Wednesday, March 23, 2016

The will of the parties vs the will of the people

As I've been saying for some time now Bernie Sanders doesn't have a chance of beating Hillary Clinton. The main reason is because the Democratic party doesn't want an outsider. Here's a great news clip explaining how the party is structured to prevent Sanders from winning no matter how many people vote for him.
Reality Check: Dem Super-delegates Include Registered Lobbyists!

Reality Check: Dem Super-delegates Include Registered Lobbyists!

Posted by Ben Swann on Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Now if you couldn't watch that, the gist is the party doesn't want grass roots candidates rocking their world. And it may shock you to learn that I agree with them. It's their party. They are the ones who run it, and fund it, and live it all year long. Let the party choose their candidate, which is why I have often said all primaries should be closed.

The Republicans are the same way. They only started allowing voters to have a say in their candidates 80 years ago. They thought it might help them come up with someone who could knock off FDR. But now that the voters in this primary may actually select a candidate that doesn't represent who the party feels they are, they are in scramble mode to stop him. The Dems have done a better job of thinking ahead. Their fix was put in a long time ago with "super delegates". The GOP will either be obvious about stripping Trump, or they will suffer through his candidacy. But a party is not the people! It's a political party.

For as long as I can remember there have been 2 parties. GOP (Republicans) and the Democratic party (Democrats). But there have always been other parties. Still rocking since the 1970's is the Libertarian party. People concerned about the environment have the Green party. Jim Rex and Oscar Lovelace started their own party a few years ago in SC called the The American Party.
When I bring this up that there are more than 2 candidates for most offices, people poo poo the idea of a third party ever winning an election. The money and power and everything is thrown behind the 2 big parties. Which is why you will never change them! The parties are designed to keep the power brokers the power brokers. It is rigged against you. However the American political system is not.

Bernie Sanders is an Independent . That means he ran against the Dems and the Gop and won. Today Bernie is 74 years old and represents a state with 626,000 citizens. If Vermont was a city it would rank #26 behind Nashville. He's an old man from a state that no one cares about, representing virtually no one. Congressman represent approximately 700,000 people each. Because a state has to have 2 Senators, Bernie only reps 313,000 people, while their sole Congressman, Peter Welch reps the whole state. All of that to say Bernie has no business starting a revolution. But he has. Millions of Americans love his message. If it was a general election, just the will of the voters, I have no doubt that Bernie would actually crush Hillary Clinton.  Bernie has raised about 100 million with 98% of that coming from donations of $200 or less. Hillary has doubled his donations at 216 million however 19% came in donations of $200 or less. The fat cats love Hillary and that shows in the coffers, but their votes are no more important than anyone else's. As far as sheer number of donations received, Sanders is the most popular candidate in our history! The 2,513,665 donations to Sanders’ campaign shatters the record set by  Barack Obama’s re-election committee. Through Dec. 31st, Obama had chalked up 2,209,636 donations.

American's need to wake up and recognize that they have been hypnotized by the political parties! And it's not like we weren't warned! John Adams said
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution. Our first President George Washington stated in his farewell address;The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty

 The 2 party system divides and conquers. Most Americans who vote, are not loyal to a party. The over whelming majority of voters don't register for a party but Pew Research reveals that most voters identify as Independent.

That means the parties have to ask people to support their candidate. And I know there's a large portion, perhaps not the majority, but a great number of people who support these parties somewhat begrudgingly because they feel it's the only way to make sure "the bad guys" don't win. They don't agree with their parties platform entirely, but feel like they have to join a force greater than themselves to stop what they see as bad policies. If you're a Democrat who is pro life you are brain washed! Your party's platform doesn't line up with who you are, so stop working against yourself. There are plenty of people who would love to run, that are pro life and also for more gun restrictions or whatever your "liberal" hot buttons are. If you're a Republican who wants more union leadership in the workplace, you need to wake up. I'm sure there are some folks begging to run as budget conscience, strong military candidates who want unions to rep the working folks.

I hope that Trump gets stripped, and Sanders gets screwed, and enough Americans get angry, to say they will never support a party again. If that happens we'll start getting more candidates. And the will of the people will begin to be represented, instead of the will of the parties. We need to convince Americans that voting for someone you believe in, is never throwing your vote away. That is a trick of the parties. A vote for so and so is a vote for individual you can't stand. But a primary isn't an election. This isn't your vote. This is you participating in a nomination process for the one of the two parties to then select a candidate to go into an election where everyone will vote. This is still the will of the party not the people. Let's not make it so the will of the party over throws the will of the people.
     
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Thursday, March 10, 2016

A preview of the ad Dems will run against Trump.

The son of a wealthy businessman takes up the family business and becomes even more wealthy. He actually builds a national reputation for himself. And he uses that national fame to talk about how America used to be respected but because of our weak, ineffectual, leaders of the past 20 years or so we're now the laughing stock of the world. We're losing a war to a rag tag bunch of radicals who are taking down what at one time was the greatest military machine in the history of the world. As your President he will restore the military to their former glory. He will defeat that group of radicals so fast it will make our heads spin. And then he'll bring back the jobs because unlike most politicians he has actually employed thousands of people and he understands the economy a lot better than any of these so called experts.
That sounds a lot like the platform of Donald Trump. It is in fact the platform of Barry Goldwater. His dad founded Goldwater's Department store. When Barry took it over he grew it so the name Goldwater was famous! He was frustrated with the direction this country was taking. It was almost as if it didn't matter who was running it from a party stance. The Republican Eisenhower was as bad as the Dems Johnson and Truman. The GOP ran a moderate in 1960 in Nixon and we saw how that went. It was time for a man of the people to show how true conservative principals would win not only the election but win back our pride. We were getting killed in Vietnam by some group of people who had no business messing with the US military. All Americans were frustrated over that. All Americans felt like the federal government was moving in the wrong direction. And all Americans wanted change. LBJ should have been easy pickings for the Republicans.  In August of 63 the VP was dragged into a scandal because his protege, Senate Majority Leader Bobby Baker, was alleged to be involved with bribery and kickbacks to the VP. Baker resigned and the investigation was squashed. But LBJ was considered dirty then by the American public. Much like Hillary is today.

Goldwater's inability to connect with the middle wasn't because he was a far right politician. It came from his speech patterns. He seemed dangerous to people the way he wanted to wipe out the Vietcong. He seemed crazy. These are the same phrases being used to discuss the GOP front runner today. Goldwater's nomination led to the biggest defeat in GOP history.
Not only was he skunked outside of the south and his home state but in Congress 36 Republicans lost their seats to Democrats for one of the biggest shifts in Congressional history. And the Senate swung even more to the Democrats giving them a 68-32 majority. So if Trump goes on to win the nomination, this is the type of advertisement you should expect to see running this Summer. And you probably should expect a Democrat in the White House with some restored power in Congress so they can move their liberal agenda which the GOP has been able to block for the most part since the 2012 elections. On the positive side Goldwater's crushing defeat cleared the way for a new crop of Republicans which finally took over the party 16 years later it what's now known as the Reagan Revolution. If history repeats itself we are setting ourselves up for a Conservative revolution in 2032.  


This campaign ad from the 1960's is going viral
This "Confessions of a Republican" ad from the 1964 presidential election is going viral, thanks to its uncanny relevance to the 2016 presidential election.
Posted by Quartz on Tuesday, March 8, 2016
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Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Why should Donald Trump scare every American

Plato philosophized about 5 forms of government. In his theory Aristocracy was best for the citizens and Tyranny was the worst. Democracy was identified as the most free a citizen could ever be. However it's also the most dangerous because if the citizens don't remain disciplined then they'll "become drunk on their freedom", and decency would erode. The government would attempt to satisfy their citizens by allowing laws to be rewritten in ways that disciplined people would have never imagined. However as the laws become lax, some of the citizens yearning for discipline would turn power over to a ruler whom Plato described as the ultimate panderer to the people. An individual who positioned themselves as the protector of all that the citizens cherished but in reality was concerned with accumulating power. Democracy degenerates to tyranny according to Plato.

Tyranny today would be considered a dictatorship and even though Plato wrote those words hundreds of years before Jesus and only 100 years or so after the idea was first attempted in Athens he described what happened to lots of great democracy's that were to follow. Chile, Egypt, Panama, Italy, Venezuela, Germany, Bolivia, are some of the more recent governments who degenerated from democracy into dictatorships. Their leader's were elected and then took over as dictators. Hosni Mubarak, Vladimir Putin, Benito Mussolini and a long list of power hungry individuals have wooed voters with an idea that they can fix whatever it is that;s bothering them. When the obvious truth is if 1 person can fix the problem, they have way too much power. But because they keep promising to fix whatever it is that's bothering the voters, the voters keep giving them more power. Until it's too late and then the power is too centralized and can't be taken back.

I think it's obvious that American's are not happy with their government and have been begging for an answer for a while. Congress approval ratings have been between 9 and 19 percent for 20 years. From 2006 on President Bush had an approval rating between 30 and 40 percent. The same thing happened to Obama when he began his 2nd term.
In other words we have been frustrated with government for a long time. Following Plato's theory the laws would be loosened to accommodate the will of the citizens who wanted more freedoms that decent people didn't. Recreational marijuana laws, gay marriage, and prostitution is being legalized all over this country. That divides us more and now the people on the right want someone to turn it around. One of Trump's promises is to get rid of happy holidays and make us all say Merry Christmas.  
     
For people who are freaking out over the liberalism of our country this kind of promise is what they were dying to hear! It doesn't matter to them that he would have to violate our constitution in a spectacular way to achieve it. What else is bothering you? ISIS "I'll bomb the s--t out of them" says Trump. The other GOP candidates actually recognize that they have to work with Congress and allies and try to explain how they would put that together, all the voters just hear blah blah. Anything else? Illegal aliens? "I'll deport 12 million people so fast it will make your head spin". Except there's no way to do that. "I'll build the biggest wall you've ever seen and make Mexico pay for it". Problem solved. Actually not because most of the drugs and aliens that get here do so right through security. And when the other candidates try to explain the complexities of immigration the people on the right scream "fix it already".

If we follow Plato's overview of the psychology of a society when they replace democracy with a dictator the American people are ripe for a dictator. And when you look at the characteristics of a dictator Psychology Today says  They are usually charming, charismatic, and intelligent. They brim with self-confidence and independence, and exude sexual energy. They are also extremely self-absorbed, masterful liars, compassionless, often sadistic, and possess a boundless appetite for power
Very few people would say Trump doesn't have most of these qualities. Compassionless and sadistic are the 2 his supporters would say he doesn't. Well what do you call it when a person mocks another who has a disability. When other candidates were offering prayers and sympathies to the families of victims of a mass shooting in Oregon Trump was on MSNBC Morning Joe and said "What are you going to do, institutionalize everybody?… That’s the way the world works, and that’s the way the world always has worked.” He went on to say "these things happen". I'd call it compassionless. What about a man who says “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives. Don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.” That's a candidate for President saying he would order our troops do commit war crimes. And the murder of innocent people, no matter what the reason, is sadistic.

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