America's Choice: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
From Sean Hannity Radio Show web posting:
"Here we are, 30 days out from the election, and the pundits and media have all declared this race is now over. Who are they to declare this race is over? This is not the media's country. This is not the media's choice. It's not any political party's choice, not the choice of the Clinton Machine, and it is not the choice of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. This race will be over, and this election will be won, when the AMERICAN PEOPLE have made their voices heard on election day."
I don't normally quote from a talk show web site, but I thought this particular paragraph summed up my feeling very well.
"Here we are, 30 days out from the election, and the pundits and media have all declared this race is now over. Who are they to declare this race is over? This is not the media's country. This is not the media's choice. It's not any political party's choice, not the choice of the Clinton Machine, and it is not the choice of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. This race will be over, and this election will be won, when the AMERICAN PEOPLE have made their voices heard on election day."
I don't normally quote from a talk show web site, but I thought this particular paragraph summed up my feeling very well.
With Trump, all I have to go on is his bombastic nature and some idiotic aspirational slogan embroidered on a bunch of hats. How exactly is "Make America Great Again" significantly different from "Hope and Change"? They are both just aspirational gobbledygook that mean whatever you want them to mean. If you will recall, when Obama ran, he never really came out and said that he was going to do A, B and C. He always talked around it, and people that were inclined to support him let his vague rhetoric mean whatever they felt most optimistic about. Additionally, Obama ran principally on the fact that he was not W.
As I see it, Donald Trump is doing the exact same thing. He has not ever come right out and said that he would do A, B and C. He uses a silly meaningless slogan to get the people unused to critical thinking on his side. He makes vague promises about winning and everything being huge. Lastly, his single solitary selling point that his supporters can actually glom on to is that he is not Hillary Clinton. You have no clue at all what he is, but at least you know that he is not her.
Please don't mistake my criticism of Trump as support for Hillary. Personally, I'd like to see her before a firing squad as a traitor. That is not hyperbole. I mean it. The one and only crime addressed in the Constitution is Treason, and her handling and brokering of highly classified government secrets for personal gain makes her a traitor. The punishment called for with that particular crime is death.
Back to Trump. You mention his disregard for all things PC. You mention his family, business and lifestyle. Couldn't you just as easily be talking about Howard Stern. Unlike Trump, Howard Stern didn't get a $100 Million inheritence from his daddy 40 some years ago. Howard Stern didn't go to the Wharton Business School to legacy his way into the good old boys club. No matter how foul he may be (and he is disgusting), Howard Stern is a self made man running a media empire business (media star like Trump). He is worth a fortune ($600 Million net worth with an annual salary of $90 Million). He, like Trump, is the textbook definition of not PC. Unlike Trump though, Howard Stern is not a known pathological liar. In fact, he may be too honest. Howard Stern never had to bribe government officials to build his fortune. Donald trump brags about it and excuses it as just the normal Tuesday for a "businessman". Isn't it ironic that on a website called GaltsGulchOnline.com that is based on the works of Ayn Rand, that we have so many people who support a "businessman" who brags routinely about bribing government officials to get what he wants. Did Howard Roark, Hank Rearden, Francisco d'Anconia, or Dagny Taggart want or need government help? They are all Randian heroes, yet somehow you want to make the guy who acts more like James Taggart instead of Dagny Taggart president. Moving on. As far as I know, all the women who have come onto Howard Stern's show do so of their own free will. They act like tramps and whores by their own choice. I don't know that I have ever heard of Howard Stern sexually assaulting any of them, yet Donald trump gleefully brags about he can just molest anyone he wants because "they let you do that when you're famous." How would you feel if he just came up and groped your wife or daughter? Would that OK because he's famous?
Again, do not mistake my words. I do not support Howard Stern for president any more than I would Hillary. I am simply pointing out that every supposed good thing you said about trump could be applied fairly to Howard Stern and in some cases, more so.
This election is between two equally unattractive candidates. *Being as nice as I can there. When asking someone to vote for either of those two clowns, it's like asking if they want to eat 6 pounds of rat poison and die painfully/slowly or just cut the the chase and put a bullet through their own head.
Speaking personally, I'll roll with Option 3. I love my country (or at least what it ought to be), and I believe that limited government, fiscal responsibility and freedom from foreign entanglements are better policies than what we have now. I don't want the government to fix things. I want the government to get the hell out of the way, and let the marketplace handle what needs fixing. As such, my principles lie more closely with the Libertarian Party. I will be voting for Gary Johnson come election day. He may be a dottering old clueless fool who couldn't govern his way out of a paper bag if you lit the closed end on fire, but at least he wants to stay the hell out of my life, my business, my bedroom and my medicine cabinet. I can't say that for Trump or Hillary.
Voting Johnson/Weld going into it, I know three things. 1. My candidate will lose this election. I'm not an idiot, I know he has no chance. It's just that I have no need to be on the "winning" side like alot of people do. 2. Trump or Hillary will win, and America will at least four more years of what it deserves. If we haven't learned about these two parties and the power mad clowns they run as candidates in the last 24 years, then we're screwed anyway. Let it all collapse. We've pissed away the birthright that our forefathers fought and died for, and we deserve what we're getting/gonna get. 3. At the end of the day, I will be able to look myself in the mirror knowing that I voted for Liberty. I did my part. I won't have to apologize later for helping put either of these two clowns (Hillary or Trump) in office. If you can live with that on your conscience, go for it, but don't ask me to help destroy the country with you.
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Healt...
“Our elected representatives must eliminate the individual mandate. No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to.”
“Modify existing law that inhibits the sale of health insurance across state lines.”
“Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns under the current tax system.”
“Allow individuals to use Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Contributions into HSAs should be tax-free and should be allowed to accumulate.”
“Require price transparency from all healthcare providers, especially doctors and healthcare organizations like clinics and hospitals. Individuals should be able to shop to find the best prices for procedures, exams or any other medical-related procedure.”
“Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers that offer safe, reliable and cheaper products.”
As for any of that being palatable to my Libertarian way of thinking, I'll pass. If I were running for president, my website would say the following:
"On Day 1 of my administration, I will present a bill to Congress completely repealing the Affordable Care Act in its entirity."
In my world be no tinkering or tweaking of Obamacare. It would simply be legislated out of existence altogether. As for the other stuff not covered by the ACA, however much I might wish that healthcare providers were price transparent, it is not the government's place to require private businesses to do anything. If a transparent pricing model is the most efficient, the marketplace would work that out on its own in due course.
Directly from Trump’s website:
“On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare.”
Close enough?
Here's the thing though. 1. I don't believe a word that Trump says. I just don't, and I never will. 2. I will never, under any circumstances vote for Donald Trump. I'm never going to vote for Hillary either. I've said in other posts on this thread that I vote FOR the principles and things I believe in, not AGAINST the other worse alternative.
The electoral college being what it is makes my vote pointless in any case. I live in Texas, so Hillary has no chance to win my state, and frankly if she does, Trump is doomed across the country anyway.
BTW, the thumbs up you get for both posts comes from me. While I doubt the validity and/or the sincerity of anything Trump has to say, I made the A, B and C comment, and you proved me wrong. I appreciate that.
The way I see it, when I cast a ballot, I am voting FOR something. I don't cast my vote to be AGAINST the other thing. That kind of thinking has gotten us weak kneed, spineless pansy candidates who stand for nothing like George H W Bush, Robert Dole, George W Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Not one of those guys, whether they won or lost, ever had any notion at all about limited government or fiscal responsibility. They were all big government progressives who did or would have spent like drunken sailors. The very best you can say about any of them is that they were Democrat-Lite. Further, any vote for any of those guys was more likely a vote against whatever statist idiot the Dems were offering up at the time.
As for me, I know what I believe in, and I will only vote for people that believe in the same things. I'll leave the "If you don't vote for the lesser of two evils, you're really just voting for the greater of two evils" school of convoluted thinking to others who are waiting for somebody else to change the country's culture first.
In the meantime we live with the system being slightly better or a lot worse while WE are alive. I think a better solution is to put effort into changing the intellectual culture, but voting for the least bad candidate.
It wont matter if you vote libertarian if the young people are taught socialism is good by the parents and government indoctrination centers, and watching people getting freebies (that they would be happy to take if offered). You will just be labeled a freak who is out of touch.
Trump is no paragon of libertarianism, but look at what his supporters are called. DEPLORABLE and they are hated- just for standing up to the establishment. Imagine what a REAL libertarian would face today !! They leave Johnson alone pretty much because he is no threat. They would dredge up all sorts of stuff on him, and he would probably be out of the race for his pot smokng alone (not that I care about pot smoking).
Some people, like you, will try to change the subject. That's all that last post of yours attempted to do. You throw some philosophical horse manure around about voting for the least bad thing instead if defending your choice for its own merits. Keeping with my rat poison analogy from earlier, that's like saying, "At least with Trump the country might die a little slower no matter how agonizingly painful it might be." You will forgive me if I fail to see the logic in that kind of thinking.
It doesn't matter. At this point, the only thing I care about is me and mine anyway. Any reverence I ever had for what this country was/is supposed to be is long gone. Short version: I am going to build my business and do my best to prepare for the S storm that will happen when this house of cards comes tumbling down on our heads. Do whatever you want. Rationalize it however you can. I'd rather spend my time preparing for the aftermath if this trainwreck is inevitable anyway. That seems more productive to me than debating the finer points of voting for/against a pathologically lying, power hungry, egomaniacal turd on a stick like Donald J. Trump.
Speaking personally, I am 44 years old, and I fully expect to see blood in the streets before I die. I think the crash is inevitable, and I think it will hit us like a ton of bricks. In the grand scheme of things, I think it will happen sooner rather than later.
This is a little abstract, so bear with me. History is like geology. You don't really see or feel it happening unless lava goes shooting up in the air or the ground splits open underneath your feet. That said, the ground is always shifting, and every seismic event is preceded by warning signs that anyone can see if they just open their eyes.
Did the Revolutionary War just happen out of the blue one day, or were the warning signs clear and obvious to anyone that bothered to look?
How 'bout the Civil War? Did that happen because some idiot decided to fire a few shells at Fort Sumter, or were those shells fired as a result of events that lead up to that?
You can think of hundreds more historical examples of one day life is one way and the very next day life was completely different. If you were a Roman, how fat, lazy and happy were you the day before the city was sacked? Years later the question wouldn't have been about who could have possibly seen that coming. Instead, the questions would have been about who couldn't have seen it and why were the obvious foreshadowings ignored.
Think about something a little more recent. The world was at war, and somehow our Pacific Fleet was bombed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. How did they miss it? Why didn't they know that was coming?
More recently, a bunch of Islamic terrorists (big shock there, right?) decided to hijack and fly some airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and some unknown target that I assume was not a random Pennsylvania pasture. Should the question be, "who could have possibly seen that one coming" or "what kind of incompetent morons could have possibly missed the build up of Al Qaeda"?
The thing is that whether you choose to look at history going forward or as something that has already happened, you cannot deny that it was/is incredibly bloody and shook/shakes our lives to the core.
Let's also be clear on another point. The term "History" applies to more than just war. Amongst others, it can be applied to things like Economics as well. If we are so smart as a country, why would we buy into the notion that being $19.6+ Trillion in debt and using intrinsically worthless paper as money is a good thing? Never in the history of mankind has that ever been successful, and it has always led to economic collapse. What makes us so special that we are supposed to be immune to thousands of years worth of history? Do economic laws just not apply to the United States?
I used 9/11 as a recent example of something that shook our world to the core. How about something fresher than that? You remember the housing crisis and the resulting bailouts? Does that ring a bell at all? One of my favorite movies of the last couple years is "The Big Short" that talks about the guys who opened their eyes and saw the warning signs leading up to that before anyone else did. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and make the time. It's worth it. Last I looked it was available on Netflix anytime.
When it comes to this country and the big kaboom I think is on the horizon, I feel like Michael Burry from the movie. Whether looking backwards to the things that have happened over and over in the past or looking forward at the unmistakeable warning signs on the horizon, I am scared shitless. When this thing comes tumbling down, it's not gonna be about some other guy's mortgage payment or a bunch of Wall Street pricks whose company falls out from beneath their feet one day. It will be about grocery store shelves lying empty and the electricity/running water not working anymore. Am I paranoid or misguided? Christ, I hope so. If I am wrong though, for the love of God, will somebody please explain to me how exactly it is that we are not all screwed. And while you're at it, please explain to me how it is that a corrupt traitor (Hillary) or a bombastic, egomaniacal clown (Trump) is supposed to fix it?
To the best of my recollection, I can think of only one thing Cruz has ever done to seriously piss me off. That was when he came out a week or so ago and formally endorsed Donald Trump. I would have preferred that he just stay silent and stand with his original "vote your conscience" argument that he made on the convention floor. I understand why he did it, but I couldn't disagree more. Ultimately, Trump is the the rat poison alternative to the bullet in the brain that I mentioned earlier. However much regard I have for Senator Cruz, I still my own thinking when it comes to politics. His endorsement does nothing to strengthen Trump's case, but it does make himself look weak especially when people will be holding that over his head 4 years from now for round 2. Whether you're talking politically or about principles, that endorsement was a spectacularly stupid thing to do, IMO.
of those two. We have no choice about that. The
only choice, is which? Certain death or Russian
roulette?
As to Dagny, oh, it is too bad she is not in the running. If she were, she would get my vote
in a minute, if I thought she had a chance (in
spite of Ayn Rand's belief against a woman's
wanting to be president). I did not vote for Trump in the primary. But I never get the nomin-
ee I want any more.
My gut feel is that Trump is sincere, courageous, and speaks a plain truth that many can support, which partially explains why his supporters are not diminished by the barrage of media inspired reporting.
to vote for Russian roulette than certain death, so
there is still a choice between two.
I have heard Mark Levin proposing some kind of
"convention of states". At first I was against it,
considering that a second Constitutional Con-
vention would be a disaster, and might wipe out
the Bill of Rights. But the way he explained it,
it would not be a Constitutional Convention; it
would be some kind of deal where separate a-
mendments would be proposed separately, and
so maybe it would be all right; and , who knows,
maybe we could even get rid of #16.
See my comment on "When is the time to resist///" posted yesterday.
I believe that the Election of Trump would slow the process, perhaps even reverse it for a small bit of time. I fear that this would give the people a false sense and that the progressive decline would set in again shortly after his terms were completed.
And its the undomesticated domestic ones who are the most dangerous.
Once that's established, reinterpreting quaint phrases like "We the People" to mean "We the State" is a simple trick. Then we the people are really screwed.