Tag: 2016 Presidential race

This Is Not Politics

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, politics, children, illustration, Common Sense

First, Hillary lied. She said that ISIS was using Trump in terrorism recruitment videos. The Donald responded with contemptuous ridicule, using a vulgar word for her 2008 defeat by Barack Obama.

Then, the Democratic Party presidential contender got all teary-eyed and said we had to treat each other with more respect, be nicer.

This is presidential politics?

Mrs. Hillary Clinton and Mr. Donald Trump are both addicted to telling whoppers. Their “stretchers” are now the everyday stuff of our nightly news.

Mrs. Clinton’s fact-less charge that Trump was being used in recruitment videos is all the more ridiculous considering that Mr. Clinton does star in such a video. Maybe she meant merely that Mr. Trump’s call for barring Muslim immigration will help ISIS paint America as anti-Muslim, telling the tall tale because, well, it “ seems true.” Even if it isn’t.

In this, she differs not a whit from Mr. Trump, who not too long ago “remembered” “seeing” “thousands” of “Muslims” in “New Jersey” celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 — a video he cannot produce, either.

Politicians hyperbolize from bigotry to factoid all the time. What’s new is Trump’s foul calumny, in response, and Clinton’s painting of Trump as a bully for belittling her. That’s not how I remember politics. It seems new to adult debate.

But it isn’t new to our experience. It’s children bickering on the playground, then whining and lying all the way to Teacher. Or even Home.

Responsible adults don’t believe every charge lodged by little boys and little girls.

Like Donny and Hillary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Presidential campaign 2016

First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people

The Ultimate SuperPAC

SuerPac, Marco Rubio, Biased Media, Republican Debate, First Amendment, collage, photomontage, illustration, Common Sense, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob

Sen. Marco Rubio’s charge in last week’s presidential debate, that the mainstream media functions as a SuperPAC for Democrats, was not only accurate, I wrote at Townhall, it has deeper implications.

Consider the relentless media drumbeat for restrictive campaign finance regulations.

If the Federal Elections Commission mutes, at Congress’s instruction, voices of the political parties and silences issue-oriented advocacy groups — or such groups are prevented by the IRS from even forming in the first place — and if Democrats get their way and ban SuperPACs (other than the media), who would hold the loudest megaphone?

You guessed it.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, NBC News, etc. — corporate behemoths all — warn of the dangers of big, bad corporations and wealthy individuals, hoping to spur regulation that hamstrings the communications of others.

The regulations somehow never involve abridging the speech of those same powerful media outlets.

Last year, every single Democrat in the Senate voted to repeal the essential constitutional guarantee of free speech, voting for Senate Joint Resolution 19, introduced by Sen. Tom Udall (D‑N.M.).

Had it become part of our Constitution, the First Amendment’s words “Congress shall pass no law” would have been replaced with an open-ended invitation for politicians in Congress to “regulate” campaign spending — therefore speech — to their hearts’ content.

The amendment was so sweeping the authors felt the need to add: “Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press.”

Big Media is a major force promoting Big Government, always willing to attack advocates of a constitutionally limited government.

Except when it comes to constitutional protections for Big Media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Biased Media, campaign finance, campaign finance reform, campaign finance regulation, first amendment, Marco Rubio, Presidential campaign 2016, Republican Debate, SuerPac

free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Why Protectionism

Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, economics, free trade, collage, photomontage, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Why do so many people (especially politicians) favor high tariffs, “managed trade,” embargoes and domestic subsidies, all of which — first as “mercantilism” and then as “protectionism” — have been debunked, repeatedly (demonstrated as ineffective economic policy), since Adam Smith’s famous 1776 attack?

Economist Donald Boudreaux, in an excellent defense of economic principles, explains why the Bernie Sanderses and Donald Trumps of this world support anti-free trade nostrums — out of sheer ignorance:

The typical politician opposes free trade because he … doesn’t understand that the purpose of trade — any trade — is to enrich people as consumers and not to enrich people as producers. He doesn’t understand that exports are a cost and that imports are a benefit; he thinks that it’s the other way ’round. He doesn’t understand that the specific jobs lost to imports are not the only employment consequences of trade; he doesn’t understand that trade also “creates” jobs in the domestic economy.… He, in short, doesn’t understand the first damn thing about the economics of trade.

But what protectionists do understand are direct appeals to “good results” (like more and better high-paying jobs). The fact that their proposals throw a monkey wrench into the diverse mechanisms of trade, yielding worse results?

They just don’t see them.

Why? Because real economies are complex, and protectionists lack the science that would help them trace the consequences of their policies.

The fact that they’ve focused their whole attention on the business of “governing,” and making simplistic, direct appeals to people who are also uneducated in economic principles, doesn’t help.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, economics, free trade, Presidential campaign 2016

ideological culture meme national politics & policies

FREE!

Don’t worry comrades!

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Bernie Sanders, free, free stuff, Presidential campaign 2016, progressivism, socialism

general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics too much government

Biden His Time

Joe Biden, president, election, nuzzle, statue of liberty, photomontage, collage, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Vice-President Joe Biden announced, yesterday, that he will not run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, ending many weeks of speculation.

The Veep’s exit from a race he never entered benefits Mrs. Clinton, who in those same polls has a larger lead head-to-head against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.).

Much of “Middle-Class” Joe’s speech was the usual laundry list of progressive pie-in-the-sky, money-can-too-buy-us-love shibboleths:

“President Obama has led this nation from crisis to recovery, and we’re now on the cusp of resurgence.”
The public schools fail to adequately educate kids — at stupendous cost. Rather than innovate, Biden demands we “commit to 16 years of free public education for all of our children.”
Biden’s biggest pitch was for “a moon shot to cure cancer.” (Cancer will be cured … but not by politicians.)

Still, Joe voiced something other candidates fail to emphasize:

[W]e have to end the divisive partisan politics that is ripping this country apart.… I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies. They are our opposition. They’re not our enemies. And for the sake of the country, we have to work together.

That hasn’t been Hillary Clinton’s approach, having compared conservative Republicans to terrorist groups. Plus, to the question “Which enemy that you made during your political career are you most proud of?” she answered, “Republicans.”

“Four more years of this kind of pitched battle may be more than this country can take,” Joe Biden added.

I guess Joe’s not for Hillary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, democracy, election, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Presidential campaign 2016

folly ideological culture meme nannyism national politics & policies political challengers too much government

All Those Egos, One Basket

Post author By CS Admin
Post date October 15, 2015
3 Comments on All Those Egos, One Basket

progressivism, meme, progressives, magic, Paul Jacob

In Tuesday night’s debate, Democrats put all their egos in one ideological basket: progressivism. Even Jim Webb managed to sound progressive … until he identified his prime personal enemy — the man he shot in wartime.

Bernie Sanders once again insisted on lecturing Americans on what it means to be a “democratic socialist.” Martin O’Malley relentlessly pursued an impossible dream, 100 percent carbon-free electric production by 2050 — far enough off to avoid any possible accountability. And Hillary Clinton said that, sure, she’s a progressive, “a progressive who likes to get things done!”

But what has she “got done,” ever?

It was her secrecy regarding the initial health care reforms back in her husband’s first term that helped spark the firestorm of opposition that led to the Revolution of ’94, and to the triangulating successes of the master of manipulative compromise, Bill Clinton. His was not a “progressive era,” though Democrats still use the 1990s as proof that their (“our”) policies “work.”

With exception of Bernie on gun control and Hillary on foreign policy and spying (Snowden gave out secrets to the enemy: traitor; she gave out who-knows-what via her insecure email server: blankout), the spend-spend-spend mantra of progressivism, mixed with “fair taxes” (higher tax rates) on the top 1 percent, was not challenged on the stage.

How far would they go to close ranks? Bernie sided with her regarding “your damned e‑mails.” That’s so ideological as to eschew any consideration of character or loyalty or trust.

Quite a revolution … in the party.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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