Tag: Voters

Peacemakers, Warmongers And Fence Setters

You are about to go to the polls and vote for your favorite candidate or in my case the one with the least smell about them…..but who represents your political thinking…a peacemaker?  Or a Warmonger?  Maybe a coward that sits on the Fence and watches the political winds?

Who represents you?

In lifetime voting records tabulated by Peace Action, the average House Democrat has a 72% peace voting record, while the average House Republican scores only 10%. In the Senate, the difference is 69% to 14%

As a foreign policy crisis explodes over the apparent Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, the failure of the U.S. Congress to assert its constitutional war powers over three years of illegal U.S. military action in the war on Yemen and booming U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners is finally coming home to roost.

The UN already reported two years ago that a child was dying every 10 minutes in Yemen, wracked by the war and its consequences, including malnutrition, diphtheria, cholera and other preventable diseases.  Data already showed that more than a third of Saudi-led airstrikes were hitting schools, hospitals, markets, mosques and other civilian sites. But none of the dire warnings by UN agencies and NGOs could trigger the constitutionally required debate and decisive action by the U.S. Congress.  Even now the Trump administration is trying desperately to salvage its blood-soaked arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/10/23/peacemakers-warmongers-and-fence-sitters-who-represents-you

I look for the person that I feel will keep the US ot of useless wars….and like I said these days I just hold my nose and vote or I look for an alternative candidate that has NO chance of winning but at least I have voted my principles in most cases…..too many cannot say that.

Today is your day to send whatever message you have close to your heart….please go vote…..your country needs you.

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Midterms Biggest Loser!

Today is the big day…the day that we all have been hearing about for over a year…..the 2018 Midterms (or is it mid-terms)….but no matter which way you vote….whether as a human or otherwise….there is one thing that is for sure….no matter who wins what the biggest loser will be democracy.

When Angelina Cruz, the head of the teachers’ union in Racine, Wisconsin, goes canvassing, she doesn’t just knock on doors. If she sees someone in the street she approaches them and starts a conversation.

“D’you know you can vote today,” she asked a young black man who walked by last Saturday.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m a felon.” (A felon is someone who has committed a “serious crime”.)

“On papers or off papers,” she asked. (In Wisconsin your voting rights are only restored after prison, parole and probation have all been served, and you are “off papers”.)

“On papers,” he said.

“Well, ask your friends to vote,” said Cruz.

“Most of them are on papers too,” he yelled back.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/02/why-democracy-will-be-biggest-loser-us-midterms

This may not matter to too many people….if not please do one thing no matter what…VOTE!

Dems may win the House but that matters not because…within the Party there is a “Civil War” brewing…..

Now here is something really interesting, via Politico: there’s a growing cultural divide within Democratic ranks:

As the party’s attention turns to the presidential nominating season, one of its biggest challenges will be navigating this culture war in its own ranks. The energy at the moment is with the liberal wing, centered around cities and college towns and on the coasts, its members mostly white and college-educated and far to the left on social and cultural issues compared with the rest of the party. But its voting majority is still more blue-collar and diverse, many of whom favor an incremental approach on social issues and who are more interested in preserving the clout of longtime powers like Crowley and Capuano than in notching symbolic victories for the “resistance.”

In many of the cases outlined above, the policy differences between the candidates are microscopically small. Nearly all Democrats favor tackling income inequality, raising taxes on the wealthy and the minimum wage, and reforming the criminal justice system. There is some dispute over how fast to move and how far to go, but the broad outlines are the same. The differences, in one analysis, are stylistic, and so it is easy to imagine that they will be worked out over the next year as the party settles on another presidential nominee.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/democrats-hidden-civil-war/

The Midterms may make these divisions more pronounced…..but the real battle will begin January 2019….how will the country turn?

2018–Where To Put My Vote

There are just a few days (One lousy week) before we vote and I have heard many people fret over where they can put their vote……(this may not help much in the Midterms but 2020 is coming)

There are many people, voters, that are not happy with the Democratic Party or the GOP and they have a decision as to where to put their vote.

We could always look to the parties of the past…Libertarians, Greens, Reform Party, Constitution Party and of course those on the far Right and Left…..or how about some of the up and coming parties…..

Like The Party of Reason and Progress (PORP)……would you like to know more?

The Party of Reason and Progress (PORP) is an organization dedicated to promoting reason and empirically sound decision-making in modern politics. Our mission is to implement effective and rational policies through educating the general public and supporting reasonable and logical public officials and initiatives.

https://partyofreasonandprogress.org/platform/

Then there is a name from the past…….the Whig Party…..would you like to know more?

Whigs have traditionally stood for representative government, individual liberty, social and economic progress, modernization, public education, a vibrant legislative branch, and ongoing cooperation between the private and public sectors. Our forebears, the original American Whigs, built on those traditions and led the fledgling United States during a period of robust economic, social and political development in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War. We proudly point to some of the giants of American history in our lineage, including such leading lights as Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln, among others.

http://www.modernwhig.org/

If you are more radical Left than the others and are looking for a party to put your trust in then may I suggest the Resistance Party……would you like to know more?

We are in the midst of a global crisis of democracy. As the foundations of the post-war international order are shaken, in part due to the real failures of existing American, European, and international institutions to address the needs of ordinary people, extreme right-wing movements are on the rise. Amid austerity, inequality, high youth unemployment and underemployment, strained relations between Russia and the West, and a refugee crisis caused in large part by the disastrous failures of American foreign policy in the Middle East, the threat posed by a virulent anti-democratic Right waxes every day in the United States and in Europe. In the United States, the radicalized Republican Party under Donald J. Trump is laying the foundation for a program dangerously reminiscent of fascism that we may refer to as Trumpism. Under Trumpism, the United States appears poised to continue to depress the wages of workers, to dismantle what is left of our social safety net, to suppress dissent in violation of the Constitution, and to mobilize racism, scapegoating minorities, who are threatened with mass deportation or worse, and who are already experiencing an uptick in hate crimes. We should not underestimate what a grave threat Trumpism represents to our democratic norms, constitutional checks and balances, the rule of law, and human and constitutional rights.

https://www.theresistanceparty.org/

These are the newest of the fledgling parties that deserve a shot at government for the traditional two have screwed the country so bad that it needs a new direction.

Place your vote where it will do the most good….but never compromise your principles.

Turn The Page!

Let’s Talk 2016

We are mere few days away from the 2018 Mid-Terms and the president still talks about the election we had in 2016…..I believe that most everyone knows that we have a president named Trump and yet he cannot stop talking about the 2016 election….on and on……

You know the election of 2016  and we have a president, like him or not, I want to move on and talk about the world we have today….but we cannot…..it seems the winner of the electoral college cannot move past the election….every rally and campaign stop he makes he constantly relives the election of 2016…..so I thought ‘why not’ it is something interesting because NOTHING happening in the Trump White House is all that interesting.

The biggest confusion is the “Obama Voter” that switched and voted for the old angry white guy….(what were they thinking?)…….

One of the most puzzling elements of the 2016 election, at least for a lot of Americans, was the millions of voters who switched from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016. Somewhere between 6.7 million and 9.2 million Americans switched this way; given that the 2016 election was decided by 40,000 votes, it’s fair to say that Obama-Trump switchers were one of the key reasons that Hillary Clinton lost.

The existence of those voters has served as evidence that the most plausible explanation for what happened in 2016 — that Trump’s campaign tapped into the racism of white Americans to win pivotal states — is wrong. “How could white Americans who voted for a black president in the past be racist,” or so the thinking goes.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/16/17980820/trump-obama-2016-race-racism-class-economy-2018-midterm

As long as we are talking about the 2016 election and since the president cannot open his mouth without saying something stupid about Hillary Clinton I might as well include her in this post…….

IMO she was a terrible candidate and the final tally in the Electoral College proves my point…..yes I know “she won the popular vote”….and where did that get her?

She can go back to the circuit of getting paid “appearance money” and step out of the light for awhile…..(she just cannot step away)…..

“No, I’m not going to run again.” So declared Hillary Clinton this week in an interview with BBC Radio. Clinton, however, said she planned to remain in the public eye criticizing President Trump, reports CNBC. One thing that seems clear: Given her re-emergence on the national stage, lots of people think she will, in fact, run for president in 2020—and lots of Democrats are conflicted about that. Details and developments:

  • Pro-Hillary: A Politico piece headlined “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Hillary?” talks to some of those conflicted Democrats. But it also quotes from Clinton adviser Philippe Reines, who argues that no other Democrat even comes close to her base of support. “Chalking the loss up to her being a failed candidate is an oversimplification,” he says. “She is smarter than most, tougher than most, she could raise money easier than most, and it was an absolute fight to the death.” He thinks it’s unlikely, but possible, that she will run. The chances are “not zero.”

Anti-Hillary: A good example of the “please, no” camp is a piece by Liz Mair in the Daily Beast, who likens Clinton to a zombie who won’t stay down. “Hillary remains caught up in the delusion that the only reason she lost in 2016 was because of Russian interference,” writes Mair. “She does not seem to have fully processed the fact that she lost the Electoral College, the only vote that counts.”

  • Another: Michelle Cottle, a member of the New York Times editorial board, wrote an op-ed arguing that Clinton is doing her party more harm than good ahead of the midterms with all her public appearances. Instead of generating support among Democrats and independents, she’s merely energizing the Republican base, Cottle writes.
  • Bannon’s view: “She’s a lion in winter,” Steve Bannon tells Politico. “Not only is she running, she should run. In the Democratic Party, the question is can anybody throw a punch or take a punch, and one thing we know about Hillary Clinton is she can take a punch.” Trump, for his part, says he hopes she runs.
  • Lewinsky controversy: Last weekend, Clinton told CBS that her husband’s affair with a 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky didn’t constitute an abuse of power because Lewinsky was an adult, reports USA Today. Clinton continues to take flak for this, including from Tarana Burke, who’s credited with starting the #MeToo movement. “It’s absolutely an abuse of power,” Burke tells the Root. “Two people made a choice and one of those people was the most powerful man in the world.” And former Obama adviser David Axelrod wrote: “Just guessing this isn’t the story Democratic candidates were looking for in the homestretch of the midterms.”
  • A tour: Clinton will further raise her public profile with a series of appearances starting next month with Bill Clinton to talk about the 2016 loss and other issues, reports Business Insider. “An Evening With the Clintons” will visit 13 cities, with tickets ranging from $60 to $745.
  • Low numbers: A Gallup poll in September put Clinton’s favorability rating at a record low 36%. That’s down 7 points from the eve of the election. The partisan split: 77% favorable rating among Democrats, 30% among independents, and 4% among Republicans.
  • Clinton also drew attention for asserting that “civility” will return to the US only when Democrats reassume power.

Please…..she lost the 2016 election…time for her to go away….Dems do not need her any longer….they need to find a voice and a message….she did not have one in 2016 and right now the Dems are still looking for their voice.  Right now not even the Party knows who the leader of the Dems is…..so is there a leader?

This is fun!

The Mid-terms will tell the tale…..the Dems may have a chance to redeem themselves with the voter…..will they?

The Crack Widens

Just days before the mid-terms and our politics is so broken that it will take more than one election to repair.

It all began in the 1990’s with the election of Bill Clinton and the Midterms that followed.  The country started dividing itself along red and blue lines…political fault lines.

We have always been a country with two parties and two ways of looking at the role of government.

And with each election after that we have widened the crack in our society…….

The United States is politically fragmenting. It would seem that the various cultural and ideological stresses impacting the nation are destabilizing the country’s two traditional political parties.

At this point in the fragmentation process we can identify four political groupings. They are (1) those of Democratic Party persuasion—and it should be noted that the Democrats are being stressed by contesting interpretations of just what the party stands for; (2) those of continuing Republican Party persuasion, which by now really represents a small “rump” party of Trump supporters; (3) the independents now bolstered by what once was the “moderate” multitude of the Republican Party as well as a growing number of ex-Democrats on the disaffected left; and (4) the mass of apoliticalAmericans who have always been alienated from politics and usually do not vote. This last group also may well be growing. Let’s look at these four groups in more detail against the backdrop of contemporary events.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/19/political-fragmentation-on-the-homefront/

Vote by vote and issue by issue and eventually we have the situation that we have found ourselves in today……division……

Despite common differences and shared values Americans are becoming more politically polarized. And it seems to be happening in large part because our tribal leaders are intentionally dividing us for their own political gains. I find this deeply disturbing and it’s something that is damaging our country as it results in a government that cannot legislate in the best interests of its citizens. So I wanted to write a few thoughts about what’s happening and why.

My general theory of this political polarization is a bit like my theory of an inter-temporal conundrum in finance. Basically, we have short term needs that are best fixed using mostly longer-term views, but we have a  political system and a news media that feeds on our short-term biases. This is creating a whip-saw effect where we are consistently dissatisfied by the wrong short-term policies that are enacted and this leads to the seasaw of changing leadership that results in little effective change. The only real winners in this whole saga are the political leaders who have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

https://www.pragcap.com/theyre-dividing-us/

Like I have written…this division is destroying the country and few seem to notice because they are too busy insulting the people around them……

I rarely tell readers what to believe. Rather I try to indicate why it might be wise to distrust, at least without very good evidence, what those in power tell us we should believe.

We have well-known sayings about power: “Knowledge is power”, and “Power tends to corrupt, while absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.” These aphorisms resonate because they say something true about how we experience the world. People who have power – even very limited power they hold on licence from someone else – tend to abuse it, sometimes subtly and unconsciously, and sometimes overtly and wilfully.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/24/hiding-in-plain-sight-why-we-cannot-see-the-system-destroying-us/

All this division worries me.  This country is so much better than the silliness we have as a government these days.

Mid-Terms are approaching….time for a change….then we have 2020 it will definitely be time for a change.

Only you the voter can change the track of this country……make the country come first.

STOP Whining!

Our Dear Leader has finally imposed the tariffs that he basically promised while a candidate…..the agriculture sector in the US is starting to hurt those people that voted for Trump……and soon it will extend into the auto industry……

The lobster fishermen in New England are whining….potato farmers in Idaho are whining……cranberry framers are whining……soybean farmers in Nebraska are whining….are you getting the picture?

Time for these whiners to face reality…..they voted for the person that is slowly strangling them……they voted for the person that said what he had in mind as a new trade policy.

So these people need to STOP whining!

Take responsibility for the the shitty vote they gave the person that is killing their future….the control of that future.

Ignorance has consequences.

And the whining continues……this time it is over the turn that the Kavanaugh nomination has taken…..it seems that he has been accused (notice I used “accused”) of a drunken grope and possible rape attempt…..and the GOP has been whining about the timing of the information release……and then of course the Fat Man in the Oval Office had to inject his feelings into the debate….

President Trump weighed in Monday on the allegation against his Supreme Court nominee, Politico reports. “We want to go through a full process” to air Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that, when they were high school students, Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, Trump said. If that “takes a little delay, it’ll take a little delay. It shouldn’t certainly be very much,” he said, per Breitbart News. But the president, speaking during an event at the White House in what Fox News notes are his first public comments on the matter, added that he was certain everything would “work out very well” as Kavanaugh is “as high a quality individual as you’ll ever see.” He said Kavanaugh has “never had even a little blemish on his record. The FBI has, I think, gone through a process six times with him over the years where he went to higher and higher positions. He is somebody very special.”

Trump also said Blasey Ford’s accusation “should have been brought up long before.” “I wish the Democrats could have done this a lot sooner,” he said. “Because they had this information for many months, and they shouldn’t have waited until literally the last days. They should have done it a lot sooner. But with all of that being said, we want to go through the process. I’d like to see a complete process. I’d like everybody to be very happy. Most importantly, I want the American people to be happy. Because they’re getting somebody that is great. … We want to make sure everything is perfect, everything is just right.” Asked if Kavanaugh had offered to withdraw from consideration, Trump responded, per Daily Caller video, “Next question. What a ridiculous question.” He noted he has not spoken to Kavanaugh about the matter.

They are whining like the cowards they are……think back to when another guy was nominated for SCOTUS and the games played …..now does anyone think that there would not be a tit for tat?

Keep whining fools!  If the House goes Democratic then the paybacks have just begun……

Personally, I do not think these “paybacks” accomplish anything ……but I do understand why the Dems will be doing it…..and anyone with half a brain will understand it also.

Whining accomplishes nothing…..to avoid having to use the “whining gambit” then do the work of the nation and leave political games behind.

The voters are the worse whiners….I guess it is easier than learning the issues and voting for the benefit of the nation….not some party.

Tired Of War Yet?

I do a lot of reading and some it I use and some of it I save in case it is needed later and other times I flush it out of my system because it is total crap……then I read something that I found interesting and the more I thought about it as I was reading I came down with a case of calling it “CRAP”…..

The piece was printed in The Hill……it states that Dems need to be aware that voters are tired of war……really?

With the nomination and likely confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the party of Donald Trump is on the precipice of dominating all three branches of the federal government. After sweeping to victory in the 2006 midterms and then electing a popular two-term president in 2008, the collapse of Democratic influence in Washington represents an astonishing turnabout of political fortune.

A study suggests that a pivotal moment in the Democratic collapse happened in a Republican presidential debate in 2015, when Donald Trump established his reputation as an opponent of interventionism in the Middle East. During the debate, Jeb Bush chided Trump for his lack of foreign policy experience, and Trump unleashed a roundhouse punch that not only flattened Bush but ultimately Hillary Clinton.

http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/397010-will-democrats-realize-that-americans-are-tired-of-war

I disagree!  If Americans were truly tired of war then they would demand it end…I am not talking about campaign slogans, chants or applause….they would vote to end it….so far they roll over and support the troops with slogans and chants and ignore the veterans.  They are NOT tired of war!  They relish it!

This piece was an outside attempt to influence the direction of the Dems during the Mid-Terms…..

Even in the day when wars make little sense we are still fighting in many countries all in the name of national security…….but nonetheless war makes little sense anymore…..

America spends more on its military than all its enemies put together yet it still can’t win wars. Failed adventures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have drained America’s power and diminished its prestige. The bloated Pentagon budget actually makes us weaker.

Here’s the weird bit: nobody seems to care. If any other government department spent as much and accomplished as little, the populace would be in arms, complaining about wasteful government spending. Instead we mumble “Thank you for your service” and increase defense appropriations.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/war-doesnt-make-sense-anymore/

Regardless we will continue to fight these wars of adventurism and the American people will care less that our troops are dying for what?

Back during WW2 the nation shared the experience with our soldiers…..civilians had to deal with rationing….not as life changing as combat but the people were asked to sacrifice….something they are not capable of doing these days…..the people are more spoiled than a 2 year old….