Lying, Two-face Politicians and Their Media Enablers

Listen to the politicians speak out of both sides of their mouths and the media let their utterances fly by in the air unchallenged.

The first offender: Mitt Romney. Mitt’s afflicted with his own rabid hypocrisy, more venal than Donald Trump’s rousing insults and remarks. Mitt campaigned openly for John Kasich in Ohio so the governor would win his home state and deny Donald Trump as many delegates as possible. At the time, Two-bit Mitt told his fellow American citizens in Ohio, “Unlike other people running, he has a real track record,” according to a New York Times article by Thomas Kaplan in its First Draft section posted on March 14. “He has the kind of record you want in Washington, and that’s why I’m convinced you’re going to do the right thing tomorrow.”

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/14/mitt-romney-campaigns-with-john-kasich-telling-ohioans-americas-counting-on-you/?_r=0

Romney’s “unlike other people running” clearly disqualified the other three candidates standing at the time because they lacked both sufficient experience and the quality of experience Kasich presented. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are freshmen senators; Donald Trump is a freshman politician but owns an extensive business resume littered with success.

Ohioans sponged up Romney’s false flattery and gave Kasich a plurality, though not a majority, of their votes, allowing him to gather all the state’s 66 delegates.

That was yesterday. It has been quite a different day since! Romney vomited this verbiage in Utah when he went to vote in what is now his home state: “I would have voted for him [Kasich] in Ohio. But a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail.”

That quote comes from a CNN article by Theodore Schleifer and posted on the news outlet’s website March 19.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/18/politics/mitt-romney-ted-cruz-utah/index.html

So much for Kasich being the only candidate with the needed quantity and quality of experience! Who’s the con artist, Mitt?

Kasich himself, as with the other candidates in this race, gorged himself on hypocrisy, too. Kasich has bashed Trump for his temporary ban on all foreign Muslims entering the United States as a tool to help prevent terrorism. Trump wants to institute effective vetting procedures first. The criticism by Kasich and others is that you can’t lump all Muslims together, though their scriptures call for them to act hatefully and violently against “infidels”.

So, did the candidates say the same thing when they presented themselves before the giant Jewish lobby, AIPAC? Did they decry individual Palestinians (and Israelis) who committed violent acts?

Naw! Spluttering about the American-Israeli relationship, Kasich asserted there was “a Palestinian culture of death.” He added the spark of Palestinian attacks on Israel was “a culture of hate that Palestinian Authority has promoted for 50 years.”

Granted, Kasich did not mention Islam, but what stands as the greatest influence on Palestinian culture? Certainly, sociological work is needed to make a scientific analysis, but can we not say that Islam provides a profound motivation to those who place their trust in it? What is the result of telling people over and over that God wants them to torture and kill the infidels and that failure to do so is itself apostasy?

Even Trump pandered to the AIPAC crowd. As an American, I was sickened. What is it exactly that America gets out of its relationship to Israel? Is not one of the causes of the Middle Eastern turmoil the creation of a Jewish state where none existed?

Much to say there is, if I may wax Yodaic, but such is fodder for another day.

Astounding Media Debate Bias

Whichever way citizens decide to vote in the Republican presidential primary, they should be aware of the astounding media bias during the campaign.

For instance, though Mitt Romney isn’t a candidate this year, every network broadcast his broadside at Donald Trump. Worse, as the various hosts interviewed guests to analyze the significance of Romney’s remarks, they loaded up guests who would be favorable to his comments while having no one or perhaps one person who might be favorable to Trump. I flipped between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. It was astounding.

One network had a former Romney campaign staffer, a current or former Cruz campaign staffer, and a current or former Rubio campaign staffer. That’s loading the “analysis.” Objectively, did anyone think those three were going to disagree with each other, at least openly. They were all going to find agreement in a positive analysis of Romney’s remarks and a negative analysis of Trump and his campaign!

Why would any of the networks bring on air current or former members of Romney’s, Rubio’s, and Cruz’s campaigns to analyze the significance of Romney’s comments? And why would they pit three, say, against a lone Trump staffer or supporter? It gives the impression that most voters and citizens are against Trump. In other words, the presentation confirms the very message Romney, who is no truth-teller himself, spouted.

The real reason the networks did it was because it represented the establishment cartel to whom they are either beholden to or from which they want to curry favor (interviews, etc.).

That is media bias. That’s what makes people sick and drives them to any candidate not tied to the establishment and the media machine.

Let’s look at another example. Ask yourself why no other candidate received tough questions besides Trump, including questions that involved dishonesty or fraud.

John Kasich comes across as “the adult in the room” (a trite, sickening, self-congratulating phrase) because he never gets challenged. Why didn’t the Fox “News” moderators (or any of the moderators from previous debates) ask him, “If you are as good and successful as you say you have been as governor, why are you trailing in every poll taken of your state?” If Kasich has governed as well as he says he has, in Ohio, there should be little of the anger that pundits say drives voters to Trump and overwhelming support for him. Why isn’t that the case? And any non sequitur explanatiion like, “as soon as we get our message out, voters will come around” needs to be trashed immediately. Ohio voters should know Kasich’s message by heart by now.

Why did none of the “moderators” ask any questions about Marco Rubio’s sale of his house to a lobbyist at an inflated amount, the Marco Rubio who is wading in debt? It’s a fair question and one for which the audiences live and at home deserve to hear the explanation. It was something that happened and was settled in the past, unlike the repeated accusations of a lawsuit against Trump University which has NOT been adjudicated.

Why didn’t the moderators ask any questions about Marco Rubio’s use of a Florida Republican Party credit card to make personal purchases of goods and services, some of which were reportedly salacious?

As much as Donald Trump gets questioned and ripped about his brash style, why haven’t moderators asked and pressed Ted Cruz about his failure to get along with his senate colleagues? Why haven’t they brushed aside his contention that he is the one who stands on principle, like some fairy tale white knight, and press him whether he is saying that his colleagues aren’t principled or whether it is possible that he is, despite his allegedly pure ideology, a disagreeable, difficult person with which to get along? Fox has used John McCain against Trump but why not with Cruz, against whom McCain has spoken strongly? Why have not the moderators asked him whether his campaign behavior constitutes a compromise of his alleged evangelical beliefs: his taunting, condescending, evasive, calumniating, apparently dishonest behavior and campaign tactics?

The moderators totally let Rubio pass on his use of vulgar humor and the violation of Catholic teaching and scriptural exhortation it represents. We all get the sense that Trump owns at best a relaxed faith; Cruz and Rubio, however, have boasted about its centrality to their lives, their “core”. No one has called them to account for their unpresidential misbehavior.

As much fuss as news organizations have allowed the other candidates to make about two alleged instances of Trump’s hiring practices, one from 40 years ago, why haven’t they pressed Cruz and Rubio on their support for not only the H-1B visas that have savaged American high tech workers and their families but for increases in the allowable numbers of those visas?

Supposedly the news outlets want the candidates to discuss policy, but in fact the news networks shy away from serious policy discussions when it depreciates the standing of certain candidates.

You can vote for anyone you want, but at least be honest with yourself. Why is Trump the only one of whom extensive policy details are demanded?

How is Cruz’s flat tax going to balance the budget? What’s the rate going to be? Please don’t refer me to his website! If he knows his policy proposals, just tell us right there during the debate! What is he, or Rubio, going to cut to balance the budget? If memory serves me correctly, Cruz said almost the same thing that Trump did: he was going to get rid of the IRS and other government agencies, but no one said to him what they said to Trump. No one said, “That doesn’t add up to enough to make up for the more than $500 billion dollar yearly budget deficit.” Why didn’t they tell and ask Cruz or Rubio, “That doesn’t add up. What else are you going to do?”

Though they are legislators and experienced politicians, Cruz and Rubio were just as general in the debate as Trump but no “journalist” demanded the same details of them as they did of Trump, and none pressed them for more details!

Trump, though he has historically and contemporarily disavowed David Duke and white supremacy, was repeatedly harassed and asked a question he had answered about an endorsement he had not sought and did not publicize. It was a complete red herring. News organizations ran headlines that claimed he hadn’t answered the question, though they either knew he had or failed to do their research, then claimed he stumbled through the process before finally answering, when in fact he had done so a dozen times or more!

Here’s the even deeper issue: no other candidate has been asked or pressed with the same intensity about any race question. All the race-related events that have occurred the past two years and no debate moderator has grilled any other Republican candidate about any substantive racial issue. On top of which Cruz and Rubio love to tell everyone how they are real Republicans and conservatives, and supposedly those real Republicans and conservatives have longed to expand into a “big tent” that many, diverse people can come to and sit under. Isn’t that pretty important to get elected? Yet nothing.

It’s a farce, and it’s dishonest! Some would argue that the GOP doesn’t care about race relations. That’s because the Republican establishment cartel doesn’t care, and they control, or try to control, the questions.

There is so much more to say. I will be rewatching the debate thoroughly to pass on to you detailed examples of what I wrote last night/earlier this morning. I am just going to leave you with this last example from this Friday morning’s Morning Joe, which had on a guest named Mary Kissell, a member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

I am sure Kissell is quite intelligent, but that doesn’t mean she makes sense or that she can see her own deep bias as a member of the establishment community (she has worked at Goldman Sachs; how do you think that affects her positions and punditry?).

Kissell spat her usual diatribes against Trump and turned a blind eye toward Cruz and Rubio. But here is the real nugget: Kissell thought Trump would be stopped in Florida despite his nearly 20 point lead in the polls because the good guys, the Republican establishment cartel, now apparently led by loser Mitt Romney, and all its billionaires were going to get together, open their wallets to the anti-Trump Super PACs, and bombard Florida with advertisements.

How was that savage, billionaire-fueled advertising bombardment going to change the Florida result in favor of inexperienced Marco Rubio?

Kissell said the ads would “educate” the Florida voters.

Wow! Since when do ads “educate”? Her use of that euphemism is astonishing and so 1984ish. Since when do Florida voters need to be educated? Does she think they are hollow-heads waiting for her or the cartel to fill their heads with truth? What does “educate” mean?

It means the Republican establishment cartel, of which Kissell is part and parcel, will slickly bomb your eyes and ears with relentless anti-Trump messages until you vote the way they want you to vote, until you vote their way just to make the bombardment go away.

Like a wartime resistance movement, you can thwart the fascists. Tune your TV or radio to a different channel if you have to, or turn them off, or endure the barrage, retreating to the bunker of your mind, protecting your secret vote until it’s time for the mission. Then emerge stealthily, go to your polling place, and cast your vote for Trump.

Your vote is like a hand grenade that destroys a cadre of jackbooted establishment gestapo and liberates us from the tyranny of establishment candidates who live off the public trough, promising everything, but never working together to get anything done, when they are even present to vote. They are too busy being bedded by special interests.

You are the wartime resistance. Protect your secret vote. Carry out the mission to cast your vote peacefully for Donald Trump. Stun and defeat the establishment cartel and their lackeys!

Marco Boobio a Faux Donald Trump

Funny how the Republican elitist cartel denounces Donald Trump for being Donald Trump, then programs “presidential” candidate Marco Boobio to act like Donald Trump. That’s when Boobio begins to talk about Trump’s penis size. Disgusting!

The metamorphosis of Boobio into someone, or something, he is not, at the direction of his puppet masters, has caused him to slide down from the high ground he once enjoyed and which made him so attractive. Yes, a few will fall for his faux Trump. Yet even with his act, Boobio remains the same.

Boobio is a young, inexperienced candidate, just like Barack Obama was.

Boobio is a first-term senator who has not completed a whole term, just like Barack Obama was.

Boobio has failed to show up for work a vast majority of the time, allegedly because he was running for president, but it was a pattern he became entrenched in before he announced his candidacy, just like Barack Obama failed to show up to unite people and give them hope and change.

Boobio has betrayed the constituents who voted for him on his proclamation that he would end illegal immigration and deport illegal immigrants, just like other politicians who promised so much and delivered nothing.

Boobio has used the Tea Party to get elected, then he abandoned them so he could get in line with the colleagues of Barack Obama.

What do you think will happen if he is elected president? If we add it all up, it means that once elected, he will talk about penis size, demonstrate his inexperience on the domestic and world stage, fail to work like a president would, fail to carry out the things he said he would do, betray the ideas and wishes of the common voter, and betray those groups and individuals who got him elected except the big donors, whose will he will not cross.

Is that the kind of person you want leading and governing you?

Do you want Marco Boobio, a faux Donald Trump who will go back to being vanilla when the campaign is over, or would you rather have the REAL Donald Trump, who is going to be the same person, himself?

Don’t you want someone with strength and a proven track record of accomplishment on the highest stage outside of the presidency? Don’t you want someone who is standing up for America, for common American citizens, for the life of the unborn, for jobs and lower taxes for the average guy and gal, for a strong military, for taking care of the veterans, for stopping illegal immigration, building a wall, deporting illegals, and barring murderous Muslims or hostile Syrian refugees from entry into these United States until we have an effective vetting system?

What does it tell you that when a candidate stands up for most or all of the things you want, the insiders – the Republican cartel of elitists – throw all their money and power against him and manipulate their puppets, like Boobio, into trying to act like Trump?

The amount of money being thrown against a people’s candidate by the elitist, wealthy powermongers and their Super PACs is unprecedented in American electoral history. It should tell you something loud and clear: their position as controllers is threatened by Trump, who is not beholden to them.

The venom the members of the Republican elitist cartel spit at him in hopes of taking him down – he’s offensive, he’s supported by some white supremacists, he sues people, he gets sued, blah blah blah – it is all about superficialities, about distractions, about red herrings meant to take you off the track. Every candidate who has ever run for president has either won support from or earned votes from criminal or unethical groups and individuals. The notion that a candidate should be upset that he is winning someone’s vote is ludicrous. The candidate may say he rejects any criminal or unethical ideas or policies, but few, if any, will take the time to denounce someone whose vote he earns.

What is happening with Trump has nothing to do with him ethically, morally, or philosophically. It has to do with control. It has to do with ego. It’s the giant, collectivist ego of the Republican privileged against Donald Trump, the man free from any controls by the elite or by special interests.

Don’t fall for the establishment cartel’s phony gambit. And don’t fall for Marco Boobio’s act. He’ll never be as capable or as strong as Donald Trump.

Trump Conservative on Essentials

The television commentators continue to approach the Republican primary campaign from the angle that Donald Trump’s competitors for the nomination must attack him and take him down. The Republican establishment cartel bosses have anathematized Donald Trump. They reiterate to commentators, whom they boss, that, yes, they must go after Trump, they being Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, or else – horrors! – they will never catch up to Trump’s burgeoning lead in the delegate count and will not be able to prevent Trump’s nomination.

What does that mean? How can it be that the establishment cartel does not want their frontrunner to be their candidate?

Though Trump has a checkered past ideologically, the policy goals he embraces now lie well within the fortress of conservative thinking: create a large, well-oiled, well-funded military machine that is the most powerful in the world; staunch the flow of illegal immigrants, build a wall on the border with Mexico, patrol it heavily, deport illegals; ban the entry of Muslims and refugees into the country until proper vetting procedures can be established; destroy ISIS; strengthen our national cybersecurity against our enemies, especially the communists and quasi-communists in Red China, Russia, and North Korea, and the bloodthirsty, murderous Muslim terrorists; create and bring jobs back to America, especially manufacturing jobs; punish corporations that damage our economy; tax people fairly; diminish the taxes on companies so they can prosper and expand, thus creating jobs; replace Obamacare in part by tearing down artificial legal barriers to competition from insurance companies across state lines so they compete for customers’ dollars and rates come down; protect Christians and Jews here and abroad; defund and if possible eliminate abortion; reign in the pharmaceutical companies; earn and demand respect for America and Americans; restore our civic spirit and national pride; and more.

With which one of those goals does the establishment cartel of elitists, insiders, and news jockeys disagree? With which goal does the average Republican or conservative take issue? The answer is readily apparent.

Sure, Trump possesses some positional anomalies, but isn’t he in sync with those many vital positions listed above? Who would trade in a ban on Muslim entry for what we have now, when immigrants are simply asked on a form whether they are going to do us harm? Raise your hand if you think a terrorist would answer that honestly. Our current vetting procedures are laughable, and even the terrorists must howl at how easy it is for them to enter the United States. It’s like getting an invitation!

It’s time for the establishment cartel to get in line with its party members and the American public, not the other way around. Ignore their call for obedience and the slick advertising that would shackle you and warp you to their will. Make them tow the line… submissively. Cast your vote accordingly!

The voter turnout in Nevada in particular sent the establishment a grim message. More than twice the number of people caucusing for the Republican Party came out in 2016 as came out in 2012, when the dullard Mitt Romney was the prime candidate, just another establishment player pushing special interests and ignoring the vast majority of people, which is one reason the middle class has been shrinking. Voters don’t want business as usual. Community organizer Barack Obama whipped Romney in debates that highlighted Romney’s fecklessness, limited appeal, and limited presidentialness. Voters don’t want anyone like that again.

Now the people have Trump, a man of strength. What a difference!

Hillary’s Hell

You have heard the saying that this or that person “lives in his own private hell.” Such an axiom seems true of Hillary Clinton.

Hillary cannot elude the past she crafted when she crushed the women who accused her husband of molesting them sexually, preying on them as one in power preys on the weak creatures about him. Burning questions incited by her own charge of “sexism” against Donald Trump are burning her up inside.

Now media outlets report that the CIA inspector general has identified that emails with a security classification above “Top Secret” have been recovered from Clinton’s private email server. Publicly, Clinton has apologized for what she essentially described as a lapse in sound judgment. Privately, she is fuming that she is being challenged and that her past actions are biting her in the behind.

It is much more than a political inconvenience for Hillary, despite at least one media report that the information in the SAP emails – “Special Access Programs” – is “innocuous.” Really? Innocuous information receives the highest, most restricted classification? Of course, the reporter himself, from NBC, has not seen what the information was.

Not that it matters in terms of whether a criminal act has occurred or not, but it is incredible that a member of the media would report that information contained in the highest, most secret classification would be “innocuous” without seeing it, no matter who his source was. If the information was innocuous, then the source should have shown the emails to the reporter. The source didn’t.

The public should understand that material is classified based on its value, whether the designation appears on the email or not. In fact, investigators have at least one email in which Hillary instructed a staffer to remove the classification. In her perverted eyes, that allows her to say she did not send or receive any classified material on her server without addressing the real question (and which still leaves open another question of whether she herself, or a staffer, loaded classified material onto her server); in fact, such a removal does not alter the material’s classification level.

People know from their everyday experiences that a person can get experience doing this and experience doing that to build up their resume and yet not be a person of character, even be a rotten person. We all have met and had to deal with someone like that. Superficially, their resume is stacked. In reality, the person does not have the heart and the temperament and the character to manage a department or branch or the people in them, much less to govern a nation.

Ambition has corrupted Hillary Clinton, and as the legal noose tightens around her neck, and Bernie Sanders’ galloping, inspired campaign propels his support closer to, and sometimes over, hers, you can imagine the white-knuckled, teeth-gnashing anger gathering within her, ready to explode.

With disaffection growing within the Democratic Party and without, she will not win the presidency, and she may not even win her party’s nomination.

Hillary Clinton’s ambitious, arrogant, angry character, has crafted her own hell.

 

 

 

British Boobs, and Pics of Angry Muslims!

The United Kingdom once stood as a noble, righteous nation – flawed, granted – but always striving for excellence. The expansion of the English culture and language owes to the English spirit: tough, never-say-die, idealistic, inquiring, seeking the good of the Crown and its peoples, noble yet democratic, industrious, and profitable. From England’s womb emerged the greatest, freest countries on Earth: the United States, the Dominion of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Now we see the decadence of the once proud empire and its prime nation. Certainly, it could be expected that such a limited number of people would not secure primacy forever. Yet it is not England’s martial primacy that we miss, but the dissolution and disintegration of its spirit, the utter effeminization of its character!

Yesterday, on Monday, January 18^th, A.D. 2016, the British Parliament debated whether to ban Donald Trump from entry into its country. Trump is the leading Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States. The request for the ban derived from a petition seeking it and signed by over half a million people (that isn’t even a fifth of Britain’s 2.7 million Muslims, a 2011 census figure from its Office for National Statistics).

Oddly, the reason for the request was the irritation of some petitioners over Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Trump wants to establish an effective vetting procedure first to make sure Muslim terrorists do not slaughter American citizens by getting lost in a crowd of students or refugees or by stealth when they enter the country.

So some Brits proposed a ban because a ban was proposed. The difference is that Trump’s ban would keep out bloody murderers; the British ban strangles free speech and political action. No less a person than Prime Minister David Cameron called Trump’s remarks, “divisive, stupid, and wrong.”

Others said even worse things, such as the Labour Party’s candidate for mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who misfired rhetorically when he said that he hoped Mr. Trump’s “campaign dies a death.”

Some Brits spewed vitriol over Trump’s additional comments that some sections of London were so radicalized that the police did not want to enter them. One can only wonder what Londoners really think, those who have to go about their lives day-to-day, as opposed to the rosy picture England’s politicos want to present, like it has always been safe for people and police to go into ethnically or racially unique neighborhoods! There’s an investigative piece for the British press.

The real problem that exists is a philosophical fascism in England and in these United States that chokes off ideas and expression unless it conforms to some 1984ish standard of tolerance and diversity. Say something the government doesn’t like, or some misfit doesn’t like, and they’ll clap the hate speech label on you like flypaper and prosecute your ass!

I’m Hispanic, but you know what? I’m proud of America’s white Anglo-Saxon and Christian heritage. It may be far from perfect, but an inspection of the rest of the world reveals it is a lot better than most, if not all.

This is the movement we are seeing in the United States: people vomiting on the proliferation of political correctness tyrannizing the country and overthrowing it. Citizens have had their fill of the spoiled, sissified diversity-thumpers calling the shots with their hissy fits, wrecking our culture, and promoting godlessness and corruption while allowing a ghetto mentality to fester and spread like a virus. We are tired of having our values pissed on and told its wrong to bring them to the public marketplace, even as the diversity thumpers demand the acceptance of theirs. We hate to see excellence dropped as a standard and mere participation made the rule. Down with the notion that an idea is the best not because it is the best, but because it represents “the marginalized” or because it includes everybody or makes everything “accessible.”

What all those words are is code, code for “we are going to gut your Christianity and your political liberty and your Constitution to make our foolproof world where nobody gets hurt and the consideration of the offended is primary, except if you adhere to the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture from which you emerged. That must be disintegrated and a new, exotic culture established.”

No More!

We have had it with your phony tolerance, which is actually quite intolerant. We are sick of your imposed understanding of diversity, which is another word for a mess. And if you don’t like the fact that the United States is going to take measures to protect itself, including banning murderous Muslims, who should be required to reject the verses of violence in the Quran anyway, give us a call when you experience the next Muslim mass murder.

It is you, David Cameron, who are stupid and wrong, and you lie to paper over the ills brought on by the migration of Muslim hordes to your country. You were elected to represent and serve your people, but instead you think it is your job to engineer them socially. Reports of unrest and danger from Muslim residents in London surfaced long before Trump’s comments. Divisiveness in and of itself is not wrong. Citizens – in your case, subjects – have a right and a responsibility to debate the merits of the people whose faith intrinsically advocates violence against “infidels”, i.e., anyone who is not Muslim. How stupid of you to reject a temporary ban on Muslim entry to secure the well-being of your subjects but to denounce free speech and legitimate policy proposals.

By the way, Jeb Bush speaks for hardly anyone. He is at or below 5% in the polls.

It is you Brits who have spawned this whole political correctness tyranny, this philosophical fascism that is strangling our countries like a plumber from Boston. May you find your mojo again. Meanwhile, we are going to do what we think is right and safe for our country. If you don’t like it, too bad!

The Oil, Water, and Fire of the Republican Debate on Jan. 14

The Republican presidential candidates took the stage last night and shone brightly on the Fox Business Network debates. Although the debates seemed to drag at times, that may have been me. I might have been maxed out on politics and the campaigns. I think just about everyone scored high marks, so I will just leave my key impressions.

The post title indicates three qualities of the debate: oil represents the form or rehtorical quality of the candidate, water the substance, and fire the political or leadership character of the candidates.

I am not sure why Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum cannot gain traction. They know the issues very well, their respective characters blaze brightly, and their rhetoric is sound. They are good Americans, and pro-American and pro-Constitution without any veneer or compromise.

Somewhere in the mettle of Carly Fiorina’s being lies a warping. She’s knowledgeable and a leader, but something isn’t right, and I am not sure what it is. It might be the sense that I don’t think I would like to work for her. She might be too harsh, not superficially so, which so many people look at these days, but deep inside. I would favor her over Hillary Clinton, but Fiorina isn’t even my third choice for president.

Rhetorically, Ted Cruz performed outstandingly. He possesses a brilliant intellect, and he discombobulated Donald Trump last night with the rebuttals to Trump’s birth questioning, most painfully and inadvertently extracting an expressed willingness  by Trump to entertain becoming Cruz’s vice-president. It was an astonishing moment, and the first and so far only serious misstep Trump has made. Trump may have played that card to indicate his willingness to test the birther issue on Cruz, but if so, it was lost in the messy dialog of the moment, and it made him look bad. How much, if at all, it disrupts his standing in voters’ eyes remains to be seen.

Cruz won the debate. He owned the oil last night. A careful spectator will note, however, that Trump’s attacks prior to the debate worked and revealed another side to Cruz: He has his foot inside two doorways: the insider doorway and the outsider doorway. Only the most gullible could gather enough non-sense to place any credibility in Cruz’s explanation that leaving off the $500,000 loan from Goldman-Sachs, where his wife works, was a “filing error”.  It was a “not filing error”, because Cruz did not list it on his report to the Federal Elections Commission when he ran for the senate as an outsider. It clearly would have made him look different than he wanted to to voters. In my opinion, Cruz lied when he left the loan off his report, and he is lying now about it being an error.

On top of that, his diatribe against “New York values”may have alienated liberal folks thinking about voting Republican.

Does that disqualify him for me? No. All politicians lie to some extent. But practically, with Huckabee and Santorum never having gained traction, Cruz drops from being my No. 2 choice to No. 3 and Rubio rises to No. 2.

Rubio has been near the top in his substance and form all along. He isn’t perfect. His inexperience, which open him up to being manipulated, his missed votes in the senate, and his sometimes misleading campaign ads mitigate his qualifications and character. The flip side is that I believe he has a much better than average mastery of national intelligence and foreign policy. When he looked the camera in the eye and said what happened to our sailors would not happen during a Rubio adminstration, his spirit, his greatest asset, was palpable and thoroughly embraceable – much more so than Cruz, who sometimes is too brilliant and planned out for his own good – and I couldn’t help but shake my fist and say, “Yeah!”. Of all the candidates, he has moderated his presentation the most to convey the impression that he is the coolest, calmest, and most collected under fire, even when Bush is stabbing him in the back. Though I dislike his connections to the establishment, Rubio is a legitimate candidate.

In some ways, Bush looked like he had his best debate, but he overreached when he told Trump he would teach him about the nuclear triad, then falsely tried to wax inclusive when he said he would support anyone on the stage, and came “unhinged” when Debate Moderator Neil Cavuto asked him whether he thought people who agreed with Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslim immigration were unhinged, as he had described Trump. Bush was a deer caught in the headlights in that moment. He didn’t expect Cavuto to be driving that question (indeed, finally a tough question for Bush). Of course, Bush had to say, “No”, but it set up a contradiction: either he doesn’t really think Trump was unhinged (incorrect, perhaps, but not unhinged); or he does, and he really thinks anyone who supports the Trump ban is unhinged, too. Either way, it appears Bush lied.

To me, Bush has the smallest fire up there on the main debate stage. He has had every opportunity and advantage in his life and as governor, when he had a very friendly legislature to work with, something he won’t necessarily have in Washington, as his older and more competent brother discovered. He is like a kid who brings all his friends with him to fight one guy because he needs the support. I cannot support his candidacy.

Christie is too much of a politician, as is Kasich, who like Cruz has keen ties to Wall Street. I cannot support either one. Carson isn’t qualified, using humor to mask his deficiencies.

That leaves the Donald. The debate setting brings to the surface Trump’s rhetorical weaknesses, simply because he isn’t a lawyer or academic debater and doesn’t have much experience with formal argumentation. He is a businessman and patriot who brings his keen intellect, savvy, skills, and winning spirit and ways to bear on getting things done efficiently and profitably. Thus, he excels in the board room, the negotiating conference, and on the campaign with a crowd or one-on-one. That is not to say he fails to deliver standout moments. He delivers them, as the targets of his counterattacks well know. He remains the most qualified candidate, an outside the box thinker who will not be bound by trite politics, conventional thought, and special interests that pervade the institutions of government and the spooks who haunt them.

Trump may seem harsh on the outside, but on the inside, he is one of us, just more successful.

In that regard, and contrary to conventional wisdom, I think Trump would perform better against Hillary Clinton than Bernie Sanders, though I think he would defeat both.

 

 

 

Sex Sells, Except When It’s Thrust Against the Donald!

The sneaky Republican establishment cabal planted their most recent attacker in front of the media cameras and microphones Wednesday night. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley delivered the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s 2016 State of the Union message.

Her job was not the usual one, though. She followed a surreptitious directive to talk as much smack, if not more, against Donald Trump as against Republican arch-foe and high priest of liberalism Obama. The cabal’s strategy was to fashion a different instrument to convey its message, one with tons of sex appeal and a wispy voice to whisper sweet negatives into the ears of American voters. Sex sells, its members no doubt thought, so a young, attractive, relatively unknown but compliant political woman, the daughter of legal immigrants from India – with a carrot of the vice-presidency bobbing nearby – might accomplish with her charms what other candidates and cooperating media had not been able to do to the Donald with all their huff and puff: knife his candidacy in the back to be done with it!

Don’t be too quick to charge me with sexism nor to stifle my free thinking with any censorious indignation. Read Haley’s words:

“During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” she said in a tone fit for a library. “We must resist that temptation.”

Wow! In one sentence she called Trump an angry witch, or maybe a word that rhymes with witch and begins with a “b”. Seductive sea nymphs earned the name “siren” when they called out from their islands and beguiled sailors into shipwrecks with their beautiful, haunting songs.

So let’s see. Building a wall to throttle illegal immigration will shipwreck America? Bringing manufacturing and other jobs back to the U.S. will shipwreck America? Protecting the right to gun ownership, self-defense, and revolution by standing firm on the Second Amendment will shipwreck America? Taking care of our veterans will shipwreck America? Building up our military muscle to regain our position as the indisputable No. 1 military power that destroys ISIS, and that defends our freedom and the rest of the world’s will shipwreck America? Temporarily banning Muslims – the ideological group that spawns the bloodthirsty jihadis – until we can establish effective vetting procedures that will help to keep all our citizens safe will shipwreck America?

Did Haley lock her intellect in a safe deposit box before she stepped in front of the cameras?

I do not doubt that Haley can be a competent politician. When one places oneself in a position beholden to the Republican establishment cabal, however, one compromises one’s intellect. She uninhibitedly proffered a few more reasoning blunders.

First, she suggested that being angry is bad. Funny, the Bible says to be angry but not to sin. She doesn’t get to devalue anger with a label of inappropriateness. It isn’t her job to instruct voters how to feel. Rather, she should represent the feelings of the voters. Candidates who sympathize with or share voters’ anger are doing their jobs.

Second, if the voters are angry, the causes of their anger should be the focus of Haley’s attention and care. She does not have to support every proposed remedy nor every part of every proposed remedy; she should support the feelings voters have for the issues that disturb them and be working industriously to fix those issues. Her babysitter rhetoric, talking down to voters and belittling candidates who are trying to find national and international solutions, doesn’t fit and doesn’t work. I submit to you that Haley herself does not know which proposed remedy proffered by the candidates will make Americans the safest.

Thus, third, Haley alienated Republican voters with her disrespectful rhetoric just to take an establishment swipe at Trump, the Republican frontrunner, and Cruz, who is No. 2 now.

Haley conveyed her next blunder in these words:

“Growing up in the rural South, my family didn’t look like our neighbors. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws (italics and bolding mine), and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in our country.”

Last time I checked, Gov. Haley, illegal immigrants were not abiding by our laws, either when they crossed into our country, unlawfully, or when they decided to continue their illegal visits to remain here, also unlawful. Further, Haley depreciated the value of her own parents’ lawful entry into our country by likening it to the situation of the illegal immigrants.

If we stroll down that intellectual block farther, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, pagans, etc., do not advocate violence against other belief systems, violence such as mass murder, rape, child molestation, etc. Last time I checked, legislatures in our 50 United States passed laws that made those activities unlawful, not to mention morally reprehensible. Shockingly, there is a belief system that does advocate the perpetration of such unlawful activities: Islam.

Don’t take my word for it. If you like your privacy, search out the verses of violence in the Quran on Duckduckgo.com. If you don’t mind being tracked by snoopers, use another search engine. I have not checked, but I would not be surprised to discover that today, Muslim countries, and countries with large Muslim populations, contribute by far the largest quantity of mass and genocidal murders on planet Earth.

Using Haley’s own standard, Muslims should not be allowed into our country on the basis of their ideological and practical commitment to bloody unlawfulness against those who fail to embrace “the prophet” and a host of other related concerns. Infidels are part of the “Great Satan” and must be exterminated.

Finally, the establishment-picked refuter missed the whole point of the voters’ sentiments when she acknowledged that Republican politicians had played a role in the leadership and legislative bankruptcy of the country during the Obama administration, then said they would fix it. No, Nikki, we have given you guys, and girls, more than ample time and opportunity to do your jobs. You failed. Now we want someone else, someone who isn’t part of the establishment cabal, the self-perpetuating liars’ clubs in both parties who serve the monied special interests and only accidentally the common citizens.

See you at the ballot box!

Beware the Mind Manipulators, and the Murderers

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently proposed a ban on Muslims entering the United States until the government can get a handle on the why of the terrorist problem and the what and how of the solution. Trump’s proposal came in the wake of another Islamic mass murder of innocents, this time in San Bernardino, California.

The proposal would not affect Muslims who are American citizens. It would affect only those who want to migrate here or visit here for one period of time or another.

Since his announcement, Trump has been bullied by Republicans and Democrats alike. Party “leaders” have been spitting every acidic slander and insult at him that they could find in their bags of tricks to smear his reputation, subvert his candidacy, and, most vitally, funnel and control the way you and I – average citizens – think.

They – the elitists and their minions of both parties – ordain that we shall think only within the boundaries THEY set. If we disobey, we are chastised and shunned, as Trump has been, and branded un-American by their hissingly hot irons of political correctness.

Whether or not you agree with Trump’s plan, you should vehemently reject the criticism of the elitists. They are supposed to be responding to “we the people”. We are not supposed to jump when they bark their intellectual and moral commands!

Trump is actually quite astute – and I do not mean in a shrewd, political sense – because he perceives that Islam’s culture and ideology clash with our American thinking, based largely on Christianity and rationalism. He sees this dissonance has long gone unaddressed amid the platitude that Islam is a “peaceful religion”. It is time to face the truth and to strike down the perverted objections of his detractors. The truth to be faced is that the Quran, or Koran, the holy book for the followers of Muhammed, whom Muslims believe to be a prophet, espouses vicious, bloody violence against all unbelievers, in particular Christians and Jews.

Worse, the Quran teaches Muslims to believe that Muhammed spoke for God, whom they call Allah, and that God Himself is calling on Muslims to wage bloody war against all non-Muslims, in some cases describing gruesome acts to be perpetrated even on women and children.

Jesus may have had Muslims in mind, as he had had Jews, when he said these words in John 16:2, “They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.”

How different are Christianity and Islam! In Christianity, Jesus gives up his life to pay the penalties for each and every sinner. In Islam, one group of sinners passes judgment on and gruesomely murders another group of sinners, allegedly for God. That is forbidden in the New Testament (see the story of the adulteress in John).

How long will our leaders cover up this clash of thinking and feeling, and the murderous animus inherent in Islam?

For those who want to know more about the verses of violence in the Quran, go to the search engine Duckduckgo, type in “verses of violence in the Quran”, or Koran, and click. You will find a wealth of material, some of it good, some of it not. Some verses may refer to this life, some to the next, some to both. Some may be figurative; others, not. The state of mind engendered by these verses, however, seems nothing short of sadistic.

Islam comes across as a religion of victimization. The mere existence of Christians and Jews is an affront to God and a persecution of Muslims. Therefore, they must be wiped out or extorted of huge sums of money, living out their days in silence and fear.

Frankly, it baffles me why any Muslim would want to come to the United States or go to any European country. Oh, that’s right: life is better here, and there, and opportunity greater, thanks to our Christian and rationalistic roots. Many Muslims want to eradicate that and establish “sharia law”, an angry, retributive, bloody, disfiguring system of rule. I cannot understand why any decent, reasonable person would desire any intercourse with such a system.

So when Trump seeks a ban on the entry of foreign Muslims to the United States, his motivation is to protect his fellow American citizens. Trump isn’t being intolerant of Islam; he’s being intolerant of one element of it: the notion and tenet that it’s okay to murder men, women, and children in the most gruesome ways because they are infidels. He has seen their murderous rampages here and abroad, and he wants to eliminate, as much as is possible, the risk of more loss of life until he can secure our borders. He does not oppose Islam per se: he has stated he enjoys friendships with many Muslims and does business with many Muslims. He is not willing to put American lives at risk, however, by failing to acknowledge  that there is a problem in their ideology that must be addressed.

Murder cannot be an accepted tenet of Islam, not if you want to live in these United States. It must be utterly rejected. That means that Muslims must reject the Quranic teaching that killing infidels is a just or holy act. It isn’t. It is ungodly and evil. That is not a religious test; it is a civil test. That is the law of our land. If you want a different law, go live somewhere else and create a malignant, hateful society. You can spill all the blood you want in your own house.

Please don’t listen to the self-righteous proclaim that interfering with a religion represents an un-American value. We made Mormons abandon their four-wives belief when there was actually a case in that instance for not doing so. Our law forces stormed the Waco compound of the Branch Davidians! No defense exists for the notion that sawing off someone’s head or blowing up someone into a thousand pieces is a righteous act because the murderer thinks God doesn’t like the victim. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with preventing such a person or group of people from entering the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Is it unconstitutional to ban a group because of their religious beliefs? No, not if the group’s religious beliefs call for the murder of Americans who do not hold those same religious beliefs. We keep hearing about religion not being a test for public office. Well, we aren’t talking about public office. In fact, we aren’t even talking about American citizens. We are talking about foreigners who believe murder is a good thing.

In fact, it is those who hold to the perverted belief that murder of infidels is good and holy and comes from God who are making religion a test of whether an American citizen lives or not!

What is constitutional is providing for the defense of our citizens and for the welfare of those citizens. What is constitutional for the legislative and executive branches to perform, and that is backed up by statutory law, is the control of immigration for the benefit and safety of the country.

It is the height of hypocrisy for people, usually Democrats, to call for a full or partial ban on gun ownership, something constitutionally guaranteed, while saying it’s unconstitutional to ban the group of people who accept the murder of infidels as holy and lawful. And keep in mind it’s a temporary ban.

To recap the mind manipulation and word abuse so far, the manipulators want you to believe that it is unconstitutional to ban a group of people who believe in murder based on the source book for their beliefs. Wrong (although who can figure out the mystery of the supreme court, which has validated slavery, the murder of pre-born children, and the personhood of corporations – get that: a corporation is a person but a human being in the womb isn’t!)!

They want you to believe Donald Trump is a bigot, and that you are, too, if you agree with him. Wrong! The only thing he is intolerant of – the only thing Trump is extremely intolerant of – is the slaughter of Americans.

They want you to believe that by proposing a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the United States that Trump is helping the vanguard of Islam, ISIS, recruit more members. This statement has been parroted dozens, if not hundreds, of times. The thinking is that such a proposal ignites the sense that the United States is engaged in a war on Islam.

I have no doubt that many actions our country takes are twisted around and used by ISIS to lure recruits. I get it. But really? We aren’t going to act in defense of our citizens because Muslims are going to scream bloody murder? So ISIS hasn’t recruited anyone the last few years, right? They have never said we are in a war with them? Better, we have never said we are in a war with them? Why, Jeb Bush is running all kinds of negative ads declaring we are in a war with them. ISIS is Muslim. Muslims get their belief in holy murder from the Quran. The verses are there.

Granted, as in any religion, including Christianity and Judaism, there are many nominal and casual believers in Islam, many who don’t know or understand the Quran and who just want to live their lives, and some who could probably care less. However, it’s part of their culture, which is another dimension to the problem. People may not believe in a religion or practice it meaningfully, but they are loathe to abandon it, and to betray it and the family members, friends, and neighbors who do live it, because the religion is so intricately woven into their culture and experience. People go with what they know.

Whether our use of a travel and migration ban on foreign Muslims is used by ISIS as part of a recruiting pitch should not determine whether or not we employ it to make our citizens safer by reducing the likelihood of a domestic attack. We are – finally – beginning to bomb the crap out of them. I am sure that serves as a much stronger indicator of how we feel and is used by them to scream their sales pitch to kill the Great Satan.

Think of the spiritual and practical implications of that statement from believers of Islam: “The United States is the Great Satan.”

If the members of ISIS want to say the United States is in a war with Islam, so be it; Muslims have already said that they are. We ARE  at war (or should be, intellectually and spiritually, and, if necessary, militarily) with the notion that murdering infidels is righteous and lawful and holy and comes from the mouth of God.

The jackbooted thugs of political correctness, even as they lob one slanderous broadside after another at those who disagree with them, calling them racists, bigots, fascists, xenophobes, and the like, assert that it is morally wrong to criticize flawed belief systems and proffer commonsense proposals like Trump’s temporary ban that would protect Americans. It will anger Muslims and help their recruiting.

That’s kind of like saying, “Don’t say bad things about the Nazis. It will anger them, and they will use it to recruit more people into the Nazi Party.”

Is it a coincidence that at least some Muslim leaders admire Adolf Hitler and do not have a problem with the evil he perpetrated during World War II, in some cases even claiming it never happened?

One must question the motives of the elitists, and their horde of minions whom they directed into verbal assaults on Trump. The motive remains simple: they elitists – the insiders – want THEIR candidate nominated regardless of what the average citizen thinks and feels. It’s the same ole same ole so they can control. That means what you want gets trampled. Now that’s fascism: controlling the media and the message  and the means so you think what they want you to think. That determines the outcome.

If Trump or Cruz or Paul gets the nomination, that will make it very tough on the elitists. It would mean you, the citizen, would have a much stronger and louder say. The big brotherism from the party that supposedly stands for individual freedom nauseates the rational person.

Most sickening of all is the elitist criticism that Trump is pandering to fear, an accusation from his Democrat and Republican slanderers. Yet the very nature of THEIR accusation is… pandering to fear! The country will become fascist if you elect Donald Trump! The Muslim murderers will recruit more murderers and murder more! The constitution will be violated if you protect American citizens! The land will be filled with un-Americanness!

Paul Ryan says Muslims overseas embrace plurality and democracy. In what countries might those Muslims be? Iran? Yemen? Somalia? Syria? Sudan? Niger? Saudi Arabia? Ha!

Jeb Bush denigrates Trump, and every Republican candidate but himself, in a recent ad, violating Reagan’s 11th Commandment, because he’s only in single digits in poll percentages. Ha! How could one vote for Bush’s slump-shouldered self and silver-spoon face? Look at Trump’s broad shoulders and his face lined with experience and savvy! Bush is the gangly, buck-toothed youth throwing paper wads at the barrel-chested man. Oh! The lesson that will be taught!

Lindsey Graham shouts that Trump should go to Hell. Sounds like a terrorist’s wish! Ha! Graham’s a wuss! Trump spanked Graham when he gave out Graham’s phone number, and Graham’s been seething since like a jilted prom queen!

Hillary Clinton moralizes and points her crooked finger at Trump, even as she tries to sit on the facts about Benghazi and her emails, about not even trying to save American lives when forces were ready to go, then blaming their loss of life on a video! She was appeasing murderous Muslims then at the expense of American lives! She couldn’t protect them, or wouldn’t. How is she going to protect you? Ha!

The media has been publishing reports of “outrage” and “uproar” as reaction to Trump’s proposal. From whom? From the people running or potentially running against him? From party elites who own a conflict of interest with his candidacy? From the long-tilted, agenda-driven media? Ha!

And Dick Cheney? Do you feel Cheney creeping up on you? Is he planning to be part of ANOTHER Bush administration? Ha!

You know what the truth is? Many of those people are also motivated by their economic and social ties to the folks in Saudi Arabia and the like. Money is at stake. Black gold. Yet Saudi Arabia is a hotbed of murderous zeal and the denigration of women, a land where a few enjoy immense wealth and the rest trudge their way through the desert sands. Why do we have close ties with such an undemocratic nation?

Finally, I am a Christian, but I don’t want even Christians or anyone else coming here until we have sound and effective vetting procedures in place. Who knows what a person really is? We can be compassionate without bringing refugees here. We can help fund and help build areas over there. Where is the compassion of the wealthy, oil rich Muslim world? Let Saudi Arabia, Qatar (they have money to bribe FIFA officials), Iran (they have money to build nuclear weapons), et. al., open their doors and fund the refugee problem so the refugees do not have to move so far away from home. Maybe they don’t want the “rabble”, eh?

All throughout the Muslim world in Africa and the Middle East war and slaughter rage. We have no obligation to allow it to migrate to these United States. None.

Vote for whomever you want. Vote for the policies you think will be most effective. Just don’t be controlled. Don’t have your mind engineered. Don’t be afraid to exercise your freedom and promote you desires. It’s our country!

Foreign Policy in the Tank

The discussion of the “deal” with Iran over the production of one or more nuclear weapons raises questions about our overall U.S. foreign policy. Understanding that the world is too big for the U.S. to catalog and address every problem – in fact that is the task of the peoples and countries involved – still, are we paying attention where we should?

1. The Middle East: the problems there aren’t going away just because the president and his advisors have swung our attention, allegedly, to the Far East, home of Red China, nutball North Korea (I hear they are going to create their own time zone, another sign of their detachment from reality and the rest of the world into a soul-smothering bubble), and the large eastern portion of Russia, part of the vomiting volcano of Vladimir Putin’s revival of Soviet authoritarianism. Iran and its organized terrorist apparatus thrives, as do other forms of Islamic apoplexy. The terrorism often obscures the genuine plight of Arabs, Berbers, Semites, and diverse religious groups in the region and leaves their condition unrelieved. As with the other peoples, the security of Israelis remains elusive, and their own more radical elements and policies help to defeat the accomplishment of that goal. President Obama’s policy of a reduction of U.S. forces and political leadership overall and in the area in particular, wittingly or unwittingly, is designed to allow terrorists freer rein, something that is sure to combust yet further strife, violence, and bloodshed.
2. The Far East: Thanks to the longstanding obtuse and detrimental economic and commercial policies of the American public and private sectors, Red China has grown into an economic and military beast, which in turn metastasizes its political will and power. Meanwhile, the American economy has diminished, the illusion of success masking a redistribution of wealth away from the middle and lower classes and into the hands of the upper echelons. Fewer have more; more have much, much less. With that backdrop, the president turns our military attention to the Far East, but for what purpose? We cannot impede the growth of Red China’s military on our current course and, in fact, we aid and abet it, having turned over factory after factory to them, borrowing from the cash we essentially give to them, so that now we want to defend against it’s interests and those of their allies, interests which threaten our security and our stability, but against which we bring much less economic, military, and political power than before! Red China, North Korea, and Russia – that unholy trinity or, as Reagan once said, that “Axis of Evil” – is back with a vengeance, manifested in their belligerent and undeterred cyber warfare against us. What are we going to do about it?
3. The Americas: Could our influence here be any less? Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua remain alienated from us. Mexico does not appear to respect us and seems far from a solid ally. The Red Chinese, not us, built a new soccer stadium for the Costa Ricans, ingratiating themselves with the locals in our own neck of the woods. Word is that the Red Chinese are and have been establishing an alarming presence in Panama by the Canal Zone. Even putting aside the illegality of much immigration to our country, can the United States, which now has over  300 million people plus a genuinely high unemployment rate, sustain the riotous migrations of Central and South Americans? Can the appalling obtuseness and negligence of our Congress and president in the matter of immigration lead anywhere but disaster?

So much more needs to be written, taking into account also Europe and Africa, but I hope I have given a slice of a picture of the situation. There is great cause for genuine concern.

I wish it were easy to say, “Vote for this person” or “Vote for this party”, as if in one fell swoop these ills could be remedied. It isn’t. In many cases, the pragmatic solutions will cross ideological lines. We need to bring back manufacturing to the U.S. We do need to redistribute wealth, or perhaps said better, undo the predatory redistribution that has been robbing our middle and lower classes. When our economy offers little more than lower wages and unemployment, do you really expect people to turn down government assistance? On the flip side, we need a mighty military and a free and fair market. When the “free” market favors certain wealthy interests, the status quo, limits the vast majority of the average people, and increasingly puts money into the hands of the people and corporations that already have an abundance, is the market free? What does it say when financial houses, rather than inventors, producers, managers, and workers, control all the money and business outcomes?

We are going to need a mighty military, and that requires that taxpayers invest in it. It’s expensive, but it’s necessary to our survival and prosperity. Plus, it is long past time for our government to establish a new cyber warfare branch of the military.

So examine the candidates and the party platforms carefully. We aren’t going to get a perfect candidate. Plus, we have to consider domestic policy. We have much work to do there.