It's Trump statements like this on Hong Kong and Xi Jinping which keep me from supporting his re-election

"We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I'm also standing with President Xi," Trump said. "He's a friend of mine. He's an incredible guy. We have to stand, but I'd like to see them work it out."

Why stand with these brutal oppressors of freedom? Just so that we can trade with them?

Peggy Noonan thinks the purpose of conservatism is merely the preservation of the free market system, yet she supports Trump's impeachment.

She and Trump have more in common with each other than either of them does with real conservatism.

They are both thimble deep and symptomatic of the poverty of America's two party system.

More here.

LOL, George Soros says European Union may go away just like Soviet Union did, blames existence of political parties and freedom!

The disappearance of the Soviet Union was a good thing, but obviously not to George Soros.

The existence of political parties is a manifestation of freedom, but Georgie Boy obviously would prefer a one-party state, complete with police-state powers to impose its will.

This guy really is as awful as people say. The socialist mushrooms popping up in the Democrat-controlled US House must mean to him it's now an opportune time to say these things openly.

In his own words:

Opinion: Europe may be on the cusp of a nightmare, but it’s not too late to wake up

"Europe is sleepwalking into oblivion, and the people of Europe need to wake up before it is too late. If they don’t, the European Union will go the way of the Soviet Union in 1991. ... anti-European forces will enjoy a competitive advantage in the balloting. There are several reasons for this, including the outdated party system that prevails in most European countries, the practical impossibility of treaty change, and the lack of legal tools for disciplining member states that violate the principles on which the European Union was founded."

Rigged party system is leaving both Trump and Sanders supporters feeling voiceless: What's the point of voting if delegates are going to do what they want?

Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box

From the story here:

[T]he sense of futility is building among supporters of Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders, both of whom have strong appeal with people who already believe that a rigged political system leaves them voiceless and disenfranchised. ...

“It’s people who are in charge keeping their friends in power,” said Tom Carroll, 32, a union plumber who lives in Bethpage, N.Y., summing up how he viewed the electoral system. Mr. Carroll, who was at Mr. Trump’s rally on Long Island on Wednesday, expressed irritation at a system that does not always abide by the one person, one vote concept. “In other countries, we pay to fix their election systems and they get their fingers colored with fingerprint ink when they vote,” he added. “What’s the point of everyone voting if the delegates are going to do what they want?”

Obama is John Galt

"The problem is, Republicans in Congress keep blocking or voting down almost every serious idea . . .. This obstruction keeps the system rigged for those at the top . . .. And as long as they insist on doing it, I’ll keep taking actions on my own . . .." (Radio address, 6/28/14)

Rasmussen Poll Finds 'Tea Party' Label Most Negative, 'Liberal' Second Most

Here:

"[T]he latest national telephone survey finds that 44% regard Tea Party as a negative description for a candidate."

This is what happens to a movement which allows others to define it and co-opt it. With most of the Republican Party skeptical of the movement at best, threatened at worst, there was none to defend the Tea Party from the outrageous insinuations from the left and its allies in the media. It has died by a thousand paper cuts.

The Tea Party's present bad rap is in many ways its own fault. It assiduously refused to unify as a national movement around a platform of ideas and candidates. As a consequence, it was variously captured by elements of Ron Paul's libertarian movement here and individual Republicans and Republican front-groups there.

As a protest movement the Tea Party needed to change because the initial outrage and emotion which brought it to life is not a sustainable or proper vehicle for conservatism. If it is, then conservatism becomes indistinguishable from the demagogic enemy. Unfortunately for the Tea Party, it opted for the change it got not by choice but by default. Refusing to coalesce as a party around a platform of ending bailouts and cronyism, limiting government spending, and endorsing the candidates who supported that as a matter of the utmost importance all doomed it. Republican interlopers like Michael Steele (who failed), Rep. Bachmann (the Lone Rangerette of the US House), and Sarah Palin (who got the bailout religion very late) pounced early and effectively to steal the limelight.

Political originality is no easy invention, but Tea Partiers were ill-served by devotees of the two-party system when true originalism and enthusiasm for the constitution should have taught the Tea Party that proper political representation is the sine qua non of republican government. And in that struggle for representation it is the two parties as we know them who are most at fault for circumscribing it in a US House of 435 members which should by now consist in 10,267. The coin of the realm has Republican on one side, Democrat on the other, but in the middle is nothing but worthless metal. 

Democrats and liberals were entirely happy to jeer from the sidelines as the neophytes were neutered by their political betters in the Republican Party. As usual, it is the Republicans who do the dirty work of liberalism, not the least of which is collecting its taxes and advancing its social agenda incrementally. The reaction of the Tea Party to the radicalism of Obama was profound and deep, as was its dismay by the failure of Republicanism to step up to it.

May the Tea Partiers learn, lick their wounds, and begin planning for another day. Freedom needs them.

Congressmen Get Richer, You Get Poorer

Just in time to echo my recent ranting about our rich, corrupt and unrepresentative Congress and why we therefore need a bigger one, Peter Whoriskey for The Washington Post here chimes in with this tidbit which shows just how unrepresentative our representatives have become:

Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity.

Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.

The importance of an individual member of Congress works according to the law of supply and demand: When the supply of Congressmen declines, their individual value increases dramatically. The supply of Congressmen is fixed by law, but their value now increases year by year because the number of people they represent continues to grow.

The US House acted in the 1920s to increase their own value in this way by stopping the House from growing in size proportionally with population. We never should have let them get away with it. Is it any wonder that their wealth has increased so dramatically since then? We have the finest Congress money can buy, and getting finer by the day.

It's rigged. It's a racket. And it's not working for the people anymore. It's working for itself.

We could stop this almost overnight if we simply increased the supply of representatives, just like we do with money. To make debts worth less, we print extra dollars with which to pay them off. We should do the same thing with Congressmen. To make them worth less, increase their supply. The cost of corrupting a much bigger Congress would therefore skyrocket, and the ability of the people to reign it in would improve commensurately.

Consider that in our country less than half the population is registered to vote, 146 million people in 2008. Of that, 131 million actually voted. This means the individual member of Congress on average has a voting constituency of 301,000.

But if we had the 10,267 representatives demanded by Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution, the size of a representative's average voting constituency would plummet to . . . 12,760.

Tick-off just one mega-church, a few VFW posts, a local manufacturer or the PTA, and out he goes. Just 6,400 people could make your Congressman a loser, or a winner, and on a regular basis.

Sounds pretty representative to me, and a lot cheaper.