Archive for December 30, 2023

I want Republicans to be more progressive and less conservative

Posted: December 30, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in election 2024
Tags: , , ,

…about the issues that matter to us.

Republican lawmakers are some of the weakest people in the world. With the notable exception of Donald Trump and a few Senators and Representatives, the overwhelming majority of Republicans elected to office can be relied upon to negotiate like Pope Francis did with Communist China (as in, sell out on all accounts and get nothing), find excuses for not pushing reforms that matter to the voters, and then reliably asking for more money because otherwise the evil Democrats will come to power.

Meanwhile, progressive lawmakers on the Democrat side push everything from porn in elementary classrooms and allowing sexual assault to go unpunished if the person is transgender to EV mandates and our military bankrolling abortion. They get pretty much all of these things, and since Republicans maybe roll back half of them, this means that “progress” is happening.

I don’t want Republicans to be conservative. Conserving means someone focuses on maintaining the status quo. That status quo is never going to happen. Technology changes our environment. Advances in medicine and communication means we can live longer, instantly communicate around the world, and even travel into outer space. It also brings on new challenges. Who would have thought that we’d be asking ourselves what to do with one million frozen embryos babies? Or how we would keep our faith if we lived on Mars?

The typical conservative response is to stick one’s head in the sand and refuse to accept the change. At my church, I have a parishioner that believes WiFi is damaging to your brain and causes cancer. When I installed a campus-wide WiFi network, every young person was ecstatic, but this guy was incensed. He spent an hour verbally blasting me while I was working, finally causing me to express some notably non-Christian phrases and tell him to…well, you can probably guess.

Yet after the network was complete, every young mom could stream the Mass on YouTube in the parking lot when they had to take their screaming 2-year-old out of the church. My church didn’t want a Facebook page until I pointed out that most of our young people were on Facebook, and if we didn’t put a message out, someone else would. Now we have a Facebook page, a solid following, and another way to build our community.

We cannot afford to simply conserve. It is not enough to just reside in the world, protect what we have and hope someone doesn’t come and upset our little piece of the world. Someone IS going to upset it, whether they come rioting in the streets, stabbing people on the train, or coming for your kids in school. Most of our elected Republicans lack the spinal cord to promise anything but a return to what used to be, which is pointless. We aren’t going back to the age of steam, the 1950s, the Victorian era, or any previous time. Birth control pills, social media, and all the recent advances in technology won’t disappear. Instead of wishing for things the way they were in the past, lawmakers need to push for their own version of progress. Since they seem void of ideas, here are my proposals that would make 2024 a far better year for Republican progressives:

  1. 100% free adoption for any unwanted pregnancy. Fund the health care, maternity leave and all adoption costs. We have so many willing families that end up adopting kids overseas due to the legal and funding hurdles associated with adopting American babies.
  2. End Daylight Savings Time. We already have states that don’t follow it. End it in the U.S. permanently.
  3. Eliminate Physical Education in schools, bring back driving class, home economics and shop class. I mean seriously, physical education is a joke. Just drop it already. Kids need to learn how to drive, balance a checkbook, cook a meal, and build things with their hands. Boys and Girls, we are far better off with more girls knowing how to use a power drill and the more boys knowing how to cook basic meals.
  4. Bring back medical billing transparency. This was a pretty big issue that President Trump signed into law, but has gone largely unenforced. We can’t begin to talk about keeping health care costs in check when we have no idea how much it costs in the first place.
  5. Turn Social Security into a TSP-like structure. Congress will rob Peter to pay Paul using Social Security unless its changed into a defined contribution plan.
  6. Cap Congress Senators and Representatives at 30 total years of service. Seriously, do we need someone hanging around for more than 30 years? After 30 years between the Senate and House, folks need to move on to something else.
  7. Legalize marijuana and tax it. It’s fine if the DoD or other places won’t hire if you use drugs, but we’re probably better off just taxing it instead of trying to ban it.

I’m sure there are plenty of other items to add to this list. The point is, rather than trying to return to the mythical “good ole’ days,” we should be pushing for better rules that reflect the reality we are in.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

End of the Year Thoughts Under the Fedora: I’m Old Enough to Remember… Election Shenanigans, What If’s, Days gone by, I SWAT you SWAT they SWAT and two Ghosts of Basketball past

Posted: December 30, 2023 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Blame Trump, election 2020, election 2024, elections, nba, politics, Sports, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , , , , , ,

I’m old enough to remember when, just a few years ago, our friends in the left absolutely and positively insisted that anyone like me who claims the last election was stolen was some kind of conspiracy theorist? And yet now we have not only the story of Colorado by legal decision and Maine by practically a Royal Fiat banning Trump from the ballot.

At the same time and with none of the fanfare of those events we have the republican AG of Georgia who was vital in the cases against Trump suddenly appealing a ruling that he has to testify under oath about the Dominion voting systems that he apparently is going to have an updated security patch install for AFTER the next presidential election.

If things are clean wouldn’t you want to make it a point to note under oath just how clean they are?

I still can’t get over the idea of how much would have been different if the left/democrats simply treated Donald Trump as a normal Presidential candidate and as a normal president and had not bothered all that was done in 2020.

He would be in the final year of his second term and riding off into the sunset. Russia would not be in Ukraine, Hamas would have been kept in check, the US economy would have been booming, the border secure and our strategic petroleum reserve still full

I strongly suspect those who did all they could to steal the last election consider those things as bugs rather than features, less opportunity for graft you see.

Older and wiser heads alas didn’t prevail

Speaking of being old enough to remember I was going through an old backup hard drive I found which had all sorts of goodies from 2015 from me guest hosing Conservatively speaking on WCRN to old podcasts and coverage of all kinds of stuff from all over the country.

One thing I noticed was from a GOP event in NH that included Donald Trump before he had announced. He was leaving the hotel where the potential candidates were and I filmed his departure in passing thinking nothing of it.

Not a single person had a clue what was coming at the time.

I’m also old enough to remember when Swatting was confined to folks like Stacy McCain and the like. 

You might forget that during the Kimberlin years Stacy and others involved in exposing that crowd were swatted. At the time I even went to my local police to warn them of that tactic since I was writing on the subject at the time. People didn’t seem to take it all that seriously.

But now we have members of congress and prominent folks like Johnathan Turley now targets

It would have been nice if this stuff was nipped in the bud early but like the banning of conservatives on twitter and youtube it wasn’t considered important enough to tackle so thus you get more of it

Finally yesterday my wife was working and my sons were engaged elsewhere so I went to my local Longhorn restaurant, sat at the bar, order the Spicy Bites (the single best appetizer value/taste combo that exists at any national chain) opened up Volume 3 of Shelby Foote’s epic Civil War trilogy to Hood defeat at Nashville by Thomas and watched the Boston Celtics play the Toronto Raptors at home.

It was the 2nd day of a back to back and stars Jason Tatum and Kristas Porzingis were not dressed and vet Al Horford were all unavailable so we saw a lot of reserves getting serious playing time. It was an exciting game with an odd finish where the Celtics blew a 20 point lead and had to eek out a win that wasn’t decided till the final second of the game, but two things jumped out at me that I hadn’t seen much of if at all in years

At one point in the 2nd quarter when the Celtics lead was seemingly comfortable I looked up at the screen and was shocked to see an NBA team with practically an all white team on the floor, technically you could call it an all “white” five because the only player of color on the floor was ironically Derrick White (who has really come into his own this season) who frankly is light enough to as they used to say in the old days “pass”.

I suspect it’s been more than half a century since that has been the case but there was something that was even more shocking to me that NBA fans haven’t seen much of these days and that was the play of Center Luke Kornet who instead of launching 3 point shots from the outside was actually hustling to be under the basket to retrieve rebounds and be in a position to be fed for easy layups by a charging White or Brown.

Just a decade or two ago a center playing, well like a Center would not be much of a story but in today’s game it’s practically headline news. I’d like to see more of it because in the end, that tends to pay off.

Note: Our days of Christmas fundraiser is in progress although in fairness it’s been a bit of a bust as we’re still at $2900 & 10 subscribers to go. If you’d like to help change that read more here or donate below: