Donald Trump for President? Part 2

The reason I'm writing this second piece is not because there is any more information out on this guy, but more from the reactions that I'm seeing to him. I always find it amazing how many so called conservative commentators, who's lively hood is wrapped up in following politics miss the obvious.

I think that there are two reasons for this. The first is that conservatives are kind of like battered women when in comes to electing candidates. They see some one who says all the right things, and then think that they can ignore the past. A clear example is John McCain, who was re-elected to the senate for Arizona after campaigning on things like immigration reform. He actually got the people to believe in large numbers that he was going to act as an immigration hawk after having co-authored an amnesty bill with Ted Kennedy. I am not aware of any other single Republican in the senate who has betrayed the cause of immigration reform (and when I say immigration reform I mean locking down the boarder and giving ICE the resources that they need to do their job) more than John McCain, but for those few months on the campaign trail, he said such pretty things about how he was going to champion the problem of an open boarder. And like a battered woman who keeps going back to the man who abuses her, the voters in Arizona voted John McCain back into office.

The other reason that many conservatives find themselves supporting a political figure that they otherwise would not is that the left tends to throw out completely insane attacks against them and all rational people feel compelled to defend them. And when you play defense for someone you tend to put them in the good guys category in your mind. So when Donald Trump is viciously attacked for bringing up the eligibility issue on the basis that it must mean he is a racist, it's hard not to think of him as a friend to the conservative cause. And don't get me wrong, I like the fact that he is bringing light to the issue. It's refreshing to see it discussed openly without the point and counter point being the positions that A) of course all the birthers are crazy but Obama should still release his birth certificate to end the discussion, and B) yes the birthers are crazy but really we should just ignore them. Trump has clearly demonstrated that the side protecting Obama doesn't have any arguments, only insults. But as I mentioned in my last post, that just means that he has a better read on what the public wants than clowns like Karl Rove do.

So when evaluating a candidate, don't fall into the temptation of either forgetting their past, or losing sight of their real downsides because a bunch of crazy arguments are levied against them on the news.   

Barack Obama: Ruling Class

In American politics, there seem to be 4 major political camps. There are principled conservatives, who go by the belief that the government that maximizes individual freedom is the best government. There is some disagreement about how this is to be achieved within this camp, for example Alan Keyes believes that some of our wars in the middle east are necessary to prevent the threat terrorism poses to personal freedom, and Ron Paul believes that the cost of those wars takes away from personal freedom. But both men would agree with the underlying principle. And if you have not figured it out, this is the camp that I'm basically in.

The second political camp are the principled liberals. They truly believe that all people are basically equal in virtue and worth. Any differences that cause some people to be criminals and others to be saints is simple the result of a bad societal structure. This crowd also believe in personal freedom, but only secondary to their beliefs in equality. They generally can't see the inherent contradictions in the methods used to try and achieve equality and their desire for freedom.

Then there are moderates. Moderates do not have any principles for their beliefs, or if they do they don't actually make connections with them and with politicians or policies that they support. These are the people who will think that the republicans have been in power long enough, now its time to vote for a democrat or vice versa. They for the most part don't follow politics too closely, and find political fights distasteful. They also make up majority of the American public (I don't have any poll numbers to back this up, I'm just going off of general observation), and mercifully don't vote that often.

The fourth political camp that makes up a very small minority of the population, but a very large majority of politicians is the political ruling class camp. These people believe they have a right to try and mold the world to make it a better place. They absolutely believe that the ends justify the means. They will do whatever they think that it takes in order to move the world in the direction that those most elite among us believe it should go. Their general belief is that in order to put an end to war and economic turmoil and all the bad things that are, that they must unify the world under a single government. Like all the other camps the individuals in this camp may differ on specific points, for example Obama believes that the U.S.A.'s dominance and independence on the world stage is the greatest obstacle to one world government, but George W. Bush believed that the backward governments in the Middle East was the biggest obstacle, or at least those were the biggest obstacles that they could address at this point in time. They also seem to vary on the extent that they are willing to let the masses suffer to reach their ends. In the case of communist dictators, they murdered millions of their own people in an attempt to get around the problems human nature causes to their visions of what society should look like. In the case of American leaders I like to think that they are on the opposite end of the scale, but the truth is that they don't have enough power over the people to prove what their true character is one way or the other.

It is the presents of this political camp that keeps things from getting done. We elect politicians thinking that they fall into camp one or camp two, but in reality they are in the fourth camp. This is why after 6 years of Republican control of the House, Senate, Presidency, and a favorable Supreme Court, all of the conservative goals such as shrinking government spending and ending the slaughter of children (more commonly referred to with the euphemism abortion) seem just as far off as they ever have. It also explains Barack Obama's broken promises, such as ending the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, closing Guantanamo Bay, having CNN record all health care deliberations, letting the American people review bills before he passes them, and on and on the list goes. All of that is theater designed to win votes so that when in power he can push his real agenda. The most striking proof of this fact is the war in Libya. George Bush's wars helped push the globalist agendas, and as such are supported by globalists. If Barack Obama believed even one of the reasons that he stated for opposing the war in Iraq, he would also oppose the war in Libya on the same grounds. The only difference seems to be that in the war in Libya instead of fighting against Al-Qaeda we are now fighting along side them. But it's still all about transforming the Middle East to make it more accepting of the coming one world government.

So your responsibility as a voter is to really do your home work and find out if a candidate is truly in your camp, or in the fourth camp and simply posturing in order to get your vote.

Budget Theater

Budget tricks helped Obama save programs from cuts

Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can't be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.

So basically all of the cuts came from giving back money on projects where more funds were allocated than were needed. How draconian.  

Donald Trump For President?

There are basically three reasons that a person will run for political office. One is to gain money, one is to gain influence and power, and the last is to try and make the world a better place. Of course you never want to support the first two types of candidates, but you even need to be wary of the third. For example, I believe that Obama is much closer to the third category than any of his primary challengers were, or than John McCain was. Its true that he engages in double talk and has made tons of petty power grabs, but I think that it has all been to means to an end. It's just that his idea of a perfect world, were the US is just one among many nations that have given up their national sovereignty to global bureaucrats, is not popular with the general public. So he has to lie a lot and regularly break the rules to push the nation closer to his dream. Hillary and McCain on the other hand just wanted to be president. Any actual good that they did would just be a perk.

So the question is, what kind of politician is Donald Trump. He does look good at first glance. There are a lot of issues that show how the people are not represented by the government, such as closing the border, where over 70% of the population stands against DC. On these issues politicians who stand with the people against the political ruling class are to be commended. Donald Trump is championing two such issues. 60% of people are not sure if Obama is eligible to hold his current office. And well over 50% of the public is against free trade. On both of these issues Trump has come out swinging like no other candidate on the field. It has earned him a high spot on presidential straw polls.

So in these cases to evaluate a candidate I try and find out two things about them. The first is whether or not they are just posturing, and the second is to evaluate what the foundation of their beliefs are.

The first thing that I did with Trump was to find his view on abortion. After doing some searching I found that he has in the past favored bans on partial birth abortion, but not the rest of them. This is a major red flag, because it says that he does not have a foundation in Christianity. You cannot believe that human life is sacred, and be ok with killing children in the womb. There may be some room to argue over when the child become a separate living entity. But there is no doubt that it is long before birth that the child is a its own being capable of feeling the brutal pain inflicted on it during an abortion. Being okay with torturing a child to death generally shows an atheistic way of thinking, that says that people don't have intrinsic value aside from being loved by other people. And because atheism really does not have any kind of basis for morality, I do not trust any one to lead who has that mind set.

As to whether or not Donald Trump is just posturing or not, my first big clue came when he said on the Laura Ingram show that he is pro life. It was a statement made without qualification, or any kind of profession of a road to Damascus experience. Mitt Romney at least had the decency to say that he has now seen the light during his 08 bid.

After some more digging on Donald Trump, I found some information on his past campaign contributions. To be fair he has donated to both republicans and democrats. But when looking at the specifics, the republicans that he has donated to are all rinos like John McCain and Arlen Specter (who was so bad a republican he actually changed teams when it was clear that his own base would not vote for him). The democrats that he has contributed to on the other hand, were fighting for key positions, such as Harry Reid in his 2010 race against Sharron Angle.

So in conclusion, who knows, maybe he really does what to see Obama's birth certificate, and to put a tariff on goods imported from China. But that is where his conservative credentials stop. The rest is just posturing. So if you are looking for a candidate who will actually champion conservative causes, look elsewhere.   

Both Parties Pretend a lot of Money was Cut!

Last Friday, Republicans and Democrats reached a historic agreement. Over the next 10 years the approved cuts will result in savings of over $500 billion, or $38.5 billion this year.

To put this is perspective, in the month of march our government spent $189 billion more than it had. So this month we can expect that they'll only dig the deficit hole $185 billion dollars deeper. Total spending in march was $1.118 trillion. So Democrats are wailing and gnashing their teeth, and republicans beaming in pride over a 0.3% reduction in the budget. This whole budget battle is nothing but theater. Even the “extreme, far right” tea party reps only wanted a 0.6% cut to the budget. If you believe in small government, I'm not sure that you have any representation in Washington right now.    

Standard Baring

A few years ago I had the misfortune of overhearing a girl coming down after a night of drinks to console herself for being dumped. It was not some one I knew personally, but she was friends with several people who were renting the house where I was currently playing lan games. I tried to tune her out, but that was not possible with her and her friends sitting right behind where my computer was set up. In order to mask the tension of knowing that she was vulnerable right then, they all spoke excessively loud and laughed altogether to hard at bad jokes that centered around things like observations about the male anatomy in pornos they had seen.

My annoyance peaked when one of them started to tell indignantly of how some girl at the bar they had come from had started striping. She then qualified her statement saying she had stripped in the ally behind the bar before but NEVER in the bar. That was apparently just too far.

After the current game was over I left still angry at the intrusion on my evening, and it was not till the next day that I articulated why that last statement the girl had made annoyed me so much. At the time I wanted to shout at her that just because you can find someone more depraved than you does not mean that what you do is ok. But that is only half of it. When I thought it through I saw that beyond just justifying her own behavior, what she was doing was setting her own self as the standard of conduct. That is to say that in her mind, anyone who behaved worse than her was evil. Anyone who behave equally to her was normal. And anyone who behaved better would be righteous. She was her own standard by which she could judge the rest of the world.

I then realized that I do this to. Almost any time I am annoyed with someone it is because they have violated that standard by which all things are judged, which is me. It was then that I realized that if it was ok for me to use that standard for the rest of the world, then it would only be fair that Jesus should apply that same standard to me. Not the standard of me, but the standard that He laid out in His life. By that standard I am damned.

Therefore, for me to feel annoyance at others because they are doing things that I would not, such as having loud, lewd conversations with total disregard for everyone else in the room, is to travel a little down the road to hell. So I have to constantly remind myself that I am not the standard barer, and forgive them as I want God to forgive me.

If you make a conscious effort to do this, you'll be amazed at how quickly the anger, stress, and annoyance, that you may not even have known was filling you, is replaced with patience, compassion, and peace.

Going to once a week

Over the weekend while I stayed at home with a bad cold hoping that if I rested enough that I could get back to work this week without to much pain, I came to a conclusion.  Writing this blog has been good for me, but it's too much work to put out a post every night.  Each entry takes about an hour to put together, including coming up with a point and counter point, finding articles to back up my statements, and checking spelling and grammar. When you add in another hour for working out, and one for preparing dinner, and at least one for reading, it does not leave to much left in the day.  As spring is coming I'm finding that I have greater desires to find reasons to go out side each day, but by the time I'm done putting a post together it's already dark.  And if I don't do it right away, I'm aware that it means that I'll not be posting anything at all.  So the conclusion that I've come to is that even though keeping this blog is beneficial to my personal growth, it's only good in the proper proportions.  So I'm going to change my schedule to instead of posting 5 times per week to posting just on Monday.  I'll put together a post this Friday too as I'm not really counting this as a post, and don't want to miss 2 weeks of major posts in a row.  But other than that, you can expect to see the blog updated once a week from now on.