Politics 101

 

SOME PEOPLE THINK POLITICS CONSISTS OF FINDING SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH THEM. They get miffed if “their guy” (or gal) doesn’t win wondering what happened to the voters. There’s a lot more to this. First you must find a candidate that not only gets the base, which is 40% of the voters, plus wins the majority of the Independents.  Candidates must be not just in sync with your views but must be likeable, appealing to not only the party activists, but also the people who rarely pay attention to politics, the swing voters, and the one-issue voters. 

            Then comes the problem of money. This wasn’t a problem when a Congressional Rep had 50,000 people in his district.  He could meet just about everybody in person.  But today a Rep has 750,000+; a Senator has 4 million in OK.  Without money, you can’t run direct mail push cards, radio and television time, newspaper ads, a social media campaign.  That doesn’t count the large number of telephone calls and yard signs.  Even to run a state Rep race costs about $75000 today.  Don’t crab about money in  politics. Unless you are trying to get US Congress to expand to 2000 Reps w/ e-votes and repeal of direct election of Senators (state control again) and are kicking all the people who are so apathetic about politics that they can’t begin to keep up with current events. But of course, what all this money means is that your candidate has to be good at raising funds.  Several of the Senate R-candidates were rank amateurs at raising money and that is likely why they lost in squeakers. PACs raise money, corporations donate/buy issue ads as well, big shots (Soros, Steyer) use their personal corporations to donate millions.  RNC raises money but general appeals don’t raise that much.  So Individual candidates have to make a case that they have a movement and without your donation, the movement will wither.  That’s how Dem guys used abortion to raise tremendous money for the last election.

            Finally we must Get Out The Vote. That used to be door knocking, cold calling, literature handouts.  R’s snoozed while Dems ordered lots of ballots in the name of their relatives—Old uncle Clem who can hardly think in the nursing home, and 20-somethings who don’t bother to vote unless there’s beer connected. They hounded everyone to vote and then harvested the ballots over the 60 days many states have for voting, took them to the election board and Lo! Turnouot grew from the old 65 % to 85%.  R’s need to start doing this if they want to win. 

            But you don’t need to get names off of tombstones.  There’s a better way but it costs money. Karl Rove’s landmark research was this: he had young students walk the alleys.  They wrote what they observed for each address.  This garbage can had lots of Field and Stream magazines, that yard had a new swing set, somebody else had a neighborhood watch sign and an American flag.  Then process this with some software and turn all these preferences into likely political preferences.  Better still, Obama bought enormous data from Google and Facebook in key areas.  These data files cost mega-money  and are usually used by businesses to send targeted ads on your phone or computer. (If they know what you read and watch, eat and order on Amazon, they have a likely guess about what kind of ad you’ll respond to) But Obama’s crew developed algorithms to process this data, correlated with voter registrations, to then start a phone campaign to remind the apathetic how/what/where to vote.  Ted Cruz and his campaign manager Kelly Ann Conway mimicked this very thing.  It is the most delightful campaigning you will ever do.  Pick from a list of about 20 Republican issues and you are issued a couple dozen phone numbers and names of like-minded voters to call.  You’ll meet friends you never knew you had just a few blocks away. I met some of the most motivated folks who just need to know what your candidate says about their issue and how to get involved.  Unlike the old cold-calling days where calls lasted 17 seconds and you got a frosty reception, you’ll have trouble shutting off these guys after 17 minutes.  This is Karl Rove on steroids.

            I relate this because so many people think only deciding via FOX news or a friend who posts on facebook is how votes occur.  That’s only the beginning.

Leftist Hippies now come to fruit

DON’T BE MYSTIFIED BY WOKEISM AND IT’S EVERMORE HEAVYHANDED TREATMENT. I ran into some leftist-type atheist/agnostics in college 54 years ago during the Vietnam anti-war era. I went to several Young Democrats meetings. Everything they said then is working its way into society now.  Leftists want control.  So they told me they saw all manner of evil in this world and what God would design something so bad?  Thus they didn’t believe in any sort of God.  And if there is no God, therefore there must not be any set morality. (Many atheists would choke on this. Nature dictates morals too.) If morality is just personal choice, we shouldn’t be too hard on people who do crime or heinous things. They are just acting by nature and can’t be responsible.  So I asked how then, if there are no morals, does one set rules by which government must act.  Oh, that is the design of really smart people like us, they alleged.  That is why we are here at this Party meeting.  The Party tells everyone what to think and do, and anyone who disagrees will be subject to persecution.

            In a nutshell, they want to control people.  Design a utopia and make everyone conform. I left the mtg. thinking how Marxist this was.  Today it is everywhere, many people accepting it dumbly. From the history you learn to the choices you have for lunch, you are threatened with control. It sneaks in. An example: Pocahontas.  Her true story is quite documented.  Young girl comes curiously to meet the Jamestown settlers. Becomes acquainted, learns English, admiring their winter clothing and tools and amazed at how determined and optimistic they are. She disappears for 3 years which her family says was a marriage and child where she was widowed and lost the baby. Came back to the colony stockade, was held in house arrest when skirmishes broke out between her tribe and the Anglos. Asked to become a Christian, was baptized, met John Rolfe who was also young and widowed.  They married, she had a son, Grandpa Powhattan and wives came to see the new grandson.  Big feast, 15 years of good will followed. Then she showed Rolfe how to plant tobacco.  He reaped an enormous profit, thereby providing England with a profitable reason to continue the colony. They went to England and she was a celebrity, but died on the return trip, her dying words were deeply Christian, full of love for son, Tom, and husband John.

            So what are a minority of modernist historians trying to say now?  They insist that they English captured her and made her accept Christianity, made her marry Rolfe and cough up the secret of tobacco cluture. All this flies against the duly recorded stories, but the historians are revisionists, trying to promote exploitation, racism, slavery, and European evil.

            The CRT, revisionism, and wokeism are just the angry demands of the “control leftists.” Truth be damned; they want their utopia. I heard this through the long unkempt manes and Vietcong sandals of these lefty hippies in 1969. 

War hero General Casimir Pulaski and the transgender debate

 

(Be forewarned, I am not a doctor.  I hope I say this correctly.) Casimir Pulaski, was a Revolutionary War hero.  He was a Polish nobleman, highly-skilled cavalry officer, who saved George Washington and the American Army at Brandywine.  He'd been given a handful of calvarymen to train and was supposed to be simply an observor of the battle. The British had trapped Washington's army and Pulaski could see what was going to happen.  He roused his horsemen, charged the British line and managed to cause chaos while Washington and troops escaped. Noting the guy's ability, Washington thereupon made him a general and sent him to defend Savannah.  There, Pulaski led a valiant cavalry charge and was shot mortally.  70 years later, Savannah erected a monument in one of their squares to the brave guy who came to fight for freedom that his native Poland had lost. [Savannah has many squares.  A city block is a park surrounded by a dozen blocks of houses or businesses. The live oak shaded parks with monuments in the center are highly regarded by architects worldwide.] In 1996 the tall spire-like Pulaski monument was found unsafe and had to be taken down and repaired.  It had been recorded that Pulaski’s bones were placed in the hollow of the base, and sure enough, a box of bones were found.  But there were numerous other stories about where Pulaski was buried.  Were these bones really his? Forensics specialists laid out the full skeleton and found the unique war wounds Pulaski suffered.  A middle finger was broken and never healed and hung down, which he had to tie to another middle finger.  His skull had been cracked fighting the Russians as they took over Poland. But the forensics people were also astonished.  It was clearly the bones of a female—classic female pelvis, long foot bones and hand bones, no ridge above the eye sockets.  Was this really Pulaski or some other body dug up and moved?  They had a hard time getting DNA samples to compare with the skeleton of a niece buried in Poland.  But a paleo-DNA lab in Canada found some mitochondrial DNA. This is passed almost exactly between mothers and daughters, women within a family, but not to males.  Pulaski’s DNA was a perfect overlay of his niece.  Hence the muscular but short general, trained as a warrior from early childhood, small trimmed mustache, was really a genetic woman.  The Polish doctor present at Casimir’s birth wrote that there were “genital deficiencies”, hence he was privately baptized at home.

            CAH or congenital adrenal hyperstasia, is a genetic disorder where some genes are missing that develop the adrenal glands. That means complications with high blood pressure and adrenaline production that can leave the immunity poorly defended against disease.  It also suppresses adrogens--gender development.  It comes in two types, the classical form has unusual genitals at birth, hence mis-gendered babies.    Receding hairline, facial hair in women and males with almost no sex drive, infertility. In short, they are born “intersex” There are other less-severe forms that become evident later in life or are temporary due to drugs taken in pregnancy of the mother.  Altogether about 1% of adults have CAH but classic CAH born with deficient or unsual genitalia is more like one in 10,000.

            This and other similar genetic deformities should evoke some sympathy. After all, people can't help how they are born.  But recently, politicians and activists, seeking a "new"civil rights issue to rouse voters, have combined this with dystrophic gender syndrome that some psychologists wish to normalize. Popularizing gender dystropia, a mental state, has led to grooming and docs doing serious damage to young people, often minors with mental struggles. The results offend sensibilities of most people.  That only makes life tough on people with real genetic deficiencies and CAH. The medical community should require DNA testing and CAH testing  to be shown the patients. No good can happen when plastic surgery and life-altering drugs are administered to minors. 

WHY HARRY AND MEGHAN BUGGED OUT

About what I thought (based on those who have read advanced copies of Spare.. The life of a prince or princess is long hours doing UK public relations.  Diana struggled with this, wanting to be mom rather than leave the kids to live with nannies and other staffers grooming them as future royals.  So when H & M got the same push, they rebelled.  Atop this was the Brit paparazzi taking racist potshots and perhaps some racism within The Firm, as they call it.  Meghan was given no protection and couldn’t fight back, something a celeb wants to do to save their image.  The Brits/Scots want a candy-coated image of the royalty that borders on perfection (the way we want no ill said of any of the Presidents on Rushmore.) That’s why you read many Brit writers slamming Harry and Meghan for their opinions of the royal family. Add to this perhaps arrogance of step-mother Camilla  

            But the family life of British royals is not good.  Staff parenting is how you get rich-kid characters like Charles, Andrew and Margaret. (That Elizabeth II turned out okay is perhaps tribute to finding the love of her life at age 14 in the Greek prince, Phillip) This does not happen so much with Sweden, Denmark, and Netherlands royalty who have smaller work loads and more family life.  Harry concluded that both Charles and William are trapped/sold-out within the workings of The Firm. It has also led to a long, sordid history of marital infidelity by just about every king, even after the Reformation.  So while the British pundits tisk over American’s owning too many guns and having gun crime, we should smile and be thankful our ancestors rebelled.

True fix for the Border

 A TRUE FIX OF THE BORDER will require

It become secure. Cheapest way is a wall and gates. But there also has to be surveillance and complete coverage.  This will require some negotiation with Indians who have reservations on both sides.

Sufficient law enforcement with directive to enforce. After all, there are tunnels, VISA overstays, etc. The gotaways exceed in number, the entire undocumented numbers just a few years ago.

Sufficient courts and screening of asylum claimants are needed to keep pace.  We don't want drug dealers or terrorists--surely everyone agrees. But we also need to hurry-up the applications. Perhaps using excess employees, such as the 87,000 IRS agents, loaned for a few years, can interview claimants and recommend as a friend of the court to the judges.

Reforms with DACA, anchor baby families, guest workers, legal immigrations fixed. DACA kids are rather trapped and fewer in number <1M.  A path to citizenship seems in order.  The phenom of people having anchor babies and bringing in up to 57 others is being abused. Congress needs to pass a law.  Perhaps, even a law to challenge automatic citizenship of foreigners. Why we do this, the only country in the world, is beyond me. Do we want diplomats' kids (from terrorist regimes?) to be citizens? 

Republicans need to propose solution of all of these with last items undertaken only when first 3 are in place. Hispanic R’s often propose a ten-year naturalization for DACA, Reduction of relatives allowed under cascading family immigrations, and good guidelines for guest workers. Plus reduced cost and time (kick bureaucrats in the ass) for those who seek legal immigration. If R’s would simply propose a comprehensive plan, they would win many Hispanic voters and the common sense voter. The tactic of just demanding we build the wall before all else considered is a loser.  We need to be the Adult Party and put our reasonable proposals out.