Does The GOP NEED The Left?

I’ve heard this question debated in several different forums in the past, and it’s an interesting question. You can ask it about either the Republicans need the Democrats, or you can ask it about the Democrats needing the Republicans. Either way works. And in actuality, I’ve come to believe that yes…you do need the opposition…for several reasons.

When government is working well (which it hasn’t been for some time), you need to left in the case of the Republicans, to show the idiocy that they display and would lead by if in fact they were given the chance to lead. The Democrats need the right, basically for the same reason. Because both sides represent not the middle, but more of the fringes of the party. There are no more moderate parties in our political system. You’re either conservative, or you’re liberal.

When government is working not so well, you have ballast. I talked about that yesterday. If you have just conservatives, you have a tendency to go overboard and push things too far to the right (and yes…there is such a thing as going too far to the right!). If you are liberal, well…we know they are always pushing things as far left as they can through incrementalism. By having two parties, you get a balance of a sort. It’s not a perfect system, but it does show a little bit of ability to bring whichever side is running things back closer to the middle. And regardless which side of the aisle you’re on, you have to understand that America is a slightly right of center country. We’re more moderate than either the Republicans or the Democrats would like us to believe.

And that is exactly why the current crop of Democrats are going to fail. It’s exactly the reason Barack Obama failed as president and had to issue so many ill-fated Executive Orders. He couldn’t get things through Congress, even when he had both Houses under his party’s control, because the American people didn’t stand for the “transformational change in government” that he was trying to sell to us. Had America realized what he was talking about during the election, he may not have won by as great a margin. I doubt he would have lost to someone as inept as John McCain, but it wouldn’t have given him any sense of a mandate.

The current crop of Democrats have pushed the party so far left, that someone like a Joe Biden seems almost conservative in comparison. He also looks very worn out and tired, and that’s what 50 years of politics will do to a person. But the problem is, most of the Democrats still in the field vying for the nomination, are much farther left than most Americans are. The Republicans learned that lesson some ten years ago when the Tea Party tried to push the GOP to the right. They pushed too far and it led to losing seats in both the House and the Senate.

In the end, as sad as I am to say it…the conservatives actually need the left, and the left actually needs the right to survive. Otherwise, one side pushes too far and we become either Nazi Germany, or Venezuela. Neither are very good choices if you ask me!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Advertisements

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Remember that old Aretha Franklin song? Remember respect? That was when someone showed you something that you kind of went, “Huh! I like that!” And you started thinking higher of the person because of their action. That is what respect is. The one thing that I’ve always felt is, respect isn’t something that’s demanded…it’s something that’s earned. When you earn respect it means something. When you demand respect, you get phony respect in reply.

Apparently, that was a lesson that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has failed to learn in her scant years on this rock. You’ve heard no doubt, that she and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi have been have words in public. Or, as AOC calls it, “singling the progressives out”. AOC is all upset because at her ripe old age of what? 29? she isn’t getting any respect from Pelosi. It seems to me, this is another area AOC is wildly amiss on.

Nancy Pelosi has been in the House of Representatives since 1987. That’s 32 years, folks. That’s a career for most people. AOC has been in the House of Representatives since January. The experience factor alone I would feel has earned Pelosi a little “respect” if not by the whole world, certainly by her own party members.

Yet in this latest tiff, AOC is upset that she’s not getting respect from Pelosi. I actually laughed when I read that. Why in the world would this 29 year old bartender deserve any respect? What has she done that has been respect-worthy? Here she is, demanding respect from someone who not only have 31 1/2 years more service in the industry than she has, but has acheived her party’s highest status in her office. What’s AOC done? Bupkus.

This new breed of young Democrat is interesting to say the least. Brash, boisterous, and bold, but not very bright, certainly not very politically savvy, and pretty ignorant to the ways of the world. I’m not calling AOC dumb, I’m not up on her enough to know if she is smart and just too damn bragadocious for her own good, or if she really is an airhead. But if she wants to have more than a two year career in DC, she needs to understand the culture, and understand the protocol. You can’t just cram your way into that world and not understand what you’re getting into. She’s a lot like Donald Trump in that regard. And, she’s getting the same treatment…primarily because she’s acting a lot like he’s acting. He’s pooh-poohing the protocol of the presidency. She’s pooh-poohing the protocol of a Representative.

AOC needs to take a back seat for a while and shut her mouth. Otherwise, she’s going to be back pouring suds at some down-scale Brooklyn establishment very, very soon!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

It Was 50 Years Ago Today…

No…Sergeant Pepper didn’t teach the band to play then. It was 50 years ago today that Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on the surface of something other than planet Earth when he exited the Lunar Module (LEM), and stepped on the surface of the moon. What’s fascinating is, I remember it like it was yesterday. And what’s equally as fascinating there is like, 50% of our population wasn’t alive when it happened.

When you come to think of it, it was probably the most remarkable human achievement ever. Mankind put together the know-how to send two men to the surface of the moon, using computers that had the computing less power than the cheapest lowest-grade Ipad available today. And not only did they do it once, they did it five other times!

In fact, the event was so remarkable, we do not possess the technology today to repeat it. If we wanted to, we could not today, send a man to the moon.

Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, with Michael Collins orbiting above did what no other people have ever done to that point. And they received hero’s welcomes when the three of them returned safely to Earth. They went on a world tour and became the envy of the planet. But what was strange with the whole event wasn’t the fact that THEY did it, it was the fact the entire world felt that WE did it. We were one. We haven’t felt that way since.

Now, exactly 50 years later, we are anticipating sending people to Mars. We have private companies that are actually sending supplies up to the International Space Station, and are advertising that they can send people up to the Space Station to spend a “vacation” in space in the very near future. It could even be said that private industry may indeed be the driving tool to launch man to Mars, not the government.

We’ve come a long way in the last 50 years. Our society’s technological advances are incredible. When I tell my grandkids the only telephones we had were either on a desk or a wall and you had a cord between the phone and the handset, they can’t imagine it. Computers were non-existent. We only got three channels on the television sets. Nobody in this country had really heard of soccer yet…much less played it. And we’d never heard of microwaves, or flat screen TV’s or smart homes. GPS was non-existent as well. We had to use maps, and God forbid if your wife couldn’t read a map! We’d get them at the local Gulf gas station or Sinclair gas station. Maybe the Standard gas station…they were all popular back then.

No, I remember watching in awe as Neil Armstrong stood on the surface of the moon, and bounced around. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Today, kids are more concerned with their electronics, and playing the latest video games (which also didn’t exist in 1969). The world has changed…and today, we should all stop, ponder in awe, and thank the heroes who have departed this world that were the part of that monumental event. It certainly is a day to celebrate!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Pelosi’s Quagmire

Nancy Pelosi is in a very tentative position these days. The Speaker of the House of Representatives is trying to control her party. But she isn’t doing a very good job. It seems four women, all freshmen Congresswomen have turned the tables on her. And Pelosi is finding herself doing things she really doesn’t want to do because she knows it’s going to hurt her party next November. But if she doesn’t follow through with it, she could ostracize these four women, and they have become the face of the Democrat party.

In a very short span, Pelosi broke House Rules when she called Donald Trump a racist on the House floor, something that is totally taboo. She then denied she did it, saying that she had cleared it with the Parliamentarian (she hadn’t). Then, to appease her base, she allowed them to take up valuable time to vote on censuring Donald Trump over his tweets, that she called racist, but no one was singled out; no one was derided by their color or national origin. The vote to censure Trump passed, with four Republicans joining the Democrats, oh…and one Independent…that idiot from Michigan who called for Trump to be impeached before he dropped out of the Republican party and became an indy.

As if that weren’t enough, Pelosi the very next day, allowed a floor vote on whether to open impeachment proceedings against Trump. That was tabled, with only a handful of Democrats wanting to proceed with impeachment. And if THAT weren’t enough, she followed it up by holding Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and Attorney General William Barr in “criminal contempt of Congress”. It’s really a no-nothing charge. The same thing was done to Eric Holder in the Obama administration over his refusal to turn over documents for Fast & Furious. Nothing came of that one either (except a waste of time).

What Pelosi is NOT doing? She’s not tackling any of the salient issues of the day. Where is the attempt to “fix” Obamacare? Where is the immigration reform bill? Where are the bills that help strengthen our infrastructure? Where is the bill to strengthen our border? We haven’t seen anything (other than the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund Bill) that actually means anything get passed by the House. Why? They’ve been obsessed with trying to find any ties between Donald Trump and Russia…or Donald Trump and obstruction of justice…or Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. They have wasted six months of time trying to proceed on a witch hunt that hasn’t produced anything. And they aren’t going to be able to pass anything in the last six months of this year. Next year is an election year, and nothing of consequence gets passed then. So, basically, the Democrats are going to try and hold on to the House by telling America that they’ve tried (and failed) to convict Donald Trump of anything. Too much time listening to Maxine Waters and AOC, not enough time actually working for the people.

And you don’t think the people will remember that? That should be on the mind of every single Republican running for the House next November. That should be top of every candidates’ mind running against Democrats next year…and the current Republicans should tell voters that’s why they need to go back…to actually DO something!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

9/11 First Responders Deserve Fund Renewal!

Think back if you will about 18 years ago. It was a sunny morning in Toledo, Ohio. I was sitting at my desk at work and my boss came in and said that an airplane had just crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York. Some time later, he came back and said that a second plane had hit the Towers. It was 9/11. It was a day, like when JFK was killed, or when man first walked on the moon that we will remember where we were, what we were doing, and the feelings that went through us when it happened.

The responders to that tragedy were quick on the scene. As thousands of people were fleeing ground zero…these brave men and women were running in. They weren’t thinking of the fact that they were going to put their lives in danger that day, or that they were most assuredly going to be dying early from the toxicity that they were wading into. They put others first.

The House of Representatives, in one of the only moves they’ve actually accomplished that had any semblance of meaning this year, voted overwhelmingly to fund the 9/11 Victims Fund for another 70 years. If they had voted that down, it would have been over after December, 2020. Instead, should the Senate pass it (as they most certainly will), the program that gives restitution, and not a lot of it to the men and women who were injured, who’ve contracted cancer and other dibilitating and fatal diseases, a chance to at least have some of their medical bills paid.

However, Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), have thrown a monkey wrench into the works. Why? Because they want to know how the $10.2 Billion fund over the next 70 years is going to be paid for. They spend more than that on lunch, and yet have the audacity to question whether this program should move forward.

One of the people that has been very active in this program is Jon Stewart. Yeah, the same Jon Stewart that does the talk show. And it’s a rare instance I find myself agreeing with him. I do in this case. Stewart has given untold hours and countless interviews to bring these victims the compensation they so richly deserve. He’s called out both Paul and Lee for their actions, and I for one, applaud him for doing so. If we can’t take care of our heroes, we don’t deserve to take care of anybody. Stewart is right on this one, and Paul and Lee are dead wrong.

Like the Veterans of our military, who come back to face incredibly incompetent medical care through the Veterans’ Administration, the heroes of 9/11, the people that were on the scene giving selflessly of themselves deserve better. Money is no object in this case, especially when there has been no fraud, no abuse, no misplaced funds. This is one instance where a federal government assistance program has done exactly what it was intended to do. To not allow this program to continue is a crime!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Court Ruling!

So, yesterday, they heard arguments at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans as to whether the Appeals Court should uphold the lower court decision to make Obamacare unconstitutional. Based on the Supreme Court’s ruling way back when John Roberts sided with the liberals and said Congress could tax anybody for any reason, it should be declared unconstitutional. But if it is, the snowflakes will scream that millions will be left without healthcare.

Of course, that’s a lie.

Actually, they should have screamed when Obamacare went into effect. More people lost their healthcare than actually got healthcare through Obamacare, and yet the leftist snowflakes were amazingly silent.

So, to help mankind, I’m going to once again tell people how the whole healthcare situation needs to play out. It’s a simple plan really. And it’s one that’s based on common sense, not leftist socialist policies and hopes and dreams.

First of all, you wipe Obamacare off the face of the earth. It was a terrible idea. OK, not completely terrible. It did allow the pre-existing condition clause to be swept away, which was a good thing. It also did away with the million dollar lifetime maximum. That was another good thing. Other than that, there wasn’t a lot of good in the bill.

Next up you allow insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines. That does a couple of things. It allows the playing field to be much larger, thus, the competition will drive the costs down. And you can shop around each year for the lowest priced policy.

Does everyone have to have insurance? Yes. You must have some sort of insurance, but that’s based on your desire and your needs, not on what the government tells you that you have to have. So, if all you want is to have critical care insurance (typically very inexpensive), that’s fine. If you don’t have to have pregnancy insurance, because you happen to be 85 years old, or a male, or you’ve had your tubes tied, you don’t have to buy that option. You buy whatever types of coverage you want.

Maybe you want to pay your primary care physician out of pocket and save your insurance in case something bad happens and you’re hospitalized. Maybe you never want to see a medical bill. Maybe you want drug coverage. Maybe you want ambulance coverage. Whatever you want you are able to pick and choose cafeteria style. By the way, it’s the same way you are able to buy your car insurance and your homeowners’ insurance today.

Now, when you go to the emergency room, you have to show an insurance card. If you don’t, they can stabilize you and send you on your way, but they don’t have to admit you. If you’re an illegal alien, you aren’t covered, so you don’t get hospitalization. If you as an illegal want to pay for a doctor’s visit out of pocket, that’s fine, but a trip to the hospital requires insurance.

If you want a Health Savings Account (pre-tax), you can certainly set one up. Oh, and all hospitals, and all doctors, and all pharmacies, and all ambulance companies have to accept all insurance. And yes, Virginia, if you are covered for an illness, your insurance company HAS to pay for that illness. No ifs, ands, or buts. If they don’t, you CAN sue them.

There you go. Now, the leftist snowflakes will complain that it does nothing for the poor. It does, actually. It allows the poor to purchase cheap insurance. You don’t have a right to eat, or to live in a house in this country, and you don’t have a right to expensive medical care either. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. If you can’t afford a couple hundred dollars a year for critical care insurance, you probably have more serious problems than your health!

And there you go, America. Healthcare is solved. Free of charge, free of government interference. Free market saves the day. There’s no need to thank me. It’s my gift to mankind.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

So, Were Trump’s Comments Racist?

The House of Representatives are all atwitter trying to decide whether or not to “censure” the President Of The United States because of Twitter comments made. Now, the comments didn’t name anyone specifically…and basically said that if you don’t love this country, you should leave and go back where you came from.

Frankly, I’ve said the same thing for decades, so I guess they should probably censure me as well.

This goes right along with the thinking that anything you say against any Democrat office holder that they don’t agree with. In this particular instance, Trump was probably talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her three little socialist buddies. And while Trump didn’t mention them by name, the question remains, were his comments racist?

The answer is no. He said nothing other than if you don’t like it here, go back where you came from. That could be Brooklyn, Detroit, or Massachusetts, or Africa. What’s so racist about that? Absolutely nothing!

Actually, the House is getting to the point where Nancy Pelosi is losing control of the party she’s supposed to be the head of (at least in the House) because of four little girls that probably were mistakes being elected there. These four want to change America by ripping up the Constitution and copying something out of the 1919 Soviet Union Constitution (which they never followed).

What’s really interesting is that America knows all about these four women basically because of the drive-by media’s coverage of them. Anytime they spout off about anything, they’re automatically front page or lead story news. What’s interesting is that the four socialist members of the House are already four of the best known Democrats in existence. Yes…AOC is better known than Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi. She is the new face of the Democrat party. That is something Donald Trump and Republicans everywhere probably relish.

What is interesting is she also has only a 22% approval rating. Socialism is approved by 18% of “swing voters”, and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) has an approval rating of 8%. How in the world do you win elections with numbers like that?

Let me back up. These numbers come from an INTERNAL Democrat poll. The numbers were never meant to get released to the public, but there was an unimpressed Democrat that decided that this move to the left would basically tank the party. And he/she is absolutely right.

So, when you hear comments from this “squad” of little girls with no real education, even less common sense, realize exactly that someone else is driving the bus. They just aren’t smart enough to get behind the wheel.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!