Thursday, December 31, 2015

Dear George Will

Every once in a while I read a silly column full of lies or misrepresentations or utter nonsense or a mixture of the three to make one nauseous.  Mostly, those silly columns come straight from left field and on a few occasions, I'll read one that comes from right field.

One such column was published last week written by someone I like, and that is George Will.

Now, I always tend to keep my guard up when I read political columns be it from the right or the left. It's just natural for me to do so.  Every writer, myself included, has a point to make to persuade the reader to his or her side of the argument.  That's all fair so long as the argument isn't littered with bull shit and urine, and that is how I have to describe Will's column "If Trump wins the nomination, prepare for the end of the conservative party".

The gathering of the GOP establishment against the number one Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, is beyond comprehensible.  It's an outright betrayal against the grassroots political movement that sprang into action shortly after President Obama's inauguration in January 2009.  That is, the TEA Party with its millions of angry voters.

The GOP establishment and the Republican voter base have been at war with one another for decades, but it's been played out in front of the nation for almost seven years.  We can go as far back as 1976 with the establishment's treatment of Ronald W. Reagan, and their support for President Gerald Ford who then went on to lose to Governor Jimmy Carter.

But then something happened in 1980.  And it wasn't the hostage crisis, although that event did help solidify Reagan's support.  The GOP establishment threw its weight behind George H.W. Bush against Reagan.

Why?

The former wasn't an ideologue whereas the latter was a champion of conservatism, and he didn't mince words.  He spoke eloquently about America, it's freedom and strengths, and told the crowd of supporters that he would repair and embolden the economy and would also strengthen the military.

Yet, despite the Reagan rhetoric throughout the campaign, the GOP establishment was not hearing it. They remained non-committed to the revolution that was taking place right in front of their eyes and refused to accept Reagan as one of their own.

So, what did propel Reagan to win the nomination and eventually the White House?  Well, it was the 1980 version of the TEA Party, the so-called Moral Majority led by the Baptist Rev. Jerry Falwell who coalesced a large group of evangelicals into a powerful conservative political group that would support Republican candidates and the Republican party throughout that decade.

Here we are in late 2015, and the GOP establishment is having another conniption fit because its preferred candidate, Jeb Bush (much like his father in 1980), hasn't been able to break out of his 3% quagmire despite political connections and contributions of over $100M and television commercials in Iowa and New Hampshire.

What has Trump spent to garner close to 40% support?  A very small, meager fraction compared to Bush's, and most of it has been spent on the red baseball caps bearing the words "Make America Great Again".

Like 1980, 1992 (with H. Ross Perot), and 1994 (with the Newt Gingrich House majority victory), there is a political revolution occurring where the voters are pissed off at their politicians and the party establishment and the media.

As much as the political establishment and the media would like to have the people believe that the TEA Party is dead, don't believe it.  It's all hype and meant to keep voters at home feeling insignificant in the political arena.  The TEA Party is quite alive and breathing fire.

Just ask former GOP representative from Virginia, Eric Cantor, a GOP rising star defeated in his own primary in 2014 by a TEA Party candidate.

But, that's not all.  The fact that piles of money is not playing the heavy role it once did for the preferred candidate says plenty, and that is what is frightening the Republican party.  All parties thrive on money, the more dollars the better, and since many GOP contributors are keeping their wallets shut, what can the RNC do but sit it out or ask the rank and file to donate.

I haven't, and I won't!

In his anti-Trump rant, Will writes, "In 2016, a Trump nomination would not just mean another Democratic presidency.  It would also mean the loss of what Taft and then Goldwater made possible -- a conservative party as a constant presence in US politics."

That was 1913 and 1964 thinking.  That would only be true if, in 2015, the Republican establishment truly supported the conservative wing of its own base.  However, the RNC has, for years, been shifting away from that base for what it sees as a more fertile ground of progressivism, thus their championing for comprehensive immigration reform, more bloated government spending, and refusing to repeal Obamacare, among other things.

Trump may not be the ideal conservative orthodox.  Hell, he's been married three times, but then again, President Reagan married twice.  Yet Reagan still carried the conservative torch.  Why?

Because, come 2016, this election is not going to be about fooling the American people once again with lofty but meaningless campaign slogans coming from the mouths of phony conservative ideologues like Jeb and Kasich.

It's about leading the United States of America in a positive direction.  The establishment wants the status quo whereas the American people want something new, something fresh, something bold. Washington is rancid!  It stinks!  It's corrupt! Everybody knows it and voters are prepared to do something about it.

Writes Will, "It is possible Trump will not win any primary, and that by the middle of March our long national embarrassment will be over.  But this avatar of unfettered government and executive authoritarianism has mesmerized a large portion of Republicans for six months."

He continues, "The larger portion should understand this:  One hundred and four years of  history is in the balance.  If Trump is the nominee in 2016, there might not be a conservative party in 2020 either."

Those words are coming from a "conservative" who hosted a dinner at his Chevy Chase, Maryland house to welcome then president-elect Obama in January 2009.

First, the only national embarrassment is the one in which Jeb Bush is incapable of gaining any traction despite his family name and the millions he's already spent to keep that 3%.  That's embarrassing!  Same goes with Kasich and Christie.

Secondly, "this avatar of unfettered government and executive authoritarianism"?  Really, that's Will really sinking to new depths given how Obama has ruled, and Hillary stating she would circumvent the GOP congress and issue executive orders to get her way if she is elected.

And lastly, the conservative party or movement, whatever you want to call it, is not going away so long as there are people willing to support freedom, the Constitution and a clean form of government. The same predictions have been made by the pundits and the progressive Democrats about the TEA Party, but the TEA Party remains a visible force in politics.

What I will guarantee to the Republican establishment is that if Trump does win the White House, there might not be a Republican party in 2020 that mirrors the party of 2016, 2012 or 2008 with its elitist smug and trappings.

 The Republican party's party of fooling the American people is over!

And there you have it folks, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly!

Thursday, December 10, 2015

FBI Director Comey vindicates Trump's safety plan

During a House committee hearing on homeland security in October, the director of the FBI, James Comey testified that the vetting process of Syrians was a gamble at best getting it right.  Said Comey, "We can only query against that which we have collected.  And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them."

This was in comparison to the Iraqi vetting process whereby for over ten years, we had Americans on the ground in Iraq gathering intelligence on people who sought to emigrate to the US.  However, that wasn't also picture perfect as yet terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida who had attacked US forces in Iraq managed to slip through the vetting process and resettled in Bowling Green, Kentucky, as reported by ABC News in November 2013.

So, one month before the Paris massacre by jihadi terrorists, one of whom had recently emigrated as a refugee; and six weeks before the San Bernardino massacre where one of the jihadi passed the US government vetting in Pakistan, Comey had announced that its vetting process may not be as good as we would like it to be.

We have known all along that the vetting process wasn't as tight as it should be, but our leaders prefer to turn a blind eye so as not to run the risk of angering a few folks and thus being called racist and xenophobe.

So, here comes GOP presidential hopeful, Donald J. Trump saying this past week on Good Morning America, "What I'm doing is calling very simply for a shut down of Muslims entering the United States, and here's a key, until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.  They don't know."

The key words in Trump's statement was "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."

Don't our elected representatives want to thoroughly investigate what is going on with the vetting of Muslim refugees?  After all, it was FBI Director Comey who let it be known first that the Bureau was not equipped to vet the influx of 10,000 Syrian refugees, let alone 200,000 Syrian refugees President Obama has planned for 2016.

Said Trump on Greta recently, "We have an obligation to protect our citizens."  Trump continued, "Our political leaders are very weak, they're very ineffective.....Look, it's the safety of our country that we're talking about."

Is Trump right? Or should we continue our slide into the quick sand pit and do nothing to protect ourselves from the obvious threat before us, just because it's politically incorrect to target a specific group of people not residing in the U.S., mind you, because it's just not the American thing to do?

The notion that the United States has to accept foreign aliens that call themselves refugees on a large scale is an invitation to disaster as we are seeing quite clearly in western Europe, especially when the majority of the refugee hordes are male between the ages of 16 and 45.  We cannot screen them because of the lack of information on them!

During the House hearing on the committee on homeland security in November, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) asked a very interesting question to homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson which went unanswered.  Said Smith, "Another red flag to me, is that in past years, historically, traditionally, refugees have been members of families.  And yet, the typical profile of Syrian refugees, I am told, is that most are young, single males as opposed to family members. And if so, to me that would raise a red flag, as well."

(Let me add that most of those refugees crossing into Europe are not simply Syrians but north Africans, Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis.)

Is the president or the US Congress going to confer a constitutional right to foreign aliens abroad before they ever set foot on U.S. soil?  I know for a fact that no foreign alien has a right to travel to the US without permission, and that those foreign aliens who have US visas can automatically have the visas rescinded and stamped "Cancelled Without Prejudice" by the US consulate.  Criteria must be met before being granted a visa.

Therefore, why all the hoopla over Trump's statement?

As you can see, this is all an engineered effort by the mainstream media, along with progressive Democrats and the Republican party elites at destroying Trump's credibility and presidential campaign before Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.

Which begs the questions that the anti-Trumpistas will not answer:  1) Are you more afraid of what Donald Trump says than you are of what ISIS has done to people and looks forward to executing right in your own back yard? And 2) Are you not concerned that the US Government doesn't have the proper mechanisms in place to vet foreign aliens coming out of that Middle Eastern region and whom may have terrorist ties to ISIS, al-Qaeda and other jihadi front groups?

The American establishment, sad to say, would rather have the American people not hear the Trump Truths so as to feather their own nests all-the-while promoting the leftwing, anti-American extremist agenda to the detriment of the republic.

And there you have it, folks, the good, the bad and the ugly!!!