If you’re not familiar with vernacular of ‘the internets’, there’s this phrase, ‘hold my beer’. Often appearing within online memes, it indicates a person’s reckless response of one-upsmanship. The Urban Dictionary defines this as ” (1) The act of giving up one’s alcoholic beverage temporarily to attempt a stunt he or she has never ventured (2) Ones personal death wish fueled by ignorance.”
Not unlike California declaring, ‘We proudly elect the far left, craziest politicians!’ with the Bronx 14th District saying, ‘Hold my beer!’.
Speaking of Alexadria Ocasio-Cortez; likely due to the newly elected fresh faces of the 2018 mid-terms like AOC, Democrat presidential hopefuls feel their best path is to run as far left as possible. This in hopes of defeating Donald Trump. Primaries are always a ‘race-to-the-base’ spectacle. This year’s Democrat primary is like a nitro-burning-funny-car-on-fire drag race to the left.
If you’re a conservative or libertarian, good chance you’ve already noticed. No sooner does one candidate declare the latest policy unicorn than another is required to up that ‘unicorn’ ante. To which you end up with a gold plated, wand wielding, two headed unicorn (bi-unicorn?).
Just like a two headed bi-unicorn, the leftist Democrat policy prescriptions don’t make sense either and often to the detriment of centrist liberal voters.
Prisoner: noun / pris·​on·​er / a person deprived of their liberty…
Ever wonder why people go to jail? Obvious, isn’t it? You done somebody wrong. You stole, or hurt, or in the most egregious way; killed another human.
What ties those crimes together? Denying liberties. No matter a corporation or a person, you’ve denied ultimate liberty by breaking the law. If you killed another, it almost needn’t be said; you’ve denied another of their liberties in the most absolute and horrific way.
It’s why jail exists. You take a ‘legal eye for a legal eye’ by denying the lawbreaker’s liberty as a punishment.
Bernie Sanders?
“But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away…you’re running down a slippery slope…I do believe that even if they are in jail, they’re paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.” So said Senator Sanders during CNN townhall.
Selective constitutional awareness is a specialty on the far left. This instance is no different. Bernie says that voting is inherent to America’s democracy.
Bernie’s wrong.
Like much of the Constitution and succeeding amendments; any voting related constitutional article only speaks to whom and under what circumstance voting should not be infringed. Simply said; based on your ethnicity, gender or adult age, the government can’t deny your ability to vote. Correctly so. We should not deny voting based on such. There is nothing in the Constitution that states under all circumstances, you have the right to vote. Period.
On the subject, Senator Kamala Harris said, “We need to have that conversation…”
And Speaking of Voting…
As part of our infantilization of the culture, there is no end to the errant belief that children are our future.
In early March, Massachusetts Democrat Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley proposed a bill amendment to lower the age of federal voting to 16 years old. According to John Nichols writing for The Nation, “Pressley made a compelling argument that won the support of 126 House members for her proposed amendment to HR1 …”
If by compelling, you mean less than one third of the congressional House supported the proposal is an impressive showing? We may may have a different definition of ‘compelling’.
Voting for the House’s ‘pre-adult suffrage’ were presidential candidates; Gabbard and Swalwell. Though it’s evident that whatever the leftist mill grinds out from Critical Theoryland, candidates are glomming on to these funky ideas. Not just glomming, they’re running to them like woke Olympians.
I’m surprised that Gabbards and Andrew Yang support this idea. Yang tweeting, “Lower the Voting Age to 16. Getting young people voting early makes them voters for life. Our politics will affect young people for decades to come. They should have a say in their own future.”
Why?
This is why the left supports it:
As noted in The Hill’s article, “In the United States, where it has been argued that a lower voting age might well have influenced the results of primary contests for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination…” here’s the kicker folks, “…and fall voting for the presidency itself…” (emphasis mine)
And Bingo was his name-o.
Fertile ground as leftist voters, the left wants to get the kids early. Can’t win by the current rules? The Democrat answer is to change the rules. Given the Chicago method of ‘early and often’ fraudulent voting, this is no longer sufficient. It’s now earlier than 18 and often with no way to even check age.
And Senator Harris said she was, “…open to that conversation for sure.” For sure.
Ok, One More Thing on Voting: The Electoral College.
Did you hear the one about getting rid of the Electoral College? Who hasn’t.
Ever since Hillary lost in 2016, this idea has been on a constant loop. The case against a National Popular Vote was detailed earlier this year by Global Liberty Media’s Patricia Anthone. As noted by Anthone; current elections are not nationalized but presided over by each state.
According to progressive flavor of the month, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, “It’s gotta go (the Electoral College), we need a national popular vote. It would be reassuring from the perspective of believing that we’re a democracy.”
Hot tip of the day Pete; we’re not a democracy. We’re a constitutional republic. There’s a difference and a reason.
One such reason is to protect the United States from hairbrained ideas. Ideas like a national popular vote.
Expanding on Anthone’s article with regard to voter disenfranchisement; many on the left have suggested that “millions of voices” were not heard in 2016. Those asserted millions of voices, of course, belonged to left leaning states.
Except these voices were heard. Heard through the Electoral College.
Like it or not.
Get rid of the Electoral College and non-urban (suburban or rural) voters can kiss their political voice goodbye. Pucker up and say au revoir to your vote middle America.
A near full half of the country will have no recourse. Of the 3000+ counties in America, 489 blue counties will be politically lording over the remaining 2623 red counties (based in 2016 election returns).
And you say Trump’s a fascist? All because Hillary didn’t want to go to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, you’re telling flyover country to bite it.
And Kamala Harris said, “We need to have that discussion…”
SCOTUS as a Sandlot Pick-Up Game
If you’re old enough, you remember when friends got together for a pick up game of basketball or football or something? You had to pick sides and hope you weren’t the last picked.
According to master gesticulator, Beto O’Rourke, “What if there were five justices selected by Democrats, five justices selected by Republicans, and those 10 then picked five more justices independent of those who chose the first 10?”
What if? What if SCOTUS were like picking sides for dodgeball? What if this idea solved absolutely nothing?
As a response to the precedented hold off of Merrick Garland for SCOTUS during the 2016 election year, and subsequent Trump election, the left’s gotta do something. As Trump marches through judicial nominations, the left sees their institutional judicial advantage (and judicial activism) slipping away.
Gasping for intellectual air, this SCOTUS expansion is the progressive solution to a problem only leftists can see. It is simply not a solution. Any court that requires a majority will favor the party in power at the time of a nomination. Nine or fifteen judges, no matter how they got there, still have to decide stuff irrespective of left or right as majority in the court.
This is just a shortsighted solution to losing SCOTUS seats in the Trump era.
There were no cries from the left when Justices Kagan or Sotomayor were placed on the bench by President Obama. The left never asserted these choices as ‘unfair’. Of course they didn’t. The process is inherently fair and these candidates were left leaning. Jinkies for the left. Even the right didn’t complain about the process. Just these nominee’s judicial approach.
Only now is the leftist sky falling with liberal bench seats aging away along with a SCOTUS opening likely if Trump wins re-election (though I truly do hope the Notorious RBG a long and healthy life).
Former California Attorney General Kamala Harris? “We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that…” …whatever that means.
Feeding the Collegiate Woke Factory
Elizabeth Warren has a plan stating, “…universal free college would give every American the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year public college without paying a dime in tuition or fees. And would cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt for 42 million Americans.” (emphasis mine)
The Massachusetts senator is suggesting that college should be something of a citizen right. Viewing secondary education the same way she views K12, “College shouldn’t just be a privilege for those who can afford to take on the significant expenses associated with higher education…Like K-12 education, college is a basic need that should be available for free to everyone who wants to go.”
If you’ve written a property tax check, you know that K12 is far from free. K12 is clearly not free. Neither is ‘free college’. As Warren is wont to do, it’ll be paid for by millionaires and billionaires. Of course it is.
The cost of education is often talked about in political circles as well as the kitchen table. Specifically the rising cost of education. It’s a problem.
Here’s a little context on rising costs:
Over the last thirty years, the cost of college has risen somewhere between 300% to 500% (depending the the comparison used).
This is not a comparison of 1987 dollars to current day dollars. It is adjusted to today’s dollars. For public college, what cost $3000 yearly in 1987 (using current dollars), today is now almost ten grand! That’s $9900.
For the same product, you’re paying three times as much. Why then, the rise in cost?
Government is now spending more on higher education lending. It is easier to get a student loan today. There is more money to be gotten for student loans than in previous decades.
It’s simple supply and demand. You have more people going to college but the same number of colleges. A finite supply of colleges tells you that; with full rolls, demands is up along with costs going up with demand. Yet, we’re getting nothing for this spending. Nothing more than we used to.
Over 40% of students attending college still don’t graduate…for three times the cost! Being statistically provable that we’re getting bupkis, why let all the kids go to college for free?
Just walk on to a college campus and say out loud that you’re a conservative. You’ll be called evil. You may be called a Nazi. You might even be punched in the face.
The university has been doing a fine job of leftist indoctrination. More so to the exclusion of other perspectives such as conservatism. To a feckless politician like Elizabeth Warren, college is a leftist voter factory. Let’s pump as many kids through that indoctrination camp as we can.
Kamala Harris’ solution? It’s,”…an important conversation to have.”
Democracy Dollars?
In what could be the dumbest campaign pander, Shapeshifter-in-Chief Gillibrand proposes giving everyone 600 bucks as a means to donate to their candidate of choice. It’s like Freedom Fries, just not at tasty and twice as dumb.
Said the intellectual carpetbagger and water pong player extraordinaire, Kirsten Gillibrand, “To get anything done in Washington, we have to address the money and greed that corrupts politicians and prevents progress on issues like gun violence prevention, lowering the cost of prescription drugs and addressing climate change…”
Though she does suggest that the money goes to any candidate, within her stated proposal belies both the reason for Democracy Dollars and the rub; as a means to get her social justice result, Democrats need to pay people to vote for them. As Gillibrand points out while attempting to address greed in politics, the real goal is to get leftist policies enacted.
Not fairness for everyone. It’s just fairness, and money, for leftists.
Given the floundering nature of her campaign, it makes sense that she’d see an implicit unfairness in the campaign system. The rest of the world thinks of this as competition.
It’s the kind of thing leftist politicians do; create money for themselves. It’s magical money. That is if you define ‘magical’ as taxpayer money.
Though I’m clearly not prone to conspiracies, I can see that; should the government provide the money for a campaign, it is not a far step to the government determining to which campaigns you’re allowed to give.
Crazy conspiracy?
Given the left’s propensity to control and limit free speech, attach purse strings to that free speech and it is another leftist mechanism to control what you can say and whom you can support.
Consider the left’s treatment of Donald Trump. Consider that some states that are now trying to remove Trump from the ballot because they don’t like him. It’s never been about fair competition in leftist politics. And the loser is you.
Gillibrand’s ill-conceived idea only proves that the fascist funds of so-called Democracy Dollars is a capitulation to uncompromising leftist ideals, versus appealing to the middle. If you can’t win on ideas, print yourself some money. I assume millionaires and billionaires pay for this too.
How democratic.
Kamala Harris on campaign finances? Well, it’s all about Trump’s campaign finances, or taxes, or William Barr or something. She’s rakin’ it in from donors so she’s mum on this.
Beer Holders Unite!
Sure, somebody’s gotta hold the beer. You’re the reasoned and responsible person that’s not jumping off the roof in to the pool. You are the holder of the beer. Bestowed with the honor of being the adult in the room.
This is something woefully absent in the Democrat’s primary. Whereas #MeToo meant something to the awful treatment of a woman, the Democrats appear to be co-opting this as a campaign call.
Are you running for president? Me too.
Therein lies the problem; with a field so ridiculous in size, it requires making some noise. It requires standing out in the crowd. Doing something that sets you, the candidate, apart from the others. It requires a candidacy that has impact.
Sadly, it has become a littered battlefield of bad ideas.
Like that shindig where your otherwise quiet and reserved friend, having had a few too many and wants the world to know his name, turns to you and says ‘hold my beer’.
You hold the beer and chaos ensues.
That never goes well.
