The nation is polarizing. Conservatives are becoming more conservative; Liberals are becoming more liberal. The veil of mediocrity has been lifted and people are being forced to fly their true colors.
Democratic Congresswoman Omar from Minnesota called out Obama for being a “pretty face” more “polished” than Trump, while denouncing Obama’s policies. Freshman Congresswoman Cortez and veteran Senator Sanders decried capitalism while unemployment is at a record low and jobs are returning to America—jobs which Obama said would not come back. That only adds to the lists of failed Obama promises. Yet, Democrats still think it was the Obama ideological opposition that failed, not their own—except for Omar who thinks everyone failed, kind of.
It’s one thing to not know when one lost, it’s another thing to not know when one will lose again. What better place to discuss a campaign for the anti-enterprise 2020 ticket than in the Caribbean!
Socialist cities across America are in a battle against rural American sheriffs and prosecutors.
Don’t attack people with your posts on social media—but if you’re CNN, that’s common practice, though still defamation—at least according to the lawyer for the Covington High School student who was treated by CNN and the Washington Post the way Facebook doesn’t want you to treat real bad guys who actually did something wrong—maybe. It all depends on opinion, but there is one solution: utilities.
Facebook and Google are in the fast lane on the highway to “Utilityhood”. Irritating as it is, a free market can’t force Facebook to cooperate with Vine when there is neither profit nor loss in our “free-and-open” Internet. By allowing Facebook to make market decisions in its own interests, it will be easier to sway public opinion toward government crushing the Facebook and Google empires by making them public utilities.
It’s all seen in his funeral. John McCain’s death, more and more, seems destined to symbolize the death of the Washington “establishment”. Put less friendlily, the death of McCain was the death of the swamp. More respectfully, and how things out to be, we mourn the loss of a senator while we move on with our convictions.
The Trump electorate, finally gaining the cooperation of the GOP, is proving more and more to be a valid and clear and enduring majority. They wanted Obama’s health care law repealed; only McCain—from their own political party—stopped them. They wanted to be descent and quiet at the funeral of the man who despised them. John McCain found Sarah Palin, then put her on a leash. She respected him and only spoke respectfully of him, then he put a muzzle on her. Now, he’s dead and she continues to respect him in her silence. Meghan McCain had a right to say whatever she wanted and her words agreed with her father’s sentiment; Trumpists didn’t like her words, but she stayed right on topic. Thank you Meghan. Trump would not attend, but his daughter did, a most appropriate discretion. Trump had more respect in his absence than in Obama’s venomous distraction toward the man who would not crash a funeral. Bush and Biden gave good and respectful speeches, celebrating and mourning him.
The Trump electorate lives on and they are growing in number. Now, with Kevin McCarthy calling an inquisition into the Silicon Valley tech giants, who have harassed the controlling votership for two years, Republicans are moving away from the maverick-moderate tactics of McCain—which did work in his day. Insulting and muffling public expression, including the Declaration of Independence, was a foolish error. If their defense is true—that they “didn’t know”—then they should have at least studied the electorate rather than despised it and known their own history well enough not to flag key words from our nation’s heritage. At least, Silicon Valley is guilty of not caring enough about what they should. They are already paying a punishment through the markets. Now, they will answer to Congress.
McCarthy’s move will energize the base—the one thing that the losing moderates of 2014 feared—the one thing that helps Republicans win elections. The Republican base is energized and we are now no longer looking at a possible and unusual midterm victory for Republicans; we are now looking at a likely and unusual midterm victory for Republicans.
Call it a Shame of Thrones or a Game of Showns, but Mueller has shown his game to his own shame. By waiting as long as he has, Trump possesses the “political currency” to order the DOJ to investigate the Obama FBI. He couldn’t have done that a year ago. But, by letting Mueller “mull” on, as it were, the Russianewsgategate “thing” has irritated everyone, even the Anti-Trumpists, for its lack of results, yet continued pursuit in what looks more and more like a ghost chase every day—now every hour.
Roger Stone says Trump might not run in the next term—if he gets his [twelve years worth of] work done in only four. With Democrats requiring 84 days to approve each of 300 Trump appointees, it’s unlikely Trump will finish in four years, as Stone’s hypothetical went. Michael Jordan said the same thing about himself year after year, that he might not play the following season—encouraging his opponents to get lazy. It’s a ruse Trump opponents would be foolish to buy into. If the Democrats really wanted Trump to not run again, they would approve all his Senate appointees and build his wall in one vote. Then, it would be difficult for Trump to argue any need to stay, even with such “huge” results.
The Senate’s vote on net neutrality is a necessary step. Internet needs some kind of regulation, even if to say that it needs no regulation, even if to protect it from anti-Capitalist corptocrats who donate to “Blue Dog Republicans”. If Facebook and Google want to provide faster Internet then they can become their own Internet service providers. If Verizon wants to say which big, fat companies can “pay for lane” in the website rat race, then Verizon should provide that Internet service free of charge. But, as long as customers pay, those customers should get to decide the lanes. This is not to be decided by Verizon, AT&T, Facebook, Google, Apple, and other big, fat companies that have more money than many governments of the world. Capitalism does not infer that private companies should overrule human rights.
Trump rescinding the so-called “Iran deal” will improve his position with other nations, North Korea only being one of them. Actually, it wasn’t a “deal” because Iran never signed anything.
Any “reputation” lost would be on Iran’s side for entering into a “deal” that even they didn’t commit to. Now the non-committal “deal” is off. Iran shouldn’t have expected anything. Now, at the bargaining table, Trump will be in a better position because nations know that he will actually follow through and only make deals that are real and binding.
This goes back to Obama’s great failure of his own base: He didn’t make laws that would last, he only made policies that depend on him being president in order to last, in this he exploited his voters by giving them high hopes and letting them get angry—the whole time Obama never told his own supporters the truth that everything he accomplished after Obamacare was designed to be blown away with the wind.
Iranians weren’t the only party with “gullible” written their foreheads; Obama voters were too, and Obama conned all of them.
The disturbing thing about the Iran “deal” is the reaction. Russia is very protective of that “deal”. That should be enough to call the “deal” off—and to prove that there was no substance in the Russianewsgategate “collusion” myth. But, where are all the stories in the press about how the “deal” was bad for the US? Having given $1.7B in cash to Iran should at least receive mention from a supposed “non-biased” media.
No one likes to read about school shootings. I was in high school when a student shot himself in the head, right in the hallway, Vinnie Garofalo, February 1998. I remember when a college classmate told our student body the reports from his former classmates at Columbine. “They’re dead,” she told him. “They’re all dead.” Now, the Editor needs to write about it and Americans need to read about it, yet again.
The Florida shooting is complicated, it always is. This one has a story behind the shooter that seems more personal than other times. No one claims his story is any alibi. Many heroes were made, both victim and living. One libriarian, Diana Haneski, was inspired by her friend’s heroism from Sandy Hook and protected 55 students by locking them in a media room. An assistant coach, Aaron Feis, protected three girls by shielding them with his own body, he did not survive.
Tragedy strikes. We reflect and ask why. Then we second guess ourselves and wish that we would have loved each other more and sooner. We go home. We cry ourselves to sleep. Then we wake up the next day and prepare to march for action. So, let’s talk action.
Emma Gonzales is right, in a sense even the minds of gun owners. To the gun owners, the NRA has been largely useless. They aren’t effective at protecting gun owner rights, only at rallying people up. At Columbine and with Michael Moore, the NRA’s reaction was generally useless. Rather than helping the nation navigate through the challenges, they just acted insensitive. The NRA’s Twitter account hasn’t posted since Valentine’s Day, when the Florida shooting happened, not even sympathy to the families. This seems to have been a “silencer” for the NRA. Politicians who receive money from that over-spiced “nothing burger” organization should be ashamed.
As for action, since we act like we’re ready for a candid conversation, let’s take off the gloves. Before you decide to click “next”, finish the next two paragraphs.
Why are we in deadlock about guns? As strong—and correct—of an argument as Emma Gonzales makes, there is another strong point that must be included in our united path forward. It’s the “elephant” in the living room, the reason we can’t finish the debate, which no one wants to so much as even mention. The dirty, politically incorrect, and inconclusive—mind you—little secret about why guns remain widely available on the market has three big beans: Russia, China, and ISIS. The wide-availability of guns in America is the only reason those countries—ISIS is a country—have not already invaded and killed millions of Americans—just as their governments have killed millions of their own people who aren’t allowed to possess guns. That’s our excuse that keeps us in deadlock over the gun debate—a deadlock that killed 17 people last Valentine’s Day.
The problem is not the Second Amendment itself, but that we only enforce half of it. We need the rest of the Second Amendment—the Militia army of civilians—a high school class with accommodation for handicapped and learning disabled, different standards for different gender, and it would be a requirement for every student in order to graduate and in order to vote in elections. The high school Militia course would teach self-discipline, readiness, hand-to-gun combat, safety in every situation, gun handling and discharge, emergency response, teamwork, and, like all military training, self-respect and self-sacrifice for others. If Nikolas Cruz had been required to graduate high school before he could buy a gun, he wouldn’t have been able to. If he had been required to get the mentoring a high school Militia class would have provided, he wouldn’t have wanted to.
That idea has been presented before by many people before. But, we don’t hear about it from the NRA. We didn’t want to have such a candid discussion about applying the whole of the Constitution—which would keep us safe from enemies, both foreign and domestic, if we would simply obey it to the full. We were too distracted with other news. So, since those other news items that we bicker about were worth the lives of 17 students, let’s take a review of the news items atop headlines in the days before the Valentine’s Day Massacre…
The Obama portraits, while acceptable, are intended to draw attention. The Smithsonian has more expressive art of Ford and HW Bush, more radical than the Michelle interpretation. Contrary to folk wisdom, the woman in the painting does resemble Michelle in those rare moments when she drops that goofy, fake smile for her natural “serious” face. It’s not that strange, as strange as it seems. But, the hue of the leaves in Obama’s piece and the street-art worthy style of Michelle evince an intent to use the presidential portraits as an opportunity to make some kind of statement. Whether that is right or wrong is up for debate, but they are trying to make a statement.
As for the leaves, to claim that they are marijuana is to claim either that the artist is botanically inept or that oneself is. The leaf in the picture more resembles the Ohio State “buckeye leaf”, which has been confused by the botanically inept in the past.
Michael Flynn was pursued by Obama’s leftover administration as retribution for endorsing Trump. It is said one should never hire friends. Hiring Flynn was a mistake, not because Flynn wasn’t up to the job of fighting in the wolf den—which he apparently wasn’t—but because it promoted him from being a target to being an easy target. In the end, however, Michael Flynn will learn just as Sarah Palin did, after being tossed to the wolves. And, the hostile takeover of Flynn’s life will be an alarm in itself to call out the folks to find out just what in the world was going on in the Obama administration that allowed this to happen. Flynn will come back to haunt the Democrats and bureaucrats.
George Soros has been dumping money into local DA elections that would normally elect Republicans. His candidates have been winning. Democrats and their voters who don’t stand against Soros will lose all credibility when next time they complain about the Koch brothers. While many Republican voters will be alarmed—and probably roused to a wrath those DAs will not want to face—the more interesting effect will be their tendency to self-destruct. People artificially propped into power rarely last, especially when they come from different stock.
…But, there’s nothing like a school shooting to put our priorities about the news in perspective.
The NFL was a distraction. Some might say it still is. Trump is dismantling the Obama administration’s work piece by piece, but most of the Anti-Trump TV time is focused on the NFL. Many Americans who never cared about politics before spent their Sunday afternoons and Monday nights absorbed in the NFL. It was a “bread and circuses” entertainment model that centered around shoving its head in the sand where politics were concerned. When the NFL allowed their rules and their players to get political, the business violated its DNA and it was only ever going downhill from there.
Since, Americans have gotten more involved. Some have gone more Left, some more Right, but more good people are getting involved. The problem now is anger.
The nation is run by demagoguery and populist fads. Few understand critical thinking. Every idea is presumed to be part of an agenda, even at the coffee shop. Anti-Trumpists are feeling what Trumpists have felt for a long time: They aren’t getting what they want. After a few years, they might realize how much they have in common with the “other guy”. Many do already.
In the short run, America will see more and more hissy fits. But, eventually, they will talk to each other, see the results of policy and the consequences of election, and get their facts sorted out.
Strange as it sounds, American politics owe a great deal of gratitude to the NFL after all.
