Wednesday, October 21, 2015

What we have here is a kakistocracy!

We've heard all the news channel talking heads talk yammering on about our government.  What they fail to explain, generally deliberately, is what type of government we have.  This is mostly due to the agenda they push.

While flawed and filled with corrupt career politicians, what we have is a constitutional republic.  Not a democracy, not a democratic republic.

However, today the United States of America seems to resemble a kakistocracy.

Let's fix this problem in 2016.  Vote for liberty.  Vote for freedom.  Vote in support of our Constitution.


Monday, October 12, 2015

Trump: Chump or Champ?


This weekend, myself and a guest got a couple of tickets to go see The Donald at one of his campaign stops.  The walk up to the building had more diversity than liberal media would like to admit.  There were also more people and diversity making up the crowd than the democrat media complex would ever like to admit.  The predictable blue blazer and khaki pants republicans were in attendance, middle aged men and women, elderly, blacks, latinos, asians, millennials and elderly.  It's the sort of crowd the liberals hate to admit have turned out to support a candidate that has traction and speaks against the socialist agenda they desperately want to ram down the American public's throat.  But, enough on the diversity subject.  Here's a link of one guy we saw after the rally.

To open up his time with the crowd, Trump spent a lot of time talking about himself.  A lot.  This wasn't terribly surprising as this is standard operating procedure for a guy who is constantly pushing his brand.  The audience was told in several ways how, in spite of some deals that didn't work out so well, Trump still managed to earn enough through aggressive business deals to wind up worth billions (roughly ten billion).  His point of telling his story was finally made when he said the mind that has done this for the last few decades is the mind that's going to get to work fixing our economic house, to which the audience cheered wildly.

Mr. Trump, who doesn't use a teleprompter, took special note to throw several verbal jabs at both Obama and Clinton for their absolute reliance on them.  His jabs at Clinton were very well-received.  Mr. Trump pointed out that Clinton spoke very dryly at one of her events stating that she didn't like his tone.  Mr. Trump said, "Our country is going to hell in a hand basket, we've got a terrible economy, record millions out of work, her email scandal, and she doesn't like my tone?!  What this country needs is tone!"  No surprise, this got him a very enthusiastic applause from the audience.  He didn't take an opportunity to mention her failure with Benghazi, but did say that her email scandal alone is a growing legal problem that should probably keep her from even being able to run for President.

Most of the other candidates also received an equal share of bashing.  Here is a quick synopsis of his assessment of each of them.  Jeb is boring, very boring, a nice guy, but we don't need just a nice guy in the office.  Rubio, he said, sweats like a pig.  He suggested that consequently, Rubio would make a terrible guy in foreign negotiations and is not the kind of guy you'd ever want to put up against Putin because of that.  He'd easily look way to nervous against a former KGB officer like Putin.  Carly Fiorina was voted worst CEO in history (though he didn't mention the source for that) and is just annoying to listen to. Walker shouldn't have slammed Trump as shortly after he did, Walker dropped out.  Gov. Rick Perry is dumb.  Lindsey Graham is out of his league.  There were other comments about nearly all the other candidates.  It's possible Dr. Ben Carson escaped his bashing.  But notably absent from his negative comments was Sen. Ted Cruz.  It makes one wonder if they've been discussing the VP role and choosing not to take shots at each other.

Mr. Trump spoke of his tax plan he released, but didn't go into detail at the event to describe it.  He spoke of wanting to grow our military to be the strongest again in the world after mentioning the U.S. Army is at it's least prepared position since prior to WWII.

After the bashing, he returned to mentioning how rich he is and that in spite of the requests of various PACs to take their money (the thing that those PACs then hold over your head when it's time for you to vote/veto bills), that he wouldn't take it so he could brush off the PACs.  That's easy to say when you're a billionaire.

He also took great opportunity to bash members of the liberal media which were there covering his event stating they're a huge part of the problem not covering the realities of how many Americans support conservative values.

That about sums up the event.

But, it didn't win me over.

He didn't discuss ACA/Obamacare or the specifics of his tax plan and how that would affect job growth.  He also didn't discuss guns or the Constitution, although he's been outspoken in the media on his thoughts of eliminating gun control efforts.

My summation, nice guy.  Rich guy.  Fun to listen to.  Based on what he said, seems like he'd let the military do it's thing against our enemies.  He'd probably do a great job with the tax plan to generate jobs.  Not sure on his stance with repealing ACA and letting unregulated free market capitalism determine a solution.  Not sure where he stands on abortion, though he's recently said he's pro-life after previously stating he's pro-choice.  No voting record to base a decision off.

I listened to Donald for nearly two hours, but still not 100% convinced of his positions, specifically how he'd tackle the healthcare conversation.  Here's a June 2015 interview with Jack Tapper. 

The synopsis of his speech is this.  "I'm rich. I know how to create jobs.  The people in office are idiots.  I won't take PAC money because I'm rich.  Let's make our military big again.  Let's make America great again."  Light on specifics, but entertaining to attend.

Sen. Ted Cruz still gets my support.