The Republicans' Lies and Broken Promises

Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, stated it masterfully in describing my frustration with the entire Republican Party.

"In January of this year, they formally controlled both houses of Congress and the executive branch. Every single thing they’d ever promised was now possible. They now had the power to enact every single spending cut they’d ever solemnly pledged. All those wasteful programs designed to fill the liberal sandbox — PBS, NPR, Planned Parenthood, NEH and the rest of the alphabet soup; all the hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to multi-billion-dollar corporations; all of the hundreds of billions of dollars directed toward leftist social engineering — poof! All of it could come to an end with a stroke of a pen. They now had the power to restore fiscal tax sanity too. Remember the flat tax? The fair tax? Slashing the highest corporate taxes in the world? Giving you a tax break? All of it could be done with a snap of the fingers.

Repeal Obamacare? Check. End illegal immigration? Check. Build the wall? Check. Crush the Deep State? Done, by God, done! There was not a damn thing the Democrats could do to stop them from draining the swamp. Except the Republican leadership didn’t mean it. With the exception of the Freedom Caucus in the House, and literally a handful in the Senate, the rank-and-file didn’t either. Not one word of it."

Mr. Bozell is correct.  And that is why I have not been a Republican for several years now.  I donated a few dollars to what I assumed were worthy candidates here and there, but I'll be damned if the GOP ever gets a single nickel in donations from me ever again until they KEEP THEIR PROMISES!

Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and the rest of the congressional leadership begged for the voters to give them the senate so they could enact a republic-saving agenda.  We gave them the senate.  They then asked for a Republican president that would sign their bills into law.  Even though I refused to vote for President Trump, we gave them the White House.  And still we flounder with all of the difficult large agenda items that were solemnly promised to us would finally be dealt with and fixed.

The Democrats are weak and inept, but the Republicans are cowardly and spineless.  Congress is broken and until we hold our elected officials accountable by removing from office every damn one of them that failed to keep their promises on these vitally important issues, we will only continue to get more of the same.

In that vein, the Republicans should be very afraid.  They think that because the Democrats are worse, that we will keep voting for them.  They are wrong!  2018 will prove to be a blood shed for the GOP if they do not come together soon and start doing the work that the people elected them to office demanded of them.  They will fall back into minority status having accomplished nothing of significance, and it won't be the Democrats fault.  No, the blame will be squarely on the shoulders of the spineless cowards that failed to deliver on their promises, despite having the power to finally do so.  Shame on them yet once again.

An Interesting Rendition of Our National Anthem

A friend forwarded this video clip of a gentleman's artistic take on our national anthem before a hockey game.  Stay with it until the end.  I didn't see the end coming, but was glad I watched the entire thing.  Cheers and God bless the United States of America!

video clip

To Denounce ALL Hate and Racism

Once again it seems America has come completely unhinged, with the help of the mainstream “un-biased” media there to fan the flames of our own cultural destruction.  Sadly, racism has always been a problem in our nation, and around the world, for that matter.  Even more sadly, it will always be present in our society to at least a hopefully minor extent.  It is an inexcusable evil that, when left unchecked, has resulted in the dehumanization of others so that they could be exploited, enslaved, and even murdered.  Even more sadly, the number of people enslaved today throughout the world in 2017 exceeds the numbers that were enslaved in 19^th century America.  Many of these slaves today are perniciously sold and used as sex slaves.

Yet despite such horrific numbers, America was doing far better with its racism problem in recent times, until the last decade or so.  We even had a majority of Americans vote for our first black president.  While I agreed with very little of President Obama’s policies and had seen many disturbing signs that had cracked his polished veneer while he was still running for the White House, I too was buoyed by the fact that America in its decency could indeed elect a person of color to the presidency.  Indeed, I would venture that the timing in our history was such that Barack Obama’s color was absolutely an asset to his election.  (Never mind the foolishness of voting for someone simply because of their color, instead of their qualifications.)

I was greatly disheartened, however, to see that rather than further unite our nation as Americans, President Obama squandered the good will bestowed on him by a significant majority and decided to insert himself into more localized incidents; indeed he was often prompted to do so by the complicit mainstream media once again.  The net result was that instead of us all simply being “Americans”, he further divided us into hyphenated Americans, most especially black-Americans and white-Americans.

Recently in Charlottesville, Virginia, there was a relatively small gathering of assorted white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and various nut-job racists that gathered with a permit to exercise their first amendment rights to spew their vile speech.  It should have been a minor story of only local interest, but sadly some Nazi-wannabe thought it would be a great idea to become a domestic terrorist and kill people by driving his car into a group of counter-protesters.  Luckily only one lady was killed instead of the dozens that could have been.  This terrorist, whom I will not name to give him further notoriety, will hopefully be punished to the fullest extent of the law for his act of murder accordingly.

It seems that the inflamed result of this event for some of our brothers and sisters on the far left is to insist on tearing down any vestige of our national history if it is even tangentially connected to the confederacy or even much of western civilization.  Indeed, eight statues and monuments have been destroyed, defaced, or pulled down by these radicals on the left since the Charlottesville murder. 

One of the monuments defaced was of St. Junipero Serra, who was a priest and tireless advocate for Native Americans.  Another monument was a bust of Abraham Lincoln, which leads to the question; do these idiots have any idea of what they are even protesting?  They certainly don’t have any historical knowledge evidently.    

Recently, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz implored his fellow liberals,

 "Do not glorify the violent people who are now tearing down the statues. Many of these people, not all of them, many of these people are trying to tear down America. Antifa is a radical, anti-America, anti-free market, communist, socialist, hard-left sensorial organization... They use violence. Just because they are opposed to fascism and to some of these monuments, should not make them heroes of the liberals. ... Doing what Stalin did, just erasing history and rewriting it to serve current purposes does pose a danger. And it poses a danger of education malpractice. I'm a liberal, and I think it’s the obligation of liberals to speak out against the hard-left radicals, just like it’s the obligation of conservatives to speak out against the extremism of the hard right.''

Professor Dershowitz makes a good point.  Since the far-left hate groups of Black Lives Matter and antifa want to tear down confederate statues, what is to stop them from wanting to tear down monuments to Washington, Jefferson, and Madison?  After all, these founding fathers were slave owners too.  What is the difference between Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee to these ignoramuses? 

It has been posited to me that Washington and Jefferson were great founders of this country so their slave owning is somehow overlooked or excused.  I frankly don’t buy it, as those guilty of tearing down statues to somehow hide our history don’t seem to love the idea of America in the first place, so why would they leave its founders alone? 

Now personally I obviously don’t think any vestige of our founders should be disturbed, much less destroyed, but for the sake of consistency on the far left, how do they reconcile this disparity in their targeted anger?  Further, do these fools think that by removing statues or defacing monuments, we will somehow purge our history?  We fought one of our bloodiest wars over the sin of slavery.  That sin was paid for in blood.  We need to acknowledge that and try to make this nation one for all Americans again.

Today’s far right hate groups are grotesquely wrong in their racism and hate.  The far left hate groups are likewise wrong in their counter-racism and hate.  The calling out of the extremes on both the left and right fringes should be the cause of every decent American.

That said, “both-siderism” is something that has taken a lot of flak lately from some quarters, particularly from the far left.  I suppose I am guilty of this from a political perspective.  But I really don’t consider myself as pointing out what’s wrong on the left as a means of deflection from the wrongdoing on the right.  On the contrary, I could care less what political persuasion one is.  I am pointing out what is right and what is wrong - period.  

It is because of this that I can unequivocally point out all violence, racism, and hate regardless of the group that is fomenting it, whether it is from the KKK or the BLM; the neo-Nazis or the antifa crowd.  All are despicable and all are deserving of decent Americans’ condemnation accordingly. (And yes, some are indeed worse than others are, but that doesn’t give any of them a free pass because their transgressions’ results of hate are less in body count.)

At the end of the day, we need to come together once again, regardless of color, faith, or political persuasion to call out against the wrongs and evil in our society.

In the meantime, if folks want to help fight against white supremacy, perhaps they should call out the evil of Planned Parenthood, which aborts approximately 266 black babies every day.

Just a thought…

The Daily Signal: Far-Left ‘Antifa’ Agitators on the Rise in the Age of Trump

 I found this interesting article by Ken McIntyre and Kevin Mooney on The Daily Signal regarding antifa that seemed particularly relevant in light of our current discussions on this blog.  It definitely lends credence to the "many sides" comment of President Trump.  Enjoy.

When self-described anti-fascists showed up in force Saturday to oppose a rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, some of them turned violent, according to media reports and eyewitness accounts.

President Donald Trump did not specify radicals who operate under the banner of Antifa, an abbreviation for anti-fascist or anti-fascist action, when he said Tuesday that “both sides” bore responsibility for the violence and bloodshed that left three dead and dozens injured.

It is hard to know at this juncture how many of the hundreds of counterprotesters considered themselves affiliated with Antifa. Nor is it clear how many of them were among those who squared off against the white supremacists marching in downtown Charlottesville, trading punches and blows, some with lengths of wood.

The full facts await the findings of a Justice Department investigation of the Charlottesville violence announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“Antifa is a coalition of hyperviolent activists who are far-left anarchists or communists,” said Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the Washington-based Capital Research Center. “They could be considered domestic terrorists. They are not legitimate actors in the democratic process.”

Read more here. 

The 3-Step Argument the Left Makes to Justify Violence Against Conservative Speakers

I ran across this article today which further clarifies a point I have been making for awhile now.  Let me state at the outset that most folks on the Left are good and decent folks and do not support nor advocate these type of tactics; however, there is a significant and growing number of other folks on the Left that think the ends justifies the means.  These are the folks that we should all unite against together to publicly denounce and marginalize them, just as we should do for the KKK, Neo-Nazi's and other hate groups from the Right.

We, as Americans, enjoy the constitutionally-enshrined right to free speech, even when that speech is deemed offensive by others.  Indeed, non-offensive speech with which everyone agreed would not ever need to be protected by a constitutional amendment.  That is not to say that we should accept or not challenge repugnant free speech.  We absolutely should and indeed have a moral duty to do so. That said, when we have become so tender as to not even want to hear opposing view points, are we not thereby weakening ourselves and our own convictions?

Enjoy!


The 3-Step Argument the Left Makes to Justify Violence Against Conservative Speakers

By Ben Shapiro

Free speech is under assault because of a three-step argument made by the advocates and justifiers of violence.

The first step is they say that the validity or invalidity of an argument can be judged solely by the ethnic, sexual, racial, or cultural identity of the person making the argument.

The second step is that they claim those who say otherwise are engaging in what they call “verbal violence,” and the final step is they conclude that physical violence is sometimes justified in order to stop such verbal violence.

So let’s examine each of these three steps in turn. First, the philosophy of intersectionality. This philosophy now dominates college campuses as well as a large segment, unfortunately, of today’s Democratic Party and suggests that straight, white Americans are inherently the beneficiaries of white privilege and therefore cannot speak on certain policies, since they have not experienced what it’s like to be black or Hispanic or gay or transgender or a woman.

This philosophy ranks the value of a view, not based on the logic or merit of the view, but on the level of victimization in American society experienced by the person espousing the view. Therefore, if you’re an LGBT black woman, your view of American society is automatically more valuable than that of a straight, white male.

 Read more...

The Fascist Roots of the American Left

By Dinesh D'Souza

In 1925 the Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing spoke out against the repressive political climate of Weimar Germany.

Although Lessing’s explicit target was the cravenness of the Weimar regime of Paul von Hindenburg, his real target was the emerging power of Nazism, and he blamed the government for yielding to it.

The Nazis recognized immediately the threat posed by Lessing. Adolf Hitler youth at Lessing’s University of Hanover formed a “committee against Lessing.” They encouraged students to boycott his lectures.

Nazi youth then showed up and disrupted Lessing’s classes. Lessing was forced to give up his academic chair the following year.

In his account of what happened, Lessing later wrote that he could do nothing to prevent being “shouted down, threatened and denigrated” by student activists.

He was helpless, he said, “against the murderous bellowing of youngsters who accept no individual responsibilities but pose as spokesman for a group or an impersonal ideal, always talking in the royal ‘we’ while hurling personal insults … and claiming that everything is happening in the name of what’s true, good and beautiful.”

This was fascism, German style, in the 1920s.

Read more...

Drinking Beer and Tax Reform

President Trump and congress have stated that one of the next major issues on their agenda, which they will begin working on in 2017, will be tax reform. 

Now I don't necessarily believe they will be any more successful with this exceptionally difficult endeavor than they were with repealing and replacing Obamacare.  After all, the GOP senators had already voted to repeal the inaccurately named Affordable Care Act multiple times when it didn't matter and had no chance of actually being repealed when President Obama was in office.  Of course they refused to cast that same vote when President Trump would have signed the bill.  Why would we believe that these integrity-challenged charlatans would be willing to expend political capital to fix our broken tax code next?

Regardless, we can hope that these cowardly and incompetent people that populate our House of Representatives and Senate might overachieve just once in their careers and actually be able to enact meaningful tax reform.

Of course any tax reform that doesn't raise taxes on the "evil rich" will immediately be vehemently decried by some of our fellow Americans as being grossly unfair and exploitive of the poorest amongst us.  It is nonsense, as the poor do not pay federal income taxes currently and surely won't in the future, but mark my words that the cacophony of demonization will happen as surely as President Trump will continue his incessant "tweeting". 

With all of this being said, a friend of mine recently forwarded this simplified explanation of how our progressive tax system functions, and the likely results of that reform being excoriated by the ignorant and ideologically partisan pundits and politicians when and if actual tax reform does come to fruition.  Enjoy!

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.  If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
 So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

“Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20".  Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected.  They would still drink for free.  But what about the other six men?
How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?  They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.  But if they subtracted that from every body's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink their beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

So the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (29% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (17% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before and the first four continued to drink for free.
But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving," declared the sixth man.  He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man.  "I only saved a dollar too.  It's unfair that he received ten times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man.  "Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2?  The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him.  But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important…they didn't have enough money among all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists, politicians, and pundits is how our tax system works.  The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.  Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

U.S. History Quiz

This history quiz link was forwarded to me by a person who thought that this was rather difficult and a good indicator of one's knowledge of U.S. history.  The test contains 102 questions and was rather rudimentary, in my opinion.  There was only one question that I had to take an educated guess on.  A vast majority of these questions should be, and indeed used to be, common knowledge for anyone that had successfully passed 8th grade U.S. history class.  One wonders if that is even objectively taught any more today.  Indeed, even this test had some editorializing towards a PC - progressive bias with a few of the questions.  Anyway, see how well you can do on this basic U.S. history knowledge quiz.