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For me in this upcoming election, it is about Trust, Consistency, and the fulfillment of the meme “Winning is only a precursor; it is what you do AFTERwards that is most important.”  Can I Trust that the person I vote for will do what they promise?  Will they be Consistent with the political beliefs that they say match up with mine?  And will they actually DO both once they win?

Or break my heart?  Sadly, the subset of politicians that don’t is rather sparse.  It is both the nature of the beast and the low regard that politicians have for honor, courage, Consistency, and promises kept. Paul Mirengoff at Powerline puts it a bit differently, but the same.  A couple of excerpts, reformatted and emphasis mine, but go read the whole thing:

DOES THIS ELECTION PRESENT A BINARY CHOICE?

On Friday, Ammo Girl (hereinafter Susan) wrote a characteristically excellent post arguing that conservatives, and in particular elite pundits, should rally behind Donald Trump. Basically, she argued (1) that Trump is clearly preferable to Hillary Clinton and (2) that the election presents us with a “binary choice” between the two major candidates…As for Susan’s argument, I agree with her first point. Trump is clearly preferable to Clinton, in my view. I won’t make that case here except to say that I prefer a terrible person who will deliver a partly liberal and partly conservative administration to a terrible person who will deliver a mostly left-liberal one.

Hold onto that thought because I immediately thought “I no longer will vote for least worst”; I still hold to that.

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and I bet they have no idea of that line’s history or context.

The Left condemns the GOP candidate even as it celebrates crudity and sexual exhibitionism throughout the culture.

One of their main spear points in the culture wars has been to replace traditional morality (not that it was totally practiced but most understood and at least gave lip service to it) with a libertine sense of morality (the old “do it if it feels good”).  So they should be surprised?  Course not – this has been happening since the beatnik movement back in the 50s and the hippies in the 60s and 70s.  It has been “push the limits” for decades and at this point, what really can be left undone…

…except we are now seeing the emphasis on thought control and having destroyed the country’s Judeo-Christian morality, we see that they are now trying to use Orwell’s 1984, not as a warning, but as a guidebook, for they are also following (Godwin’s Law be damned) Herr Goebbels:

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Via Powerline comes a complaint from Facebook – and the underlying shafting of American deliberately by Democrats (emphasis mine):

Before Obamacare, we paid $481 per month for decent health insurance. Just got notice that we will have to pay $1140 PER MONTH next year!!! I am not kidding and yes you read that right…..that’s a mortgage payment! On top of that, we will now have a $6550 deductible per person with no prescriptions covered.

All of our doctors and clinics are no longer in-network and if we travel outside of the cities, there are no clinics or doctors covered! So if we are traveling and get sick or are in an accident, it will ALL be out of our own pocket! It is absolutely ridiculous!!!

Even though I am not crazy about my other options, I WILL NOT VOTE FOR HILLARY…..who is just carrying on what Obama started. We are just normal people working hard to run our own business….why should self-employed people be so penalized to cover all of the uninsured?!?!? We are hoping we can switch plans, but have already been told by our insurance agent that the options aren’t much better, uggghhh!

I read recently that Obamacare was responsible for $11 Billion of redistributed wealth – or as Obama said to Joe the Plumber years ago:

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Those of us on the Right often see and talk about current events and then the parallels from past history and cultures – something that we NEVER see the Left do (outside their lens of oppression and race).  Why?  Because there’s nothing new under the sun – almost everything we see today someone or people have done in the past.  The kick is to learn from those mistakes from the past – and don’t do it again!  But alas, the Smart People of the Left refuse to see (and more important, understand) that certain things bring civilizations down.  But, they blithely believe that THEY are finally the ones that can make it work.

Interesting article about the Romans: “How Roman Central Planners Destroyed Their Economy” and it ends with a quote from Von Mises (emphasis mine):

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Much ink has been written about the rise and fall of the TEA Party.  It started off as a rebellion against what it saw as overreaches by Government, especially the Federal govt, starting slowly with Bush (“We have to destroy the Free Market in order to save it”) and then on steroids after Rick Santelli’s famous rant that he didn’t want his money to go the the irresponsible and force him to pay their mortgages. Ordinary people REBELLED against the profligate spending, a government that no longer respected the Constitution, and the distortions it was making in their lives and how the Rule of Law was being broken.  It finally came down to three main points:

1. Fiscal Frugality
2. Constitutional boundaries
3. Free Markets

While the movement attracted a lot of Libertarians, Democrats and Independents who were realizing, too, what was going on and more importantly – what WASN’T happening.  That said, the bulk of people in the TEA Party turned out to be Republicans who were not only mad at the Democrats but also their own Party for not behaving and standing up for what it said it did – they didn’t walk the talk.

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In the free market, if you do not serve your customers, you’re history.  The accountability is via Profit indicator: if you are not selling something that works, your profit will suffer.  Price your offering too high, people will not buy and your profit will suffer.  Price is too low and be unable to recoup your costs and be ready for the future, your profits will suffer.  Accountability via the Profit mechanism will and does cull the weakest. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to keep the Public Sector accountable and a recent study has shown that disdain reigns supreme when the “Governing Class” is queried about their thoughts on those they are supposed to be “serving” (emphasis mine, reformatted):

Recently, Johns Hopkins University political scientists Jennifer Bachner and Benjamin Ginsberg conducted a study of the unglamorous D.C. bureaucrat. These are the people who keep the federal government humming — the Hill staffers, the project managers and all those desk workers who vaguely describe themselves as “analysts.” As Bachner and Ginsberg argue, civil servants exercise real power over how the government operates. They write and enforce rules and regulations. They might not decide what becomes law, but they have a hand in how laws are drawn up and how laws are implemented.

This is the Administrative State of which I write often.

For all their influence, though, nearly all of these technocrats are unelected, and they spend most of their time with people who are just like them — other highly educated folk who jog conspicuously in college tees and own a collection of NPR totes. In their new book, which is part ethnography and part polemic, Bachner and Ginsberg argue that Washington’s bureaucrats have grown too dismissive of the people they are supposed to serve. Bachner and Ginsberg recently sent around an informal survey to selected members of this technocratic class, and the results, they say, were shocking.

“Many civil servants expressed utter contempt for the citizens they served”

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A Sham Investigation Does Not Exonerate Hillary Clinton
By Peter Lemiska

As we saw during the debate between the vice-presidential candidates, Democrats love to use the FBI investigation as proof of Hillary Clinton’s innocence in the Servergate scandal.  They must have missed those congressional testimonies of FBI Director James Comey, which show that the more we learn about that investigation, the less credible it becomes.  On the heels of Comey’s testimonies, only Clinton’s ardent supporters and the hopelessly naïve have any trust in its outcome.  Only they believe that Clinton and her cohorts were treated like other citizens would have been treated.  Only they believe that no crimes were committed.

Republican Congressmen, many of whom had served as prosecutors, were astonished at the handling of the investigation.  Rep. Trey Gowdy cited, among other irregularities, those five immunity agreements that yielded not a single criminal charge.  He admonished Comey’s FBI with these words, “That is not the FBI that I used to work with.”

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Over at Gab.ai, I “gabbed” this (not tweeted – I’m no longer using Twitter):

It seems that lots of stories (the Oct surprises?) are coming out about Trump sexually harrassing women. So he is vilified by the Dems now while Bill Clinton is still revered as a rock store by Dems (well, at least as a minor one) for having done the same things?

Also this: Jonah Goldberg, “Character is Destiny.”

If you’re shocked that Donald Trump was capable of being this much of a pig, you let yourself be deluded. If you’re surprised that the Clinton campaign — or some allied party — found something like this, you willfully chose to live in a fantasyland. If you think there isn’t more of this stuff waiting, you’re doubling down on your delusions and fantasies.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending Trump.  I neither

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I was not happy when politics intruded into one of my favorite sports when Colin Kaepernick decided to inject Black Lives Matter into the game.  As a political junkie, I certainly have discussed much these last 10 years at GraniteGrok. However and unlike Progressives, I don’t bring politics into areas “just because I’m there” – I will wait until someone else does first.  And there are certain times when I keep quiet completely – it’s not my place and that’s how I feel.  If I am watching football, I want to see football – period.  It seems that the NFL management has yet to learn this lesson-in-process (emphasis mine, reformatted):

Now, with the start of this year’s football season, we’ve watched a certain second-string quarterback and social justice warrior lead disrespectful expressions during the national anthem and other players have jumped on the bandwagon, offering the black power salute as well.

Everyday Americans have reacted. Until this year, the NFL’s ratings steadily grew with each passing year. This season, the NFL’s ratings are in a free fall, with ratings already down to 2007-levels. Since the start of this season, ratings have dropped 17% for Sunday Night Football alone, costing broadcasters (and by extension. the league) precious ad revenue. Imagine the league negotiating for the 2017’s season, trying to command this year’s ad rates with 2007’s audience numbers (or 1970s viewership, if current trends continue).

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