Category Archives: Politics

You Feel what You Think

Posted on by
Reply

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but of emotion. (Dale Carnegie quote)

Yes, BUT:

Reason and logic are distinctively human features. But so few humans use these features.

That’s why we are where we are.

For God’s sake: Start THINKING, people!

Also: Your feelings are just a form of thought. When you feel something, you are thinking something. The thoughts may or may not be rational and valid; the thoughts may or may not be wise to act upon. But your feelings are your thoughts.

So you can’t escape the need to think … including about your own thoughts and feelings.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Speech Biden should Give, but Never Will

Posted on by
Reply

I think we can judge this Biden presidency right now. The record isn’t anything you don’t already know. We’re a nation on the verge of officially entering a recession. The list of items that are not available is staggering. Mothers can’t feed their kids because baby formula is not on the shelves. Our southern border has more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. Inflation is reaching astronomical highs, and gas prices are killing America’s working class. What is amusing is that Joe Biden thought he was America’s savior. He felt his win would bring back leadership and competence.

First, we already had leadership and competence under Trump. Sure, the delivery was a little rough around the edges—but the economy was booming, and we had peace. Under Biden, we’re slowly getting sucked into a perpetual proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. America is not back. We’re adrift. I don’t think we’d ever have a presidency where the average voter could see in less than 18 months that this guy couldn’t do the job. The high approvals post-2020 were a mirage. It was weeks of liberals rejoicing that Donald Trump was gone. After seeing how Biden governs, 64 percent of Democrats don’t want him to run again. It must be nice that you can survive the price hikes, the inflation surge, and the overall tanking of the economy to satisfy your anti-Trump lust. Wealthy white progressives will be fine. The rest of us need to tread water.

Biden just looks small behind that presidential seal. You know he’ll just deliver his remarks—poorly—and then shuffle off. In Biden’s mind, that’s leadership. It’s not. You have to do stuff, Joe. And the fact that we’re hearing from Politico, CNN, and The New York Times that your staff has to draw and redraw your scheduling plans because you’re a geezer who can’t handle the stress of the job is telling. I don’t care that Biden can carry a conversation. He doesn’t have Alzheimer’s; he’s no vegetable. But this White House’s crisis management and execution are pathetic. It’s more tragic than the 2021 New York Giants season.

And this fiasco extends beyond the Oval Office. The vice president has been a dumpster fire for months, with Kamala losing all her top staffers peppered with laughably incoherent remarks. Many say it’s HBO’s Veep personified. The First Lady is also part of the problem.

She’s become a bumbling gaffe-fest. Her butchering of the Spanish language is a crime as heinous as the bombing of Guernica. It reached new levels when she compared Latinos to breakfast tacos. From top to bottom, there’s rot. There’s incompetence. Joe Biden must get on his knees in Saudi Arabia and beg for oil. Saudi Arabia is already operating close to production capacity. Biden can and should use our vast domestic energy resources, but he can’t. The Democratic Party is now dead-set on wrecking the economy for Mother Earth. The irony that you need fossil fuels to power the Left’s electric car fetish shouldn’t be lost here.

Given this train wreck of a presidency, it’s time for the Bidens to thank COVID. It’s the only reason why they’re here. COVID is the reason Joe Biden is president. Under the revised way of campaigning due to containment protocols that never worked, Joe would have shown his degraded facilities mentally and physically on the pre-pandemic campaign trail. It would have taken a few falls from exhaustion and some word salad moments to make the point we all knew was valid: Joe isn’t mentally able.

He blamed Trump for COVID deaths. More people have now died of COVID under Biden than Trump. Go back through his Twitter. It’s an endless stream of overpromising. It’s a stream of total failure. All of Joe’s 2020 campaign tweets have come back to slap him.

Now, he won’t give such a speech. That’s insane. Thanking a pathogen for your electoral success would be something, but it would also cheapen the office, and that’s not good either. Still, in my vengeful world, I’d have Joe, Jill, and Kamala deliver remarks of gratitude and thanks to a virus and the Chinese who released it, which allowed them to secure a win they didn’t deserve. Oh, and the whole 1 million deaths part. Thanking the virus in that regard is just inappropriate. Or is it all that much outside the realm of possibility? For God’s sake, Jill thought breakfast tacos were the best way to convey Latino diversity.

As satire, someone should draft a Biden speech thanking COVID for his 2020 win. Biden doesn’t have the skills to be president or the political acumen. Even Obama was chugging Pepto Bismol when Joe shuffled his way into the 2020 ring. We also forget that COVID torched the economy. Trump was heading towards a landslide win if things didn’t get rocked by the Wuhan plague. Look, Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director and now a senior adviser to Biden, said the quiet part out loud already.

Matt Vespa, townhall.com

School Vouchers

Posted on by
Reply

Those proponents of liberty who advocate the voucher system fail to recognize that, in so doing, they are giving an implicit endorsement to a principle that they profess to oppose. The fundamental premise of the voucher plan is identical to that underlying the present system of state education. The coercive power of the state (which in the final analysis means the threat or use of the gun) will still be used to seize the property of private individuals in the name of an undefinable public good.

— Robert Patton, The Freeman (April 1971)

Another Dead Terrorist: So What?

Posted on by
Reply

Cynthia Farahat on Facebook, 8/1/22:

The head of Al-Qaeda Ayman Al-Zawahiri was killed by a U.S. drone strike today. While the world is a better place that this savage is gone, he will be replaced by a worse terrorist.

This reminds me of the drone strike which killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in 2016, who was for working with the Afghan government, and was subsequently replaced with a much worse monster, Hibatullah Akhundzada.

While Al-Zawahiri’s killing is good news, unless there is a broad plan to eradicate Al-Qaeda (which there isn’t) this is basically a regime change with a worse terrorist who will lead Al-Qaeda on a path more similar to Islamic State and Jama’at Al-Tawhid wal-Jihad.

Tough Love can Resolve a Crisis in Confidence

Posted on by
Reply

A website visitor asks, “I’m hoping you can help out with my 27-year-old son. He was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) back in high school, and nothing has been the same since. He’s just an older version of the kid he was in high school. He started college, but dropped out. He doesn’t hold a job for very long, either. He doesn’t abuse alcohol or drugs, and I don’t think he’s depressed, because he has a girlfriend (who is about as unambitious as he is). He hangs out with friends and isn’t particularly gloomy.

“The problem is that he’s living with us, and it’s a glaring reminder that he’s not getting on with his life. If he were living with us to pursue college, that would be one thing. But he’s going nowhere. Friends have suggested that we kick him out of the house and give him notice that living at home has an expiration date! But what if we push him out and he becomes depressed? Maybe it’s better to stick with the trouble we know?”

Dear Reader, there is a glaring contradiction in what you’re saying. On the one hand, you want your son to believe in himself. You want him to develop and demonstrate the confidence required to move out and become more ambitious. At the same time, you don’t have the confidence that he can do it. That’s the contradiction. And I’ll bet your son sees it too. You cannot GIVE him confidence. He has to foster that within himself. However, by acting as if you don’t trust him to cope with living on his own, you’re implying that you don’t believe in him, either. I’m not blaming you for his problem, but I am holding you responsible for making it worse.

The only solution here is to decide on a date when you will require him to exit. I have some friends who did this with their 18/20-year-old kids. They lived in a big house, and the family relations were actually pretty good. As a result, it was tempting for the kids to stay even when they were no longer kids. The parents wished to go back to traveling and doing other things they had been involved in twenty years before. So what did they do? They put the house on the market! That drove the message home really fast. I’m not suggesting you sell your house if you don’t want to, but I use the example to show how important it is to SHOW your son, and not merely tell him, that you mean it. You and your husband may have to get creative.

I realize you might not follow what I’m advising. It’s too much trouble, and it’s too frightening. There might be a scene. I get all that. You’re probably a peaceful and reasonable person, and you don’t want to spend your days engaged in drama. But there’s a drama occurring under your roof right now. It’s a crisis of confidence and self-respect in your son. You told me as much in your note.

You don’t really have a choice about conflict. Take your pick. Either postpone the inevitable, or confront it now and get it over with. And by the way, don’t focus on the ridiculous (and increasingly disproven) ADHD label. Your son manages to focus on his priorities. He manages to pay attention enough to find and sustain a girlfriend and a circle of friends. He has the capacity. He’s just not utilizing it when it comes to holding a job or planning on a place to live. And he doesn’t really need to as long as you continue to enable his casual lifestyle. Chances are good his “diagnosis” of the mythical ADHD gave him tacit permission to be a slacker.

Tell him you believe in him, then SHOW him you believe in him by putting an expiration date on his already prolonged childhood under your roof. Everyone, especially your son, will be better for it.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach