Posts Tagged → vote
Tidal wave vs. The People
When I was a kid at the New Jersey shore, I remember how some of us young boys would bob in the beach zone where the sandy bottom dropped off and the waves hit the hardest. If Jersey waves can hit hard…though they did to us kids.
We would square our shoulders and lean into the hardest waves, barely touching bottom, trying our best to withstand them.
It was a physical test and a test of willpower, kind of a test of our budding manhood. Man vs. Nature. Primal combat.
It was summer vacation, what can I say. We were kids and let our imaginations run. By today’s video games standard, it was quite wholesome and innocent.
Today I feel like we are all right back there facing down waves.
This time the waves are assaults on our society, civilization, by a media-political complex bent on crushing everything in its way. Especially the traditional people who represent or hold onto the old ways that built America and which are the foundation of Western Civilization.
A recent example of this was when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1994.
Clinton had a whole host of women accusers surrounding him. Accusations of rape, sexual assault, harassment, etc. And despite that, plus his shady business dealings, the media-political complex circled the wagons around Clinton and did everything possible to get him elected president.
In the course of that process, the media-political complex allowed Clinton to dodge, avoid, and lie about his actions, and get elected as a result. They attacked his accusers and protected him, because they shared his political views.
Another example of this was when Barack Hussein Obama was elected president in 2008. Obama had a whole host of questions surrounding him, including his shady business dealings and his overblown, shallow professional qualifications. As well as his citizenship qualification, which was raised first by his primary opponent Hillary Clinton, and recently resurrected by Obama’s own Kenyan brother, who last year was sending out a photo of Barack’s original Kenyan birth certificate.
In the course of that election process, the media-political complex allowed Obama to dodge, avoid, and lie about his actions, and to get elected as a result. The media-political complex circled the wagons around Obama and did everything possible to get him elected president, because he represented their values, their desire to “transform America.”
Today we are seeing this same old process unfold yet again, in the case of the US Senate election in Alabama.
There, a conservative anti-establishment candidate, judge Roy Moore, is facing an obviously contrived and coordinated attack by the media-political complex bent on crushing him and overturning the will of the people, the voters of Alabama.
That media-political complex is made up of BOTH political parties, as well as political and social elites.
Doubting that assertion? Consider that US Senate leader Mitch McConnell prefers a liberal Democrat over the independent minded Moore in that seat. McConnell can easily work with liberal senators. He knows how to horse trade with them. How to give in, roll over. He knows Moore will not roll over, and is not interested in the careerist perks McConnell can offer.
It may not be politically correct to be this honest, but the truth is, I do not believe the accusations against Moore. They are just way too conveniently timed, and are obviously led by GOP squishes like McConnell.
Where were these accusers decades ago? Suddenly now they’re available?!
And where was this same media scrutiny when rapist Bill Clinton was running amok and poised to become president? Where is that scrutiny now? Well, Bill Clinton is a hero to liberals. So he got the pass.
Where is the same media scrutiny for US senator Al Franken, whose damning photo shows him illegally groping a sleeping woman (who also accuses him of attacking her elsewhere)?
Where is the same media scrutiny for the dozens of Hollywood elite also accused of pedophilia, sexual assault, rape, and harassment?
Nearly crickets out there, folks, except in the unbelievable cases where the media-political complex is trying to protect Franken.
But Hell’s bells, you get an independent-minded guy like Moore, and the whole world is descending on him and demanding him to bow out of the race, with no proof other than these obviously well-timed political accusations.
So it is the Roy Moores of the world now, squaring their shoulders, standing in the surf where their feet barely touch the sandy bottom, and facing down the big tidal wave of contrived fake news designed to wipe them out of the only political process anywhere on Planet Earth designed to capture the will of The People.
Moore may not be a young kid, but it is the innocence of America that is at stake here.
Win, Moore, win.
Win for The People.
Marsico, Rozman and Morris for Dauphin County Judge
If you consider experience and qualifications alone when selecting a county judge, then there are only three logical people to get your vote on May 16th, 2017:
Ed Marsico
Michael Rozman
Royce Morris
Ed Marsico has been Dauphin County’s district attorney for a long time, so long that I have lost count of the years. During his time as the chief law enforcement official for Dauphin County, Ed has always struck a balance of fairness and restraint, when lesser people would have given in to anger over some of the heinous crimes committed in the Harrisburg area. That always struck me as the sign of a well developed personality, because man, I did not feel that way about some of the scumbag criminals he prosecuted. I wanted a public stoning. Ed pursued justice. Without any stain on his long career as a visible and scrutinized public servant, Ed Marsico is the most qualified candidate for county judge in this race and one of the most qualified we have ever had. He has earned your vote. (Ed has done a great job as DA, and I and many others would have liked to have had him run for Pennsylvania Attorney General, but Ed is devoted to Dauphin County).
Michael Rozman has served as deputy district attorney under Marsico for a long time. Often laboring away out of the limelight, Rozman has racked up some of the greatest experience any lawyer can have. Rozman’s mastery of forensics, crime scene investigations, police interviews and interrogations, and knowing how to distinguish a bad boy from a true bad guy puts him head and shoulders above any of the other candidates, except for his boss, Ed Marsico. Again, if experience and outstanding qualification matters to you, if you want justice and not politics in the court room, and if you want to be judged by someone who has had decades of experience dealing with courts, criminal matters, justice, and police work, then Michael Rozman has earned your vote.
Royce Morris is also exceptionally qualified to be judge, and he is the Yin to the Yang of Marsico and Rozman. Morris has been one of Central Pennsylvania’s leading criminal defense lawyers for a long, long time. His view of criminal law is seasoned with the understanding of the behavior and reasons why certain bad things happen and how people either purposefully or mistakenly end up in the criminal justice system. Royce has received accolades from judges, jurors, prosecutors, defendants and police officers for the careful way he has handled some of the region’s toughest defense cases. Again, if experience is what you care about, and you want to be judged by someone who is not a party hack or a devotee of political climbing, then Royce Morris earns your vote.
It is true that there are other candidates for the three vacant seats on the Dauphin County court. But none of those candidates has anywhere near the hard-bitten experience dealing with tough crimes and careful analysis like Marsico, Rozman, and Morris have had.
The quality difference between the top three candidates and the others is measured in light years, which is to say an enormous gap, not even close.
Yes, it is true that a Republican political endorsement was made for this seat, which benefited one of the other candidates, and while I am no fan of political endorsements in general, if there is one place where a political endorsement does not belong, where it actually indicates weakness and not strength, it is during the selection of a judge. Politics has no business entering the court room or the judge selection process, and only you, the informed voter can stop it.
About eight years ago now-Judge Andrew Dowling was not endorsed by the Dauphin GOP, and he was told not to run, and yet he went on to win his seat on the court, overcoming what is obviously a very shallow and judicially meaningless political process. A better process would be to rank judicial candidates by a letter system, or by gradations of qualification (e.g. Highly Qualified, Qualified, Not Qualified). That election, when Dowling overcame the political hackery, was a refreshing reminder of the wisdom and power of the citizen voter.
Three years ago outstanding judicial candidate Bill Tully was passed over by the Dauphin GOP, and another, very young and less qualified candidate was endorsed. He was closer to the political establishment. The voters rejected that set-up, too, and sent Tully to be the next Dauphin County judge. That election, when Tully overcame the political hackery, was a refreshing reminder of the wisdom and power of the citizen voter.
Readers may ask why I write these essays about candidates and politics, and I will tell you it is simply because I have always had a passion for good government and fairness. Believe me, I make no friends writing these things, I receive no money and actually have lost business because of my opinions. And I have garnered some enemies along the way, too. But if Americans are not brave enough to stand up for what they deserve, then they get really bad government filled with political hacks who care nothing for the welfare of their fellow citizens. Maybe I am brave, maybe I am foolish, but I stand up nonetheless, and I tell it like I see it, and I tell it from the perspective of the person in the street.
Vote for Marsico, Rozman, and Morris, and you will get judges we can be proud of. That is my opinion.
NPR’s alternative facts undermine media credibility
Seasoned NPR employee Mara Liasson asked a question at a White House press briefing the other day, and it has taken me days to accept the brazenness of her bald-faced lie.
Asking Trump Admin spokesman Sean Spicer about allegations of voter fraud, Liasson asserted that Trump had claimed the number of fraudulent votes in the November 2016 election were between three and five million.
Unfortunately, Spicer is new and did not challenge Liasson’s lie. Trump never claimed that number. He did say he believed between one and two million of the votes for Hillary Clinton were fraudulent. How Liasson arrived at five million votes is something only she knows.
But we know why she did it: Mara Liasson is personally opposed to the Trump Administration.
Unfortunately, Mara Liasson is like the other NPR employees, she is a partisan political activist. Her personal politics shapes her professional behavior. Nothing that Mara Liasson does is news reporting, as in reporting of actual facts. Her brazen creation of alternative facts in this one instance resembles her many prior years of alternative facts creation and fake news aimed at her other political enemies.
In one public moment, Mara Liasson has re-opened the worm can of fake news and alternative facts, used to attack and undermine the mainstream media’s political enemies.
And NPR fans wonder why their credibility is so low, and why there are so many loud calls to defund NPR and strip it of the publicly owned intellectual property it manages, like its trademarks and logos.
UPDATE: Fifteen minutes after writing this, I read a New York Times article published today, written by Richard Fausset, another political activist who wears the credentials of a “news reporter.”
What catches my eye right away is the following statement by Activist Fausset:
“The scrambling of what’s real and what’s illusion began well before Mr. Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway offered the concept of “alternative facts” on Sunday when commenting on false statements by Mr. Trump and Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, and before Mr. Trump’s repeated false claims on Monday that millions of illegal voters cost him a popular vote majority.”
Time to revoke California’s full faith and credit standing
Full faith and credit is the idea that all of the states in the United States operate at more or less the same level of professionalism and responsibility. Full faith in the driver’s licenses of one states are assumed by all other states, and full credit is given by all states to the licensing process of all other states. It is at the core of the Union, it is the glue that binds the states to one another as equals.
California is up-ending this arrangement, however.
California has for a long time been dubbed “the Left coast,” the “land of fruits and nuts,” the “sunshine cancer state,” and all kinds of other funny, silly, and word-play sly riffs on its geography and light-headed lifestyle.
What is not so funny is how badly California has gone off the rails, threatening to take a bunch of other train cars with it.
Phenomenally wild and unscientific regulations, unsustainable minimal wage hikes, outlandish worker compensation and insurance requirements for employers, and other bizarre acts of officialdom there have damaged the state’s economy and the quality of life of its citizens. Businesses relocating from California to Nevada and Texas is now a daily report in regional newspapers.
However, if that isn’t bad enough, consider this, the dead canary in the polluted California coal mine: This week California government officials revealed that they had “inadvertently” released private information on about 3,500 state-licensed firearm instructors. The most personal medical and professional information about these individuals was disclosed to a news reporter, information that can really damage the instructors, and lead to their identity theft. The assumption is that the reporter would widely disseminate this information. After all, if he can damage these people personally, maybe they will stop being firearms instructors, goes that warped logic. It is at least consistent with California’s war against lawful gun ownership, a goal shared by the mainstream media. It was no accident.
This, in a state that goes into wild contortions to avoid identifying illegal aliens it has brought into its illegal “sanctuary cities,” including releasing illegal aliens convicted of violent crimes, who then go on to murder more Americans. Because they are illegal aliens, they are somehow “victims,” and not subject to the rule of law. The state of California puts tremendous taxpayer-funded resources into protecting illegal aliens, presumably because they will be good little partisan voters who continue to vote for more Santa Claus government handouts. It is total lawlessness, because the political goal of complete single-party power and control drives all official decisions.
California has gone so far as to issue driver’s licenses to at least a million illegal aliens, which easily paves the way for them to become illegal voters. This is America’s biggest vote fraud, and as we saw recently it threatens the core of our Republic. American taxpaying citizens deserve better than this. It really is a declaration of war complete with an invasion force. But Americans have been patient and understanding, too much so.
It is time to withdraw California’s full faith and credit standing amongst its peer states.
The resulting death and destruction emanating and radiating out from California reaches every corner of America, and this mayhem demands that other states take action to protect their citizens from California’s wanton disregard for basic law and order, a basic disregard for life and limb of American citizens who happen to be unluckily in the path of a vehicle incompetently driven by an illegal alien. Or on the street when an illegal alien blessed by the state of California pulls a gun and murders in cold blood.
Here are concrete steps the responsible adult states can take to get our United States back under control and serving the interests of the citizens and taxpayers who populate them:
1) Declare all California driver’s licenses unacceptable as legal documents or certifications, and subject to immediate confiscation by law enforcement officers;
2) Declare all California-licensed vehicles subject to immediate search, and illicit contents therein subject to seizure, and the vehicles to be impounded;
3) Declare all other California licenses and certifications null and void, and subject to review in each state.
This is good government. It is a government of good standards, of, by, and for The People.
America’s Frontier Identity Cuts Both Ways
America is a frontier nation.
It was carved out of the North American continent, geographically speaking, and conquered and purchased from its first inhabitants, the American Indians, sociologically speaking.
This was a frontier within a frontier within a frontier. Walls upon walls of high mountain ranges, surrounded by a vast ocean. As the Europeans steadily pushed inland, they found one Garden of Eden after another after another. This experience forged an identity not seen since the Hebrews left Egypt and trekked through the desert to the Promised Land.
One of America’s great beauties is its identity, the frontier identity, resulting from and coming out of our founding times. This is an idea in most people’s heads that the nation is huge, nearly limitless, nearly boundless. This is an inspiring conception, and it has been bolstered by 250 years of unfettered individual success.
Over the years industrialists, and to an increasing extent Republicans, were accused of having a false sense of natural resource limits. The natural resource exploitation of the 1800s and 1900s gave birth to unimagined material wealth, and also incredible land, water, and soil pollution. Some observers have more or less said this inexact misuse of valuable resources was due to the frontier mentality our early industrialists inherited.
Today, it can easily and more exactingly be said that the Left is living in a fantasy haze of unsustainable frontier mentality. The bizarre notion that tens of millions of illegal border crossers can simply enter any nation, here we are talking about America, and impose enormous costs on the inhabitants without fueling an explosive conflict is one of the standbys for liberals and Democrats today.
That Los Angeles and every other Western city is out of land, air and water (their huge impacts on schools, roads, hospitals, police and sewage infrastructure are barely guessed at) and yet must steadily absorb an increasing number of illegal economic migrants is a testament to the failed frontier mentality of the white liberals promoting this assault on their fellow American citizens. Some say liberals will burn down their house to keep control of it, and I might agree with that, if I thought it were going to be burned down. Instead, I am more likely to believe that we are headed toward some sort of genocide where my house will remain intact, but I and my family will be officially evaporated. To make room for someone “more deserving.”
Only in huge nations like America, and Russia, and China can these fantasies play out. The mental frontier is so vast, so unattainable, that pretty much anything can go, and everything will be alright. Stalin and Mao toyed with it, and used it. Today the American Democrats are following in that path, albeit slower, right now.
I myself am drawn to the frontier mentality that values wilderness, clean streams, large unbroken blocks of forest, farmland, and wildlife habitat. To me, that is the best expression of America’s frontier legacy, and boy do I like to roam in the big woods. A lot of the animals there seem more interesting than a lot of people I encounter.
Tomorrow we all vote, a referendum on this frontier mentality. My own conception has never been very popular with either of the political parties. Instead, we will see one side vying for the ability of a person to make his or her own way on merit alone, and the other side trying to flood the streets with new voters who can artificially breathe life into an unsustainable frontier mentality and create an America sure to fall apart.
And thus, the frontier mentality cuts both ways, for good and for bad, for health and for ruin, for fairness and injustice. Will our old frontier mentality ride in to save the day?
Voting for Hillary?
Voters who select Hillary Clinton now forever disqualify themselves from criticizing any future candidate. There has never been nor is there likely again to be a candidate as unqualified and as corrupt as Clinton.
Knowingly choosing Clinton means a voter forfeits their ability to credibly attack future candidates. If Clinton is worth your vote, then anyone is worth voting for, because a candidate cannot be worse than Hillary Clinton.
Sure, you could disagree on policy with a future candidate, but you could not fairly accuse that person of being flawed. If Hillary isn’t too flawed for you now, then no one can ever be flawed again.
Hold Hillary to the same standard you have for other candidates, or forget being taken seriously.
Hypocrosy corrodes credibility. Don’t be a hypocrite. Vote for Trump and hope he’s happy to leave after one term.
How nice are you?
Out of curiosity, ask yourself: How nice am I?
Then answer it this way: No matter what media and university people are telling you, the fact is that in this political combat, Nice People Finish Last.
On the one hand, we are told that anyone who is not politically correct and partisan Left is a racist, and an extremist.
The people daily planting this message are themselves politically and culturally extreme, by traditional standards. You know, the traditional standards that founded the very civilization they enjoy so much, but which they have turned against. The people carrying this message have an agenda, to shut down all opposition, whether by shouting it down or making it illegal.
On the other hand, we have a bunch of generally comfortable, nice, thoughtful, considerate Americans, educated at liberal colleges. They voted for Obama, thinking doing so would prove once and for all that they are not “racist.” They work hard, pay their taxes, dutifully invest in college for their children, and follow the flawed but prevalent 1960s maxim “let your kids find their way and discover who they are.” Their kids do not find their way, but are usually led astray by leftist professors and activists.
The material comfort we middle income Americans enjoy is putting us to sleep. And when we are confronted with accusations that we are racist, or mean spirited, or sexist, or whatever, we naturally cringe, and do what we can to prove that we are not as accused.
And thus are the Nice People manipulated and bullied into handing over what little power they have left. Giving to those who will never relinquish it.
This election is not about Republican versus Democrat, or about liberal versus conservative.
It is about the American voter waking the hell up and realizing now, at the last second, that the Left has been on a ruthless warpath for fascist control for decades, and the “right” has been cowed into protecting only its material comforts, at the cost of the Republic. The cost of our liberties. Your liberties. Our Constitutional rights.
When American professors are permitted to openly state that debate is not welcome in their classroom, you had better take notice.
When the American media openly allows itself to proudly act as an arm of one political party, for one highly corrupt political candidate, you had better take notice.
When racist extremists are marching through your kids’ college campus, accusing “white” kids of being “racist” because of the color of their skin, you had better take notice.
When racist extremists are marching through public streets, destroying everything around them and assassinating police officers, and then elected political officials give them legal cover, you had better take notice.
When our highly armed US Navy vessels are dodging tiny boats threatening them in international waters, instead of incinerating them, you had better wake up.
When our military service men are captured by a hostile nation (Iran), and ransomed for over a billion American dollars — your tax money, instead of being returned unharmed under threat of American retaliation, you had better wake up.
Hello there, Mister and Missus Middle America….your nation as you knew it is coming to an end. Everything has changed under your feet. You think that because there is food in the fridge and gas in the car that all is fine. That is materialism putting you to sleep.
If you do not vote in a stop-gap candidate like Donald Trump, then your civilization is over. By the time you realize it is gone, it will be too late. Many of you will later accept being cowed into submission by Hillary and her political descendants, but many of us will not. What happens after that is the kind of conflict that has always happened in every human society preceding us when irreconcilable forces clash. No sane person wants that, and your vote this election can either postpone it, or create the conditions necessary to turn the tide altogether.
Want to be really nice? Help get America back on track, or at least keep it from jumping the tracks. Vote for Donald Trump.
If it smells bad, it’s bad
Donald Trump wasn’t my candidate. Lacking a political or social track record appealing to my values, he was going to be enjoyed for having mixed it up with the corrupt political establishment.
But then Ted Cruz began behaving in ways inconsistent with my values, too, and I began second guessing my loyalty to his campaign.
American voters across the country have increasingly complained about voterless primaries run by insiders. Actual voters, public opinion, have been shunted aside in Colorado, Wyoming, Indiana, and elsewhere.
We are then lectured about “the rules,” and how if people want to win, they need to play by the rules.
Well, in Georgia there were no rules. It was Lord of the Flies, anarchy, where voter sentiment was tossed out and insiders voted themselves into delegate roles inconsistent with the actual vote outcome.
Rules? The rules here are meaningless. They change with the wind. They’re open to interpretation. They apparently don’t mean much at the end of the Election Day, and across America actual voters are complaining that something smells bad. They’re saying they are being disenfranchised.
If our voters say it smells bad, then it’s bad.
On Facebook some people I know and respect assert that Trump is “whining” about losing, that he’s disorganized, that he doesn’t care about or want to learn the various state rules. That he doesn’t want to play by the rules.
Problem with this thinking is, Trump is merely giving voice to the hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens feeling shut out from their political process. When our fellow citizens express these concerns, we must listen. When they say they’re being ripped off by insiders playing by rules that are by their nature fast and loose, we should listen.
When voting fails, the fabric of society is tearing.
Real conservatives are principled. First and above all else, conservatives follow our Constitution and the basic, essential principles devolving from it. Like one citizen, one vote as the basis of our republic.
People who say they don’t care about these claims, who say they don’t care about Trump or his supporters, are really saying they just want to win and they don’t care how they do that. And that right there is as unprincipled as it gets.
Cruz’s character is being tested here. In my sad opinion, this candidate I donated to, campaigned for, lined up endorsements for in Pennsylvania, is demonstrating poor character. He should be disavowing the voterless primaries he has “won,” as well as the delegates he has “turned,” despite the will of the voters who created those delegates in the first place.
No question, Cruz better represented my values early on. But now, his actions say that my perception of his values was wrong. And thus, I’m not voting for that, or him. I’m voting for the voters and their voice, their best advocate, Donald Trump.
Three seats open on the PA Supreme Court, three women to fill them
Rebecca Warren, Cheryl Allen, and Anne Covey are three outstanding people. All are candidates for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. All are attorneys. Cheryl and Anne broke gender barriers to become judges; Cheryl may have broken a skin color barrier. Rebecca is breaking a philosophical barrier that seeks to keep Constitutionalists out of jurisprudence. Note the bizarre role of the PA Bar Association in this election.
All three women I’ve met and spoken to at length, each more than one time. All three impress the heck out of me. They are real people, plenty smart, and plenty experienced. The citizens of our Commonwealth deserve to have these kinds of minds running our legal branch.
I’m voting for all three of these amazing, inspiring women on Tuesday, which is Primary Election Day. Hopefully, you will, too.