Donald Trump Should Not Run For The Presidency
Nov 9, 2022 2022 Election, Opinion
I was hoping to be invited to play golf at one of Trump’s resorts, but I think this will put an end to that.
I was, and to some extent, still am a Trump supporter. I think his first term in office was effective and good for America. We had record employment, low inflation and a stock market that was humming right along. Despite 4 years of constant torture by the left (and some on the right) Trump managed to stay effective. I know in my heart he won the election in 2020 and that it was stolen from him in a grand act of treason by the left and some on the right. The swamp needed him out. Trump, unlike Biden, could not be manipulated by the people who really call the shots.
But there were then and are now things about Trump that drive me nuts. His ego and his mouth constantly get in the way. He is like the child who will do or say anything to be noticed by others. Look, here I am see me!!! He is a counterpuncher and I like that. I like that he will fight back but he does not know when to keep his mouth shut. His biggest issue in that regard is that he must always be the center of attention. He must be the one all others look to. No matter what, his actions are designed to keep him in the spotlight.
That might seem great to some, but it is detrimental to the team. Two things from the past week lay that out quite clearly.
At an event Trump called the Florida Governor Ron Desanctimonious. Trump likes to give people little nicknames. Most are degrading (though accurate like Crooked Hillary) but DeSantis is an ally. He is the younger wing of the party that is every much a counter puncher as Trump but without the mouth, the ego and the baggage.
Trying to be cute and call DeSantis a name in an effort to diminish his status got some chuckles but it did not play well with the base. DeSantis is genuinely liked and when Trump violated Parkinson’s 11th Commandment, popularized by Ronald Reagan, “Thou salt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”, many felt it was inappropriate. This has been a problem with Trump for a very long time. He simply does not know how to keep his mouth shut.
Case in point. It has long been speculated, and Trump has hinted, that he will run for the presidency again. That appeals to the base of avid Trump followers, but it scares many on the outer edges of the party. While Trump works hard, there is no doubt about that, and could outwork many people half his age (and could outwork Biden on Trump’s worst day), he is in his 70s. He is an old man, a hard-working old man, but old none the less. Many younger folks want new blood in the races and many older folks are not ready for a return to the chaos that Trump creates.
I often wonder if his business empire is full of this amount of chaos.
The second thing Trump did that demonstrated a lack of restraint is announcing, on the eve of what was anticipated to be a wave election, that he had a very big announcement to make and that he would make it a week from election day (look here I am, see me). Speculation had been that he would announce his intention to run for the presidency on election eve, but he teased everyone with the very big announcement nonsense.
What was supposed to be a wave election focused on all of our candidates turned into a spotlight back on Trump and the belief that he just announced without actually saying it. Once again, he opened his mouth and sucked the air out of the room. He made it all about him. He could have waited until the day after the election. He could have waited until next week, but he lacked the discipline to keep his mouth shut for the good of the nation. How many people were terrified that if they put more Republicans in office Trump would see it as approval of his intention to run again? How many people decided not to vote after he opened his mouth in hope of reining him in and avoiding a future return to chaos? Maybe Dr. Oz underperformed in PA districts that Trump carried because people were not willing to vote after Trump’s announcement. We will never really know but Trump should have remained silent and let the election play out.
Trump is worried about others announcing they will run in 2024. Trump has stated that if anyone runs against him it will be seen as disloyalty. Sorry Sir, the presidency does not belong to you and no one owes you allegiance. They, just like you, are free to run and in fact, many will run but they had the discipline to keep it to themselves. Trump is worried that Ron DeSantis is gaining a lot of steam in the party and will be the preferred candidate for 2024. DeSantis is young, a heavy hitting counter puncher, a conservative and a man who has the discipline required to lead. He knows when to speak and more importantly, he knows when NOT to speak.
So, after Trump insulted Governor DeSantis and after his non announcement, announcement what happened? The people of Florida promptly gave DeSantis a landslide election in Florida and that was in most seats up and down the state. They made it clear he was the future of the Republican Party. They made it clear that of the two heavy hitters in Florida, DeSantis is the one they want leading them. DeSantis led Florida through the Covid nonsense, and he showed true leadership during Hurricane Ian and he did it without the chaos and drama that seems to be inherent in Donald Trump’s character. The state is markedly improved because of DeSantis’ leadership. Floridians respect that and they rewarded that.
I like Donald Trump, but I now think his time has come and gone. He should come out next Tuesday and say he has decided to semi retire and let his kids run the business while he enjoys his remaining years playing golf at his golf courses. He should also make it clear he is passing the torch to Ron DeSantis.
On Tuesday the wave never came, some Republicans lost their seats, and the Senate is in peril. The people Trump endorsed for national office floundered and only a few made it across the finish line. What did Trump do the day after an embarrassing election? He made it about himself once again by touting how well his endorsements did. Trump said it was a great midterm because he was 174-9 in endorsements. I think he might be embellishing but the reality is it was not a great midterm when the Republican Party that he is the de facto leader of failed to pick up very many seats against a senile president with economic woes and tons of other issues that should have made wins easy. Once again Trump had to make it about him.
The big winner in all this is not Donald Trump and it is not the Republican Party. It is certainly not the American people. No, the big winner is Joe Biden. That man is a demented doddering old fool who was in a position to suffer an embarrassing loss. He did not and he might actually suffer fewer losses than Trump did in his first midterm. Trump lost 40 seats. Biden will probably not lose that many (though I firmly believe cheating helped out in this regard).
While Trump celebrates a Pyrrhic victory, Joe Biden is taking a victory lap.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: Desantis, florida, leadership, new blood, trump
Obama Then And Now
Sep 21, 2013 Political
Barack Obama is working hard to get the debt ceiling of the nation raised. We are already at 17 TRILLION dollars but Obama wants more. The asinine statements that raising the debt ceiling does not give us more debt are an insult to people with brains. Raising the debt ceiling allows government to borrow more money which leads to greater debt. If there will be no increase in our debt then there is no need to raise the ceiling.
But Obama wants more. He has already added 8 TRILLION dollars and he is not yet satisfied. He is out saying that Republicans are holding the nation hostage because they want cuts to go with any debt ceiling increase.
We must cut our spending. There is no other way around it and raising the debt ceiling is not a way to do that. Force Congress to live with what it gets and keep the ceiling where it currently sits.
We can do that with cuts.
But to Obama the Republicans are doing things that have never been done. Why, we must raise the debt ceiling as a matter of good business and those mean Republicans are preventing us from doing this and it has never happened before, all this hostage taking to get what one party wants. After talking about how it has never been done before Obama then discussed the dangers of not allowing a president, any president, to raise the debt ceiling so we can ensure our bills are paid:
“George [Stephanopoulos], here’s the problem. If we continue to set a precedent in which a president, any president, a Republican president, a Democratic president, where the opposing party controls the House of Representatives, if that president is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills, the other party can simply sit there and say, ‘Well, we’re not gonna pay the bills unless you give us what we want,’ that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely.” Maddow Blog
Barack Obama is a typical liberal and those who support him are mindless drones with short memories. Nancy Pelosi says Obama is wonderful and has been non partisan. It is all those evil Republicans and Nancy has not seen anything like this in her entire 26 years in office. A real journalist would have asked her to submit to a drug test because this is how she treated George Bush. Democrats run roughshod over everything when they are in charge and Pelosi was no different as Speaker. Can you be any more of a mind numbed drone with a short memory?
[note]The Obama interview quote is from Rachael Maddow’s Blog and the title (GOP debt-ceiling hostage strategy takes shape) shows the writer [Steve Benen] is one of the mindless drones with a short memory.[/note]
Not long ago when Obama was a Senator he refused to vote to raise the debt ceiling. He did not think it was necessary for presidents to have a raised ceiling and he did not think it was important for America to pay her bills. In fact, Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling when George Bush was president as a protest to government spending too much of our money, or as he called it, reckless fiscal policies (what he really hated was that a Democrat was not spending too much of our money).
Here is what All Drama Obama had to say in 2006:
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. National Review
Everything he said then is true with regard to now with the only difference being that the numbers are much larger. Obama has been a leadership failure. His policies and our debt increase are signs that we can’t pay our bills. We do rely on other countries to pay our bills and the bad choices made by Obama have passed debt onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.
By Obama’s own assessment he has been a leadership failure. We need to hold him to his word and remind him that the amount of debt passed on is grossly higher now than when he opposed doing what he now says we must.
The debt ceiling is not being held hostage the American taxpaying public is. We are held hostage to the shackles of debt amassed under an out of control government.
Obama is at the top of that mess and it all rests on him.
But I guess if Obama had to assign blame he would blame it on Bush…
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: debt limit, leadership, lies, Obama
SPIN, LIES, LEADERSHIP? AND IGNORANCE (OURS)
Jul 14, 2011 Political
Spin
More misuse of our language (an addition to Fictionary July 10 post). The oft-used word invest. When it is uttered by a politician, you can be sure it has nothing to do with what we typically attribute it to. Their invest is a red herring for a big government program that is (probably) a repeat of an already instituted, failed and wasteful spending program that didn’t work the other times, is now repackaged and renamed for the same negative results from the same dumb premise. (I know, a long description, but oh so true.) Perk up your ears when they say invest; is government investing our money? Au contraire!
Where in our country are housing prices still rising, and where is there no unemployment problem? You guessed it! These staffers are in our world? And, this is the place from which often emanates that all-too-common D.C.-ism: We must invest in our children’s education. Really? Is the American public still falling for that worn out mantra?
News flash! You can’t fix a social problem by throwing money at it. Other countries have more students per classroom and a whole lot less money spent per child and get much better results. Their children are there to learn! Their parents demand it…their culture demands it…their teachers and administrators demand it. We (taxpayers) can feed kids breakfast and lunch and send them to the best school in their vicinity. But, if these same kids go home to an unfit guardian or adults who are terrible character examples, our money that our government spent is wasted. You can’t make life fair for some kids by feeding them, bussing them to a good school and sending them back home to non-parenting. That waste is multiplied when that unproductive, untamed and disrespectful child is an adult on welfare or in prison.
As long as we have no expectations of our children, guess what we get?
Give ’em the two “L’s” — love and limits. Yes, the limits are just as important as the love!
Lies (just two blatant examples)
Your government’s definition of transparent, independent and accountable by Secretary Sebelius, at the 5th bullet point. Do you believe her?
Your government’s Department of Homeland Security and another whopper from Janet Napolitano. Do you believe her? Did you believe her when she said our borders are safer than ever?
Leadership?
The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2. The last time we believed scare tactics by the Drama Queens they bailed out the big banks and corporations and then, to add insult to injury, they stimulated our debt and unemployment with our money on a credit card!
Ignorance
Apparently we Americans don’t know much about America. Pitiful! But, then who hasn’t seen those incredible Jay Walking bits? (This video: Your reward for reading this far!) Maybe we got where we are today because we don’t know what, when and how this country became so great. We don’t know our own American History! Maybe we ought to start getting smart, paying attention, and becoming responsible citizens. No point in waiting for or expecting those in charge to change their ways!
My Personal Desire – time to get back to the basics. More reading and learning for me. It really is quite easy today with answers to everything literally and figuratively at my fingertips! What excuse do I have?
If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.
– Aristotle
Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
– Winston S. Churchill
A country without a memory is a country of madmen.
– George Santayana
Some historians hold that history is just one damned thing after another.
– Arnold Toynbee
CoolCat
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Tags: Commentary, history, housing prices, Jay Walking, leadership, lies, spin
Obama Can Stop Blaming Bush; Its All His Now
May 12, 2009 Political
The Democrats are good at pointing fingers and assigning blame so long as the fingers and blame point away from them. The current economic downturn is a direct result of their liberal policies which ultimately led to the housing market collapse. The easy credit and the lack of rules, all championed by Democrats who were captured on film defending the practices, were the major cause of the problems we have. I also believe that some wealthy people like George Soros manipulated the market just before the election in order to assist Obama and that the manipulation helped us reach the breaking point.
To be sure, there were financial institutions that gamed the Democrat’s rules in order to make money but let us keep in mind that Congress makes the laws and if these greedy people used them to make money then as long as no laws were broken the people are just greedy and not lawbreakers. However, Democrats in Congress were just as greedy with their special loan rates, their political contributions from financial institutions and their friends raping Fannie and Freddie for millions of dollars in salaries while riding those entities into the ground.
There is enough blame to go around.
However, the time to blame George Bush has passed. Bush had little to do with the collapse and his biggest mistake was to push for bailout money. The first six years of his presidency were prosperous. Unemployment was low and the stock market was doing well. Things went south after the Democrats took control of Congress. The last two years of Bush’s presidency were years in which Democrats controlled Congress and the collapse happened under them.
Certainly Bush and the Republicans are not blameless. They spent far too much money and began to act like Democrats. People rejected this and sent many of them home but the reality is, the house of cards fell down under Democratic control and as a result of Democratic policies.
Barack Obama has played the blame game for months. During the campaign he blamed the world’s woes on Bush which one would expect during a campaign. However, Obama has continued to state that he inherited the problems. This is not completely true and those he inherited came from Democrats.
It was one thing to blame Bush in the first 100 days but we are past that now and all of it belongs to Obama. A true leader assumes responsibility and works to develop solutions. Obama continues to point fingers and make false claims that every problem was inherited. He has had enough time and now it all belongs to him.
This will not stop people in his administration from making the false claim that something was inherited and it will not stop them from blaming Bush but they will be lying and misleading because they cannot actually lead.
Every President has inherited things from his predecessor and some of them were good while others were bad. Few ran around blaming the other guy for months on end. Amazingly, they never seem to give credit to the other guy for the good stuff.
We are winning in Iraq so Obama claims that he has changed things and now we are on course. He has never looked at something good and said that he inherited it from Bush. He has never given Bush credit for anything good. No, but he sure blames all the bad on Bush.
Mr. Obama, stop whining, stop crying, and stop pointing fingers and using the tired excuse that you inherited a mess. You have been in office long enough that it all belongs to you. It is yours and the reality is that your policies are causing the problems. Stop crying and start leading if you actually know how to do that.
Wesley Pruden has a great article in The Washington Times which discusses these issues and more. He hits the nail on the head and lays the blame where it belongs.
Remember, out of control spending was bad when Democrats were chiding Republicans for it but now that Obama is outspending all the presidents in history combined, it is good. Deficits were bad until the sainted won was elected and now making it 3 or 4 times larger than the record Bush set (under the Democrats) is supposed to help fix things.
No, it will be bad because Obama does not know what he is doing and his policies will cause a collapse (or a civil war). Obama will blame it all on Bush as will the boot licking Democrats who follow him around.
But they will be wrong. It all belongs to Obama and those of you who do not believe so need to tell us at what point your guy accepts responsibility. As far as I am concerned, as long as he keeps blaming the bad things on Bush then that is how long we get to credit the good things to him.
Come on Obama, man up and take charge.
It belongs to you. You wanted it, you got it so stop trying to blame everyone else and start taking responsibility.
Oops, personal responsibility is something Democrats do not believe in.
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Tags: Bush, economy, inherited problems, leadership, lies, Obama
The Contradictions Of Barack Obama
Mar 11, 2009 Political
Barack Obama is a charismatic man who is well spoken and is usually coherent so long as he has a teleprompter from which to read. Obama is a man of contradictions which might be a polite way of saying he is a liar.
Barack Obama pushed through a trillion dollar spending bill that he called a stimulus package. It was so critical it had to be done yesterday. The Congress acted so quickly that none of them read it. Obama then went on holiday and eventually signed it four days later.
Interestingly, after he spent wealth that has not yet been earned, he gave a speech where he said we had to spend money wisely and that there needed to be fiscal restraint. He promised that they would not spend money without a funding source (usually whomever he decides is rich). How contradictory is that? He says they won’t spend money they don’t have after he spends more money than anyone in the history of government and it was money that will not be earned until our grandchildren get jobs.
Today, Obama signed a 450 billion dollar omnibus package which wrapped up all the things Congress did not get to last year. It is the unfinished business for the year. I guess Congress was too busy taking all those days off last year to get this done. In this bill there were about 9000 earmarks. This is money that is wasted by our government. This is money we do not have and it is being spent after Obama said we would not do that.
About 126 million dollars in earmarks going to Massachusetts will be spent on structures honoring the Kennedys. That’s right folks, the US government is spending millions of dollars to stroke the egos in the Kennedy family. This is a blatant waste of money and Barack Obama should have vetoed the bill. He was obligated to do so by his own words. No, not the lie about spending money we don’t have but another, now apparent lie, he told during the campaign.
Barack Obama said that that he would fix the broken earmark process to ensure our money was being spent wisely. Then he allowed Congress to insert 9000 earmarks in a bill and he signed it. He did not keep his word about earmarks which is another one of those pesky contradictions.
I also read that Obama used a signing statement on the bill. That is something he said George Bush abused and all indications were that he would not do that. Guess it is different when you actually have to govern.
Interestingly, Obama and his minions claimed that this bill cleaned up last year’s mess and that things would be different when they submit their first official budget for next fiscal year (begins 1 October 2009).
This is a cowardly way of addressing the issue and it shows that Obama does not possess leadership skills. What better way for him to signal this change thing he talked about then to veto it and tell them to send it back when it had no earmarks? He could have sent a strong message to the American public and to Congress. Instead he allowed Congress to abuse him like a $2.00 hooker.
This man is clueless and he is spending us into a black hole. I never want to hear the Democrats cry about Bush and his spending again. Yes he spent a lot and I wrote about that several times but Obama is on a pace to well exceed Bush and he will do it in a much shorter period.
A community organizer is not a leader. Barack Obama has never been in charge of anything. He has never been a leader. He has never had to be the decision maker.
It shows.
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Tags: Congress, contradictions, Democrats, leadership, lies, Obama, Republicans, spending