Canceling Student Debt, It's A Matter of Perspecive - 8/25/2022

If you have student debt, chances are you support student debt cancellation. Duh.

It's all a matter of how you look at it, a matter of perspective. I realize that.

I saw a post from a woman I follow on Twitter. She's a Mets fan. She posts in a little collection of Mets fans whose stuff I see regularly. In her comment she seemed to be genuinely perplexed that people couldn't see how canceling this debt would benefit her and many, many others like her. I didn't know anything about her, so I looked at her page this morning to see where she was coming from. It's clear she's a grade school teacher. It's a matter of perspective.

I read a post from another person. He asked, "If your credit card company chairman announced that he was canceling a part of your balance, would you say that's unfair to the other card holders?" My response was, "If the President of my credit card company called me and said “We know you’ve made your payments on time, so are increasing your debt by $10,000 because we are forgiving your next door neighbor’s $10,000 debt,” I think I just might levy an objection. It’s a matter of perspective."

Before I go further, let me offer that there are things that President Biden could have done that would have made me support this initiative. 

One: means test debt forgiveness recipients. Don't forgive debt to people who made plenty but spent their money on lots of other stuff who somehow can't find the money to pay off their student loans. 

Two: discriminate by degree. What fields of study lead to essential jobs in the community which don't pay a salary commensurate with the community's need for their services. Teachers, for example. Engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc., make enough to pay their loans. That Liberal Arts degree may make for a well rounded individual, but there's no appreciable need in the community for Liberal Artists.

Three: Make a public service payback provision. You're a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or liberal artist who doesn't qualify under provisions One and Two above? You can be paid back if you commit to community service in your chosen field or as a generalist of some sort. Figure out an hourly rate, per field of study, and require 1/2 hour to cancel one hour's worth of debt. For example, someone owes $20,000, and the occupational field related to their degree pays $50 an hour on average in their community. That comes out to 400 hours, times 50 to get to $20,000. In my scenario, 1/2 of the 400 hours would cancel the debt: 200 hours. That comment I made on Twitter applies here: if they're going to increase my debt by $10,000 in order to forgive my neighbor's $10,000, I'll feel better about it if for the next two years he'll be washing my car once a month, cutting my lawn every two weeks, and trimming my hedges once a month.

Four: make colleges and universities pay a portion of the debt out of their endowments. Let's face it. These institutions jacked up their tuition costs commensurate with the amount of money that was made available to students in the form of federally guaranteed loans and grants. The colleges and universities are a huge part of this problem. Not only did they jack up prices to claim this additional available money (same as auto manufacturers and EV rebates are doing right now), but I fully expect them to jack prices up again to claim this debt forgiveness windfall as best they can if they can.

Of course, none of what would make this acceptable to me is in there. It's not because this is a pure vote grab in an election year when Democrats are scared to death of November because our President is inept, has dementia, and is of their party. Lacking any of One through Four, above, I'm against it. But I don't matter. I'm not one of the votes he's buying, anyway.

Mitch McConnell and the Establishment GOP, Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys - 8/24/2022

For many years I felt the worst possible candidates for President were Senators and Lawyers. And the Senators who run often are lawyers. Lawyers are different. They're trained not look at issues and events through a moral lens, but to look at things through a legal one. "Can I justify this?" "Can I defend that?" Right or wrong are often far removed from the logic that supports or opposes their stance or vote on an issue. And a Senator, they're this upper house body which maintains a status quo. If I were to make a list of all the politicians I detest or have detested in the last 40 or so years, I bet a whole lot of them would be Senators. And a whole lot of those would be Republicans, the party with which I was affiliated for so many years. If there is such a thing as a "uniparty", it is nowhere more in evidence than the US Senate. Even in all the Mitch Rapp books by Vince Flynn that I like so much, the villain is often a Senator. Too big for his or her britches, and deeply connected to both the donor class pulling strings behind a curtain, and the bureaucracy, pulling the levers of power, unelected but empowered by tenure and invisibility.

Mitch is a clown.

 Before I go any further, let me get right to the point. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is a uniparty scumbag. He absolutely doesn't care if the GOP doesn't win back the Senate. As a matter of fact, I believe he wants to lose. It's so much easier to be the opposition party than the party in power. He can complain and carry on about not liking what's going on, to the delight of gullible Republicans who think he's sincere. But he isn't really opposed to much. It's a show. A charade. A deception. A farce. He's getting richer. His donors, the real unelected government, are happy. Life is good. Fuck the electorate.

Donald Trump? That bastard isn't beholden to McConnell's donors. That asshole questions the bureaucracy, thinking as President he holds power, that he has a say. We're so much better with a pliable puppet who was a Senator for many years who knows how the game is played and what the rules are. Well, he oughta, except that he has dementia.

Mitch McConnell, the Establishment GOP, the Uniparty, and the DC bureaucrats, aka "the swamp"? Not my circus. Not my monkeys. Most of em are clowns, anyway.

Really Bad Precedents - 8/23/2022

Last night I read an excellent article by John Soloman from his "Just the News" site. The article (link below) details how the Biden Administration has green lighted the investigation of President Trump that led to the Mar-A-Lago raid that has infuriated me and so many others. I want to explore with you some of the implications in my mind that come from all this. First, if you're interested, the Soloman piece:

justthenews.com John Soloman Article

 

If you don't read Soloman's "Just the News", maybe you should.

The first thing Trump supporters and even detractors need to realize is that among Biden supporters and Trump detractors, be they GOP establishment types or Democrats, is a core belief that Trump is corrupt. It's probably safe to say it's a compilation of reasons that drives them to this presumption of guilt.

First, there's his boorish, abrasive, inappropriate behavior and big mouth. Supporters may recognize that only the nastiness of a wolverine can confront the predatory and vicious attacks that come at every prominent Republican candidate. They came at Bush One and Bush Two, at Romney and McCain. They'll come at DeSantis or whoever is next with vicious attacks, too. Trump may be the only kind of a candidate who can stand up to the attacks, and does so the only way he knows how, by attacking his detractors just as viciously. It may be the only strategy that can withstand the attacks, but to many it's beyond unseemly all the way to unacceptable. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Then there's the fact he's a successful entrepreneur of significant wealth. There is a presumption among many, especially on the left, that every company and person who is highly successful financially is corrupt. To the socialistic and communist left, business is the daytime home of the boogymen that hide under their beds waiting to pounce when they close their eyes seeking peaceful sleep. Trump and his kind wait for just such moments to destroy the innocent and "helpless".

And lastly, his political initiatives, positions, and programs are at odds with all that is progressive and leftist, things that in their minds are all goodness. So someone like Trump who would challenge and thwart the good and beneficial progressive agenda must surely be evil and accusations of criminality are certainly befitting such an evil doer as that.

What I am telling you, is that underneath all these efforts to get Trump: in New York by a DA who campaigned on a "I will get Trump" platform, in Georgia, where Trump did the unconscionable by not just questioning an election he did not believe was conducted legally or fairly, and in DC, where Trump's efforts to drain the swamp were an affront to bureaucrats across the entire broad range of Federal Government agencies, is a core belief in his guilt. Guilty of what? Of something. Of anything. Of everything. It was the DC swamp that sanctioned and enabled the unprecedented Mar-A-Lago raid. The raid was indeed sanctioned by the White House, and Joe Biden is lying when he says it wasn't or that he didn't know about it. Joe is hiding behind a flimsy plausible deniability curtain, but anyone with eyes can see right through it. There are report Joe has been pushing AG Merrick Garland to "get Trump". Why would Joe do this, breaking with 200+ years of precedent? I just told you. Trump's a jerk. He's a successful businessman, which means inherently corrupt, and he opposes the left's agenda, which is clearly an evil thing for anyone to do. So he's got to be guilty and they just need to catch him. It's imperative.

Think about this: The Biden Administration waived Trump's Executive Privilege. Insanity.

Lemme finish by turning this around a bit. I think the precedent of going all in to destroy Trump is the absolute worst political thing anyone of any political party or persuasion has done in my lifetime. There is a new precedent, a third world dictatorship mentality being embraced on the left and by never-Trump conservatives like Liz Cheney. Do you think that Hillary Clinton, Joe "10% for the big guy" Biden, and the heroes of the left are any less contemptible to me/us than Trump is to them? Do you think the fact these creeps spend a lifetime in "public service" and are worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars is any less an indication of corruption than Trump's business successes (and failures) are? Do you think to a conservative that the left's political initiatives, positions, and programs are any less evil or contemptible in the eyes of conservatives? The answers are no, no, and no. This new precedent of using the apparatus of the government to destroy our political opponents is a bad one, a very, very bad one. It is a mistake, a mistake that clearly the people doing so feel in their hearts is righteous and justified in making. I got news for them.

What goes around comes around.

Trumpism, the GOP, and Matty P - 8/22/2022

There has been a lot of angst among members of the Republican Party over what Donald Trump did to it. I read the Wall Street Journal, and they've been particularly critical of Trump and Trump supporters, I guess because we're not being pragmatic and supporting traditional GOP type candidates in favor of Trump endorsed interlopers who would dare to challenge those same traditional GOP types. We're handing things to Democrats by not choosing the practical candidate from the GOP establishment in favor of someone who wants to overturn the GOP apple cart.

Before I go further, I have no idea why Trump endorsed Dr Oz. To me it was a terrible choice and I'm not a Trump mind-numbed robot. I'm not in PA, but if I were I probably wouldn't vote for him, either. So Trump endorsements don't control my choices. Back to that "GOP apple cart".

I'm not a Mitch McConnell fan. Not even a little bit.

Trump didn't steal me from the GOP. Let's get that straight. In 2014 I left the GOP before Trump came on the scene. At that point I was completely fed up with and tired of Mitch McConnell and the others like him. I did not believe they cared a bit about me, that they represented me, or that they were loyal to us as a GOP voting block. They were and still are sellouts as far as I am concerned. I might have tolerated same, but I got sick and tired of their weak feigned support of Conservative principals. They let progressives, liberals, and Democrats have far too many wins, and more importantly, far too many easy wins. They didn't fight for me. I never felt they did. I felt they fought for their own financial enrichment, period. So I left the GOP and became an independent. I figured 'let them see me as a swing voter'. Let them campaign for my support. Let them work for my vote.

Trump came along in 2015 and in 2016 I came back to the GOP to support Trump. I didn't come back because I was any more enamored with Mitch or Ryan or any of them. I came back to support Trump, who I believed and still believe represented me better and who I believe loves our country more than either of the two conniving establishments do.

So when the WSJ and establishment Republicans try to understand why I and others like me aren't lining up behind their choices for the GOP, which are 100% continuation of the establishment and a repudiation of Trumpism, I can only say my vote wasn't yours to begin with. Trump brought me and millions of others to the GOP to support him. He didn't bring us, nor am I here, to support your tired line of bullshit and your weak-asssed efforts where you pretend to support me, but to see you time and again cave in to the left and march to the orders issued by your owner donors.

We aren't divided because of Trump. We got Trump because we were so divided.

It's not Trump and Trumpism that is causing weakness and division. It is you, the establishment Republicans, who are shooing us toward the door because we won't sing along with the songs in your tainted hymnals. Figure out why we came in when Trump came along. Show us with actions first, words next, that you want to Make America Great Again and that you will put America First. Show us that you will fight the left's progressivism like relentless rabid attack dogs. That's not who your military industrial and pharmaceutical masters are telling you to be? Well, choose. It's them or us. I won't support you if you choose them. My vote isn't in your hip pocket. You can bet your ass it's not.

Liz Cheney, Good Riddance - 8/17/2022

I'm going to make this short and sweet this morning. I am delighted that Liz Cheney was defeated in her bid for re-election for her seat in the House of Representatives representing Wyoming. I'm going to give you, I suspect, a slightly different perspective on the whole thing than what you're getting from liberal or conservative media of all types. Follow along.

Good riddance!

 

1. January 6th protesters were well within their rights to protest the execution of the 2020 Presidential Election in its entirety. The fact that an election so important left so many of us with legitimate questions about the run up to, execution of on Election Day, and the counting is inexcusable. I'm not even going to list the grievances I know that I share with many millions of Americans. None of the grievances I have were conjured up by Trump. Not a one.

2. January 6th trespassers and rioters were wrong. The then President, Donald Trump, asked that the protesters act peacefully and lawfully, if I recall correctly. But some got carried away and did wrong.

3. Taking #2, above, into consideration, who were the instigators? I have seen many, many allegations that Capital Police and the FBI had undercover officers, agents, and informants inserted into the crowds of protesters. So far, so good. But here's the rub: some of these cops are alleged to have instigated illegal activities. I struggle with "entrapment" in that if you're not a criminal and someone suggests you commit a crime, to the largest extent, you own it if you do it. But it's not an undercover cop's place to incite, inspire, and encourage crime. "Let's go over there and do this!" "Let's go over there and do that!" According to much of what I've read, that is exactly what happened. It happened in Michigan with the absolutely phony Whitmer kidnapping. To what extent did it happen on January 6th?

4. And this is where I fall off the Liz Cheney bandwagon. She's a never Trump (fine if you don't like him, but not fine in a criminal justice situation wherein you put damaging Trump ahead of doing the right thing for all the other people in the Jan 6th situation). If the Republicans on the Committee aren't asking questions about the undercover cops and agents, then who will? The January 6th Committee was nothing more than a show trial to get Trump. Where Cheney had a chance to ask the questions me and many millions of others wanted asked: about the election and about the entrapment activities on January 6th, but instead chose to help Speaker Pelosi rid D.C. of Donald Trump, once and for all, that's where I decided she can go fuck herself.

Goodbye Liz. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Note: Having doubts and serious questions about the 2020 election, all the shady and questionable shit I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears isn't anti-democracy. Stop it with that bullshit. Cheney wasn't protecting democracy. She was trying to rid D.C. of Trump. I realize you have Trump Derangement Syndrome and can't differentiate between the two, but I wish you'd try.

I Fear for Our (formerly?) Great Country, An Angry Rant - 8/16/2022

Democrats Have Crossed the Rubicon with the Mar-A-Lago Raid on August 8th

As a primer, I recommend this excellent Margot Cleveland piece from the Federalist yesterday.

Excellent Margot Cleveland Federalist Article

More than anything else, I've spent the last year and a half, almost two, astounded by what seems to be a complete and total disconnect between the left and the right. And as much as some, perhaps most people might want to blame Trump for the disconnect, I do believe the Trump phenomena is a result of the division, not the cause of it. Let's just presume for the sake of this discussion that Trump is destroyed by the Deep State and Democrats this time. Then in 2024 we'll have a different candidate on the GOP side. Whether that's Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or someone else, we will see the same demonization, vilification, and underhanded, dishonest attacks made against the new GOP candidate as the old. I expect the attacks to be vicious, relentless, and mostly based on unfounded innuendo and baseless accusations, a la Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But here's the kicker: the people making the attacks, and their like-minded politically aligned people will deeply and truly believe every single thing, every single word of it. The result? Even if the 2024 candidate is NOT Trump, they will truly believe him or her unfit for the office, and that belief will color every single thing they say and do before, during, and after the election.

Cernovich can be a knucklehead, but this tweet says it all.

If you read the Margot Cleveland article I linked, and if you think about what's going on with Trump right now, and put that all in the context of Cernovich's very accurate assessment in this tweet, you get it. Lemme take this to where it seems to be going.

They're not going to let up until Trump is finally arrested. Who's they? The whole, entire fucking left. The politicians, the media, and the vocal left on social media and everywhere else. The Deep State. The entrenched D.C. bureaucracy. In their eyes he's evil, unfit, and any and all allegations are believed true and egregious, regardless if they are or aren't.

And then there's me and people like me. I've got no other or better way to say it. The Mar-A-Lago raid pissed me off. Not like so many other things have. All the shit they've done to Trump has pissed me off. But this latest one for me was different. It hit me in a whole different place and a whole different way. Incredibly, Trump's worst crime in their eyes, in your eyes if you're the lone lefty with balls enough to read my stuff, was not accepting the result of the 2020 graciously and conceding to their power like the loser they see him as.

Well, look here. You motherfuckers cheated in the election. I can't say I know and have proof it was enough to change the outcome, but you cheated. Trump BELIEVES the cheating did affect the outcome. You may not like that, but he does and as such he has every fucking right to believe it and say he believes it. Maybe you shouldn't have stopped counting in the middle of the night. Maybe you shouldn't have changed the rules contrary to your state constitutions for Covid. Maybe, just maybe some portion of the 2000 mules is true (some of it is, period).

Well now you've got the Presidency. Of course in it you have an ineffective, demented has-been, a small man who looks smaller every day, a pipsqueek of a man who looks evil and vile, spiteful and hateful with his DOJ's unnecessary and totally unacceptable attack on his predecessor and likely 2024 opponent. Mr. President, Mr. Attorney General, Mr. FBI Director, this doesn't end well. Nope. Why not?

Because I know how I feel about the way they're doing President Trump. Lemme tell you. I feel like this is an attack on me personally. You see, when I voted for Trump, twice, it was as much or more a rejection of the D.C. establishment as it was anything else. And they know this. They know we voted AGAINST THEM. And all this? All this is to punish us. To force us to bend at the knee and accept their power and control. This is about way more than Trump. This is about the Trump movement which is a fight to have a government controlled by our people, not special interest after special interest and international and domestic financial giants who buy and own our elected officials. The power is flexing and fully invested in hammering us back into our rightful place, fully disempowered and unable to affect them or their efforts moving forward.

I was livid to know that Trump had to take the Fifth in a hearing in NY being conducted by a DA who ran on the promise of "getting Trump". Evil. I was livid when I heard about the Mar-A-Lago raid. Unacceptable. I was livid when I read they took Trump's passports. Total fucking insanity. They act like that was an innocent mistake. My fucking ass it was a mistake. They saw the whirlwind it created and gave them back and called it a mistake. It was no mistake. It was overreach. I was livid when I heard that Rudy Giuliani was the target of an election interference. Listen up leftist fuckfaces in and out of government: we have a right to question the results of 2020 and to say so anytime and anywhere we want. We have a right to hire lawyers, investigators, and dig in to find answers to things that appear at best to be questionable. The unfair and unacceptable treatment of January 6th protesters is how people who dare to question the absolutely questionable are and will be treated.

Unless someone can talk some sense into the Deep State and leftists in D.C., I fully expect we will see President Donald J. Trump in handcuffs. I believe it will be perhaps the biggest political, social, and legal mistake in our lifetimes. Some people who will be as angry as I will over it will act out. I am sorry to say that, but that is foreseeable and is totally predictable. For what? For fucking what? A flex of muscle to intimidate us who dare to disagree with the way Washington does business these days? This won't end well.

I fear for our country. Are we still great? Some of us want greatness. I have no idea whatsoever what the other people want. And you motherfuckers have absolutely no idea what an insurrection is or what an insurrection looks like. Seems to me you're doing your best to find out. I fear for our country. Can cooler heads prevail? Biden, Garland: the ball is in your court. Can you be the cooler heads we need, or are you the evil vengeful pricks you are showing yourselves to be right now.

Unifying? My ass Joe. We've never been so divided. I blame you. I fear for our country.

Never This Divided in My Lifetime - 8/13/2022

Let me start with this: I do not think Donald J. Trump is infallible, perfect, above the law, or incapable of wrongdoing, mistake, or misjudgement. He has a massive ego, he always has to get in the last word, he feels compelled to respond to insults and slights in kind, and far too often when he could make a point clearly and definitively, he instead takes a low road that undermines what might otherwise be an effective and relevant case or argument. Yeah, he's an asshole. But at least a part of his brusque and bellicose natural tendency is badly needed in our country right. It was in 2016, 2020, and still is headed into 2024.

See, Republicans and Democrats alike are mostly corrupt. I'm sure there are exceptions who are on the up and up from both parties, but both parties are owned and controlled by special interests, often foreign who do NOT have the United States' best interests, nor the American people's best interests at heart. In order to remain in control and in power, these politicians and special interests have discovered the best way to keep their stranglehold on Washington is to keep us divided and at each other's throats. Behind the curtain, though, away from our prying eyes, both left and right are getting rich at the hand of the same special interests.

 

Trump threatens all of that. He is no doubt a highly imperfect vessel, I conceded that here at the outset. You can't convince me he doesn't love our country and love our people. He was a billionaire before he was President, and as such was nearly impervious to the power and influence of the special interests who own enough of the other politicians in Washington to have a firm grasp on the throttles of power and control.

I have felt a simmering loathing deep in me for the left. Most of what they put forward seems to me to be either illogical, immoral, impractical, or a combination of two or all three of those. Granted, I can often see an underlying good intention, but the road to hell is so paved, as the cliche says. You can name any of the debated issues of our time, and if we disagree about it, chances are it is one of those three characteristics where our opinions will differ. A healthy dialogue about any one of these issues, under those three lenses, would help us to narrow our misunderstanding and maybe find small areas of agreement we could build on. I can't find much healthy dialogue, free from insult, innuendo, slander, or dishonesty. So lacking meaningful dialogue, and seething at those insults, innuendos, and slanders, I wind up deep in an echo chamber, where my own thoughts, even where moderate, aren't ingested for comprehension and mutual understanding, but rather become just a stepping stone to some further and further place. As positions migrate further and further, these here going this-away, those there going that-away, the divide gets continually wider and deeper. As I read and hear the stuff from the left as it migrates further and further, and as it is delivered in the form of insult, innuendo, and slander, I seethe. I loathe. I despise. It is hard not to respond in kind. Very.

We simply don't know how to talk to each other anymore. Trump's appeal? He calls the bullshit as he sees it. Does he go too far? Probably so. No, definitely so. But as I am bombarded with insult, innuendo, and slander, only Donald Trump steps up on my behalf. This is what I think my friends on the left don't understand. Look at the shit Hillary Clinton said about me/us in 2016. We were "deplorable". We were racist, homophobes, zenophobes, on and on and on. Not only did I not hear ANY, not one, not ANY of my friends on the left object to her doing so, instead you cheered her on. Yeah, you did. As outspoken and vocal as I am, only one person, my nephew, asked my to explain why I supported him. Everyone else assumed, presumed, and bought off on the inflammatory leftist stereotyping and insults. At the same time I saw many of my friends on the right do likewise to the left. So the divide deepens. It widens.

For the record, I have never stopped wanting to understand my friends on the left. That doesn't mean we, having mutual understanding, would agree. It'd be less divisive than buying off on political propaganda and assumptive stereotypes. Show me why you think my position is illogical, immoral, or impractical. Find a way to do that without calling me stupid, evil, brainwashed, or dishonest. If you can't, then scroll on. You're not worth talking to anyway.