Tuesday, May 31, 2016

David French is Like Ted Cruz Without the Baggage

I would love to say that I knew everything there was to know about David French before today. Like most, I had to Google him. I’ve read many of his articles in the past. In fact, in scanning his list of articles on National Review, I realized that I’d read the majority of his articles. He has a way for catching the attention of Christian conservatives with his headlines.

While there is still an outside chance that Ted Cruz could get the GOP nomination through a very unlikely series of events, it’s important to start researching the notion of the backup plan – an independent conservative candidate – coming in and giving us an option for President that doesn’t include a New York liberal Democrat of which there are currently two. After my initial research, I’m leaning towards the notion that French is very similar to Cruz without having the baggage accumulated against him through Donald Trump’s Alinskyite attacks.

We don’t usually focus on breaking news which is why it’s different for me to write about French without doing the full research. It took over four months of researching the original candidates before endorsing Cruz. This is different. I’m not posting this prematurely out of some need to get into the news cycle. I’m posting it because I’m excited. After my cursory examination of French and his chances as a candidate, I’m ready to say that I’m impressed with both French’s resume and ideas as well as Bill Kristol’s hand in this if it does come to pass. As of now, nothing is official, but the rumors seem awfully compelling. Unless Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn decided immediately to make another run for public office, I’m not sure there’s a better candidate than French, including my early backup plan favorite Senator Ben Sasse.

Headlines are labeling French as a “conservative lawyer.” That’s like saying Trump is a “realtor.” The label greatly diminishes the breadth of understanding and accomplishments that French has on his resume. As a Harvard Law grad like Cruz, French has demonstrated an intimate understanding of the Constitution and a profound reverence for it as the source code of American governance. We can see this through his resume but more importantly we see it in his writing. Through one’s writing, we’re able to discern the depth of their understanding and French’s Constitutional well runs deep… just like Cruz.

What French doesn’t have is a list of enemies like Cruz. While fulfilling his promises to the people who elected him, Cruz built up a reputation of being unlikable. Then, Trump was able to spin the conversation after the Iowa-Carson dropout incident and labeled Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted.” The name stuck. Trump won that battle and eventually won that war.

With French, Trump will have a harder time attacking him. Don’t misunderstand – Trump will attack and his attacks will be vicious. He’ll find a label. He’ll rally his troops behind his attacks. If Mother Teresa were alive and opposed Trump, he’d find a way to badmouth her and his supporters would cheer. What we initially see in French is a Christian conservative patriot who hasn’t made enemies and who seems to have the right ideas behind which Republicans and Independents could rally.

It’s important to remember that to win the Presidency, French does not have to beat Trump and Hillary Clinton. He simply needs to prevent them from breaking the 270 electoral college vote threshold. If he can win a handful of states, that Republicans normally win and if Trump can win some states that Democrats normally win, it’s very possible for nobody to get to the 270 mark. If that happens, the House of Representatives will decide on the next President. I like French’s chances in that scenario.

We’ll be researching much more about French if an announcement comes about his candidacy. In the meantime, there’s no need to expend further energy on speculation.

We don’t even know for sure at this point if French is going to run, but if he does, the early research shows that he has the background and principles to make a serious run. We hope he does. He could be the only person who can stop one of the two liberal Democrat New Yorkers from sitting in the Oval Office.



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Monday, May 30, 2016

Trump’s Best Campaigners: Those Who Protest Him

If it weren’t so clearly obvious, I’d have to turn this into a long story. It’s extremely obvious that the Trump “protests” are campaign gold for Donald Trump, so one might think that there would be no need to write this article in the first place. Unfortunately, the subjects of the article are the ones that don’t get it.

Those of you who are standing outside of rallies, sneaking into them, blocking roads, burning shirts, flashing signs, and causing general mayhem at Trump rallies need to hear the reality: YOU’RE HELPING HIM. This isn’t a sitting politician. This isn’t a cause to fight. This is a candidate who will likely win the GOP nomination and is on pace to be the favorite in the general election if Hillary Clinton is able to win her party’s nomination. As such, these protests do nothing more than spur his supporters forward and swell their ranks with people on the fence who are more opposed to your actions than to the potential disaster of a Trump Presidency.

If you want to fight Trump, rally behind a candidate you can support. Causes that work for something are always seen more favorably and are more effective than causes that try to work against something. There are now Libertarian candidates ready for support. There’s Clinton. There’s Bernie Sanders. There’s a potential third party candidate who could emerge if they see enough support.

For the record, I oppose Trump. This is one of the reasons that I’m hoping his idiot protesters would stop. They’re making it harder for an alternative to rise because they’re helping to unify the party against the oppressive atmosphere the protesters promote.

These protesters are self-serving. If they are smart enough to realize that they’re not doing any good towards stopping Trump, then they’re just venting and having fun. If they’re not smart enough to realize they’re helping their foe, they should educate themselves before participating in these protests. Either way, these protests need to stop. You’re only helping your enemy.



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Why Katie Couric’s Lies Were Much Worse than Brian Williams’

Yahoo’s Katie Couric and NBC’s Brian Williams have a few things in common. They were both considered to be respectable journalists at one point. They used to be trusted to deliver the news appropriately. They both lie.

Williams was suspended and demoted before getting a glimpse of renewed fame due to America’s short-term memory problem. More importantly, his lies were the type that didn’t necessarily distort the news. He’s egotistical and wants the world to think more highly of him than he deserves, but as far as we know he didn’t utilize his deceptions to manipulate the way people felt about anything other than himself.

What Couric did with her recent gun documentary debacle is in a completely different league than Williams’ transgression. To understand why, we have to understand the two different types of journalists on television, radio, print, and the internet. There are more than two types, but the majority of journalists who are active participants in mass media reporting fall into one of two categories:

  1. Reporters: At different levels they have different titles, but generally these are the journalists who simply report the news in as unbiased a way as possible. Despite the fairy tale of a perfect media world, there’s no way to completely eliminate bias when humans are in the mix, but there are plenty of good reporters out there who will state the facts and position the stories in a way that allows the audience to draw their own conclusions. Both Williams and Couric usually fall into this category.
  2. Commentators: These are the pundits. They’re the talking heads common on “the shows” from cable news, talk radio, and on blogs across the internet. They’re supposed to be clearly delineated; nobody turns on Mark Levin or The Morning Joe with expectations that they’re going to get an unbiased perspective on any piece of news.

When a journalist crosses over by claiming to be delivering the first category while secretly inserting the second category, they’ve wiped away the lines.  They’ve become activists. Williams didn’t, as far as we know, ever really do that in a deceptive way. While there were times when he might have inserted some editorial perspective in his reports, he did so in a way that was transparent. His lies were designed to fuel his own ego, not to use propaganda to change hearts and minds.

Couric deceived. She intentionally manipulated the footage in order to present a report that was actually a commentary. The two most common evils in journalism are false sources at the top of the scale and premature reporting at the middle of the scale. Intentionally editorializing a report falls somewhere between those two.

What Williams did was foolish but relatively harmless. What Couric did was blatantly corrupt as an abuse of the power that she’s been given as well as the trust that she’s earned over the years. She had one goal: to make people less sympathetic about gun rights by manipulating them through lies. This is an unforgivable offense for a journalist. If Yahoo has any integrity, she will be fired.



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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Will Trump Sue North Korea for Ridiculing Him?

The short answer is, “no,” but don’t think that he hasn’t considered it.Therein lies the problem with Donald Trump and foreign affairs.

We know Trump. He has very thin skin. When anyone attacks him, he ramps it up to nuclear levels. As a realtor and reality TV star, this ramping up of his insecure defense mechanisms have yielded very little damage (other than hundreds of lawsuits, four bankruptcies, and a football league). As President, he becomes instantly dangerous.

As detailed on The Blaze, North Korea’s response to Trump’s pledge to speak with Kim Jong-un was only mildly insulting by Trump’s standards:

The problem is that this minor insult will go a long way if he were to be elected President.

We don’t support Hillary Clinton, but we also cannot support Trump. This latest offense was just a foolish attempt to garner more votes so the hope is that it won’t escalate. On the other hand, hoping that anything involving perceived insults or threats to Trump will almost always escalate.

The post Will Trump Sue North Korea for Ridiculing Him? appeared first on Conservative Haven.



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Monday, May 23, 2016

Betrayal in Vietnam Demonstrates Obama’s Lack of Understanding in Foreign Relations

As President Obama lifts arms sanctions against Vietnam, the hard hitting reality of his incompetence in foreign relations is in full bloom. This is a bad move all around.

On the surface, this is an insult to those who fought in the Vietnam War. That should not be taken lightly. There’s no need to go into details about this.

When we dig deeper into the geopolitical reasoning behind this move, it becomes scarier. The President’s standard operating procedure of relinquishing leverage and embracing globalization has been on display throughout his two terms and this is the latest example. In an ideal world, this could be used to position Vietnam as another player in the fight against China’s expansion in the South China Sea. Vietnam has been at odds with China’s expansion into waters that Vietnam claims as their own, so it makes sense to empower them as an additional threat.

The problem is that they won’t be a threat. Hanoi and Beijing have maintained a more favorable relationship than either has had with Washington DC. Any thought that this will make Hanoi jump on the American bandwagon is foolish. We are allowing lethal weapons sales to a country that is much more likely to turn them against us than against China.

That doesn’t mean that China isn’t upset. They have been able to hold Vietnam at arms’ length for decades and are now forced to embrace them more closely, but embrace them they will. The notion that China is going to sit back and watch as the U.S. cozies up to a country so close to China is foolish.

Perhaps the most important factor to understand here is that we are now openly supporting communism. That cannot be dismissed. With any communist, the ability to turn on a dime must be considered. We are opening up arms trade with a country that could easily use those arms against us.

President Obama wants to open doors. He’s been doing it throughout his reign. The problem is that the majority of doors he opens lets in much more bad than good. This is just another example.

The post Betrayal in Vietnam Demonstrates Obama’s Lack of Understanding in Foreign Relations appeared first on Conservative Haven.



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Sunday, May 22, 2016

No, Conservatives Shouldn’t Vote for Hillary

Look, I get the frustration. I feel it. As a Christian and constitutional conservative, it’s impossible for me to vote for Donald Trump. I won’t go into the many reasons for this; either you get it or you don’t. With that said, I also cannot even consider voting for Hillary Clinton. I won’t say that she’s worse, but when trying to choose between the lesser of two evils, we have to exhaust every option before making the choice.

An article on Fortune makes a relatively compelling argument about voting for Clinton over Trump if you’re a conservative. The argument appeals to the idea that we can stack the Supreme Court in the future by taking advantage of the fact that the number of Justices is not declared in the Constitution. As such, we don’t need to be limited to nine. The idea is to save the country from Trump by electing Hillary, letting her do her damage, ousting her in 2020, and then stacking the Supreme Court with conservatives by pushing the limit up to 11 or higher.

This is sound on the surface, impossible in practice. More importantly, it’s the wrong way to approach this. We shouldn’t support Hillary. We shouldn’t support Trump. We should fight until November for the best candidate regardless of their chances. The two-party system has been a debacle in that it maintains the status quo. True conservatives realize that the Republican party has left us. We also realize that the Libertarian party has some pretty liberal ideas mixed in with its conservatism. The other lesser conservative parties aren’t viable. However, now is the time to throw viability out the window and vote for the candidate that has the best policy proposals combined with the ability to lead. If we stick to those principles, we’ll likely lose this election but we’ll be establishing the foundation for the conservative movement that will be needed at full strength over the next four to eight years.

The Fortune article points to the New Deal as an example of how we can win in the long run by voting for Hillary:

Conservatives reluctant to support Trump but lamenting that a Clinton victory would lead to a Supreme Court dominated by progressives should recall the lessons of the New Deal. The progressive court that would emerge from a Clinton presidency could be quickly transformed if Republicans copy New Deal progressives and embrace court-packing. There would be costs associated with this scenario, but the costs of either a Trump presidency or acquiescing to a generation of progressive jurisprudence would be far greater.

Barely touched is the fact that the Supreme Court ploy to protect the New Deal failed. The New Deal prevailed based upon other factors, but Roosevelt was unable to expand his Supreme Court control. If he couldn’t do it, chances are slim that it could be done today.

Don’t vote for Hillary. Don’t vote for Trump. Vote for the most principled conservative on your ballot. Write in Ted Cruz if you have to. This isn’t just about our conscience. It’s about saving the country from itself in the long term.

The post No, Conservatives Shouldn’t Vote for Hillary appeared first on Conservative Haven.



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The New Americana: Conservative News for Those Who Aren’t Selling Out

Believe it or not, I didn’t take the loss to Donald Trump by the Republican party very hard. That might be difficult to believe considering I haven’t posted on this site in over a month, but if anything the loss has emboldened me to double my efforts for the conservative cause in an effort to help America. We’ll be posting here more often again, but we had to take a brief hiatus to launch a new site: The New Americana.

The idea was sparked by sites like Drudge and Breitbart that waged a war against Ted Cruz and conservatism. Their blatant adoration for everything Trump brought many conservatives to question whether or not these sites were bought off. I won’t discount that possibility, but I think it’s more likely that they’re seeing in a Trump nomination the potential for continued success; having a conservative in the White House with a Republican-controlled Congress doesn’t do much for page views when you’re a conservative website. I see this more as opportunism: they supported the most liberal candidate in an effort to have a reason to draw conservatives back into their websites when Hillary Clinton is President.

As a result, we built The New Americana. It’s like Drudge in that it’s an aggregator of conservative news, but it will also house its own unique content. On top of that, we’ll be posting a daily link archive so that any links you saw on the site will be saved for posterity.

The need for conservatism to finally have its day in the sun after three decades of moderate and liberal policies reigning in Washinton DC has never been greater. As wars wage over religious liberties, bathrooms, the military, the economy, and America’s place in the world, we have to stand true to our beliefs because they’re right. Conservatism works in its purest form. America hasn’t given it a chance for a while because of the influences of liberal mainstream media. We have to keep fighting and The New Americana will be a nice venue through which conservatives can find their regularly updated dose of news that can help them fight the good fight.

After a month off, we’ll be posting here more often as well. Be sure to subscribe if you want news delivered to your inbox. Just put in your email address in the little widget at the bottom of the page.

The post The New Americana: Conservative News for Those Who Aren’t Selling Out appeared first on Conservative Haven.



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Only #NeverTrump Can Save Congress

The narrative now among many Republicans and conservatives is that Donald Trump might be bad, but he’s not worse than Hillary Clinton. That’s debatable, but one thing is certain: embracing Trump makes losing the Senate and possibly even the House of Representatives a near certainty.

Let’s first look at the scenarios before diving into the full concept:

  1. Trump Wins in a Landslide: Despite claims by many #NeverTrumpers, it’s very possible that Trump could run away with this election. Clinton is that unlikable. She’s that corrupt. Many Independents, particularly those who are concerned with terrorism and border security, will roll the dice on Trump rather than embracing the known corruption of Clinton. In this scenario, the Democrats will focus all firepower on making sure that Trump is not given control of the Senate and the House. This will carryover to those Independents who are willing to vote for Trump. They’ll be more secure with a Trump Presidency if the checks and balances are stacked against him. The Republicans will lose the Congress in a big way if it appears likely that Trump will win.
  2. It’s Close: Nothing much changes in this scenario from the previous. The fear of Trump controlling the White House with a friendly Congress will still scare people enough to vote Republicans out of office. This could yield the worst-case scenario: A Clinton administration with a Democratic controlled Congress.
  3. Clinton Wins in a Landslide: It’s sad that, as conservatives, this might be the best-case scenario for the country. If Clinton is winning big going into the final weeks, there’s a chance that a mixture of complacency on the left and stalwart opposition on the right could save Congress. A Clinton White House with a Republican-controlled Congress is not what anyone really wants, but if we’re talking about the lesser of evils, this is the least evil scenario.

There are two paths possible for conservatives to take. The first is bad. The second is worse. With the first scenario, we push with everything we have to prevent Trump from having the slightest possibility of winning. This doesn’t mean supporting Clinton; I would never vote for anyone as liberal or corrupt as either candidate and the idea of an opposition vote should go against American values. There will be conservative candidates on most ballots. When in doubt, write-in Ted Cruz.

Preventing Trump from having a chance means fighting for the conservative candidates in Congress and running for Governor without supporting Trump. It sticking to our guns that he possesses neither the integrity nor the skills required to run this country. It means making sure that nose-holding Trump supporters realize that opposing a Clinton White House means the potential to give her Congress as well.

The second scenario is a full-blown blitz to do three things: help Trump win, help Congress remain Republican, and push both towards conservatism in any way possible. Unfortunately, “any way possible” is limited. In fact, there may be no way to make Trump shift to the right. Some will point to his Supreme Court list as an example that he can be conservative. This sentiment is naive. It’s a list of names of judges that someone else likely compiled in an effort to pander to conservatives. If any other candidate had released the list, I would cheer. This is Trump. He can and has changed his perspectives at will. This list is meaningless until someone is appointed. Based upon how he’s handled literally every other policy proposal, I would wager that the judge nominated to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat is not on this list.

Then, there’s the fall. Every pundit has been anticipating a breakdown or scandal of some sort since Trump announced his candidacy. It hasn’t happened, at least not to the point that he would lose. Every day, the chances increase. If you think that nothing is coming and that it’s safe to attach your name to the Trump brand by supporting him, may God help you when the Trump train derails. Those who have stayed true to conservatism and America will remember who drank the Kool-Aid.

By embracing Trump for the sake of unity, Republicans are increasing the likelihood that they’ll lose one or both chambers of Congress. The only way to prevent it is to support conservative candidates and to declare loudly that Donald Trump does not represent us.



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Friday, May 20, 2016

It’s Not That Trump Isn’t a Conservative. He’s Not Competent.

One of the biggest reasons that many Republicans are claiming to either reluctantly accept Donald Trump or to not accept him at all is that he isn’t a conservative. Moreover, he’s actually a liberal on nearly everything outside of immigration; Mitt Romney and John McCain appear to be right-wing extremists compared to Trump. This really isn’t the point.

As we’ve learned the last several Congressional election cycles, conservative promises usually don’t equate to conservative actions once elected. One of the biggest reasons I support Ted Cruz is that he said he’d promote conservatism during his Senatorial campaign and he kept his promise once in office. This is rare. The reason that candidates do it is simple. It works. They can talk about conservatism on the campaign trail, then act like a moderate Establishment crony for the majority of their term. Then, they start back with their conservative talk right before re-election. Republicans are so hungry for principled conservatives that they’ll listen to the pitch and cross their fingers.

The same thing is going to happen with Trump. In fact, we’re seeing it already with his release of a nice list of conservatives to potentially replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Don’t get me wrong – he’s still going to continue to shift his views to the left for the general election, but he’s the master at speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He is the only politician I’ve ever known who’s able to support both sides of an argument with ease. He’ll say the right conservative things without committing. He’ll say the right liberal things without committing. That’s his skill.

Unfortunately, America may buy into it. The GOP Establishment is already falling in line.

I’m a policy guy. I enjoy reading and analyzing policy proposals by candidates and elected officials. I usually make my decisions based upon these analyses. With Trump, it doesn’t work. He could come out as a full-blown Constitutional conservative and my opinion of him wouldn’t change for two reasons. The first is easy and needs very little explanation: I don’t trust him. Not a bit. Not an iota. He takes pride in being able to shift his positions at will. That means that absolutely nothing he says today has any meaning about his Presidency. The excuse that a man who claimed to be “very pro-choice” and supported partial-birth abortions is able to change his mind means that he can change his mind back.

The second reason is a bit more complicated. Trump is incompetent. He’s demonstrated that throughout his life. Millions of voters look at a billionaire and assume that he must be a great business man. He is not. He’s never been one. He’s a great marketer and an incredible salesman, but he’s successful in spite of his decisions. I contend that if Trump was born to a middle class family, he wouldn’t be a billionaire today. He might not even be a very successful person at all. Unlike candidates like Cruz and Marco Rubio, Trump didn’t work his way to the top. He was born on top. He was born into a real estate empire. He received “small” million dollar loans to get him started. He received more loans when he failed. Where is his success? Real estate. Where are his failures? Literally every other endeavor he’s ever attempted outside of real estate and his brand.

Trump Air took less than a Presidential term for him to completely blow it up. He was in the USFL one year before turning a thriving league with a ton of potential into a laughing stock. He built Trump Mortgage, saying that it was, in his highly intelligent opinion, a great time to get into the mortgage industry because it would be thriving for a long time to come. That was 2006 at the beginning of the mortgage crisis. Time after time, Trump demonstrates that he’s completely incapable of leading any company. How does he expect to the leader of the free world? More importantly, with a resume as horrendous as his, why would any voter be willing to risk the country on someone who has surrounded himself by failure.

The uninformed and easily-impressed wings of the Republican party have been enamored by false promises that are turning out to be lies (that they call “straight talk”) and the belief that he’s a strong man when he’s really a strongman. God help us if this man becomes President.



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Thursday, May 19, 2016

Either Trump Wrote His Own Press Release or He Had a 4th-Grader Do It

Under normal circumstance, we try to stick to policy in our defense of conservatism and America. Rarely do we make fun of anyone for being silly; that’s the stuff for rags like Salon or Gawker. However, the way that a Presidential candidate communicates gives us insight into how they would act if elected and Donald Trump’s self-written press release is a clear example that this man is not fit to be President.

At this point, we haven’t confirmed that it was written directly by Trump but after reading it you’ll likely come to the same conclusion:

The fact that Hillary thinks the temporary Muslim ban, which she calls the “Muslim ban”, promotes terrorism, proves Bernie Sanders was correct when he said she is not qualified to be President.

Look at the carnage all over the world including the World Trade Center, San Bernardino, Paris, the USS Cole, Brussels and an unlimited number of other places. She and our totally ignorant President won’t even use the term Radical Islamic Terrorism. And by the way, ask Hillary who blew up the plane last night – another terrible, but preventable tragedy. She has bad judgement and is unfit to serve as President at this delicate and difficult time in our country’s history.

Initially, I was going to write up a sentence-by-sentence, word-by-word analysis of why this is embarrassingly moronic. After further consideration, I’m going to leave it as it is. Either you read this and realize what it represents or you’ve already succumb to the poison in the Kool-Aid. As noted on Twitchy, this is gibberish.



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Wednesday, May 18, 2016

The Crazy Scenario Where Ted Cruz is the GOP Nominee

Yes, the comments on this post are going to be brutal. In fact, I’m not even going to promote this post. I’m just going to write it up, Tweet it out, and see what comes of it. There’s a scenario, albeit an extremely unlikely one, where Ted Cruz is the GOP nominee.

About a week ago, I started seeing things falling into place. I chalked it up as wishful thinking since, as a Cruz supporter, there was always the chance that I was simply in denial. The more I watch, the more I realize that there are two things that make me believe there’s a chance it could actually happen. The first is that circumstances favor Cruz if the tide turns against Trump at the right moment. The second is that God is sovereign; while I would never presume to know anything about His plan for America or the world other than what’s in scripture, I know for certain that nothing is impossible when His will is at play. Whoever is supposed to be President of the United States will be President of the United States. Now’s not the time for a theological discussion, but it should be noted that acknowledging God’s sovereignty is not a license to sit back and do nothing.

A few things have happened surrounding Cruz that makes the scenario work. It’s important to note here that I do not believe this is Cruz’s plan. He filed to run for re-election to the Senate in 2018. He’s been pushing for delegate control in an effort to shape the Republican platform towards conservatism. He’s travelling to various state conventions to rally support for this reason.

For various reasons, Cruz is staying in the mix and doing things that would be required for him to win the nomination even if he has no plans of doing so. By filing for re-election, he’s able to continue fundraising. Being out of the nomination race will put him two months behind the Democrats for general election fundraising. By filing now and soliciting campaign contributions, he can keep the money dripping in. More importantly, he can still maintain a small campaign staff to keep the machine warm.

His goal of a contested convention meant that he would need to accumulate delegates favorable to him for subsequent ballots. There are reports that some of his delegate victories are starting to fade and support Trump, but that’s to be expected now that he’s out of the race. If push comes to shove, they’ll support him.

One of the most important indicators that he has a chance is that he hasn’t endorsed Trump. This is important as we’ll soon see because it will need to be someone not tainted by Trump who is nominated. Of course, all of this is for naught if the single catalyst doesn’t occur at the exact right moment: Trump’s scandal, meltdown, and/or disqualifying revelation.

Since announcing his candidacy, the media and most pundits have been waiting for Trump to get wrapped up in a scandal or meltdown right before our eyes. It didn’t happen, at least not in a way that could hurt Trump. For Cruz to get the nomination, something bad will have to be revealed about Trump. A serious scandal, complete public meltdown, hidden camera recording of him saying or doing something really bad… sadly there are plenty of options that would fulfill this. We’re not talking about the feeble attack piece the NY Times posted over the weekend. We’re talking about something yuge. Whatever it is, it needs to happen right before the Republican National Convention.

One might wonder why it has to happen right before the convention. The reason is RNC rule 40b and the meddling of the GOP Establishment. Under rule 40b, a candidate can only be on the ballot if they have a majority of delegates in eight or more states. Only Cruz and Trump qualify. If the disqualifying/scandalous Trump event happens before the rules are modified, the RNC will almost certainly shift the rules to allow for more candidates on the ballot. We would see Marco Rubio and John Kasich almost certainly making a play on the floor if they’re on the ballot. We might even see someone else make a move. The Establishment will do whatever they can to prevent Cruz from getting the nod. That’s why this must transpire after the rules are finalized the week before the convention.

Another question might be why the nominee would need to be someone who didn’t endorse Trump. I’m not talking about the lukewarm acceptance that some have given him. I mean those who completely shifted from enemy to fanboy such as Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal… anyone who hopped all the way onboard the Trump train. Anyone who currently supports Trump will be tainted. Whatever the revelation is about him, it will be far-reaching. It will not just affect his candidacy. It will be like a scarlet letter painted on the chest of those who were too blinded, corrupt, or politically ambitious to see through Trump’s deceit and incompetence.

Lastly, this scenario means that Cruz would have been better served to stay in the race through to the end, right? No. He was being brutalized by Trump and his media surrogates. The damage, the scars, were starting to stick. The “Lyin’ Ted” moniker was making an impact on his own supporters even though Trump’s primary backing for it was the Iowa caucus when a campaign staffer alerted people of the Carson CNN post. Watching Trump label Cruz as a liar is like Bill Clinton attacking someone as waging a war on women, but for whatever reason Trump sold the idea that he’s honest and Cruz is not. It was important for Cruz to get out when it became clear he couldn’t prevent Trump from getting to 1,237. That’s why he dropped out shortly after the Indiana results were announced.

The chances of a Trump-proof scandal happening at the right moment are next to nil which means this article is an exercise in futility and false hope. Again, I won’t promote this story to the masses, but it was important to get it off my chest. It’s like watching a painted at work without knowing what’s being put to canvas. I’m seeing what could be if all the right things happen and I’m willing to accept it as possible even if it only has a fleeting chance. There, I said it. Now that it’s out there, I can go back to working on more realistic scenarios.

As the Cruz campaign said, no regrets.



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Sunday, May 15, 2016

Using the Clinton Counterarguments to Defend Trump Brings You Down to Their Level

Hillary Clinton might just be the worst serious Presidential candidate in modern history. In fact, the only person who can realistically give her a run for her money is her opposition on the Republican side, Donald Trump. This isn’t an article that will try to determine which liberal, corrupt, deceptive major party frontrunner is worse. If anything, this is free advice to Trump supporters who have a strong tendency to make the wrong arguments when attempting to defend their chosen candidate.

When points are made about Trump’s lies, liberal policies, or history of immorality, the counterargument often starts with a variation of the words, “ya, but what about Hillary?” Those of us who are pointing out Trump’s shortcomings aren’t doing so because we believe that Clinton is better. That’s the point. Clinton isn’t better than Trump and Trump isn’t better than Clinton. They’re both liberal Democrats.

The fact that Trump allegedly wants to build a wall doesn’t excuse his other policy proposals that are as destructive as Clinton’s. It definitely doesn’t excuse the radically progressive ideas that Trump has been floating about the economy. Remember, one of Trump’s “strengths” that he and his supporters have been touting is his financial acumen. Now that he’s being forced to go into more details about how he would fix the economy, he’s taking a stance that is left of Clinton. On trade, bringing back American jobs, and fighting the national debt, Trump is in lockstep with another candidate: Bernie Sanders.

The argument at this point should not be that Clinton is even worse than Trump. It isn’t just weak. It’s defeatist. Rather than using the middle school argument that “my candidate is stronger than your candidate,” Trump apologists should be leading the charge to make Trump listen to conservative reason. They should be telling him that he must stop lying if he wants to retain their vote. They should be telling him that he must not keep shifting to the left on policy proposals. Don’t make the argument that he’s the lesser of two evils. Help him to stop being one of the two evils.

With hope and gentle prodding, I encourage Trump supporters to stop playing the weakness card. You’re sounding like victims. You’re relinquishing your political muscle that has been built on conservationism and replacing it with the feeble accusations used by liberals. Stop it. If Trump is to be the President, we all need you to get him back on track rather than being his liberal enablers.



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Saturday, May 14, 2016

Psalm 37:4 – ‘the desires of thine heart’

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.Psalm 37:4 (KJV)

For such a wonderful an important verse of the Bible, it’s a shame that it is often misunderstood and used to deliver a perverse message. The prosperity gospel, a false gospel promoted by so many teachers around the world, uses this verse to convince people that if they love the Lord and do good works, that they’ll get the desires of their heart. This is incomplete.

The desires of the heart are evil. We want money. We want things of this world. The desires of our heart are anchored by the carnal desires of the flesh. That’s not what this verse is describing. To understand it, we need to look in context.

Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

Trust. Delight. Commit. These are instructions for us to give unto the Lord. “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.” In other words, we aren’t to love the Lord in order to receive the desires of our human hearts. When we give all of our trust, delight, and commitment to the Lord, the desires of our heart can change. Sadly, we can never do it fully. Our sin nature loves the world. This inability for any man to be good or righteous in the eyes of the Lord made it a requirement for Yeshua to be the only unblemished sacrificial lamb to atone for our sins and our sin nature.

The desires of our heart would be different if we were capable of embracing all that the Lord offers us, but we cannot. This brings up two questions. First, if we are incapable of doing it, why would it be instructed in the Bible? The Psalmist wasn’t stating an impossibility. He was alerting us to what could be achieved prior to the revelation that no man can achieve it. No man is righteous. No, not one. That doesn’t mean that the promise made to the righteous one doesn’t exist.

The second question that it brings to mind is that if we are incapable of fully embracing all that God wants us to embrace, why embrace any of it at all. That’s a much more complex answer, but it’s also simpler from a different perspective. We won’t go into the hard answer right now, but the easy answer is that God instructs us to do it. If He’s our Father, we must try to obey even if we are incapable of achieving it completely.

The one thing this verse does not tell us is that if we love God and we’re good people, that we’ll get the things of this world that our heart desires. Only when our hearts do not desire the things of this world will our heart’s desires be realized.

The post Psalm 37:4 – ‘the desires of thine heart’ appeared first on Judeo Christian Church.



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Friday, May 13, 2016

If Gender is Based Upon Internal Awareness, then Rules Must Pertain to Sex Rather than Gender

Most conservatives are fighting the wrong battles as it pertains to bathroom laws. We’re making the mistake of addressing this logically; applying logic to a debate with liberals is like giving a chemistry lesson to an infant so they’ll eat their Brussels sprouts.

It should be noted that I specifically called out “rules” rather than “laws.” Laws are simply rules that are established and enforced by government, so the concept doesn’t encompass everything at stake with this crucial topic. This is definitely about laws, but it’s also a cultural issue. Now that President Obama is making a decree and threatening to withhold funding from states, it’s political beyond the laws as well.

The debate should not be over gender. I’ve made that mistake myself and while the individual debates were easy to win, a cultural shift is happening that would overpower the victories we could win by debating that particular issue. In other words, it’s time to stipulate that there are more than two genders. I know what you’re thinking because I have a hard time accepting it myself. We won’t win that battle. Moreover, it’s not even important whether or not we win that particular battle or not. The real battle must be centered around shifting the rules to pertain specifically to sex rather than gender.

Give them their identity. A conservative case can be made that one can identify any way they choose as long as doing so doesn’t do harm to others. We shouldn’t try to fight whether or not someone is allowed to identify as a particular gender, race, religion, ideology… anything. If a man wants to identify as a woman, so be it. His gender will now be female. His sex, however, is still male.

The distinction between gender and sex is the difference between preference and physiology. Public bathrooms should be divided by sex. If Bruce Jenner wants to be called Caitlyn, so be it. If she goes through the transition and becomes a woman, so be it. However, her sex is still male even if medically she has transitioned. Why? Because it doesn’t matter how many hormones or operations she has to make her appear to be a woman. She still possesses the core of maleness. As it pertains to rules, there is nothing that can be done to change the fact that she was born male.

If a man has operations to put horns on head head and fur grafted onto his skin while he grazes in the field, we’re still talking about a human. He might identify as a bull, but his core is still human.

If we continue to fight this war from the perspective of identity, we will lose. Soon, we’ll start seeing 6’9″ boys identifying as females so they can dominate in girl’s basketball. This is the blurring of the lines that we should have all seen coming. When lines become arbitrary and physiology is replaced by identity, the lines will no longer simply be blurred. They’ll disappear altogether.

The path for conservatives is to pick one line – sex as determined by birth – and draw it as the singular component of all rules that pertain to the sexes. By fighting the gender battle, we’re accepting that gender has a place within the rules. It shouldn’t. It has its place culturally, but when rules are being set, our unwavering platform must focus on sex.



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Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Correction...


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Monday, May 9, 2016

If You’re Shocked that Facebook Censors Conservatives, Here’s a Bigger Shock…

The Internet in general censors conservatives. It always has. It likely always will. No, I’m not suggesting that sites like Red State or National Review are invisible. That would be too obvious, too outrageous. The censorship that happens across the internet is so subtle that it takes a former employee to blow the whistle before it can even become news.

In reality, this has been discussed often pertaining to many high-volume websites for years. On social media, sites like Twitter and YouTube have been under scrutiny well before the recent Facebook revelation. In search, Google is notorious for blaming the algorithm for its clear left tilt. Then, there are the major publications like the New York Times and Reuters who routinely link to left-leaning sentiment on “news” issues when neutral or right-leaning sentiment better serves the purpose. This is why progressive sites like Salon, Slate, and Alternet pop up as the “news” for Ted Cruz and other conservatives. Hit pieces against conservatives tend to appear more readily on nearly every major traffic-driving website. Meanwhile, puff pieces about Hillary Clinton fill the exact same venues.

Yes, the Internet is against us. It’s against Christians. The conspiracy theorists would blame the New World Order for controlling media at every level to push a leftist agenda of globalism. The end times watchers will blame manipulations from “rulers of the darkness of this world” for this disastrous trend in the media. I’m not sure what the cause is, exactly, but one does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to realize that there’s a conspiracy of some sorts arrayed against conservative Christians on the Internet.

Unfortunately, it’s worse than most even realize. The left is creeping into alleged “alternative media” sites like InfoWars and BeforeItsNews. These sites are not the beacons of counter-culture conservatism that they appear to be. They’re good for a chuckle, but their tilt always ends up leaning to the left in the long run.

Here are a few safe sites. Be warned: just as Breitbart and Drudge took their turns to the left, we have to make certain that we watch for the same trends everywhere. I hate to come across as paranoid but I’ve been burned too many times by “conservative” websites that were actually wolves in sheep’s clothing.

  • Redstate
  • National Review (usually)
  • The Resurgent
  • Daily Wire
  • Heritage
  • The Daily Signal

There are others, of course, but I’m compiling a comprehensive list on another site.

Now’s not the time for a deep dive. Instead, be aware and look for alternatives in order to get your daily dose of news. The “trusted” sources are not what they appear to be. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Bing – they all lean very much to the left.



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#NeverTrump and #NeverHillary Can (and should) Coexist for Conservatives

When Barack Obama won both of his Presidential terms, conservatives were often blamed by moderates and straight-ticket Republicans because we were accused of staying home. We didn’t get the conservative candidates that we wanted and many claimed that they wouldn’t vote for Mitt Romney or John McCain, so their losses were our fault. The same thing seems to be repeating itself again, but in reality it’s very different.

Truth be told, we voted for McCain and Romney. Conservatives who objected to the GOP Establishment candidates voiced our concerns and filed our objections, but on election day the vast majority of us held our noses and voted for the moderates. The reason they lost is because they failed to resonate with the average voter who isn’t politically savvy. Still, conservatives were blamed because we weren’t enthusiastically embracing the only choice we were given.

With Donald Trump, it’s a completely different scenario. Many conservatives will stay home this time around. It’s not because we don’t think Trump is conservative enough (he isn’t) nor is it out of some misplaced pride that keeps us from admitting that we were wrong about him. The problem is that we’re absolutely right about him. Some or all of the following reasons are compelling us to abandon the GOP nominee for the first time in decades:

  • He’s not even close to being a conservative. In fact, he’s much further to the left than Romney or McCain. Heck, he makes the Bush family seem like far-right extremists. Outside of immigration, every single one of his policy proposals are either pseudo-conservative perspectives or are outright liberal.
  • He doesn’t possess the values that should be required of a President. Trump has been given the businessman pass for doing things that are amoral or even immoral throughout his life. Since he wasn’t a politician before, we’re supposed to forget and forgive all of the people he’s hurt. We’re supposed to dismiss his claims of buying politicians as “just business” because that’s how it’s done. We’re supposed to accept that filing four bankruptcies and tanking dozens of his companies somehow exemplifies sound fiscal judgment. We’re supposed to disregard his casinos (and the strip clubs within them), infidelity, and damaging lives around the world because he was just being The Donald.
  • He’s a moron. He’s rich, therefore he’s smart. That’s the narrative. Forget the fact that he made his money in real estate after being born into a real estate empire. Forget the “small” loans he’s blown through to get here. Nevermind his inability to name a single leg of the nuclear triad after being asked about it by the same person on two different occasions. I never thought George W. Bush was a very intelligent person, but compared to Trump he’s an absolute genius.
  • We’ll lose the Senate and possibly the House if he keeps the race with Clinton close. The final month before the general election will have hundreds of Senate and House candidates pointing to Trump and rallying people behind the idea that he cannot be allowed to have control of the House and the Senate. The only thing that can prevent a complete meltdown of Republican control in the federal government is if he’s losing badly before November.

There are so many more reasons that conservatives are not going to vote for him; too many to list. There seems to be only one reason for conservatives to vote for him: fear of a Clinton White House. I completely agree that it’s a compelling argument. Here’s the thing, though. Hillary Clinton might be the second worst Presidential candidate in modern history and would likely demolish what’s left of the country after eight years of Obama. The only person who might be worse than Clinton is Trump. He’s already sounding more like a Democrat than a Republican. If he’s ideologically similar to Clinton on many issues outside of immigration, he’s not worth the risk based upon his demonstrable incompetence.

His supporters will say that he’s pro-2nd-Amendment and pro-life. Unfortunately, he’s come to these perspectives recently. What could possibly make us believe that he won’t change again? After all, he’s known for changing at will. When the next major mass shooting happens, do we really believe he won’t cave? If women’s rights activists pressure him, will he always fight abortion? Keep in mind that he’s already threatened to change the GOP platform by lightening the abortion stance.

There’s one argument missing here. I’m not one who believes that Trump will destroy the Republican party nor do I believe he can destroy the conservative movement. If the party is so weak that one candidate can make it topple, then it should be toppled. As for the conservative movement, it’s time to make it solidly rooted within the grassroots. Until we can get the people to realize that conservatism works, we’ll never get a great candidate into the right positions.

Is it possible to be #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary? Yes. It’s when we abandon principles and adopt a “lesser of two evils” strategy that we fail. By focusing on a third-party conservative or even investigating other candidates already within some of the 2nd tier parties, we may not be able to stop either of the two evil ones from being in the White House but at least we won’t have to accept the blame for aiding them, either. It is up to Donald Trump and his campaign to earn the votes of Americans, conservative or not. At this point, he’s done nothing to earn our vote other than to stir up a plurality of angry individuals who were ripe for his sales pitch after eight years of Obama.

It’s impossible to know at this time if Trump would be better than Clinton. What we do know for sure is that other aspects of Trump’s nomination are going to hurt the country. It’s also likely that a Trump Presidency will bring America down. Whether through third-party conservative candidate or by sheer grassroots opposition, it’s imperative that neither of the two liberal candidates get our votes.



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Saturday, May 7, 2016

Prom night. Clearly excited!


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Friday, May 6, 2016

Donald Trump and Paul Ryan: The Shady Scenarios Surrounding Their Interactions

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan isn’t ready to endorse Donald Trump. The GOP’s presumptive nominee says he’s not ready to support Ryan’s agenda. The two are clearly at odds, but a scheduled meeting next week is anticipated as being the end of the feud and the beginning of unity within the party against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Then again, it might mark the beginning of a true splintering of the party. All will be determined after they meet, so let’s go over the scenarios before discussing why this is a catch-22 for both men.

They Come Out Hand-in-Hand

In this scenario, one of two things happened. The first is that Trump was able to put Ryan’s concerns at ease and demonstrate his malleability to fit in with both the Republican Establishment as well as a Congress that is fearful of losing some of its Republican members due to a backlash against Trump in November. On the surface, this is unlikely, but we should never underestimate what Trump is able to do behind closed doors. Ryan is smart enough to see through a sales pitch, but he’s also ambitious enough to see opportunities behind Trump’s presentation.

The second scenario is that this whole thing is a charade to make a Ryan endorsement both credible and powerful. If they come out hugging and kissing, Ryan will be able to say that he was a skeptic like millions of other Republicans but that he now believes Trump will defeat Clinton and preserve the sanctity of the Republican party. It helps Ryan because he would be doing so with his eyes open rather than the blindness demonstrated by so many others who have accepted Trump as anyone other than Hillary. It helps Trump immensely as he tries to mend the gap he built with voters, particularly conservatives. In fact, this scenario would be more potent than had Ryan come out immediately backing Trump/

They Agree to Disagree

Ryan can come out supporting Trump with the same lukewarm embrace based solely on his opponent that many have adopted. This is the scenario that would almost certainly signal Ryan’s desire to run against President Clinton in 2020.

They Separate Even Further

Of the three scenarios, this is the one that would be most likely if there’s no ulterior motives at work. Trump goes in to convince Ryan. Even at risk of hurting his own standing within the party (especially if Trump wins the general election) he grows more strongly opposed to Trump and even declares that he will back Trump but only as the lesser of two evils.

If this happens, we can know that there is no duplicity involved. Ryan has real concerns. Trump was not able to abate them. Ryan will speak out during the campaign about any policy proposals that Trump declares that go against the Republican platform. In this scenario, I would gain an immense level of respect for Ryan, a moderate that I’ve been critical towards since his rise to prominence in 2011. I still won’t agree with most of his actions, but at least we’ll know he holds values over ambition, America over the party.

When the dust settles from their meeting, we’ll have a much clearer picture of who is on whose side and how this race is going to unfold during and after the Republican National Convention. If I’m picking the most likely scenario, it’s that the come out of the meeting with Ryan endorsing Trump.



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Thursday, May 5, 2016

I Would Support Ben Sasse as a Third Party Candidate

Senator Ben Sasse is a conservative. He’s a Christian. He’s not part of the Republican Establishment and he was one of the first DC politicians to speak out about and even directly call out Donald Trump about his liberal and/or ludicrous policy proposals. For these reasons alone, conservatives should consider supporting him.

There’s more to it than that, though. I’ll briefly state that Trump would be disastrous for America as President, possibly more so than Hillary Clinton. Now is not the time to go into details about why I believe this, but that particular article is coming in the near future. In the meantime, whether you believe that sentiment or not, can we acknowledge the perspective that Trump is “less than ideal” as our Commander-in-Chief.

Most people know very little about Sasse because the majority of his notoriety has come outside of Capitol Hill. His inexperience in politics has made him less impactful than even Hillary Clinton, but there’s a catch. Just as Ted Cruz made enemies in DC, so too has Sasse started to alienate himself because of his desire to keep the promises he made to the people who voted for him. People like Cruz and Sasse aren’t always the most effective in the legislature but they’re ideal for the executive branch.

The irony is that deal-makers like Trump are much better in the legislature and worse as executives. Before anyone trumpets on about how great of an executive Trump has been in his business life, let’s not forget that every time he’s been an executive outside of real estate or entertainment, he’s failed miserably. His successes in real estate are a result of literally being born into a real estate empire and his successes in entertainment are akin the the Kardashians’ successes. When he’s tried to be an executive in other industries like airlines, mortgages, football, food, casinos, and everything else that’s not real estate or entertainment, he’s been a disaster.

There’s an argument that a third-party run would be bad for the country because it would help Clinton win the White House. We’ll set aside the perspective that it she wouldn’t be as bad as Trump; I know there are still those who think that Trump would be an adequate President, the lesser of two evils, so to speak. I would contend that a solid third-party contender like Sasse would be able to galvanize the conservatives and pull in those Independents and Democrats who are more turned off by the corruptions within the Trump/Clinton option than anything else.

In other words, Ben Sasse could win.

I’m willing to support this effort if only for the sake of protecting my conscience in November, but when it’s examined more closely, it’s clear that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have a candidate that can truly lead America away from the brink. Ben Sasse could.



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Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Of Course John Kasich Dropped Out. Mission Accomplished.

Call me a conspiracy theorist. Call me prescient. Call me bitter. When John Kasich stayed in the race beyond his big victory in his home state of Ohio, I wrote that I believed he had made a backroom deal with Donald Trump to help him secure the nomination.

In retrospect, I’m not sure if the deal was made with Trump or someone in the Republican Establishment, but the evidence is very clear that his mission was to prevent Cruz from being the nominee. Some will say, “but he made a deal with Cruz over Indiana.” Right. A “deal.” It was arguably the biggest factor in Trump’s monumental victory. It was a boneheaded move by the Cruz campaign that completely backfired and I would suggest that the Kasich team knew it would. I’m not going to dwell on the mistakes the Cruz campaign made; in retrospect, their campaign was technically strong by failed to account for the emotional effect of proper political campaign politics.

Kasich is complicit in this major blow to conservatism, the Republican party, and America. Whatever deal he made with Trump, the GOP elites, or whoever, his mission was accomplished. Do I blame Kasich for Cruz’s loss? No. I blame us, the grassroots. I blame the conservative pundits who either betrayed their own ideology or failed to spread it properly. I blame the Christian pandering to political correctness that has allowed Trump to be acceptable to many of us who believe the Bible. I blame the Cruz campaign for not seeing the landmines they were setting for themselves.

I don’t blame Kasich. He should have been an easy foe to vanquish, but most underestimated his effect on the outcome.

There’s no need to dwell on it. However, we must remember. Kasich is on the list of those who fought against America. Etch his name on tablets of history as an enemy of conservatism.



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Tuesday, May 3, 2016

It’s Not Trump’s Fault. Nor the Media. It’s Ours.

In Indiana, Ted Cruz was eliminated from the GOP race. Fingers are being pointed. There seem to be so many people to blame. The reality is this: WE are to blame. By “we,” I mean faithful Christians and true conservatives.

How did this happen? When we. How does a liberal narcissist knucklehead like Trump win over Republican voters? The answer lies in the inability of two related segments of America. Let’s start with true conservatives. The Mark Levins, Erick Ericksons, and Ben Shapiros of the world have failed. The grassroots activists, of which I consider myself an active participant, have failed. The National Reviews, RedStates, and Soshables of the internet have failed. Conservatism as a political ideology makes way too much sense for us to have failed, but we have.

The reasons are numerous, but let’s list a few:

  • Fighting on Their Level: To get noticed, you have to get loud. To get loud means that you have to abandon the higher thinking of intellectual discourse upon which we have an advantage and dive into the realm of emotional argumentation and insincere pandering. This is a losing battle; when feelings are involved, logic is dissolved. Having a low flat tax for economic growth makes sense logically but it doesn’t appeal to the masses who have to be shown things in quick sound bites and brief headlines. Preserving liberties is a fundamental component of conservatism, but when emotional fairness leads to political correctness (which it invariably does), liberties are painted as discrimination. Conservatives have the better plan, but “better” is wiped out when we bring the argument down to the emotional level… which happens way too often.
  • Acceptance of the Lesser of Two Evils: How does John McCain stay in the Senate for so long? Because he’s better than the opposing Democrat. How does Paul Ryan become Speaker of the House? Because we’ve elected too many moderate Congressman. If ever there was a reason to remain on the #NeverTrump side of the ball, it’s this. We have to rebuild the Republican party under the flag of true conservatism which means that we cannot support anyone who is the lesser of two evils. As much as a Hillary Clinton White House terrifies me, I can’t say with certainty that Trump would be better. If anything, I’m leaning towards the notion that he would be worse. I will not vote for either. More on that in another article. In the meantime, we have to come to the realization that we cannot keep electing populists and moderates to office.
  • Allowance of Fakers: Conservatism is popular on the campaign trail. It’s popular for talk show hosts, podcasters, and bloggers. The problem is that too many of them are fair weather conservatives. They bend. They pretend. They wave conservatism around as if it’s malleable when it shouldn’t be. They’ve helped to redefine what conservatism is supposed to be, but the reality is that true conservatism is ideal the way it is. The fakers must be removed from the conversation.

As for faithful Christians, our calling is to share the Gospel, to live by the tenets of the Bible, and to fight when appropriate. We aren’t. As a group, we’re relenting to the same political correctness that is rampant in politics. By standing by and lightly chastising the moral degradation of the country, we’re allowing for people like Trump to become our representatives. It’s sad that Trump is now the “last hope” for defending religious liberties. In other words, we are now condemned to fight on our own.

I’m disgusted, but at this point it’s time to look in the mirror to see why this happened. Once we get our wits about us again, it’s time to do something about it. As Shapiro points out, it’s time to start rebuilding now.



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Monday, May 2, 2016

Cruz Will Win Indiana if Media Spin is Ignored

On Tuesday, voters in Indiana go to the polls to determine the future of this country. Most are saying that if Ted Cruz can’t win Indiana, his chances approach nil for getting the Republican nomination. While that’s debatable, we’ll stipulate it for now.

What we won’t stipulate is that Donald Trump has already won Indiana. That’s simply not true. The media will tell you to look at the polls. They’ll tell you that this factor is against Cruz or that decision is going to hurt him.

Here’s what the media won’t tell you. They won’t mention that Cruz was behind in Iowa leading up to the caucus. They won’t tell you that he was WAY behind in Oklahoma ahead of the primary. They won’t mention that Trump’s choices are also being weighed and considering the debacle of a foreign policy speech he gave ahead of the Indiana vote, it’s clear that not enough people were watching. If they were, Trump’s candidacy would be declared null and void.

They even tried to spin Governor Mike Pence’s endorsement as lukewarm for Cruz and beneficial for Trump. While his press conference was not the inspirational call to arms that Cruz has received from Governors like Scott Walker and Rick Perry, it was an endorsement nonetheless. Now, he’s out campaigning with Cruz and trying to alert Indiana voters about the substantive issues that face the state and the country. Compared to Mike Tyson’s endorsement of Trump, Pence’s should hold quite a bit more weight.

Liberal mainstream media knows they have a loser in Hillary Clinton. They know that the only chance she has of winning the White House is if they can help get Trump nominated by the GOP and that’s exactly what they’re trying to do. It can be said that the press controls the fates of politicians. It’s been happening for decades. This year, in this state, it cannot be allowed to happen.

Cruz reaches conservatives. He reaches true Christians. He reaches the intelligent voters who are coming to realize that Donald Trump doesn’t have a plan for most of America’s problems. The few plans that he actually does have are amateur at best and destructive at worst.

As a man of faith, I believe that this is in God’s hands. How our Creator initiates His plan is by working through the people and at this point, those people are Indiana voters. We are being tested. It’s a test for all Americans and it has come down to the Crossroads of America.

The people of Indiana are free-thinkers. They don’t need the press to tell them who’s going to win. They’ll determine that on their own which is why I’m confident that Cruz will be declared Indiana’s choice on Tuesday night.



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Sunday, May 1, 2016

The companies behind the curtains

Chrysler

In the automotive field, there is a great deal of misdirection going on.  First, there are the parent companies; the company that owns several different brand names and keeps them all under one umbrella.  Then there are brother and sister companies, two different companies that produce the same vehicles under different names, but are still owned by the same parent company.  There are companies that have a stake in other companies, there are mergers, and there are collaborations that take place on a random basis.  To say it’s confusing is an understatement!

When you’re buying a new car from companies like Deals in the D, don’t you want to know a lot about it?  We want to know what kind of warranty is backing the vehicle, what we can expect from the brand, and how well that particular model has done in reviews, studies, and safety testing.  However, when we don’t know the lineage of the cars we’re driving, how can we ever possibly know enough to make us feel comfortable driving them?  There are many car companies with their hands in many different brands, so wouldn’t it be nice to know who actually made your car and who is backing it?

Toyota, the auto giant that produces one of the top selling sedans in the United States, is a Japanese brand that got their start in 1937.  What started as an effort to make quality automobiles has snowballed into a mega-corporation that is the parent company of four additional brand names, and holds a stake in several others.  Toyota is not only, the manufacturing company behind the high-end luxury vehicle company, Lexus, but also is the company responsible for the moderately priced brand name, Scion.  While they also hold a small stake in revolutionary car company, Tesla, it looks as though Toyota has nowhere to go, but up.

General Motors is the perfect example of a parent company, as they’re primary owners of four different automotive companies; Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC.  When the financial crisis of the early millennium took hold of General Motors, they faced some difficulties.  However, they were able to disband, and the new company General Motors Company, LLC was able to form to purchase all of the shares and keep the old name.  GMC and Chevrolet produce many models of the same vehicles, sold under each of the respective names, and they’ve stacked up well against their competitors.  There are also several European companies in which GM has a stake.

Many of the holdings are well known, such as Ford owning Lincoln and Honda owning Acura, but in shocking news Volkswagen is the owner of five major luxury brands.  While Volkswagen is a German company that specializes in producing affordable and approachable vehicles, their holdings are representative of their high-end goals.  As the owners of Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche, Volkswagen has created an almost unstoppable empire founded on luxury.  These days, saying you’re a VW fan, could mean much more than it used to!

While VW’s ownership of several luxury manufacturers may come as a bit of a surprise, nothing is bigger than the sleeper Fiat acquiring a fleet of its own.  With a spotty history in the United States, Fiat hadn’t produced a vehicle in the country since 1983, despite having done major business in Europe for over one hundred years.  However, 2009 saw a resurgence of these vehicles here in the states, perhaps due to the major stake purchase in Chrysler.  In addition to being the owner of Chrysler, Fiat also owns Jeep, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Dodge, Lancia, Maserati, and Ram.  For a company that didn’t do well in the U.S. in the eighties, they’re sure doing alright now.

As of right now, Mitsubishi is the only independently owned vehicle manufacturer, with Mazda pulling up a quick second because Ford only owns a very small portion of their company.  Who knew that the classic Jeep vehicle could technically be considered a Fiat, or that Swedish born Volvo is actually owned by a Chinese company?  Much like the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz, there certainly seems to be a man behind the curtain of some of the world’s most powerful vehicle brands.

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Ted Cruz vs Donald Trump is a Test of America’s Principles

The psychological projection that Donald Trump has spawned with the “Lyin’ Ted” moniker he assigned to Ted Cruz brings up an important question that voters in the remaining primary states must answer. It’s not a question of whether or not Trump is using Saul Alinsky’s playbook (he is) or even whether or not Trump’s ability to manipulate the media is honorable or not (it’s not).


The real question is whether or not this country has the principles and discernment to see through the narratives perpetuated by Trump’s surrogates as well as Hillary Clinton’s surrogates in the mainstream media.

What Trump has done is tapping into a disillusionment with the government by appealing to those who want change regardless of what it will bring. This is an unrequited anger; Trump has demonstrated throughout his life a willingness to thrive within the system. His rebuttal to such claims is that nobody knows the system better than he does so he’s the right man to change it. This is utterly ludicrous. You wouldn’t hire a rapist to protect the women in your family just because he has experience with raping women.

Cruz has demonstrated the types of traits that would be considered admirable if it weren’t for Trump’s and the media’s spin. He fought Washington DC, including corrupt members of his own party, from the time he was Solicitor General in Texas through his term in the Senate, but the spin is that he’s not liked because of the enemies he’s made. He kept his promises, a trait that is obtuse in Congress. He learned the election system and prepared to fight within the rules that have been in place for a long time, but the spin is that he’s trying to steal the nomination.

America is currently rewarding pandering and incompetence while millions of voters are punishing steadfastness and strong organization leadership. This Presidential nomination cycle is terrifying because it shines a bright spotlight on the degradation of millions of Americans’ values.

Undecided voters (or even lukewarm supporters of Trump) need to take a step back and look at the situation through a lens of clarity. If Trump is nominated, it means that Republicans are suckers. If Trump is elected, it means that America is lost. For a man who has demonstrated absolute incompetence to beat a man that has fought for the people demonstrates just how undeserving the country might be.

This is a test. If the voters fail, we deserve Trump as the nominee and as a result Hillary Clinton as President. If we pass, Cruz will be the next President of the United States and we’ll have eight years to truly rebuild all that has been last over the last seven Presidential terms.

America is at a crossroads. It’s certain that millions of Republican voters are allowing their discernment to falter in favor of media manipulation and a great sales pitch. Will the principles that made this country great be pushed aside in favor of a false promise to make it great again?



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