Rumors have been swirling that they are getting ready to impose COVID lockdowns again for 2024. I discounted them but now I’m not so sure – Lionsgate has reinstated mask mandates in their LA office and a few other bits of info in my own life tell me that something is up: that there might be a push to resume COVID panic. The main reason I can figure for this is to allow free flowing fraud for 2024 – and the bad news for us is that most battleground States have Democrat governors who will certainly want to impose the mandates when ordered to. Still not a done deal: outside of a small portion of idiots, nobody wants mask mandates and other COVID lockdowns in place. Popular resistance might prevent it.
The other possibility for bringing them back is that we are teetering on the edge of a major economic downturn and getting COVID restrictions back in place will be a convenient thing to blame…rather than all the selling out to China and paying for a proxy war in Ukraine that we’re losing. Main thing: put nothing past these people. As I’ve said before – once you get a person going along with abortion to birth, there is no morality left. They are into objective evil.
They seem to be slow walking Maui information, don’t they? Rumor is that hundreds are still missing – and must be presumed dead by now. Including large numbers of children. Why not let it out right way? Because they need it to be old news…dribbled out, perhaps with a Friday newsdump. To have Democrat policy cause such a shocking disaster isn’t something they want in the public eye. They also needed a chance to get Pudding Brain’s meds right for a visit. They did the best they could but of course that senile idiot tried to make the tragedy about himself; trying to talk up a minor house fire he had once into something comparable. But make no mistake about it, that fire was caused and aggravated by Democrat policy at the local, State and federal level. It should never have happened – and if by some chance it started, wise policy before and during would have made it a minor event. This is blood on Democrat hands.
We on our side really need to hit on this; every Blue city murder, every death along the border, every drug overdose…all of it comes to us via Democrat policy. They are piling up corpses in great, big bloody batches and we can’t afford to be nice about it: paint their doors with the blood of the victims. No more letting Democrats get away with a claim of being compassionate…they are as cruel and uncaring as the worst savages of history.
The end of Buckley-ite Conservatism? National Review is ending its fortnightly format and going monthly. Naturally they are dressing it up as new and improved…but the bottom line is that it shows a declining appetite for what NR sells. And just what does it sell? Conservatism which Liberals find tolerable.
No disrespect to the late Bill Buckley here. He was a man of brilliance who did many things to advance Conservative thought. In the heyday of Liberal dominance – the 20 years after the end of WWII – Buckley’s magazine was one of the few things keeping the flame of Conservatism alive. But in the end Buckley’s project failed. And it failed because it presumed Liberalism to be a valid worldview. That is, that Liberalism had a genuine intellectual and philosophical underpinning. It didn’t. It doesn’t. It never could have. Liberalism, from its first emergence in the middle 18th century always had the fatal flaw: the absurd belief that if we could just get the system right, we’d get the desired morality. Buckley’s brand of Conservatism did see through that, but not all the way. There was still some underlying assumption that Liberalism is tolerable, when just a bit of thought lets you know that it will always devolve into some sort of totalitarian barbarism. Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Nazism all grew out of Liberalism…and the increasing favor tyranny finds on the Left today is just yet another manifestation of Liberalism’s devolution to tyranny.
The breaking point – the thing which pointed to ultimate failure – was the casting out of the Birchers. I, too, once believed that it was a good and necessary thing. Can’t have kooks! Well, true; but we also can’t let ourselves be suckers. And casting out the Birchers made us suckers. Whatever screwball ideas they may have had, the bottom line is that they were defending what Conservatism is supposed to defend; faith, family and property. Because they were abandoned, the Right essentially abandoned the defense of faith, family and property. If you think back on it all, every time there was a crucial fight on those issues, the Conservative movement caved into the Left. It wasn’t Conservatism which began the pro-Life movement. It wasn’t Conservatism which saved the Second Amendment. There weren’t rich donors behind them; while Conservatism would say kind things about them, they never got into the fight. If Conservatism wanted to Conserve anything then it’s jobs was to guide and channel the Birch-impulse…away from the genuine screwballs. But to do that would be to get down in the dirt and fight it out to the destruction of Left or Right. Conservatism never wanted to do that. Might upset the liberal friends, you know?
And so it drifted until with betrayal piled on top of betrayal, the common folk turned to an outsider to get what they want – a defense of faith, family and property. We’ve yet to see how this comes out – but what Buckley did is gone, never to return.
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And so it drifted until with betrayal piled on top of betrayal, the common folk turned to an outsider to get what they want – a defense of faith, family and property.
Kind of ironic, isn’t it? And the fact that it took someone like Trump tells you all you need to know about the rest of the Republicans. There are a few in the Republican Party who could have done what Trump did – very few. None of them wanted the job in 2016 or 2020 because they saw how the long knives from both parties came out after Trump. I can’t think of another individual on the national scene who could have weathered what Trump did and still come out swinging. And make no mistake, if Trump falters and someone else picks up the mantle of defending faith, family and property, those same long knives will be turned on them without hesitation or mercy.
Well, Ted Cruz saw the problems, and ran for office because he thought he could address them. He ran in 2016 with a coherent and articulate platform based on returning to a solidly Constitutional government, restraining federal power and restoring state sovereignty and addressing government corruption. He is intellectually brilliant, is is amazingly articulate and thoughtful, he fought and won several Supreme Court cases, he had the political experience to add to his legal expertise, and he was passionate about solving these problems.
But he didn’t have the emotional appeal of Trump, and he couldn’t manage to make calm intellectual arguments outweigh the visceral pleasures of the Politics of Personal Destruction (“Lyin’ Ted!) I think this is when we saw the party start to divide, between the calm rational thinking people who just wanted to hire the best guy for the job and the hyper-emotional element who craved the ability to emote in giant rallies. (Who now explain that they were just there because of calm objective analysis of Trump’s stated policy goals.)
So when I read until ……..the common folk turned to an outsider to get what they want – a defense of faith, family and property. I kind of gag, because this is hyper-emotional hyperbole. AS IF Ted Cruz did not offer a “defense of faith, family and property”. What utter crap. That is exactly what he DID offer, but he just couldn’t compete with the emotional rewards of going to the Trump circus, the Trump appeal to the feelz, the Trump offer of excitement. Cruz just wasn’t exciting enough. He just wasn’t glamorous enough. He just asked people to think and didn’t offer them entertainment.
The sanctification of Trump is getting very tiresome. Yes, he ended up being a very good president. Yes, he did a good job, in spite of many unforced errors due to his ego and inexperience and really really bad judgment. He did some things I really admired, but when he screwed up he screwed up big time. Having Trump in the White House was like having two presidents. One was clever and insightful and effective and the other one blundered along saying and doing very stupid things. Yes, I think he would be effective if given another chance. Yes, I will vote for him if he is the nominee, knowing that if elected we can only hope that Smart Trump gets more air time than Blundering Trump.
But he was not some mythical hero sent down from Olympus to fill a void no mere human could fill. And he was not the only person who saw and recognized the problems and had good ideas on how to address them, plus the skill set to do so. Cruz came in as the guy applying for the job of CEO of a huge corporation, with his neatly typed resume and his list of qualifications and accomplishments, expecting to be judged on his ability to do the job. Trump, on the other hand, appealed to people who wanted/needed to feel part of a crusade, an almost religious fervor, who loved the vaudeville flavor of lining up opponents and then hurling insults at them. It was two campaigns, with two increasingly different support bases.
Cruz was a class act, all the way. He supported Trump as the nominee and as the president. And then he had his one big chance to make a huge difference in the entire arc of the nation, by using his considerable skills to influence Congress to postpone certification of the 2020 election results, knocked out from under him by another stupid ego-driven Trump circus, this one totally undermining his effort and destroying any chance of it succeeding.
Would Cruz have been able to, as Spook said, weather what Trump did and come out swinging? Well, he wouldn’t have HAD to weather what Trump did, because Cruz was never the target-rich environment that Trump was. And is. Cruz would have had to weather the same political attacks every politician has to deal with, the same kinds of attacks he had been dealing with his entire life in politics. The “long knives” coming our for Cruz would not have had the same material to work with. No adultery, no porn stars or payoffs, no clumsy phone calls to heads of state, no Ivanka, no Jared, no stupid tweets, probably no internal administration conflicts due to hiring the wrong people, etc. Just a workmanlike approach to the executive branch, and given what Cruz said about his philosophy of government and his ideas about the problems we had I think he would have accomplished as much as Trump did, and probably had eight years to do more.
So let’s just see if we can defend Trump without wrapping him in a Superman cloak and explaining how he alone was The One We Had Always Been Waiting For. We had already been there, and really needed to get away from personality cultism. And still do.
I think this is when we saw the party start to divide, between the calm rational thinking people who just wanted to hire the best guy for the job and the hyper-emotional element who craved the ability to emote in giant rallies.
There is a very real reason why this happened and again, it goes back to my unanswered question …. “how do you think we’re doing?” The calm, rational thinking conservative people are losing ground to the Left every single year, to the point now that this country is unrecognizable. We are a nation that spends more time on tik tok than in the classroom, more time on selfies than the dinner table, and more time in the bars than in church.
The first rule of marketing is knowing your customer, and the rational, calm thinking conservative people have lost sight of who their customer is, and what their desires are. IMO, the God fearing, family oriented, hard working average conservative out there doesn’t want anymore lectures on Constitutional philosophy … they get it. They understand the Constitution. What they don’t understand is why we lose ground every year. They want pragmatism and results, exactly like the results we saw happen from 2016-2019.
And again, Trump is not a cult, and to imply that the millions of average Americans who support his fight are in a cult, is not right. Additionally, to think that the “long knives” won’t have the same effect on other candidates is just wrong. Look what they did to Romney. Talk about a squeaky clean guy … yet they eviscerated him, and now he is one of them.
Not all who support Trump do so out of cultish devotion. But many do. Just listen to them. One clue is the absolute, obdurate, insistence that he is not going into this race loaded down with so many negatives that there is reasonable concern he will be defeated by them.
The election is more than a year away, and given Trump’s history even without the added conflicts of the indictments and so on those months would be full of melodrama. The man can’t even talk about a potential opponent without resorting to infantile name-calling! He needs drama, he thrives on it, he craves it, and he creates it wherever he goes. This appeals to a certain kind of voter, but it has the opposite effect on many.
Saying, in a poll, that you “support” someone is not the same thing as saying you will vote for him. The word is ambiguous, and can mean supporting in terms of agreeing he is being badly treated OR in terms of wanting him to be president. But the word is being used to herd people into the conviction that Trump is unbeatable. I want to see the whole poll. I want to see the followup questions, if there are any. A real poll would say “Do you support Trump?” followed by “Is he your choice for the presidency?” Because the two are not the same.
I still contend that a lot of people who find a lot to like about Trump are also very likely to suffer even more Trump Fatigue as the constant drumbeat of TrumpTrumpTrump continues, the incessant focus on his multitude of issues and problems goes on and on, and people start to consider the very real threat that electing him will mean four more years of nonstop melodrama. That is a reasonable concern.
I still contend that many people who have defended him, been indignant at what the State is doing to him, like what he did as president, would even like to have him back as president, can still, when it is time make that final decision, decide enough is enough and this nation needs calmness and steadiness.
I get the emotional appeal of electing a man who is fighting for his political life. I get the emotional rush of the idea of him being elected while in jail. There are all sorts of movie-script versions of using support of Trump to flip off the State, and they all have their appeal. But after four years of turmoil, the nation might not be inclined to sign on for four more years, even if that would mean having Trump back in office.
At least not when there is an alternative who is the opposite of Trump in every way except the concept of which problems we face and the need to solve them. Not when the choice is never-ending conflict and, yes, melodrama, or a quiet steady progression of accomplishment.
It’s true that when we talk of the constant turmoil of the Trump years, from 2015 till today, it’s fair to say BUT THAT WAS NOT HIS FAULT! Except a lot of it was. And it’s a pretty good guess that we are in for, at the very least, another year of it and maybe even five years.
And finally, one big dark cloud hanging over everything that is Trump is the fear that his massive ego will bring about another four years of Leftist tyranny and permanent damage to the Republic if he and the true cultists who worship him tank the election out of spite or pissiness because he was not properly respected. If he and his supporters want to be taken seriously as patriots only interested in the welfare of the nation who just happen to think Trump is the best avenue to achieving that then they/you had better start stepping up to the plate right now and making it damned clear that you and THEY will support any nominee the GOP puts up, will NOT mount a third party run for the office, and will NOT just stay home and pout, tossing the election to the Left.
The real reason Trumpists are increasingly seen as cultists is the perception that their devotion to him is so strong that a third-party run or a boycotting of the election are very real possibilities.
I’m starting to think your debate inspiration was Roseanne Roseannadanna. I talk about campaigning, to draw new votes to the Right, by explaining (in simple terms) our political philosophy of limiting federal power and keeping authority closer to the people through state sovereignty, thinking that after four years of federal muscle-flexing and tyranny this might resonate with people who have just experienced and been damaged by heavy-handed federal authority.
Your response is this: IMO, the God fearing, family oriented, hard working average conservative out there doesn’t want anymore lectures on Constitutional philosophy
In other words, once again you respond to something I didn’t say. Unless you thought the Right was not going to be happy with a simple vote for its candidate unless it was accompanied by a lecture.
Here’s a radical (and evidently new) concept: Address what I SAY. Such as:
People, politically illiterate people unfamiliar with the Constitution, often don’t understand why conservatives vote the way they do, and fall prey to the Leftist canard that it is just due to greed, or selfishness, or indifference to suffering, or bad character. Until we can start to explain to people that decisions (like Roe) have to be made based on a coherent and consistent philosophy of government as stated in our Constitution every decision is going to be viewed through the lens of emotional judgment instead of understanding. Prove me wrong. (And no, a lecture on how well conservatives understand the Constitution won’t do it.)
Because this tactic has not worked for over 20 years now, and I don’t see it working this time either. Using a sports analogy, we are in the fourth quarter and down by 21 points. We can’t keep running the ball. We need a new approach because we simply can’t keep losing. We won’t have a Constitution anymore.
(What’s funny is that I write a post about you “responding” to something I didn’t even say, totally misstating my comment, and you “respond” to that by doubling down on the same error.)
Well, maybe in some areas of Phoenix “this tactic” has been tried and failed. What, the tactic of lecturing to conservatives about what they already know?
Because that is what made it through your clogged-up filter, instead of the comment that it is those who don’t understand why conservatives vote the way we do who need some explanation.
And why do you insist that this is an either/or (what you called “binary”) choice? Do people around you not speak in sentences? They can only think of and say one small idea at a time?
Sample speech from a candidate: “We have spent the last four years experiencing what happens when we elect people who think the federal government should have unlimited power.
We saw one man, at the head of the federal government, shut down our economy and limit our personal freedoms, just by signing his name. I want to represent you to turn that around, to limit the power of the federal government and bring the power closer to the people, where the Constitution says it belongs. Every policy I support will be based on that simple philosophy of how our country should be governed.”
Too complicated? Tried so very very very many times and always failed? Because I have never heard a politician say anything even close to this.
I haven’t heard that either but I did witness it. I think Trump governed closer to what the Constitution mandates than any other president in my life time. Including Reagan.
I agree with what you said about Trump governing closer to the Constitution. I remember him telling Congress “do your damned job” more than once, as he tried to cancel overreaching Executive Orders and get the legislature to LEGISLATE. He was meticulous about getting multiple legal opinions on the scope of Constitutional presidential authority.
He was so good—except when he was awful. If there was some magical laser scalpel that could excise the stupid from Trump–mostly his ego, but some of his recklessness, which is probably ego-based—and make him more articulate, I would have few if any complaints.
In a recent interview, Soros claimed that he wanted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to win the Republican primary in the anticipation that former President Donald Trump will then launch a third-party bid for the presidency, splitting the GOP vote and resulting in a landslide win for Democrats.
Soros is a direct threat to the stability of this country and we should treat him accordingly
We could easily strip him of his citizenship, which would make it illegal for him to donate to politicians. We won’t, but we could.
We need a new approach because we simply can’t keep losing. And what IS this “new approach”? More name calling? Another sleazy Jerry Springer chair-throwing campaign?
Well I hope not but it might come to that. I wish everyone would get a long too but that’s not the reality. We just have to win, and honestly I hope it is DeSantis because I want the next generation to step up. But right now the majority wants Trump, and if he is the nominee, we have to make it work.
I 100% agree that the Constitutional debate is important and worth having, but IMO we have to stop the bleeding first. And that’s going to require some different approaches.
Would Cruz have been able to, as Spook said, weather what Trump did and come out swinging? Well, he wouldn’t have HAD to weather what Trump did, because Cruz was never the target-rich environment that Trump was.
You know I love you dearly, and you and I seldom disagree, but I think you’re wrong on this. The GOP establishment hates Cruz almost as much as they hate Trump. Anyone dedicated to dismantling the Swamp is going to have massive pushback, and if they don’t have vulnerabilities to exploit, they’ll simply make stuff up. Even with all his baggage, the amount of sh*t that was made up about Trump could fill a book, probably multiple books. You think they wouldn’t do that against Cruz? That’s naive. Cruz may not have the personal baggage that Trump has, but when has that ever stopped the Left and their ends-justify-the-means mentality. We’re dealing with psychopaths. Look at Ronald Reagan who was also hated by members of his own party, even after two landslide elections. You heard comments from members of both parties; “how could so many people be so stupid>” That’s what they think of us.
Oh, and you may have noticed – Cruz is not running again.
While the Left can be counted on to savage any opponent in any way possible, that level of vitriol and viciousness still needs a matrix upon which to build. Trump supplied this. All the Left had to do was build on what he gave them—sordid history, adultery, sex with porn star, payoffs, Ivanka, Jared, tweets. There is no doubt that the Left would have gone after Cruz, but they would have had to invent a basis for their lies, which makes it harder to sell them. There is a big difference between “Trump is a morally corrupt adulterer” and “Cruz is just a big old poopyhead”. Not everyone can tell the difference between a conclusion and an opinion, but some can, opinions are a harder sell. While stuff was made up about Trump, most if not all of had an original thread of fact it built on.
So what I think you said is that both Trump and Cruz were anathema to establishment Republicans and therefore…..? Because it wasn’t establishment Republicans who savaged Trump. They didn’t like him, but they didn’t dedicate themselves to destroying him. They didn’t support him, but they didn’t act like the Complicit Agenda Media about him, either.
As for the Swamp, there are versions of the Swamp. If you are talking about embedded cronyism and kickbacks and so on, then yes, the establishment Republicans would have wanted this to continue. I’m not sure they were invested in continuing the Bureaucratic State and de facto legislation by political appointees.
If you are arguing that Cruz would have presented a target with as many vulnerabilities and opportunities for attack that Trump did, I simply have to disagree. Which is pretty much what I said: Well, he wouldn’t have HAD to weather what Trump did, because Cruz was never the target-rich environment that Trump was. And is. Cruz would have had to weather the same political attacks every politician has to deal with, the same kinds of attacks he had been dealing with his entire life in politics. The “long knives” coming our for Cruz would not have had the same material to work with. No adultery, no porn stars or payoffs, no clumsy phone calls to heads of state, no Ivanka, no Jared, no stupid tweets, probably no internal administration conflicts due to hiring the wrong people, etc.
And as for Cruz not running again, I don’t see what that has to do with anything.
8/22/23 @ 10:23 AM
Well, Ted Cruz saw the problems, and ran for office because he thought he could address them. He ran in 2016 with a coherent and articulate platform based on returning to a solidly Constitutional government, restraining federal power and restoring state sovereignty and addressing government corruption.
8/22/23 @ 7:40 PM
I want to represent you to turn that around, to limit the power of the federal government and bring the power closer to the people, where the Constitution says it belongs. Every policy I support will be based on that simple philosophy of how our country should be governed.”
Too complicated? Tried so very very very many times and always failed? Because I have never heard a politician say anything even close to this.
Ted Cruz? Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. I still love you.
I actually thought of that when I wrote it, but then realized that only a few of us probably heard Cruz try to talk about needing to return to the Constitution before he got drowned out in the schoolyard taunting. I only heard him mention it once.
Good catch, though. Love you too.
That is, that Liberalism had a genuine intellectual and philosophical underpinning. It didn’t. It doesn’t. It never could have.
And it never will, because it is not grounded in God. When will people learn that there is a spiritual world, there is a God, and there is Order, and whenever man tries to alter, or ignore that order, bad things happen. Jesus warned us of this, and many still refuse to listen.
And to Spook’s point, how ironic is it that it took a billionaire in a three piece suit to rally patriotic, blue collar Americans? The family unit is the purest, and simplest form of government, and through the family unit, individual autonomy is achieved and communities are built, all without the need of a national authority or agenda, and that is what terrifies the Left. Democrats began dismantling black families in 1964, and they continue too wreak havoc on White and Hispanic families now. Look what they just did to the small family oriented Hawaiian town in Lahaina? They don’t care about families, they only care about their secular and selfish pursuits.
“We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re coming for your children”. That’s who Democrats are now.
Speaking of Democrats, how do you suppose their effort to “save democracy” in Ukraine is coming along lol? Weird that they pick the most corrupt country in the world to save democracy right?
The Ukraine war is a money laundering operation, period. And we need to ridicule America’s Ruling Class on their opinion that if they don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, he will march into Europe … that idea is a complete joke. Not only does Putin not have the army to do that, but Putin doesn’t even want all of Ukraine, he simply wants the eastern flank and I will wage a bet that most of the people that live in that region, want to be part of Russia too. Putin could end this war tomorrow if wanted to, he certainly has the nuclear stockpile to do it, but as of this date, his troops only focus on the eastern flank. During Obama’s presidency, Russia marched into Crimea and took that peninsula over without firing a shot, and Obama said nothing. Weird now, that this recent effort by Putin causes the West to “save democracy”, right?? It’s all corrupt.
Update: I guess nearly $200 billion just isn’t enough … I wonder where that money went??
Ukraine: “We Simply Don’t Have the Resources to Do the Frontal Attacks the West is Imploring Us to Do”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/ukraine-we-simply-dont-have-resources-do-frontal/
Your stupidity is astonishing. Where did Mark even suggest it was not ok for private business’s to do what they want within their 4 walls? Just another strawman argument on your behalf, which does get boring. What Mark implied is that because the authoritarians at Lionsgate are now imposing masks, it may not be long before the authoritarians in government do the same thing. Authoritarians think a like, and require stupid people like you to buy into it. Which you do.
Hey, “we’re queer, we’re here, and we’re coming for your children” … kind of a bizarre chant but that’s who you and your friends are.
Rumors have been swirling that they are getting ready to impose COVID lockdowns again for 2024. I discounted them but now I’m not so sure – Lionsgate has reinstated mask mandates in their LA office and a few other bits of info in my own life tell me that something is up: that there might be a push to resume COVID panic.
Do you all remember several years ago when a half dozen or so Liberal Democrats in various venues posed the possibility of sending 75 million Trump voters off to re-education camps? Eugene Robinson, far-Left columnist for WAPO, being the most prominent among them. The rest were obscure Dem operatives, low level politicians, and I think a lady who writes for The Atlantic or New Yorker. The idea went nowhere, and I’m sure internal polling told the powers that be to not mention it ever again. Fast forward to Lionsgate and masks. Another test run? We’ll see in the next few days to maybe a week or two, but my bet is that they’re waiting for a reaction. I wouldn’t even be surprised if, behind the scenes, someone in government asked for volunteers and Lionsgate volunteered. I’m not sure, at this point, why anyone in the entertainment business would think they’re immune from socio-political backlash. Maybe they’re just stupid.
Talk of Covid is slowly creeping into the national narrative again. Their gloves are off. Ours better be. The current Democrat party is the greatest threat to our Republic. Putin isn’t even a close second.
Here it comes … are people really this f***ing stupid? I am beginning to think they are …
BA.2.86 Covid variant IS spreading in the US: Virginia resident who traveled from Japan becomes second US patient to be infected with mutant strain – as experts say case is just the tip of the iceberg
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12433597/bax-ba286-second-case-covid-usa-virginia-japan.html
Some iceberg! The guy wasn’t even sick, and they only picked up the result in a random test of travelers. He was “asymptomatic” which means no symptoms which means not sick.
In the same article: doctors on the ground say that while they are seeing an increase in patients with the virus, their symptoms are milder than at any point previously in the pandemic. Yelp, time to panic all right.
Note the language – “infected with mutant strain”. That will indeed alarm the stupid people.
What Biden said the other day in Hawaii is just unconscionable. To compare “almost” losing his corvette (which is a lie) to the tragedy in Hawaii is grounds for removal in my opinion. This worthless piece of shit needs to go away. On top of that, his non binary administration are taking advantage of the situation and vacationing in Hawaii rather than doing their jobs. This is just off the charts bad. How anyone can support this shit is beyond me …
While most government officials (not corrupt) would see a trip to Hawaii as an opportunity to address the recent tragedy near Lahaina, it seems FEMA officials saw it as an opportunity for something quite different.
According to a report and photos obtained by the Daily Mail, while the people of Hawaii grapple with a serious disaster, FEMA officials have been enjoying all the amenities that come with a $1,000+ a night hotel.
The revelation has sparked outrage, with many seeing this as a blatant display of disregard for the dire situation at hand.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/fema-turns-hawaii-tragedy-tropical-retreat-stays-1000/
If you don’t know about it, you can’t get mad about it.
I saw on the news the other day where he compared Maui to a “kitchen fire.” Man what a doofus.
I hear that Doofuses of America are circulating a petition to ask the courts to issue an injunction forbidding the use of the word “doofus” related to Joe Biden, because using the term to describe him is making doofuses look bad.
😂
I’ve been thinking about this conversation we’ve been having about returning to Constitutional government. Amazona has made some good points, and Cluster has made some good counterpoints. In my opinion, you both have missed the most important point: Instead of concentrating on issues or on returning to the Constitution, why not combine the two. Instead of a candidate saying, here’s what I will do on (fill in the blank), say, here’s what the current administration is doing on (fill in the blank), here’s why it violates the Constitution, and here’s how I will address the problem in a Constitutional manner. I’m not positive about this, but I strongly suspect that today’s young people are not taught much about the Constitution. Any conversation about it on the campaign trail is going to fall largely on deaf ears with what is becoming an increasingly important segment of the electorate. Tie it in with issues that are important to people and explain that they can be addressed in a constitutional manner, and if you have a choice to solve a problem legally or illegally, why would you pick illegally? Just a thought, and yes, I know Amazona has made this same pitch, but it’s important enough that it needs to be repeated over and over.
I like this idea and what better issue to start with then abortion and the dismantling of Roe v Wade. Really easy to explain that ending Roe simply sent the issue to the States for people to decide. That’s actually called Democracy. … the States are a democracy, the nation is a Republic. And what better way to strengthen democracy than to have 50 States practicing it, and allowing people to vote with their feet and live under the governance they want. Freedom is a beautiful thang
Unless they all jump on the bandwagon, this approach would also separate the candidate or candidates who utilize it from, not just the rest of the GOP candidates, but from virtually EVERY Dem candidate. And if subsequent polling shows that it resonates with a significant percentage of the electorate, you can bet the rest of the GOP candidates will jump on board. I can’t picture ANY Dem candidate being able to cross his or her fingers hard enough to convincingly lie about it, given that none of them have ever been constitutionalists, so the electorate will have a clear choice between a party that at least WANTS to play by the rules vs. the party that says “rules, schmules — we don’t need no stinkin’ rules.” The vast majority of Americans live their lives playing by the rules. Sadly, as Amazona noted, Ted Cruz is the only candidate who has made this argument, and he’s not running.
That’s just it—we never pin down a Democrat with questions like this. We need to start doing this. We need to start asking questions like “Why do you favor consolidation of power in the hands of a few?” It’s kind of like “are you still beating your wife?” If the answer is that the person does NOT favor consolidation of power in the hands of a few then the next obvious question is “then why are you a Democrat?” If he admits he thinks this is a good idea, then ask him why, and find a way to point out that this attitude, by the way, is contrary to our own Constitution.
Back them into corners. Make them explain and defend, not their policies but their philosophies. To paraphrase Spook, make them lie or squirm.
Policies are too often just platitudes. When I started asking Libs to explain their political philosophies I got things like “I think things should just be more fair”. Any policy can sound good and noble—-“no child should go to bed hungry” is a policy, and a very appealing one, but how can this be achieved, and more to the point, is it a duty of the federal government to do this? It’s really more of a platitude than an actual policy. But this is the kind of superficial pap politicians dish and get away with.
And it’s possible to squeeze in a little Constitutional education along the way, if candidates know enough to do so and have this on the top of their awareness. A few years ago I read a statement by a noted religious leader who said the federal government has no role or place in virtue. That sounded pretty dramatic, but he went on to say the federal government was designed to provide an umbrella of identity as a nation and protection for its citizens, so they can have the liberty to pursue their chosen lives, and any connection with virtue, such as charity, is delegated to the states. This is a unique and stunning and somewhat controversial perspective to most Americans, who think the federal government’s purpose is to take care of their needs and make them feel good, and it has to be introduced gradually, but I think it is essential if we are going to get away from the nanny-state intrusive and controlling feds we have now. If all our candidates understand this they will be better equipped to deal with the feeling that the federal government’s role is to meet all our needs, even if only to quickly say “the federal government was designed to provide us a framework of laws and protections of our rights and liberties, and for the states to deal with personal needs.”
And I think the vast majority of Americans are ready to bring governance back to the States and closer to them. That means people will have more of a direct say in how they live, and I think that will resonate. 50 laboratories of democracy is much better than one national approach to everything.
And this is what I have been trying to say.
If you have a clear and coherent vision of what you want to convey, you can work it into everything you say. You can, if the situation calls for it, do it in connected declarative sentences that refer specifically to the Constitution. Or you can work it in a little more casually, like “That’s why the Founders insisted that power be kept in the states and closer to the people than in the federal government”.
If we don’t make the dictatorial shutdown of the nation a central aspect of the campaign we’re fools, and we can circle back to it (to coin a phrase) in different ways, but basically along the lines of “We fought a bloody war for independence from a massively powerful Central Authority, which at that time was called a monarchy or the king, and here we were in 2021 under the thumb of a massively powerful Central Authority called the Democrat Party, or Joe Biden. When did we start to slide backwards to the same kind of tyranny we fought to escape?”
Instead of Identity Politics focusing on individuals. we should focus on the Democrat Party. That’s what I mean by the “structure”. Over time, with enough repetition, it will start to sink in that any Dem will do the same thing. And there are myriad ways to make references to the Constitution without a lecture. It takes about six seconds to say something like “One size does not fit all, the problems of Rhode Island are not the same as the problems of Nevada, which is why our country was designed to have very little power in the federal government and most authority in the states, where the people most affected have control over their own lives.” Plug in the state where the speech is being given and contrast it with a state as unlike it as possible, and people will nod in agreement. Then slightly tweak the speech to say something like “The Founders understood that someone who had never been west of the Potomac would probably have little understanding of the issues of the western states, which is why the Constitution was set up to keep most authority in the states and closer to the people”.
And to me the most powerful message of all is that the core decision is not whether to support or reject any particular ISSUE but to understand if it is in federal authority or has to be decided at the state level. Here is when something like abortion should be handled. Instead of a gotcha question about how a presidential candidate feels about abortion, the answer should be a version of “it doesn’t matter because abortion is not something the president or even the federal government has authority over because it’s not a delegated duty of the federal government.”
The GOP used to be the Big Tent Party with room for everyone because it didn’t have membership criteria based on “values” or “issues” but pretty much just if you understood and agreed with the 10th Amendment. We’re fools if we demand that someone has to agree with us on ANY issue other than the division of authority between the feds and the states. And that’s how we need to start defining “conservatism”. I remember saying here that to me, a woman can be a high priestess of Wicca who runs an abortion clinic and wants to marry her girlfriend, but if she agrees that the core choice we have to make is where the decisions are made she is a conservative. And I remember a poster, who is no longer with us, being very indignant and outraged by this, saying he wouldn’t belong to a party that included people like this. Which, to me, raised the question of why we have a party in the first place. To win control of the government so we can govern according to the Constitution, or to just hang out with people we like and agree with?
We as a party have started to impose litmus tests of “values” and “issues” that have nothing to do with the central and most important difference between us and the Left, which is where the authority is and must remain. We should strip every single element of social justice and social engineering out of our platform and keep it restricted to the determination to only have laws made by Congress, state sovereignty strictly respected and enforced, and other tenets of the Constitution like equality under the law. I feel strongly that this would open up the party to a lot of people.
But we have to have party unity in the form of the same message being put out by everyone. By every candidate for every office in the land.
So I guess Putin killed the Wagner chief and you knew that was coming, but what I don’t understand is this …. if you’re the hunted, you need to start hunting yourself. I love the mafia and have read a lot, and it always amazed me to read about guys who have had a hit put out on them, and they would always do one of two things – they either tried to hide, or cozy up and try restore credibility. I wouldn’t do either. If I had a hit on me, I would go in full combat mode and go kill the guy who put the hit on me. What do you have to lose????? Become the hunter, not the huntee. And I apply the same line of thinking to our current situation. I am MAGA and I am called a “threat”, well guess what? Because of that, I did just become a threat.