Results of Michigan’s economy

I’m sitting here in my Dad’s truck right now near my house at Wendy’s and I wanted to show you a picture of something:

Empty Wendy’s Parking lot

This is of course a parking lot in a Wendy’s near my house. This restaurant has been a Wendy’s since the early 1990’s. when it was a Hardee’s prior to that.

I can honestly tell you back in the 1990s that the parking lot that I’m sitting in now around this time of the day, between 12pm and 3pm, this parking lot would literally almost be full and the restaurant packed.

Nowadays, it sets half empty, all the time. This is what the Democrats did the folks right here, what you’re looking at it that picture above, is the decimation of our economy.

To his credit, Governor Rick Snyder has done what he could do to fix it and to bring Michigan back.

But the truth is folks were into a recession deep and I think it’s going to take maybe 20 to 30 years, before were are actually able to fix what the Democrats broke, this is why we need to vote differently and I pray that Trump makes it through the primaries and gets to the general and decimates the Democrats.

They should pay for what their policies caused in this country. 😡

Just thought I’d share that.

Hillary doesn’t deserve the black vote, says The Nation

I saw this on Memeorandum and my eyes bugged out. 😯

Via Michelle Alexander at The Nation:

Hillary Clinton loves black people. And black people love Hillary—or so it seems. Black politicians have lined up in droves to endorse her, eager to prove their loyalty to the Clintons in the hopes that their faithfulness will be remembered and rewarded. Black pastors are opening their church doors, and the Clintons are making themselves comfortably at home once again, engaging effortlessly in all the usual rituals associated with “courting the black vote,” a pursuit that typically begins and ends with Democratic politicians making black people feel liked and taken seriously. Doing something concrete to improve the conditions under which most black people live is generally not required.

Hillary is looking to gain momentum on the campaign trail as the primaries move out of Iowa and New Hampshire and into states like South Carolina, where large pockets of black voters can be found. According to some polls, she leads Bernie Sanders by as much as 60 percent among African Americans. It seems that we—black people—are her winning card, one that Hillary is eager to play.

And it seems we’re eager to get played. Again.

It gets better, go read this one. She spares no expense in gutting the Clintons. It’s that good.

Others: Mother Jones, Washington Post and Slantpoint

Audio: Obama talks about Iowa, Hillary, Sanders and 2016

The full audio:

The Story via Politico:

Barack Obama, that prematurely gray elder statesman, is laboring mightily to remain neutral during Hillary Clinton’s battle with Bernie Sanders in Iowa, the state that cemented his political legend and secured his path to the presidency.

But in a candid 40-minute interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast as the first flakes of the blizzard fell outside the Oval Office, he couldn’t hide his obvious affection for Clinton or his implicit feeling that she, not Sanders, best understands the unpalatable pragmatic demands of a presidency he likens to the world’s most challenging walk-and-chew-gum exercise.

“[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” a relaxed and reflective Obama told me in his most expansive discussion of the 2016 race to date.

Iowa isn’t just a state on the map for Obama. It’s the birthplace of his hope-and-change phenomenon, “the most satisfying political period in my career,” he says — “what politics should be” — and a bittersweet reminder of how far from the garden he’s gotten after seven bruising years in the White House.

The caucuses have a fierce-urgency-of-now quality as Obama reckons with the end of his presidency — the kickoff of a process of choosing a Democratic successor he hopes can secure his as-yet unsecured legacy, to keep Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or somebody else from undoing much of what he has done. And he was convinced Clinton was that candidate, prior to the emergence of Sanders, friends and associates have told me over the past 18 months.

“Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose,” he said. “I think Hillary came in with the both privilege — and burden — of being perceived as the front-runner. … You’re always looking at the bright, shiny object that people haven’t seen before — that’s a disadvantage to her.”

He also spoke of Bernie Sanders:

Obama didn’t utter an unkind word about Sanders, who has been respectfully critical of his administration’s reluctance to prosecute Wall Street executives and his decision to abandon a single-payer health care system as politically impractical. But he was kinder to Clinton. When I asked Obama whether he thought Sanders needed to expand his horizons, if the Vermont senator was too much a one-issue candidate too narrowly focused on income inequality, the presidente didn’t dispute the assertion.

Gesturing toward the Resolute Desk, with its spread-winged eagle seal, first brought into the Oval Office by John F. Kennedy, Obama said of Sanders: “Well, I don’t want to play political consultant, because obviously what he’s doing is working. I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you’re going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you.”

Then he added: “As you’ll recall, I was sitting at my desk there just a little over a week ago … writing my State of the Union speech, and somebody walks in and says, ‘A couple of our sailors wandered into Iranian waters’” — and here he stopped to chuckle in disbelief — “that’s maybe a dramatic example, but not an unusual example of the job.”

As much as I hate to say it; President Obama is correct about that one. The office of the President of the United States is a very difficult job and it requires someone who can handle the job. While Bernie Sanders might be a respectable person and all; if I were voting in a Democratic Primary, there is no way that I would vote for Bernie Sanders, I would most likely vote for Hillary Clinton. Because she has already been there and she seems, for a Democrat, a bit more reasonable, than Bernie Sanders.

Needless to say, being an ideologue is great; if you are an activist or even maybe a Senator. However, when you are the commander and chief, that is a whole other ballgame and there is a certain amount of pragmatism is required in that office, if you actually want to succeed at the job.  You have to remember, when you are President; you are President of the people of the United States of America, not just the President of the people who voted for you. You have to take into account everyone, not just those who voted for you. This is why I am not too keen on Ted Cruz; he is an extreme ideologue on the right, where Bernie Sander is an extreme ideologue on the left.

This is where I think Donald Trump might just be the more pragmatic candidate, who might just be able to get things done in DC and put aside some of this partisan rancor that has become so terrible under Bush and Obama. Now, if we could just work on his humility and get him to stop retweeting stuff like this here.

Other Bloggers: Vox, The Daily Beast, USA Today, Yahoo Politics, John Hawkins’ Right Wing News, Mother Jones, Talking Points Memo, Hot Air, The Daily Caller, Washington Post, ABC News, Shakesville, Slantpoint and The Week – Via Memeorandum

Bernie Sanders and DNC reach “an accord”

Well, that was quick. I guess the lawsuit and big dust up were avoided.

Washington Post reports:

The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont filed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee on Friday, arguing that the party had unfairly suspended the campaign’s access to key voter information. After several tense hours, both sides announced a deal had been reached.

The suit came shortly after campaign manager Jeff Weaver acknowledged at a Washington news conference that Sanders staffers had improperly reviewed information gathered by rival Hillary Clinton earlier in the week. But he accused the DNC of over­reacting to the breach by suspending the Sanders campaign’s ability to access the computer system containing information about Democratic-leaning voters, including data the campaign has gathered about its own supporters.

After midnight, Sanders and the DNC put out statements that both indicated the impasse had been resolved but that put remarkably different spins on the outcome. Sanders’s campaign said the DNC had “capitulated” and that Sanders would soon regain access to the data. The DNC said what happened was “completely unacceptable” and that it would continue to investigate the circumstances even as Sanders regained access to the valuable information.

I have two theories about why the DNC decided to settle. One is that the DNC is about broke and going to war with Sanders, who is obviously no pauper; would have bankrupted the Party.  Two, is that if Sanders had been shut out; He would have ran as an independent, which would have resulted in chaos and would have ruined the Democrats ability to even win the election – thereby ruining Hillary’s chances. You have to realize, Bernie Sanders is getting the support of the disillusioned Obama supporters who feel that Obama and Democrats sold them up the river.

Believe me when I tell you this; I know all about that feeling of being sold up the river. I have mentioned this before; but, my Father is a retired G.M. worker and a member of the local UAW chapter here in Detroit. Back in the 1990’s when NAFTA was signed into law, by Bill Clinton; there were many people around these parts, who felt that the Democrats and Clinton, had sold them up the river. I and my family were one of those people.

So, I totally understand how they feel. I also know that this feeling was one of the motivations for me giving up on the Democratic Party. I mean, I honestly felt sold up the river; as a white guy, of southern heritage being called a “slope-headed racist,” It just made me think that my family and myself were sold up the river at the cost of getting Obama elected. Which is pretty ironic, considering the fact that Obama has basically sold most of the people, that elected him, up the river – in the name of global trade.

Which is precisely why I am at the political stance that I am now. I am conservative on social issues: Abortion is murder, homosexuality is morally wrong. You have to realize, that back, as recent as 30 years ago; these positions were pretty much mainstream Democratic Party positions; needless to say, that has changed, quite a bit in the last 30 years. The question is: What changed? It was not me, that is for sure. What changed: They did. The Democrats changed, not me. They are the ones who moved further to the left; not me.

I also, since filing for bankruptcy in 2004; have become a bit of a fiscal conservative too. Losing one’s livelihood will do that to a guy.

Either way, I am glad they settled; I would like to see Hillary fight for her quest to become the DNC’s nominee. To see it just handed to her, is against what that party supposedly stands for.

Others: Associated Press, TalkLeft and Power Line (via Memeorandum)

The DNC figures out a way to kneecap Bernie Sanders

I figured this was coming, I just didn’t know how they were going to do it.

Washington Post reports:

Video:

Story:

Officials with the Democratic National Committee have accused the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of improperly accessing confidential voter information gathered by the rival campaign of Hillary Clinton, according to several party officials.

Jeff Weaver, the Vermont senator’s campaign manager, acknowledged that a staffer had viewed the information but blamed a software vendor hired by the DNC for a glitch that allowed access. Weaver said one Sanders staffer was fired over the incident.

The discovery sparked alarm at the DNC, which promptly shut off the Sanders campaign’s access to the strategically crucial list of likely Democratic voters.

The DNC maintains the master list and rents it to national and state campaigns, which then add their own, proprietary information gathered by field workers and volunteers. Firewalls are supposed to prevent campaigns from viewing data gathered by their rivals.

NGP VAN, the vendor that handles the master file, said the incident occurred Wednesday while a patch was being applied to the software. The process briefly opened a window into proprietary information from other campaigns, said the company’s chief, Stu Trevelyan. He said a full audit will be conducted.

The DNC has told the Sanders campaign that it will not be allowed access to the data again until it provides an explanation as well as assurances that all Clinton data has been destroyed.

 

Having his campaign cut off from the national party’s voter data is a strategic setback for Sanders — and could be a devastating blow if it lasts. The episode also raises questions about the DNC’s ability to provide strategic resources to campaigns and state parties.

It looks like the DNC is bound and determined to have Hillary Clinton be the nominee for President of the United States for the Democrats and they will stop at nothing to get her elected; including have a vendor purposely allow the Sanders campaign access a database, then penalize him for it.

It is a passive way to getting the old man to just leave the race, without resorting to being rude or worse, being labelled an anti-Semite. However, don’t you think that the Jewish media isn’t watching this; because they are, very much so. Needless to say, this should be very, very, interesting to watch play out in the media.

Something tells me however, that Sanders won’t reach for the Semite card at all. This is not to say that some of his surrogates will not. As you see the video above, lawsuits are already being threatened. As they say in lawyer speak, discovery is a bitch.

Others: Talking Points Memo, ABC News, blog.ngpvan.com, Bloomberg Business,Guardian, Engadget, addictinginfo.org, Hot Air, Politico, New York Times, Common Dreams,Syracuse Post-Standard, CNN, The Daily Caller, Raw Story, Jewish Telegraphic Agency,NBC News, Shakesville, Althouse, abc13.com, Business Insider and U.S. Uncut (Via Memeorandum)

LOCAL NEWS: Puerto Rican Woman removed from board of local community theatre after calling makeup racist

Seems like the liberal intolerance thing is getting a little close to home now. For what it is worth, Wyandotte, Michigan is about 10 miles to the south of me. This was in the local paper here.

Via News Herald:

Jazmyn Bencik isn’t afraid to speak up when she sees something she perceives as wrong.

That’s exactly what she did recently when she saw something she thought was insensitive against her race.

Bencik saw a member of the Southgate Community Players post a photo of himself titled “Puerto Rico Suave” on Facebook. The theater group was preparing to put on “West Side Story,” which closes this weekend.

Bencik, who at the time was a board member for the Wyandotte Community Theater, thought using white actors to portray Puerto Rican characters was wrong. She was even more offended when she found out several cast members were using spray tans to appear “brown.”

“It’s highly offensive to use excessive spray tan like that,” Bencik said. “It’s the equivalent of using yellow or black face.”

She said she commented on the photo and was nearly immediately attacked for her feelings.

“It was racially insensitive and personally offensive,” she said. “I was told that they weren’t likely to get that many Puerto Ricans to try out for a play in Southgate. Then I suggested they take into account casting difficulties in the future.”

Phillip Rauch, president of the Southgate Community Players, said Bencik’s feelings are off base.

“We don’t use black face,” he said. “We are actors putting on a show. That’s all it is. Using spray tan is nothing more than part of the costume.”

Bencik said she was willing to leave it at that, having spoken her mind. But it didn’t end there for her.

“When I went to practice for our group I was told what I had said was wrong,” she said. “I don’t understand what I did wrong. I was speaking my own opinion.”

She said members of the board told her that she shouldn’t have spoken out on the issue since she was also on the Wyandotte Community Theater board of directors.

“They told me that especially because I was the social media director that I shouldn’t have spoken out,” she said.

That night, Nov. 10, she was removed from having access to the Facebook page for her group. She said she received a letter the next morning notifying her that she was relieved of her duties with the organization.

There you have it folks, liberal intolerance at it’s finest. Jonah Goldberg was on to something:

A good win for traditionalists in Houston, Texas

Southern Future reports:

The American “March of Progress” towards equality ran into a brick wall this week as segregationists won at the polls in the largest city in Dixie. The people of Houston, Texas (which is now just 26% White – down from 62% in 1970 – due to the US policy of demographic displacement) overwhelmingly rejected a broad equality measure pushed by Democratic Party leaders and homosexual activists. Anti-egalitarians focused their campaign on opposition to bathroom integration, supporting traditional sex-based segregation of public bathrooms. The Human Rights Campaign, a Left-wing gay advocacy group, called the vote “a devestating blow to equality.”

This is a good thing, and I am very glad to hear about it. 😀 This is what we are up against folks.

Open Message to Lawrence Lessig: Welcome to the Democratic Party of 2015!

Lawrence Lessig is singing the blues of the current state of the Democratic Party:

I’m running for President. Or trying. After raising $1 million in less than 30 days, I entered the primary on September 9 as the Democrat’s only non-politician. My platform is simple: end the corrupting influence of money in Washington, so we might finally have, as Buddy Roemer would put it, a Congress free to lead.

But that message is being stifled with the tacit approval of the Democratic Party leadership, who are deploying the oldest method available for marginalizing campaigns they don’t like: keeping me out of the Democratic presidential debates.

Here’s how you make the debates: After one declares, a candidate is formally welcomed into the race by the Democratic National Committee. Polling firms, taking a cue from the DNC, include that candidate on their questionnaires. Candidates that poll at 1 percent nationally in at least three separate polls earn an invitation. Simple enough.

That’s how the process typically works for other candidacies—but not for mine. The DNC still has not formally welcomed me into the race—despite my raising money at a faster pace than more than half the pack, and being in the race nearly a full month. Polls, in turn, have taken the hint, only including me sporadically on questionnaires: of the last 10 major polls, only three mentioned my candidacy. One poll recently put me at 1 percent (for comparison, candidates O’Malley, Webb and Chafee, who will each get a podium at the debates, are all currently polling at 0.7 percent or less, according to Real Clear Politcs). Were I actually included on every poll, I would easily make the debates.

The Democratic Party could fix this by welcoming me into the race. Yet when I tried to talk about this with the chair of the Democratic Party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she scheduled a call, but then cancelled it. So far she hasn’t had the time to schedule another. I’ve had similar experiences at the state level, where the same game is played: The chair of the New Hampshire Democrats invited me to speak at their convention. I was given 5 minutes. Hillary Clinton took an hour.

These signals from the party affect the media, too. While news shows have been busy limning the depths of Donald Trump’s brain, there hasn’t been time to consider a Democratic candidate saying something that no other Democrat is saying—especially if the party itself doesn’t consider the candidate a real candidate. And while the Atlantic listed me as a candidate on their website from day one, it took some lobbying to get the New York Times to do the same. Neither fish nor fowl, and not insanely rich, no one quite knows where to place a candidate like me.

Moe Lane weighs in:

…..the DNC doesn’t want to have him on the debate stage. In fact, the DNC doesn’t want there to be an actual debate at all. They want a quiet, boring, and above all cheap primary season, so as to maximize the amount of time Hillary Clinton spends in cryostasis. The DNC cannot control the situation completely, but they can by God control the presence of Lawrence Lessig, so they shall.

On the other hand; this is how the Democratic party operates. This is always how the Democrat party has operated. The Democratic party leadership has always been adamantly against allowing any kind of genuinely populist – even the twisted, sad, bitter examples of it that manage to half-grow on the Left – sentiment to drive policy. Lessig is supposedly an educated man; surely he understands that the party of Wilson and FDR would think of him and his as useful idiots who look at their best when a firm boot is placed upon their necks.

This right here above that I quoted, is the exact reason why I stopped voting for the Democratic Party. They do not want people to have a choice, they did not want people to have a choice in 2008, and now they do not want a choice in 2016. It has been non-stop Hillary Clinton. Well, some of us do not want another Clinton in the White House, at all. You have to remember, I am 43 years old, I am old enough to remember the Clinton White House; I remember the scandals, I remember Waco, I remember Monica, I remember all of that. Because of that, I do not want another Clinton in the White House at all.

The Democrats are going to get what they want and they do not give a flip as to how they get it or who they hurt or kill to get it done. That, my friends, is fascism; that my friends is, as Moe Lane called it, “boot to the neck” thuggery. I give the Republicans credit, at least they have a wide selection of people in the primary. With the Democrats, it’s Hillary or third party. That’s not the American way at all.

Of course, when you operate a political party that is direction opposition to the values that America was founded upon, you should expect such things. America was not founded as a Democracy, America was founded as a Constitutional Republic. It is such a pity that many well-meaning Americans have been duped into the lies that the Democratic Party feeds them.

Others:  Liberal Values, Hit & Run