I've had this blog so long that this year marks the fourth presidential election I have blogged about. Man, that's hard to believe!
I have not posted as much in recent years, but I have not stopped writing and I have certainly not stopped having opinions. With that in mind and the Democrat field having been narrowed to Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, and Republican Donald Trump being ensconced as the incumbent gunning for re-election, 'tis time to crank out a few posts about the candidates.
I'll start with the Dems and this post will be about the man who was the front-runner for their nomination up until last Tuesday, i.e. the self-proclaimed socialist Bernine Sanders. Next up will be one about Joe Biden, who has, for now at least, taken the yellow jersey off of Sanders's back. One about Trump will be forthcoming too.
If you got triggered by me saying that Trump is "gunning" for re-election, you really ought to calm down a bit (and I assure you that the pun which started this paragraph was not intentional).
If you think I'm a blind partisan hack because I criticize Sanders when I opine about Sanders and I criticize Biden when I opine about Biden, please don't forget that there's a Trump post coming up as well, and please realize that you do not know what I'm going to say in it.
But for now, about Bernie Sanders...
I have not posted as much in recent years, but I have not stopped writing and I have certainly not stopped having opinions. With that in mind and the Democrat field having been narrowed to Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, and Republican Donald Trump being ensconced as the incumbent gunning for re-election, 'tis time to crank out a few posts about the candidates.
I'll start with the Dems and this post will be about the man who was the front-runner for their nomination up until last Tuesday, i.e. the self-proclaimed socialist Bernine Sanders. Next up will be one about Joe Biden, who has, for now at least, taken the yellow jersey off of Sanders's back. One about Trump will be forthcoming too.
If you got triggered by me saying that Trump is "gunning" for re-election, you really ought to calm down a bit (and I assure you that the pun which started this paragraph was not intentional).
If you think I'm a blind partisan hack because I criticize Sanders when I opine about Sanders and I criticize Biden when I opine about Biden, please don't forget that there's a Trump post coming up as well, and please realize that you do not know what I'm going to say in it.
But for now, about Bernie Sanders...
Yeah he's been a U.S. Senator for the past 14 years, following 16 years as a U.S. Congressman. And for most of the 1980's he was mayor of Vermont's biggest town. But in his heart of hearts, Bernard from Brooklyn by way of Burlington is a crackpot campus commie with a head full of thoughts that don't deserve to be called ideas.
In John Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row, an industrious immigrant named Lee Chong owned a grocery store that was described by Steinbeck as "a miracle of supply" where "a man could find everything he needed or wanted to live and to be happy." If Bernie Sanders had his way, the feds would shut that store down for offering so many products that it turned a profit (gasp!) because, after all, "you don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants and 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry."
The United States itself is a miracle of supply. But Bernie Sanders doesn't care why that it is or what that means, nor does he care how much that benefits Americans en masse, nor does he care how much that benefits the world in general, nor does he care what consequences would ensue if that ever ceased to be.
Sanders wants Master Government to control everything and decide who gets what. To that end, he wants Master Government to dictate how much of the fruits of your own labor you get to keep. The fact that his preferred system would cause supply to shrink and productivity to wane, and thus cause standards of living to go down, is of no concern to him.
In September 1981 Sanders was invited to speak at the kickoff to a United Way fundraising drive. When he stepped to the mic he stunned the audience and pissed on the whole event by asserting "I don't believe in charities," and by taking exception to the "fundamental concepts on which charities are based."
Why would he say that? Because he believes all that money people voluntarily donate to privately-operated, conscience-driven charities should instead be confiscated by Master Government. And why would he believe that? Because, as per this contemporaneous New York Times article, he thinks Master Government should be "the" provider of social services.
Sanders has had more than 38 years since that night to adjust his position, or to clarify that his position is not as he and the Times made it sound -- yet he has neither adjusted nor clarified.
He has such a soft spot for tyrants and tyrannies that he reflexively airbrushestheir murdering and mass incarceration their abuses while praising them for "doing" things that would be done even better if they weren't so busy murdering and massively incarcerating abusing their subjects citizens. Take, for example, what he said on 60 Minutes two weeks ago: "When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?"
That's Bernie Sanders for you, entirely ignoring a whole menu of patently obvious facts including: 1) that Castro could have had "a massive literacy program" without all the murder and oppression; 2) that lots of free countries have had "massive literacy programs" without any murder or oppression; and 3) that only Castro-approved reading materials have been allowed in Cuba since 1959, which means 4) the sole reason for Castro's "massive literacy program" was so he couldmake get people to read his ever-present propaganda.
Sanders famously honeymooned not merely in Russia, but in the USSR. He did this long after its true nature was well-known, and he did not go there to seek out and fraternize with freedom-hungry dissidents. Instead he went there to glorify their oppressors, and he returned to the free world waxing poetic about Soviet subway stations being "very beautiful" and part of "a very, very effective system." You can practically hear Sanders gearing up to tell us that Mussolini made the trains run on time and therefore we shouldn't be claiming that fascism was all bad.
He frequently tries todistract people from his love of tyrannies take the heat off himself by saying he wants to model the United States after Scandinavian countries, especially Denmark. However the policies he touts are, shall we say, unlike those that actually exist in Scandinavia.
Sanders wants to increase our corporate tax rates, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are already higher than the corporate tax rates in every one of the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden, and Norway). Sanders wants oodles of business regulations, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Scandinavian countries are light on business regulations.
His comparison of his own policies to those of Scandinavia is so inaccurate that Denmark's president, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, told him to cut it out. While speaking at Harvard in 2015, Rasmussenn declared that it's wrong to associate his nation with socialism. He bluntly said that "Denmark is a market economy" and he also applied that description to "the Nordic model" in general, yet Sanders, to this day, continues his false portrayals of Denmark and Sweden and Norway with no sign of slowing down.
The good thing about Sanders is that he's refreshingly honest about what he believes. He is so true to his opinion that he will publicly call things as he sees them even when he knows it will greatly damage his electoral chances. There is something genuinely admirable that.
The bad thing about Sanders is that the things he believes are bonkers.
That, and also his bizarrely rigid way of refusing to ever change his mind or see things from another perspective, even when the truth is slapping him in the face like a wet salmon and making it obvious that he's wrong about whatever it is he's rattling on about. That's a bad thing too.
Should Bernie Sanders be president of the United States, putative leader of the free world? Nope, non, nein, nyet. No he should not. Not at all.
Sanders wants Master Government to control everything and decide who gets what. To that end, he wants Master Government to dictate how much of the fruits of your own labor you get to keep. The fact that his preferred system would cause supply to shrink and productivity to wane, and thus cause standards of living to go down, is of no concern to him.
In September 1981 Sanders was invited to speak at the kickoff to a United Way fundraising drive. When he stepped to the mic he stunned the audience and pissed on the whole event by asserting "I don't believe in charities," and by taking exception to the "fundamental concepts on which charities are based."
Why would he say that? Because he believes all that money people voluntarily donate to privately-operated, conscience-driven charities should instead be confiscated by Master Government. And why would he believe that? Because, as per this contemporaneous New York Times article, he thinks Master Government should be "the" provider of social services.
Sanders has had more than 38 years since that night to adjust his position, or to clarify that his position is not as he and the Times made it sound -- yet he has neither adjusted nor clarified.
He has such a soft spot for tyrants and tyrannies that he reflexively airbrushes
That's Bernie Sanders for you, entirely ignoring a whole menu of patently obvious facts including: 1) that Castro could have had "a massive literacy program" without all the murder and oppression; 2) that lots of free countries have had "massive literacy programs" without any murder or oppression; and 3) that only Castro-approved reading materials have been allowed in Cuba since 1959, which means 4) the sole reason for Castro's "massive literacy program" was so he could
Sanders famously honeymooned not merely in Russia, but in the USSR. He did this long after its true nature was well-known, and he did not go there to seek out and fraternize with freedom-hungry dissidents. Instead he went there to glorify their oppressors, and he returned to the free world waxing poetic about Soviet subway stations being "very beautiful" and part of "a very, very effective system." You can practically hear Sanders gearing up to tell us that Mussolini made the trains run on time and therefore we shouldn't be claiming that fascism was all bad.
He frequently tries to
Sanders wants to increase our corporate tax rates, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are already higher than the corporate tax rates in every one of the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden, and Norway). Sanders wants oodles of business regulations, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Scandinavian countries are light on business regulations.
His comparison of his own policies to those of Scandinavia is so inaccurate that Denmark's president, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, told him to cut it out. While speaking at Harvard in 2015, Rasmussenn declared that it's wrong to associate his nation with socialism. He bluntly said that "Denmark is a market economy" and he also applied that description to "the Nordic model" in general, yet Sanders, to this day, continues his false portrayals of Denmark and Sweden and Norway with no sign of slowing down.
The good thing about Sanders is that he's refreshingly honest about what he believes. He is so true to his opinion that he will publicly call things as he sees them even when he knows it will greatly damage his electoral chances. There is something genuinely admirable that.
The bad thing about Sanders is that the things he believes are bonkers.
That, and also his bizarrely rigid way of refusing to ever change his mind or see things from another perspective, even when the truth is slapping him in the face like a wet salmon and making it obvious that he's wrong about whatever it is he's rattling on about. That's a bad thing too.
Should Bernie Sanders be president of the United States, putative leader of the free world? Nope, non, nein, nyet. No he should not. Not at all.
