A Conservative movement would argue for a ban on no-fault divorce.
Here’s a shorthand of our problem: we’re a nation which has 800K+ divorces per year and we’re mad about politicians not keeping their promises.
People are furious that the drug maker Mylan has jacked up the price of the EpiPen. Progressives are upset over the price hike while Conservatives are out there pointing out (correctly) that the reason Mylan can do this is because of restrictive, government regulations which prevent a competitor from placing a different EpiPen product on the market…but even the Conservatives are missing the point that Mylan has spent just in 2016 $875,000.00 lobbying the government, and they spent $1,550,000.00 lobbying in 2015. Who wants to bet that some of that lobbying was related to making sure that Mylan has a clear shot at the EpiPen market? Who wants to suppose that even a penny of it went to lobbying for a more open drug market? As I’ve been saying for years, Big Corporation is no friend of ours – they are not Conservative. And, yes, this means that we Conservatives should be fighting against Big Corporation. That is, if we ever want to win. I advocate for a law requiring the break up of any corporation that has a market capitalization in excess of $50 billion (that, by the way, breaks up all the large corporations you’re likely familiar with). Competition is good – let’s have some.
Whatever level of immigration we ultimately decide upon, it should be based upon merit and national need. We don’t need people over 45 moving here. We do need more doctors and engineers. Don’t need more billionaires. And we don’t need that many of any sort – we’re rising towards 320 million people, and we’ll hit 400 million by mid-century. In and among such a large population, we should be able to find all the people we need.
A Progressive is someone who continually changes his goal – every time something a Progressive does fails, it isn’t a time to re-assess the original desire, but to make up a whole, new desire and then pretend that was the goal all along.
Public schools are built on the concept that everyone has the same general education desires and abilities. I’ve looked around a bit and noticed one very stunning fact about people: they are different from one another. Some kids are good at this, some are good at that – and the parents likely know best what the kid likes and is good at. To be sure, there are bad parents out there – but most will make an effort at it; and if we didn’t have a public school system, then we’d have a myriad of different types of schools catering to different desires and different income levels. We, as a people, need plumbers, electricians, carpenters and mechanics far more than we even need engineers…and vastly more than we need Liberal Arts grads. There is an honorable place for those who learn essentially for the sake of learning – who delve deep into history and philosophy and try to understand the nature of humanity…but when the faucet is leaking, you need a plumber. You’ll never actually need someone to explain Cartesian philosophy to you.
Telling the truth is not the same as not lying – you can say nothing and thus not lie, but you aren’t by that act telling the truth. Telling the truth, as our famed oath in court says, means to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The problem with modern times is that, for the most part, people refuse to tell the truth – to tell everything that relates to the subject at hand, in clear and concise language that cannot be mistaken in meaning.
There is no such thing as a half-truth, by the way. Add an ounce of lie to a pound of truth and all you get is a lie.
If you are opposed to Big Government, you should be opposed to the death penalty. After all, a wise man doesn’t trust the government to consistently get it right about trivial matters – it is the height of folly to somehow think that the government will always get it right on the matter of executing a human being. I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever want it on my conscience that an innocent man was sent to death because of a mistake, or because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Blogs For Victory 
So if anyone of you were ever wondering to what depths the Democrats and their surrogates in the media would sink to in this election campaign, you saw it yesterday, and it is now to the point that I honestly getting to the point of being embarrassed for this country. Mika was nearly crying this morning on MSNBC because of the “words” that Donald Trump uses, and Al Sharpton stated that there are “boundaries” in politics. Boundaries in politics coming from Al Sharpton is like boundaries in violence coming from El Chapo. And our very own poster Bob is also blaming Trump for the coarseness in this campaign. Americans seemingly have the emotional maturity of a 5 year old, and the inability to lift our conversation above that of skin color, will be the demise of this country.
Like I said earlier folks, this is a battle for the very soul of this country and it is not a boxing match, it is a full throated, bare fisted brawl against an opponent who will gladly lie, deceive, deflect and literally rip the heart out of this country to win power. The Democrat and establishment policies over the last 50 years,have failed this country and without a record to run on, they must resort to the race card and they will viciously play this card over and over again regardless of how much damage it does to the country. Remember, the Democrats are the party that embrace the racist Black Lives Matter movement which is directly responsible for inner city destruction and violence and indirectly responsible for the death of several police officers. The Democrats embrace la Raza and the open borders movement which is directly responsible for the deaths of border guards, and the abuse of women and children at the hands of the human smugglers. The Democrats weakness on radical Islam has resulted in the on going Christian genocide in the middle east, and the deaths of many other innocent people all for the crime of being homosexual. Anyone who directly or indirectly supports the current Democratic party has blood on their hands and need to be soundly rejected.
“Anyone who directly or indirectly supports the current Democratic party has blood on their hands and need to be soundly rejected.”
Yep. Yet conservatism is never represented, even by conservatives, as the moral and humane and compassionate political position.
Just another random thought, isn’t the Clinton Global Initiative a charity designed to help people in need? So where is their presence in Louisiana? Shouldn’t they be there?
I heard that Sean Penn went down there to represent the Clintons, but it turned out the sighting was just that of a weasel trying to crawl into a canoe to get out of the water.
Cluster, do you still think violence is due to “radical” Islam, or just plain Islam? There is a growing opinion that the violent, the killers, the terrorists, are really those who subscribe to Islam as it is written and most often taught, which would mean that we are protecting those people by using the modifier “radical” to describe them, I think it is the non-violent, peaceful Muslims who are the radicals, just as Martin Luther was a radical, just as the Founding Fathers were radical. People who go against the teachings are the radicals.
Whenever I have someone do work for me, I ask how that person made the decision to become a……..mechanic, appliance repairman, electrician, etc. I always ask “Did you go to Show and Tell and say “I want to be a plumber when I grow up”? And the answer is always no, the person just kind of fell into the job. He or she needed job, got one and worked hard to be good at it, and in many cases went on to start his or her own business in that field. A lot of the people I talk to make really good money, and all make what is now called a “living wage”. Check out what electricians make, or plumbers. These are the people who keep the country running, and these are the forgotten when it comes to education.
The old theory was that even if you are going to be a plumber, you should still go to college because college will teach you how to think, how to analyze, how to process information, and college will teach you the classics. Even a plumber should know a little about Greek mythology or ancient history, and about the basics of our political system. That was sound reasoning, but it depended on having colleges that actually teach those things.
But then college stopped teaching those things, and became a mishmash of Leftist political indoctrination and a substitute for job training, so young people who had been brainwashed into thinking they had to have college degrees ended up being tens of thousands of dollars in debt, convinced that all their problems had to be solved by the government, and without a single job skill. Instead of getting a really good plumber who loves to read and can quote Plato, we get a whimpering Leftist who vomits in fear at the threat of having a mild-mannered conservative speaking on her campus a mile away from her dorm who is totally incapable of dealing with anything resembling real life and who owes $50,000 in student loans to pay for her Masters degree in transgendered albino Eskimo studies and knows with absolute certainty that Republicans are evil. Even those who get what used to be respectable degrees don’t read and can’t spell, don’t know the difference between “discreet” and “discrete”, use apostrophes to indicate plurals instead of possessives, and think “reality TV” is real.
I use to subscribe the traditional orthodoxy that radical Islamists were just that – radical. But I am now of the opinion that the radicalism is more mainstream amongst Muslims than we think and that they are indeed following the true doctrine of Islam.
Re: plumbers knowing “how to think, how to analyze, how to process information, and college will teach you the classics”, that is what our high schools should be teaching. Have you ever seen a high school exam from the 1950’s? And as Marco Rubio stated in the primaries, “we need more plumbers and less philosophers” and he is 100% correct. We need to strengthen our VoTech educational system.
Here’s another great article from AT this morning, and the following excerpt nails it:
We are living in a period when Democrats are normalizing the demonizing of conservatives and Christians as evil people beyond the pale. We are all KKK. As predicted, violence follows vilification. Trump supporters have been punched, hit with a crowbar. robbed, spat upon, thrown to the ground, injured by a soda can thrown at the back of the head, and pelted with dog feces. In San Jose and Minneapolis, police have stood by and allowed the violence. A black Trump supporter who voiced his opinion in a bar was shot. Democrats think we deserve it.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/08/those_kkk_republicans.html#ixzz4IXOYXKbs
So maybe Trump ought to be asking that question: Why do people now think that having a different perspective means it is OK to use violence? Maybe it is time for him to start pointing out that there has been a focused movement on the Left to sanction violence against people who do not agree with them.
I think mainstream Democrats are good decent people who vote Dem for two main reasons: Their families always voted Dem, and they have not questioned the narrative that Republicans are bad people with bad motives. Now that their party is represented by violent thuggery it is time to make the case that Republicans and our policies are not harsh or cruel but intended to help people regain the dignity of independence, and to discuss the historical lessons of political movements that are dependent on silencing opposition through censorship or violence.
The violence at Trump rallies was almost exclusively from radical Leftist agitators, though Trump stupidly put his foot back in his mouth when he encouraged his people to retaliate with more violence. Trump’s motorcade was attacked, not Hillary’s. All the violence has come from the Left.
There is a lot I would like to hear Trump say, and a lot of questions I would like him to ask. He got where he is by being the voice of the Politically Incorrect, so I’d like him to use that voice.
Most people in the United States believe in God and go to church, and the people we know are good people—so why are we ignoring the efforts to make Christians out as hateful, violent people?
In the last fifty years, has there ever been a movement in this country that encourages people of one color to attack and even kill people of another color? It is happening now—what is the administration doing about it? Our DOJ ignored a black group’s public solicitation of murder for hire because the target was white. Since when is this how we act as a nation? The thing is, this is not just a race issue—this is a political issue, because it is tolerated and even encouraged by the Democrat Party.
In the entire history of our country, has there ever been an organized movement to kill law enforcement people? Why is there one now? And why is it accepted by the Democrat Party?
It was not so long ago that black people were energized and motivated and inspired by the message of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. Now, a few decades later, it is white people who believe in his message, and many black people who reject it. Now black people of all economic levels are openly stating their hatred of white people, saying they distrust white people, because they are white, and it is white people who think we should be judged on the content of our characters and not the color of our skins. If you don’t think this is promoted by Democrats, who have to divide our nation into groups that don’t get along so they can gain and keep power, just look at where the messages of hate and violence are presented to the American public.
The First Amendment to our Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. This has been distorted into a lot of things never intended by the Founders, but its true reason was that they understood that a free nation has to have free and open exchange of ideas and discussion of different political views. They understood that a nation where different opinions are silenced, through censorship or through violence, is a nation that is headed for tyranny. All we have to do is look at the United States today to see the path we are on. Colleges and universities, which are supposed to be where people are exposed to different ideas and encouraged to think, are now censoring speech and banning speakers who do not represent the radical Left. Editors of student newspapers are fired for printing things that do not echo the agendas of the radical Left. Conservatives receive death threats and are physically attacked, just for having political beliefs that are not consistent with the radical Left.
I’d start using the term “Radical Left” and tying it into current Democrat Party actions and statements. I’d start pushing the good, decent element of the Dem Party into making a choice of what kind of American they want to be.
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Interested in what you think of this, http://www.nbcnews.com/specials/donald-trump-republican-party/gop-future
I think it’s crap. I got as far as the statement about Trump’s campaign appealing to bigotry, said a rude word, and quit reading.
If you want a serious analysis of the GOP you don’t go to a member of the Complicit Agenda Media, with its Liberal anti-conservative bias. It is a hit piece on Republicans and the party as well as on Trump, thinly disguised as analysis of the future of the party. The highlghted comment about the party facing change is just recycled from what Republicans have been saying.
If you are serious about understanding what is going on, you would be helped by remember the rule: GIGO.
Was at dinner tonight and the place’s TV was on CNN, fortunately with the volume turned off, but I noticed that they were running some kind of show which highlighted the KKK. I wonder why? I also note that all of a sudden, MSM outfits can’t get enough comments from David Duke…
I think it’s funny how liberals obsess with trying to define their opposition, all the while ignoring the descent of their own party into nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of foreign interests and special interests while being awash in Wall Street money and deceit. The candidate for the Democrat party, by her own admission was “dead broke” when she left the White House in the year 2000, yet today after having no other employment other than public service in the Senate and SecState, she is reported to be worth $100 million plus and not one person within the Democrat party seems to be concerned by that. Is it common to amass such a fortune while in public service?
I also think Democrats would be better served by examining their own dismal record of governing this country. They have been the “champions of minorities” now for over 50 years yet today within those communities poverty levels are higher, incomes are lower, crime rates are higher, living conditions worse, etc., etc. and they still can only demonize their opponents for highlighting these unfortunate truths. And what is the Democrat party candidates big economic idea for 2016? Invest in infrastructure. Shovel ready jobs. Sound familiar Casper?
I think both parties are in the process of change. The GOP is changing into an American party comprised of people who want to protect our borders, language, and culture and who want to restore the American dream for everyone, specifically those within inner cities and minority communities who have been lied to for generations by opening up our energy reserves and by eliminating regulations that only serve to line the pockets of special interests and federal bureaucrats. The Democrats on the other hand are morphing into a globalist party comprised of people who support open borders, a large central bureaucracy, wealth redistribution (which only amasses wealth for government caretakers), and a politically correct society that controls language and thought. The divide could not be more profound.
So Cluster, let’s compare states run by progressives with states run by conservatives. Start with life span. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy
You will notice that 9 of the top 10 states are blue states and 9 of the bottom 10 are red states. Could it be better government?
BTW, I don’t worry about how Hillary made her money. I’ve read her tax returns. That are all on line.
We can also compare average income by states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income
Again 9 of the top 10 are blue states and 9 of the bottom 10 are red states.
Then there are suicide rates.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm
8 of the 10 highest are in Red states. 9 out of the 10 lowest are in blue states. I think we are starting to see a trend here.
So, why are there 5 times the number of abortions in Delaware compared to Alabama? Suicide is terrible – but murder is terrible, as well. What makes Blue-States so despairing of the future that they abort their children at such a high rate?
The basic problem with your “Blue States are better than Red States” is that the Blue States get wealthy for two different reasons – being on trade routes and/or being government subsidized…and there’s a massive difference between subsidizing a welfare parent in Alabama and subsidizing a college professor in San Francisco. And even that measurement leaves out the massive socio-economic Apartheid that you Progressives are creating in the wealthy areas…tiny but massively well paid elites being serviced by a massive and low paid servant class, increasingly made up of immigrants.
Then there is poverty rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate
Only seven of the states with the lowest poverty rates are blue states. However, 9 out of 10 with the highest rates are red states. So tell me again how conservative policies are better.
And four out of ten dentists recommend Crest toothpaste. Who the F**K cares? Citing meaningless statistics on life expectancy, poverty rates, and tax returns is nonsensical and irrelevant but is typical of the brain damage people like you suffer from. Your posts remind me of some other nonsensical utterances by other brain damaged Democrats:
“And don’t let anybody, don’t let anybody tell you, that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know, that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried. That has failed. – Hillary Clinton
“We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership. ~ Barack Obama
So Cap, please don’t try and pretend like we have anything in common, or continue to bore me with any more of your irrelevant musings. Payback is coming for people who support the established Clerisy. Brace yourself. And now that the education has begun within the minority communities exposing the incompetence, dishonesty, and hypocrisy of milky white liberals like yourself, the reckoning will be profound. I look forward to that day.
Sorry my facts get in the way of your beliefs. Please feel free to show me on a state level where conservative governance is doing better than progressive. I use state statistics because a city can be adversely affected by changes in an industry regardless of who runs it.
As for trickle down economics, it doesn’t work and never has. What creates jobs is demand. The more people needing a product or service, the more people that must be hired to produce that job or service.
Casper, I am sure it is your blissful ignorance that protects you from the deep shame you should feel for the stupid things you say.
“What creates jobs is demand. The more people needing a product or service, the more people that must be hired to produce that job or service.” Didn’t you leave out a teeny tiny little piece of that puzzle, Cap? Such as, who starts or expands the business that produces what is necessary to meet the need? You tap danced around it, admitting that people must “be hired” to meet the new demand. Hired by whom?
If you can grasp the outline of business—that is, a company at the top, created to produce what is called for to fill a need, followed down the hierarchy by the management, then the employees—-isn’t it obvious that each of these people has to be paid? So the product is sold, the money flows into the top of this pyramid, and then it flows down through the levels of management and workers and sales people and delivery people. Flows, trickles, I am sure you will quibble about the terminology. It is what Liberals do. Anyway, from the salary check the money then continues to flow outward into the general economy. It buys food, clothing, gasoline, cars, TV sets, restaurant meals, movie tickets, income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes—-but it all started at the top of the hierarchy of a business that was created to meet demand and which pays people to work there to meet the demand.
Let me see if I can find a way to make you understand this, as it seems to be way too complicated for you. OK–you go into WalMart and buy a garden hose. You go to the checkout stand and give Susie $43.96 for the garden hose. (It’s a really good one, won’t kink and lasts a long time.) Does Susie take that money and put it in her pocket to pay her for showing up at work that day? No, at least she can’t legally do this. No, the money goes into an account which is managed by the administration of the company. It goes into an account where it mingles with the money from every other WalMart in the country. Then this account is used to pay the people who work for WalMart. It goes to the top of the management chain, where it is processed, accounted for, and then distributed. If you get the vapors at the term “trickle down” then use any word, phrase or image that floats your boat. But the money moves downward throughout the company employee chain and from there outward into the tax coffers and the community.
Your odd, distorted, Socialist view of commerce seems to be a “trickle UP” philosophy—there is a demand, and when the demand is met the money moves upward into the workforce. People dependent on OPM—that is, teachers and other government employees—tend to have this huge blind spot in their economic vision. The money is just there, somehow.
” I use state statistics because a city can be adversely affected by changes in an industry regardless of who runs it.” And how many of these industry changes are due to national, federal, interference? I can name a couple—-the onerous banking regulations that continue to pile up, restricting the ability of banks to function as banks are supposed to function, and the new minimum wage bill.
Do you know how a bank works? I am going to strip it down to a first-grade level of explanation. The ABC Bank makes it desirable for Mr. Jones to save money, by paying him interest on his savings. So Mr. Jones puts money into a savings account where the bank gives him interest payments on that money. Then the bank turns around and loans that money to FGH LLC, a new business formed to meet a demand—-you seem to understand at least the “demand” part of this concept—and FGH LLC pays interest on the loan, at a higher rate than the bank is paying Mr. Jones on his savings.
So far so good. So then here comes Big Government. First it takes on massive debt (to pay for socialist programs and agendas and to pay for massive expansion of the size and scope of the federal government) and then has to artificially keep interest rates low because even a slight rise in interest rates would make the national debt service too high to meet. So now the ABC Bank can’t pay Mr. Jones a high enough interest rate to make him make the sacrifice of saving his money instead of spending it on beer and football tickets. Now the bank has less money to loan, making it harder for new little businesses like FGH LLC to get started. But wait—there is more. Thanks to many different kinds of problems in lending resulting directly from Big Government trying to use private lending to further its social engineering schemes, BG has imposed massive and crippling regulations on all lending, trying to create the impression that the problems were not due to the interference of BG but to some malfeasance in the banking/lending industry. So now ABC Bank has several problems It can’t get as much money as it wants in its reserves to be able to lend as much money as it needs to lend to be profitable, and when it does have some money to lend the government restrictions won’t let it.
So in smaller towns around the country, smaller banks without large reserves can’t contribute to the economic success of their communities because they can’t loan the money the small businesses need to be able to establish and grow and therefore “trickle down” part of their profits to the employees and the community.
And is this due to conservative governance? Is it due to having a Republican governor or state legislature? No. It is due to massive federal interference, which is due to massive expansion of federal power, which created the lending problem by trying to use industry to further Leftist social engineering schemes and which then tried to cover up the problem by further interference.
In big urban areas, particularly where a sizable number of inhabitants work for government, and where big companies congregate, companies that are well established and well capitalized because of their size, history, market share and so on, these effects are not felt as deeply as in smaller communities, where the business giants don’t have a presence, where the economy depends on the establishment of small businesses.
I know this is a lot to take in, for someone who has never given a thought to any of this, preferring to cut and paste from Wikipedia and various Leftist sources.
Casper is actually a really good example of why we are in such a mess in this country. First of all, he is a teacher so he actually imparts this level of wisdom to the next generation. Secondly, he uses broad and irrelevant statistical measures in an effort to support the effectiveness of his political ideology, so using this logic if we all lived in Beverly Hills everything would be great. I am reminded of when Nancy Pelosi stated that unemployment is an economic stimulator, or better yet when she said that Obamacare will allow people to pursue their dreams. Casper is a lot like Nancy.
And if you bring up Detroit, I’m sure he’s got a statistic somewhere to show that Republicans are at fault for it…
Or Chicago, or Baltimore, or St. Louis, or …… Aside from the irrelevance of his wikipedia stats, I am sure that Casper was a big Bernie fan so his sudden total allegiance to Hillary can only mean that Cap is more of a reactionary against the GOP rather than in favor of the Democrats. I have an acquaintance like that. He is so convinced that the GOP will outlaw abortion and impose religious tests, that he votes democrat simply by default. No self respectable Bernie fan would ever support the Queen of Wall Street.
Casper has always been spineless. He is one of the dangerous ones, someone who supports a party and its agenda and policies without the slightest idea of what that party and those policies truly represent. What makes this reprehensible is that he doesn’t even care. All that matters to him is the emotional component of being part of a select mob, and then joining the others in that mob to hurl invective at an invented Other.
I can understand how the illiterate, the uneducated, can do this because they don’t have the kind of educational or intellectual background to understand the ramifications of what they are doing. They see only “stuff” and vote for whoever gives it to them. They are easily herded into mobs of hyper-emotional rage and resentment, done to discourage examination of their minders, but they are basically mindless components of an easily manipulated mob.
But someone who has, presumably, received an education and has the ability and resources to investigate and evaluate the respective political philosophies of the American Left and Right, and who abdicates this responsibility, is beneath contempt.
Try it for yourself, Cluster. See if you can get Casper to stand up on his hind legs and give a coherent answer to the question of what political system he thinks is the best blueprint for governing our country, and why. I’ve tried, and only gotten squishy nonsense. He mouths platitudes about supporting and believing in the Constitution, and at the same time misrepresents what it says and throws his support behind the party that is dedicated to first undermining it and eventually discarding it. He said, right here on this thread just a day or so ago, “I never said I wanted a powerful central authority” while at the same time defending the person and party that represent the establishment, development and expansion of a powerful central authority.
The thing is, whether this is stupidity, dishonesty or simple ignorance, it still shows a remarkable lack of a moral compass, because a component of his blind and unquestioning loyalty to the system he supports and defends is the fact that when it comes right down to it, he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if Hillary is a criminal, he just cares if there is enough proof in Leftist sources to cause problems for her. He doesn’t care if the system he supports is focused on eroding and then discarding the Constitution. He doesn’t care that its policies have moved race relations back to a level of hatred and distrust not seen since right after the Civil War. He doesn’t care that the Dependent Class created and fostered by his preferred political system has destroyed the black family and created generations of black people who are basically treated like livestock, fed and housed and harvested for votes. He doesn’t care that his preferred system has created a de facto fourth branch of government staffed by political appointees who are not subject to Congressional oversight and who act at the direction of the president through Executive Orders, bypassing the only legal legislative process in the country. He doesn’t care that this represents one of the last steps toward total tyranny.
He doesn’t care.
Have you noticed that after Casper throws out his little snot nuggets, he refuses to answer questions about them? Just look at the questions I posed him, and his refusal to address them.
This tells me a few things.
One is that he lacks the intellectual vigor to even want to look beneath the surface of anything that appealed to him.
One is that he is so intellectually dishonest that he has absolutely no interest in the accuracy or relevance or significance of anything he says. His gratification is wholly emotional—it makes him feel less weak and impotent to be part of a mob, and the timid middle school teacher version of throwing Molotov cocktails is going to a conservative blog and throwing out superficial and basically meaningless snippets gleaned from Liberal sources.
One is that he realizes these things about himself, and knows he can’t defend his positions or even explain them, so he just tucks his tail and scoots off to find something else to toss out.
Casper, we are not here to explain things to you. You come here with an agenda and, evidently, a political philosophy, and you know going in that it is not what we believe. So why don’t you just tell us why YOU believe that Progressive policies are good for the economy, consistent with Constitutional governance, supportive of personal liberties, and beneficial to the nation and its people.
You see, Casper, you have never made much sense here. You have on one hand complained that believing the nation should be governed according to the Constitution means going back to slavery and not allowing women to vote (though neither is addressed in the Constitution) and then you have said you believe we should be governed according to the Constitution and then you keep going back to defending the general idea of Progressive governance though you are never specific about why or what you think makes it better. You have never explained why you think a massive and powerful Central Authority is (1) compliant with the Constitutional restrictions on the size, scope and power of the federal government and (2) a better way to govern. You have never explained why you are so comfortable with the encroaching power of government agencies, which have taken on the de facto role of a fourth branch of government, run by political appointees with nearly no way to remove them, given massive powers by Executive Decree without the approval or even oversight of the only legitimate legislative body in the government. You are all over the place and seem to think that darting in here with challenges means you are contributing to political discourse.
Why don’t you pick one of the links you seem so proud of, and explain what it means to you and why. Why are you so determined to pick out statistics like this, instead of addressing the real problems of Progressive governance and/or the social and legal aspects of the Obama Administration?
Or you can start by explaining why it doesn’t bother you to know that Hillary sold political influence while Secretary of State. You are a teacher, presumably somewhat competent in research and analysis, so why don’t you go into the whole Pay for Play thing, and show why massive “donations” to a foundation which exists almost exclusively to enrich the Clintons and which coincide with political favors for the donors don’t bother you. Or are you just looking at income paid directly to Hillary Clinton, as such, and finding that just fine with you? Convenient and even essential to ignore the Clinton Foundation and its funneling of money directly to the Clinton family.
Amazona,
I neve said I wanted a powerful central authority. In fact that is why I used State statistics as a comparison rather than national statistics. After law, the states are the laboratories of democracy.
As for the Clinton Foundation, please sow me how either of the Clintons have become rich from the foundation. Neither of the Clinton’s receive a salary from the foundation. Their income comes from speeches and book royalties.
When you support Liberal/progressive governance, you support a powerful central authority. It is the definition of Leftist political philosophy. If you support the party that represents it without understanding it, that is reckless and inexcusable.
Of course, when asked to explain or define your political philosophy, you babbled something about believing we should be governed according to the Constitution, which is in direct contradiction to supporting the party, and the policies, that countermand the Constitutional restrictions on the size, scope and power of the federal government.
“…that is why I used State statistics as a comparison rather than national statistics. “ as if “state statistics” are not formed by federal laws and regulations. That is the complaint, Casper. You really never do get it, do you? When a central authority has taken on the power to make rules, laws, regulations that override state authority, that is the definition of Progressivism.
But since you want to insist that the raw data you quote, but refuse to analyze or defend, is due to the political orientation of any state’s government, why don’t you explain just what Progressive laws, rules, regulations form the basis of the alleged success of the blue states you admire, and which conservative laws, rules, and regulations form the basis of the defects of the states you target.
“Neither of the Clinton’s (sic) receive a salary from the foundation. “ A TEACHER using an apostrophe in a plural? Thank you for illustrating the defects of Progressive “education”. No, Cappy, if you are talking about one Clinton possessing something the correct spelling would be “the Clinton’s” whatever. If you are talking about the possessions of more than one Clinton, it would be “the Clintons’ ” whatever. And if you are just talking about more than one Clinton, it is just “the Clintons”. I hope you don’t try to teach English grammar to your poor
studentsvictims.OK, lesson over. Now back to the Clinton Foundation. Where does the money go? Are you truly so blindingly naive you think those millions upon millions of dollars have to have a clearly marked trail called “Clinton income” to mean the money does not go to the Clintons? And not just to the Clintons. There are outrageous payments made to Clinton cronies, like Blumenthal.
If Hillary does pray, I am sure a lot of her prayers are thanksgiving for gullible sheeple like you.
As far as where the money goes for the Clinton Foundation this might help:
http://fortune.com/2016/08/27/clinton-foundation-health-work/
“The most recent Clinton Foundation rating from another watchdog group, CharityWatch, gives the organization a solid “A.” The group says that the foundation spent 88% of its 2014 outlays directly on programs (rather than overhead) and that it only has to spend $2 to raise $100.”
Casper, you are so funny. Tell me, did you read this to mean that the foundation spends 88% of its donations “…directly on programs (rather than overhead)..”? Read it again. Of whatever it does spend, 88% is spent on that program and only 12% is “overhead”. Not what it GETS, but what it SPENDS.
Seriously. What this says is that if the foundation allocates $1000 to a cause, $888 of that money goes to the cause and $120 is for “overhead”. It gives percentages of OUTLAY to overhead, not INCOME to OUTLAY. And when you look at the audit for the foundation, for example, even that figure is questionable. If you consider salaries, benefits, travel, consulting fees and so on as “overhead” they far exceed the amount spent on programs.
I hope your teaching also does not involve cognitive thinking, analysis, or math.
Considering all of the organizations affiliated with the Clinton Foundation, he said, CharityWatch concluded about 89 percent of its budget is spent on programs. That’s the amount it spent on charity in 2013, he said.
We looked at the consolidated financial statements (see page 4) and calculated that in 2013, 88.3 percent of spending was designated as going toward program services — $196.6 million out of $222.6 million in reported expenses.
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/06/where-does-clinton-foundation-money-go/
From an “independent audit” for 2012:
Program Services
Salaries and benefits 66,775,050
Direct program expenditures 29,389,026
Professional and consulting 13,697,674
UNITAID commodities expense 28,647,779
Procurement and shipping 1,668,867
Travel 16,707,454
Some misc. stuff
Total expenditures for Program Services $196,633,380. But just look at all the stuff that is packed into the category “program services”. Most of it seems to be administrative, what one might call “overhead”.
There’s also $15,633,562 for “Management, General” and $19,129,160 for fund raising. It seems that a lot of money went to different forms of “overhead”—-salaries, benefits (both terms that can be loosely defined) “professional and consulting” (almost $14 million worth) and close to $17 million for “travel”. I wonder just how they define “overhead”.
It is impossible to know for sure what expenses went to the actual programs themselves—that is, for medicines or wells or whatever—but it is reasonable to assume this would be under “Direct program expenditures”. Note that this line item is less than half of the one for “Salaries and benefits”. So much for low “overhead” compared with outlay. I looked up UNITAID and that is a mess, so I refer you to the following article.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/16/clinton-foundation-financial-disclosures-still-a-shambles-despite-hillary-clinton-oversight/
As to your being so impressed at the low cost of their fundraising, that cost was borne by the United States and its citizens, when donations were met with quid pro quo benefits from the State Department.
“Her donor list includes:
Over $25 million – Gates, UNITAID, and a couple of Guistra foundations (who surprisingly sits on the board), and the Netherlands Lottery.
In the $10-$25 million range we have – Government of Norway, Saudi Arabia, an Australian government organization, Dominican Republic, as well as some very prominent billionaires in Scotland, UK and US.
For the $5-$10 million range – Qatar, government of the Netherlands, Kuwait, the Swedish lottery, and a Saudi/Ethiopian businessman, Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi
“
“More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.”
The story said the donations to the Clinton Foundation amounted to roughly $156 million, not counting 16 foreign governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton charity.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/hillary-clinton-clinton-foundation-scandal-defended-article-1.2765590
Casper, are you claiming that back when the nation was run according its Constitution, urban areas did not have higher per capita incomes than rural areas, or longer life spans due to different life styles and exposure to occupational hazards?
If you believe that before the encroachment of Progressive governance incomes were pretty equally distributed among urban and rural areas. and the life spans of urban people were subject to the same hazards as those in rural life, and/or that medical care was equal in both urban and rural areas, then please explain how increasing the powers of the Central Authority led to the differences that seem to mean so much to you now.
You see, Casper, as usual you have it all backwards. The advent of Socialism/Liberalism/Progressivism does not mean increased economic prosperity, or longer life spans, or happier people. If that were true, Detroit would be a modern paradise of happy, prosperous, healthy people. So would Baltimore. So would the inner city of D.C. So would Philadelphia. All your statistics mean is that Progressives tend to cluster in urban areas, which have always had higher incomes and better medical care, etc., and that the numbers of Progressives in those areas is vastly bolstered by the very high proportion of their Dependent Class citizens, making the raw data show them to be “blue” areas.
As usual, Casper, you embarrass yourself. Take your poverty level stats, for example
This is all raw data. Look at what is not included.
For example, many of the states with higher “poverty levels” also have large numbers of Native Americans living on government reservations, which are often areas of low income. How many of the lower average income states are also burdened with large numbers of Dependent Class including illegal aliens, both of which are directly attributable to Progressive policies. And the raw data merely assume that income levels coordinate with poverty across the board.
Even you, Casper, can understand that someone making, say, $50,000 a year living in Utah is going to have a much higher standard of living than someone with the same income in San Francisco. Yet you blithely accept the notion that income alone decrees poverty or affluence. When a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan costs three thousand dollars a month and that will buy a four or five bedroom home in Casper, can you really say that the same dollar amount of income means the same level of “poverty” in each location? Yet you don’t question the notion that someone who gets paid a higher salary just because the housing situation in that area demands it to be able to hire and keep employees automatically means that person has a higher standard of living.
You get to be blind, deaf and dumb and just accept every superficial nonsensical thing fed to you by your minders. Just don’t expect to drag it here and have it viewed through the same Liberal goggles you wear.