Dems Should Not Be Naive – There Was No Blue Wave And No Left-Leaning Mandate
As I read many political columns and listen to the speeches and interviews of Democratic leaders (such as President-elect Biden, Speaker Pelosi, Minority Leader Schumer, and supposed transition team members), I am amazed at the stark contrast between them and the political naivete of many of them.
Here is my advice to our incoming elected officials: there was no wave – either red or blue. Don’t think that there was. No one won everything that they wanted – in fact, except for the Presidency, the Democrats pretty much failed and were by and large rejected.
I agree with President-elect Biden that he needs to be the President for all Americans. But will he? It is no secret that I am pretty sure that Mr. Biden will be a wimp of a President. I thought he was a terrible pick for the Democratic Party. He is a poster child for almost everything that is wrong with our federal politics.
The only mandate that Mr. Biden received was that he was not Trump. That is all. It is primarily the only real plank that he had in his election. It is what he talked about in his very few speeches and his carefully structured interviews.
Mr. Biden was lucky; the global pandemic happened immediately after a failed effort to remove a sitting President. Had that pandemic not happened, Mr. Trump would not have shown what a terrible leader and motivator of humanity that he is. Mr. Trump would have easily been re-elected, and there would have been a red wave.
Mr. Biden would be a fool to think that he could have beaten Mr. Trump had there not been a global pandemic with what would have easily been the most robust economy this country has ever seen.
He (and his Democratic handlers that will be really running the Office of the President) should be careful not to think that they have any mandate other than tweeting and insulting people regularly. That was the only real reason that they won.
- They didn’t win based on a mandate for Medicare For All or the expansion of Medicare.
- They didn’t win based on a mandate to create the Green New Deal.
- They didn’t win to end fracking.
- They didn’t win to gouge the rich and give able-bodied people the means to not work hard for their livelihood.
- They didn’t win to kowtow to Europe, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
Significantly changing any of the above Trump administration policies will cause the Democrats to lose substantially seats in the Senate and the House (probably more likely the House) in 2022. It will cause them to have Ms. Harris lose the Presidential election of 2024 (I do not anticipate Mr. Biden to be mentally able to finish these next four years, let alone run for re-election).
Finally, the American tradition of not persecuting your political opponents must be withheld. The investigations into Ms. Clinton effectively were squashed after she lost four years ago. This is how it should be. Those who think the Democrats should throw Trump in jail, bite your tongue until you have bitten it in half. That is not the way that we treat our defeated political rivals in the US.
Mr. Biden has the Presidency, but will he be wise enough to ensure that he (or his chosen heir) will win in 4 years? Based on the rhetoric of his political supporters, I doubt it. My gut is that there will be a Republican POTUS in 2024 because the Democrats have chosen an inept man to sit in the Oval Office now. They will be unwilling to govern from the center and not punish hard-working Americans for working hard.
This is wrong! DC protestors harass diner
This is so wrong. Protestors have every right to protest but they do not have the right to demand that others join them in their protest nor do they have the right to invade the personal space as a crowd in another individual.
Lock them up and throw away the key
Surveillance cameras inside the store show about 60 boys and girls storming into the Walgreens at around 10 p.m. on 4th of July in Philadelphia.
This is a terrible display of wanton destruction and disregard for the law, personal safety, and personal property.
I am sure with all of these images, they will catch all of them. The solution is simple – lock them up for a LONG time.
This is organized crime. These young people gathered at this Walgreens and knew they were going to vandalize it and do massive robbery. By their sheer size of numbers, the employees of the Walgreens were unable to stop the destruction and it appears that objects were thrown at them by some of the hoodlums. Since they were are colluding together, they should all include the charge of aggravated assault on top of their acts of inciting a mob, vandalism, armed robbery, and trespassing.
There are so many good things going on in America but this is a prime example of what is bad.
Excellent comments by a 26-year-old on Facebook
An excellent view of America by a 26-year-old young lady from a Facebook post. Well written thoughts.
“I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to “fix” the so-called injustices of capitalism.
I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook’s, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me.
We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times.
Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.
Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.”
Never saw American prosperity. Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Now, I’m not attributing Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s words to outright dishonesty. I do think she whole-heartedly believes the words she said to be true. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Let me lay down some universal truths really quick. The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history. Not only that but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25% of the world’s GDP.
The list goes on. However, these universal truths don’t matter. We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity, some of the poorest countries in the world have low-income inequality), we are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history), we are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralization of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering).
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity?
We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why?
The answer is this, my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like not to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.
With the current political climate giving rise to the misguided idea of a socialist utopia, will we see the light? Or will we have to lose it all to realize that what we have now is true prosperity? Destroying the free market will undo what millions of people have died to achieve.
My generation is becoming the largest voting bloc in the country. We have an opportunity to continue to propel us forward with the gifts capitalism and democracy has given us. The other option is that we can fall into the trap of entitlement and relapse into restrictive socialist destitution. The choice doesn’t seem too hard, does it?”
Alyssa Ahlgren
Copy and paste if you agree.
Cool video to help save the coral!!
https://www.facebook.com/bbc/videos/471770686665765/
The industry of coral propagation seems to be reaching a state of enlightenment where the knowledge of fundamental procedures for the simple division of reef invertebrates is becoming time-tested and even commonplace. It is wonderful to see so many corals in captivity that once were thought to be impossible to keep alive not so long ago now routinely pruned like shrubbery. In gross terms, the captive propagation of coral may be categorized by the action of the event: induced passively, naturally occurring or imposed. Passive induction would include strategies of division that neither result in the immediate production of a free-living clone, nor will they necessarily occur unassisted. Rather, such techniques are methods for spurring budding through fission. Some examples of the induced passive division include slicing or notching the periphery of the stolon mat of hardy soft corals such as Star Polyp (Pachyclavularia) or nicking the exposed and illuminated stalk of a leaning (or forcibly tilted) stalk of an Alcyoniid, which often spurs the budding growth of beautiful multi-stalked colonies. Natural strategies of captive coral propagation occur with various manipulations and/or imitations of natural dynamics of the reef environment and are being seen with increasing regularity. They are indeed some of the most interesting events to behold and the subject of another discussion altogether. Indeed, harnessed natural reproductive events like planulae harvest are the future of our trade.
For more than a few years, however, the most common coral propagation technique has been the imposed fragmentation of soft and stony reef corals through cutting, breaking or sawing. By definition, these are deliberate actions taken to asexually propagate a coral and produce divisions that are free-living clones of the parent/donor. They are the fastest and most popular way to farm corals to date, and they are the foundation of our cottage industry. Indeed, imposed fragmentary techniques will likely dominate coral farming until larval rearing techniques are refined.
Header photo found at http://www.coralvita.co/coral-farming/