The Catcher In The Rye

Donald Trump is an asshat. As Antonin Scalia might say, his speeches are "pure applesauce." His "big" foreign policy speech the other day, was an incoherent and contradictory mess in spite of the fact that he read it off a teleprompter. He has to walk back something every week as a result of his off the cuff comments. ("Women should be punished for having an abortion.") He regularly displays his astounding ignorance of even the most basic concepts such as the Nuclear Triad. But most of his supporters don't seem to mind a deficiency like that in their Commander in Chief. He says things like, "I'm gonna make you people so rich." Which sounds a lot like his pitch for Trump University. He has been a loyal Democrat contributor for decades and within the past few years has openly praised Obama, Hillary, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. He supports Planned Parenthood and thinks universal health care is imperative.His favorite bible quote is from Two Corinthians.

So why do I feel like the catcher in the rye?

You'll recall that in the book of that name, Holden Caufield has a dream where he is standing in a field of rye, near a precipitous cliff. The field is full of children running and playing. Holden takes it upon himself to "catch" the children before they come to close to the cliff. That's how I feel these days, but it's not children I want to catch, it's Trump supporters and they seem more like lemmings. They are trying to go off the cliff and I can't stop them all. They are obviously delusional, even proudly so. They are impervious to facts. I have one Facebook friend who was a raving liberal just a few years ago. Now he seems to have two obsessions: electing Donald Trump and making sure everybody goes to the bathroom that includes their gender at birth. He is quite concerned about the latter, and is appalled to think that a transgendered person might go into a restroom that isn't really theirs. He is totally for the South Carolina law, yet seems unaware that Trump is opposed to it. Sarah Palin had a signature issue when she ran for VP, she was pro-life above all. Now she endorses a man who gives money and praise to Planned Parenthood, and wants the pro-life plank removed from the Republican platform. 

Today it looks as if I will be overwhelmed and the lemmings will all make it to the cliff and jump. I can only shake my head and walk away. It is so stupid.

Conservative's Last Stand

Tomorrow is March 15th and likely the day that Donald Trump either secures the Republican nomination, or opens the door to stop him. It's all going to come down to who wins Florida and Ohio. If Trump wins both, it's over. He's nominated and a Democrat is elected president. Any other scenario leaves the door open to a brokered convention and (IMHO,) also a loss in November. If Ted Cruz were to end up actually beating him with more votes, the Republicans might prevail in the general. But if he, or anybody else is handed the nomination in a convention deal, they would be toast.

The Republican party is not my party. I am a conservative-libertarian who has voted Republican with virtual exclusivity since 1976, because they always had the most conservative candidate, be it for president, governor, senator or county supervisor. When Ronald Reagan ran in 1980, moderate Republicans said he'd never get elected. Too extreme they said. Shades of Barry Goldwater! He'll be portrayed as a right wing nut, and we'll never get the center to vote for us. But they were wrong. He engineered two landslide victories by being consistently conservative. That goodwill carried over for exactly one election cycle. George H.W. Bush won four years by pledging "Read my lips, no new taxes," and then tossed it all away by doing just what he said he wouldn't. Four years later we ran Bob Dole to get that moderate vote, and whiffed again. W unveiled compassionate conservatism, which I detested because it clearly implied that conservatism lacked compassion to begin with. Instead it turned out to be conservative light. His unpopularity lead us to put up John McCain and then Mitt Romney in a lurch, once again, to the middle, which got us nothing.  

And the entire time Rush Limbaugh kept telling us, "Conservatism works every time it's tried." Then Donald Trump took up his pet cause (No amnesty!!) and he promptly threw it all overboard in order to "win." He thinks Trump is Ronald Reagan now, and has an excuse or counter argument for each Trump outrage. Today, he tried to cover for him inciting his people to attack. His argument? Rush remembers how angry he used to get watching leftists get away with all this same stuff, and nothing happened to them! He starts by saying two wrongs don't make a right but..... And then proceeds to lay down a smoke screen so that the Trumpster isn't seen as the complete jerk that he obviously is. This is all rather sad to me. I always thought Rush to be an honest broker. But all he can do these days is "explain" Trump. And he does so without end. He firmly believes that people just don't understand him, so he'll spend hours telling the audience about how all those evil moderates have acted so traitorously that the conservative masses have just risen up and yelled "STOP." And lost in all this is how conservative principles have been kicked to the curb. It's all about winning now, even as they secure defeat with Trump at the helm. Not conservative now, and never has been. Neither are his supporters.

Widows and Orphans

Yesterday the President mocked Republicans that declared their intentions to block or limit Syrian refugees due to security concerns following the terrorist attacks in Paris. While our President is often dismissive of Republicans in general, he showed real disdain in this instance, choosing to mock them as a bunch of cowering wimps. Now they were fearful of a bunch of "widows and orphans."


Here is a list of the known groups currently fighting in Syria:




ISIS
The Al-Nusara Front (Al Qaeda)
The Khorosan Group (Al Qaeda)
The Islamic Front
The Free Syrian Army
The Syrian Armed Forces (Assad)
Hezbollah
Peshmerga (Kurds)
YPG (Kurds)




Of the above groups,  only the Peshmerga could be considered anything like an ally. Of the Syrian groups, only the Free Syrian Army is considered to be "somewhat" secular. Meanwhile, the Americans, Russians, British, French and Arab allied planes have been killing tens of thousands of fighters from mostly these other groups, for over a year now. So my question is, what has become of the widows and orphans of these Islamic radicals? Where have they sought refuge? I'm guessing they might like to leave the area too. After all if their father/husband is dead, why would they stay? Widows and orphans from every single one of these groups likely want to leave Syria. That does not make them our friend




And here are a couple of observations about refugees, widows and orphans. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, came to this country as a 10 year old refugee. I know the President was overseas when he made these comments, so he probably didn't see the Frontline special on PBS showing the Islamic State training children, some as young as four, to be fighters and suicide bombers. But maybe he saw their previous video where they had a boy, who appeared to be no more than nine years old, execute two bound men by shooting them in the head. I wonder if he was an orphan then, or now. Similar videos of child training have been proudly produced by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And it appears that the female suicide bomber in France yesterday, was a cousin of the mastermind, so perhaps not a widow, but I bet she could have passed for one. Apparently she tried to lure the French police in by crying for help out of the window. But the police were expecting suicide bombers and didn't fall for it. She blew herself up anyway.




In his comments, the President sounded much like a school yard bully taunting some kid and calling him chicken, because he's not willing to come take his beating. It was juvenile, and beneath the dignity of his office. All thinking Americans have reason to be concerned. There is far more reason to question the sanity of those who are not, than to question the courage of those who are.

Pushy Liberals

The latest progressive device to fend off criticism of their support for the abortion industry, is to make abortion the moral equivalent of any measure that merely limits welfare. The rhetorical sleight of hand occurs when they suggest that any limitation imposed, or any program voted down, is the same as denying any and all welfare. An objection to cost, is the same as starving children. Identifying the moral trap that welfare surely represents, just shows how heartless conservatives can be.


So when a liberal sees that there is guy pushing old ladies in front of an oncoming bus, and another guy who is pushing old ladies out of the way of oncoming busses, in short order, they will determine that both are men who like to push old ladies around.

Why not?

Yesterday, I received an email newsletter from my state representative in the Wisconsin legislature. In it, she informed me that she is introducing a bill to put the minimum wage at $15 per hour. Because I have tried before, I already know that it is not possible to argue this point from a perspective involving the laws of economics (they’re agnostic.) So, I've decided that it’s time to give them what they want, and more.

Even though my rep holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UW, and I’d be shocked to learn that she has ever taken even a single course in economics, I’m sure she is eminently qualified to set wage rates for all businesses. After all, it’s just common sense that all employers need to pay their workers more, and I don’t see any reason why my rep can’t be the one to tell everybody else what they should pay. It can’t be that hard, just pick a number that’s “fair.” And $31,200 per year sounds like a really fair rate to pay the newest and least experienced worker on your team. And since they know best what employers should pay for their labor, I think they should also set prices for those businesses as well. I mean, who would know better? 

History has proven how well a centrally planned economy works, so this too should be no problem. We just have every business out there that is paying the new minimum wage, submit a list of the products and services they sell, and these hard working state legislators will fire back with the prices they will be allowed to charge for said products and services, and then cement them in place with a law. What could possibly go wrong?   

The Root Word of Liberal is Liberty

If you've ever spent any time at all reading the comment sections on a liberal web site, then you already know what are the two biggest threats to life as we know it in the world's greatest democracy, the United States. They are, of course Fox News and the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that allowed corporations and unions to spend freely from their treasuries in order to influence elections and public policies.

Notice that in both cases, we are dealing with speech alone. Despite the fact that anybody who disagrees with Fox or any of the companies that choose to speak out for policies that they favor, are perfectly free to speak themselves, in full throated opposition, this does not appeal to them as a remedy. It used to be said that the answer to the problem of free speech, is more free speech. But now it seems the answer is just less speech all around.

And notice where their efforts are concentrated in the matter of the debate on climate change. There has been zero effort to win the debate. No, ending the debate is the only thing in which they are interested. Sceptics are "deniers, " as in "Holocaust deniers," and Al Gore is now openly calling for their punishment.

And they wonder why we call them "ill-liberals."

Ferguson

You'd think that with three months to plan their riot, Ferguson, MO should have had it go a lot smoother than it did. But let's face it, the looting and rioting was being looked forward to so much that they would have done it even with an indictment of first degree murder.

But the most disturbing thing was the comments from the "protest leaders." All expressed their profound disappointment that "justice was not served." They complained loudly, that "justice" had eluded them again. But when they were pressed to reconcile their feelings of betrayal and the facts of the case that had finally been revealed, they in essence said, the facts don't matter. Obviously their idea of justice does not revolve around the facts.