Iowa Results and Insights

 

The biggest lesson we learned was that the media placed far too much emphasis on the caucuses. What we learned was that in cases where there was no definitive winner, then the entire choice would come down to a coin toss, how perfectly random. In the six instances where these rules were applied it was apparent that team Hillary got to call the coin-toss and call them they did. Apparently Bernie Sanders was perfectly happy to allow her team to call it, “Heads we win and Tails you lose.” And in six caucuses that appears to have been the call as Hillary either won each or Bernie lost, either way, Hillary went forth and declared a great victory while Bernie, being Bernie, claimed he and his supporters gave it a good fight and promised to continue the “Revolution” on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and beyond. When one looks beyond the primary delegates to the “Super Delegates” which are more or less decided by the Democrat Central Committee, one sees the reality of the delegate race as Hillary has 357, Bernie has 14 and O’Malley has 2 all going towards garnering the 2382 delegates needed to win.

 

We learned that Hillary can place way too much emphasis on her phantasmal ability or luck by her precinct chairs abilities to call coin tosses. Her grand claims of victory soon turned to sand in her mouth and she probably sputtered and spurted still insisting she had a mandate. Perhaps she was looking at the super delegate count which is made up of party hacks and people of whom Hillary had their FBI files on another server which was not used for State department e-mails but whose contents would be just as interesting to the voting public but has zero chance of ever seeing the light of day as it would be burned as soon as it was taken in as evidence. There are far too many people the files held there could damage and who have the power to destroy evidence just as well as Bill and Hill have proven capable. We also learned that Bernie has excited and tapped into an interesting voter group, the young and first time voters. Some of these first time voters have been of sufficient age to vote before but have now found their candidate. This is a large part of the voters eight years ago which propelled Obama into the White House and are just as likely to spoil Hillary’s last chance saloon and give her a really bad case of déja vu hiccups as she watches another upstart, this time a seventy-four year old hippie socialist who never let go of the dream from his college days, or is it daze? Should Bernie Sanders pull this off he will have proven that Hillary is fated to never grasp the golden ring in politics and Bill will never hear the end of how it was supposed to be hers but that Obama beat her and then Bernie the crazed lunatic stole it and it just was not fair. I guess nobody ever had the nerve or the suicidal tendencies to tell Hillary that life quite often is not fair. We learned also that Bernie had a solid and faithful following and that his challenge to the chosen one is real and very possible no matter how many delegates Bill can line up on Hillary’s side as in this day and age of the voters, as a collective intelligence, choose the candidates and the final elevations of a President. We also have seen the inside of the “Feel the Bern” generations and they are coming on strong and this might make Bernie Sanders the more electable Democrat and the real candidate the Republicans should fear facing.

 

The Republicans gave us a different message. The evangelicals, the Christian Right, was supposed to decide the Iowa vote and put one of two candidates on the short list for failure; they did not come through that way but have written the last swan song for Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz needed to corral, he is from Texas you know, the Evangelicals but he somehow lost about half the herd which left him limping into first place by a small margin, though it was a landslide by Hillary standards. Ted Cruz did do well as many had predicted claiming that the majority of the polling numbers for ‘The Donald’ (Donald Trump from here on) were mostly fictitious and when the time came to actually support a candidate, these polling numbers would prove to be a phantasm and disappear. Well, they actually did but not as far as predicted and Donald Trump has proven he is for real and will become a viable and potential winner should he start to actually express serious steps and reasons for his bombastic statements and clarify them into a reasonable platform people can stand behind. Ted Cruz, as wonderful as his supporters claim, will very likely fall flat in New Hampshire and rebound in South Carolina and Florida though it will remain to be seen if that is sufficient for him to remain in the race. After the caucuses in Nevada and Colorado it will be definitively decided who is the acceptable alternative to the establishment choice which appears currently to have fallen from Jeb Bush to Chris Christie to John Kasich and now on the Marco Rubio. Other than Cruz, Trump and Rubio who finished in close proximity to one-another, the rest should start taking stock of how much is this worth pursuing and what actually are your actual chances of emerging from the background in a positive manner. The media will ignore you until you make a mistake, and then they will crucify you until you fall on your sword; trust me, I’ve been there. For a good number, probably larger than those willing to vote for him, Ben Carson leaving will be heart-wrenching. We want so much to just once have the nice guy who refused to go negative and was an exemplary person whose life reads like a storybook where underprivileged youth from the worst part of town rise to prominence and was not only a success but also a solid positive force and contribution to society become Mr. Smith Goes to Washington except with a much happier result as he rises above the political machinery and does great and wonderful things lifting the nation by his inspirations. That would have been Ben Carson but perhaps this is better as the media have not torn him to shreds which would have come next had he shown he might succeed. The media will praise you to the hills and as soon as you start to succeed, partially due to their building you up, they will tear into you until you let out a personal secret, say that one time you lost your temper, we all have at least one such moment, and then that will become your defining moment as if nothing else you ever accomplished really made up for the momentary weakness when you were eight years old.

 

 

Mr. Carson Goes to Washington

 

 

So the result in Iowa placed Ted Cruz momentarily in the cat bird seat with Donald Trump close behind and Marco Rubio in tightly behind Donald Trump. There being merely 8,500 votes between the three out of close to 175,000 they finished in a photo finish which their margins only looked large compared to the difference, or lack thereof, between the top Democrat candidates who basically resulted in a dead heat. The reality hopefully will become obvious to the three that for the race to be determined honestly then one of the non-establishment candidates will need to bow out if the other will have even a chance of taking the nomination. Should all three remain in the race and the contest continue to have similar results then there will be the definite possibility that at the Republican Convention there will be no definitive winner and as long as the three remain holding their delegates to their vote then there will be an arranged result which is basically a fixed convention where a candidate is chosen in some back room with some establishment and insiders making a choice and then bringing their golden boy forward and sweeping the convention as the party machinery steamrolls any opposition and presto, Jeb Bush is brought forward as the great hope of the party and we end up with the potentially lowest turnout election percentage in American history as we end up with that dreaded Clinton-Bush family rerun of the 1992 election without the drama or concern as the people show their disgust by staying home. Should this scenario become reality, then there need be a slight Constitutional Amendment making every Federal elected office have an additional choice at the bottom such that the people can demand better choices than the party line who has scratched the most backs and it is decided to reward them by making it their turn for the House of Representatives and then later the Senate and finally, for the real party hardliners, the Presidency by voting for “None of the Above” and if “None of the Above” receives the greatest plurality then the parties must find new candidates and a reelection will take place six weeks later, so they better choose well and somebody the people would rally to or they could face embarrassment after embarrassment and perhaps allow a primary if it is a Senate or House of Representatives for unaligned people to attempt to gain ballot access and allow the highest independent vote getter to also be on the ballot as it is doubtful such a person could do any worse in the performance than some of those currently in office. We really need to get better quality candidates and until the parties are forced to consider that they have to win over the people or face challenges from what are usually referred to as Joe-six-pack meaning it as a pejorative label when actually that may be a person who would do a far better job of representing the people with their being from amongst them. Still, there are the gems amongst a sea of party functionaries and the quality, or lack thereof, of the candidates on the average ballot simply proves George Washington correct when he claimed, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Enough said.

 

We regret that nowhere in the conglomerate of offerings is there a single candidate with military service in their background. Some of the candidates I doubt could reduce their self-worth to a sufficient level to survive basic training nor would they know when to stand on principle and when to stand down as that is also something they test in basic training and for the select few who respond accordingly they offer them to attend OCS which is the one way that an enlisted man can become an officer, and maybe a gentleman. The world stage being what it is, we believe would be best served by somebody who has served and our first choice would be Lt. Col. Alan West.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Hillary Clinton on Freedom {of} From Religion

 

Democrat front-runner candidate for President Hillary Clinton made some frightening comments in a speech she gave addressing the Women in the World Summit in New York City where she stated the following:
“Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice — not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will and deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed. As I have said and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century and not just for women but for everyone — and not just in far-away countries but right here in the United States.”
The entire twenty-three-plus minute speech is embedded below at the end of the paragraph. What Hillary Clinton expressed here is almost exactly the same as what President Obama meant when he railed against those people stating, “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

 

 

 

 

He as well believed that those who held traditional American beliefs were the main impediment to Western societies being capable of moving forward. He and Hillary both believed that religion, Judeo-Christian religious beliefs were the central force against permitting the necessary changes they both see as required in order for the twenty-first-century progress to move ahead. Of course their definitions of what must be eradicated from the society are the support given to the fetus and its physical well-being and right to life over the mother’s mental wellbeing and right to an uninterrupted social life. In all of their references they paint the religious as standing in the way and impeding moving forward most often by the religious oppositions to abortion as the biggest hurdle which society must overcome in order to continue onto the path to a future filled with promise even if it is devoid of children. Simply look to Europe and witness the reality they desire for the rest of the Western world, a slow, inexorable marching into oblivion. They have cast the religious amongst us as societal Luddites impeding the progressive political agenda and its advancement. Of course advancement only as it has been defined by the Progressives and echoed as so precisely by a complicit media as it is the apparent marriage of convenience between the Progressives on the extreme left and their sycophants in the media which are responsible for the marriage of convenience between leftist culture and leftist government.

 

Meanwhile, we have watched the decline of Western societal structure as a sizable number from each generation have been literally cut from the society even before they were born. Further, those who were the underpinning of the society find themselves in decline which has led to an extreme increase in seeking of immigrants, both legal and undocumented, as solutions to initial errors in judgement or errant lifestyle that has led to an half of each generation left missing from society since the onset of abortion as nothing more than a simple procedure with no moral or otherwise negative influence. Still the Progressive extremists and their views of life have been cast and accepted as middle of the road, thus making extreme Progressives to be defined as the moderates while centrist individualists being made into right-wing-crazies and Constitutionalists are painted as so far to the right that their views must be guarded against just in case they might win a simple argument and start the snowball down the hillside.

 

To witness how such radical views became defined as the centrist view, one need only witness a panel discussion where there are three or four from the progressive side while as well as more often than not the moderator while only one and on rare occasions two chosen and permitted to express the conservative argument; this is called balanced. There is little to any debate about what Hillary expressed at that particular venue, she simply laid claim that religious doctrines will require changes in order to make them compatible with her and the other Progressives’ agenda. It is this low grade war being fought between the religious and secular interests that will eventually be decided in the courts. It is only fair that this finalizing in the abortion debate end from whence it came with the initial Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973, and the Americans have continued debating that decision ever since. This was one of the final deliberations where the court took it upon itself to forego waiting for the people and their elected governments to make legal and to protect abortive rights bringing the argument to the fore enacting the sentence such that they would fit it within the protections within the Constitution. Thus the Supreme Court took it upon itself to make it illegal to refuse a woman her right to have an abortion and challenged those who disagreed with their going rogue presuming to make law rather than interpret law from the bench. This will become the point where the Democrat Party made the Obama Administration’s core beliefs the central plank in their 2016 Platform placing it dead center. Soon after the Roe vs. Wade decision the makeup of the court changed and has contained an odd balance with usually two or three justices, who can best described as truly moderate, determining the balance of the Supreme Court on any given day.

 

These floated trial balloons being loosed by the Democrats and Hillary along with the rapid-fire discovery or addressing of controversies and questionable acts have a simple explanation, best to get them behind them and decide what positions to retain and which to discard. By the time next year rolls around and actual primary election season is upon the Americans these will all be discarded as old news, been there covered that and simply proven irrelevant already so let’s forget it and not waste precious time and talk about now. Should this plank against Judeo-Christian religious based society raise sufficient clamor, then it will never be brought to the fore again but it will still remain as a central pillar, a silent, central pillar. For those who doubt this, perhaps a little revisit to the 2012 Democrat National Convention move to restore to the platform a reference to “G0d” and recognition of “Jerusalem as the Israeli Capital City” is in order. The response by the Democrat Delegates on the floor and the response of the chair are their epic insanity and can be viewed at the Globe and Mail here; you can always count on the British to retain things well past their use-by-date and for Beyond the Cusp to recall and use such trivialities. It appears that the Democrats and Team Hillary have learned that it is paramount to get through all of the ugly and difficult to handle items which might reveal the difficulties and other unintended consequences up front and early on so that the Democrat National Convention can be choreographed to run smooth as a Patrick Swayze fight or dance scene. The one question which remains is whether the American public reaches a point where they have a really severe case of Hillary fatigue from which her campaign is incapable of surviving. With the remaining time and the earlier than usual kickoff, we may be about to watch a Hillary burnout where she does not get past and escape all the questions from her past and instead she simply gathers more questions and doubts and eventually is forced from the campaign simply as too much ends up being revealed. The question remains if not Hillary Clinton, then who? There are those calling for Elizabeth Warren and others now claiming that Bernie Sanders would make a formidable campaigner. There are other candidates out there such as Martin O’Malley, Maryland Governor and former Mayor of Baltimore; Joe Biden, current Vice President and perpetual comic relief; Andrew Cuomo was former New York Attorney General and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Clinton administration is the eldest son of the legendary ex-Governor of New York and Democratic Party heavyweight, Mario Cuomo; Howard Dean as long as he remains calm and not scream eerily; Rahm Emanuel was part of the power behind President Obama’s first term; and Al Franken who is a humorous joke which would make a mockery of the office and a few others. There are a few who are above the fold candidates who have the backing of some of the Democrat elite and thus will be the ones who will be the top contenders. Hillary Clinton is the most obvious with Elizabeth Warren the favorite of the leadership of the not Hillary establishment and lastly there is Michelle Obama who would have a formidable cash producing machine of her husband behind her. The odds between these candidates and the others make for an interesting mix with Hillary probably being nudged out due to her baggage being simply overwhelming and her inability to avoid making incredulous miscues and just plain saying the dumbest thing at the worst possible moment. This plus the fact that her voice is simply grating on the nerves which also makes her miscues even more horrific and damning. Michelle Obama has improved her presence and has learned from her mistakes made during her husband’s campaigning. Still, Michelle Obama also has grated on the nerves of too many people including many in the liberal media which will work against her. Add to that the statements she had made about the electing of her husband as the moment which made her feel proud about her country and other haunting statements which will be used against her. The worst thing thus far which can be used against Elizabeth Warren would be her reference to having been partly Native American which she can easily dismiss and give a heartfelt, or at least appearing to be heartfelt apology and she would probably be permitted to march on unscathed as that would become old news almost immediately and she has no other thus far obvious mea culpas to trip her candidacy over. This latest Hillary statement may simply become something which could balloon and become literally overwhelming as it will play very poorly in Iowa, South Carolina, parts of Florida and possibly New Hampshire. If Hillary Clinton is going to implode it will become evident very quickly and then it will blow the door wide open and let the torrential flood of candidates begin.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Press Wrongly Claims Anybody but Romney

We have been hearing the press refer to each Republican who entered the race or made a splash be touted as the “Anybody but Romney” candidate until they either self-destructed or otherwise crashed and burned. There was Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and then the first show of preferences in Iowa. After Iowa they made note of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum simply because they were not given much choice, Santorum ended up winning, yes, I know they said Romney by 8 votes but the official results out this past week tentatively show Santorum by 34 votes, they’re counting again, and Paul came in a close and respectable third close on the heels of Santorum and Romney. Then the focus moved to New Hampshire where they belittled Ron Paul as not a serious option who would get his devoted following’s votes and they rather quickly dropped any mention of Rick Santorum touting the race as between Romney and the not Romney candidate, Gingrich.

Yesterday was the primary in South Carolina and the conversation remained Romney-Gingrich and not much else. The press is back to its Romney versus the not-Romney, which they have returned to Gingrich, dumping Santorum and Paul as quickly as the press driven polls have allowed. But what the press has honestly been seeking from day one has been the not honestly conservative candidate. They are pushing anybody but Santorum and Paul, the only true conservatives of any real measure in the field. But the press keeps drumming the “win the center to win the election” mantra in order to support the least conservative candidates. That is the big lie of our times, the fat middle of the political road voters. We have a polarized nation where most of the voting public are either on the right shoulder or the left shoulder and nobody is in the middle of the road (anyway, you get run over walking in the middle of the road). President Obama did not win the last election by pandering to the middle of the road. He ran on a whole program of wish upon a star and liberal emotional tripe. There was no attempt by the Obama campaign to do anything but rouse up the left and far left base and get them out to vote. Meanwhile, listening to the press, including Fox News, the Republicans went with a moderate Republican who would be able to gather in those millions of voters of the middle in America. Unfortunately, that was done at the expense of energizing the Republican conservative base which caused a rather lackluster turnout from conservatives. We are heading down that same worn out road again and I believe that conservatives have about had all they can stomach of the press choosing the Republican candidate every four years.

The Republicans have to realize that their only ticket to electoral victory is through a vitalized and excited base. Chasing the chimera of the centrist voters is the path to political oblivion. The Democrats have realized this and that is why they have completely forsaken the middle of the road track and swerved as far left as possible and excited their base. By going middle of the road and offering a moderate rather than a true conservative message will not resonate well with those true conservative voters needed so desperately to turn out by the Republicans. Did the Republican Party’s leadership miss the entire message from the 2010 midterm elections? The Republican Party nearly swept the elections in the vast majority of contests where they ran true, real, and, yes, Tea Party candidates for the House and Senate. Hello!! Wake up and smell the coffee. Take off the rose colored, mainstream press issued glasses and read the Tea Party leaves. Republicans only hope is with real, through and through, red-blooded conservatives. But they will not wake from their mainstream press induced haze and face reality because it is easier and less confrontational just to play the game where the Republican Party is simply the foil which never honestly and righteously challenges the liberal dogmas and actually hold up a real and true conservative banner and run with it.

Beyond the Cusp