Insiders Beware

Our political landscape has been shook up this year, make no mistake. Driven by the publics disdain for politics as usual, two candidates are emerging that are making the insiders of the respective parties have to pay attention to them. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Whether you agree or disagree with them, they have managed to make waves and have us talking points we might not normally be discussing if the field was filled with traditional candidates. Bernie Sanders for example while having been a lifelong politician, is not a traditional insider in that his view are further left than most and he leans, very hard, towards socialism. A fact he does not hide or run away from but is proud of. He doesn't come off as polished and practiced, but rather honest and straight forward. A bit of a fresh air if you ask me in a front runner. He doesn't shy from Clinton's criticism but defends it as strongly as he can without getting dirty. I'm pretty sure the Democratic insiders are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get their rock star Hillary past this guy. From what I'm seeing online, however, the people are liking Bernie more and more. On the Republican side it's going to be a little more boisterous I think. Multiple candidates are vying for the nomination, with the biggest political outsider in the whole shebang leading right now, Donald Trump. His brash straightforward way of speaking has people both enamored and rankled. He says what many are thinking even if the way he says it is a bit crass. But that's Donald Trump. He's slick in that respect. He might piss you off how he talks about a subject, the wall being one of those subjects, but he gets you talking, and he gets you talking about him and what's going on. He has us all talking about him in one respect or another so say what you want, he has opened dialogue. Let's face it, he has us discussing subjects that need serious addressing. I don't agree with all of his views on how to do things, but I do agree on what he has said about needing to fix these problems. The GOP will never in my opinion, stand by and let the primaries and caucuses play out without some serious maneuvering behind the scenes. They can't, Trump is not beholden to them and a candidate who needs them as little as Trump does is dangerous to them. As with Sanders, Trump doesn't need the large donors or PACs to get to the people. The Republican machine I feel is going to try and rally behind Cruz, not openly at first but as the field thins it will become more apparent. They will do anything to keep Trump off the books. The Democrats will be less forceful but still try and maneuver Hillary into position. You see the two parties are used to placing party before country, a practice I maintain is nearly treason in my book. They have a lot to lose if they have to allow someone who won't bow to them become their candidate for President. Hopefully the people will voice with their votes what I see them voicing everyday and fight the establishment by putting in outsiders. Let!s make this election one for the people. Make 2017 The Year of the Outsider.

A blurb about social media

I did a quick check of the poll numbers this morning and what I saw excited me. Not just for the results but because of my post about social media being more important these days. On the site real Real Clear Politics, they showed Bernie cutting into Hilary's lead by 6 points overall since two days ago. Ok that shows momentum for Sanders, but the real exciting part was that The Huffington Post had an article about an online poll that had 45000 plus participants and the overwhelming majority of people gave Bernie the win by an 81% to 19% victory. Yay Internet, real rime results from tens of thousands of people. Side note, the very subject the Dem analysts laughed at Bernie about was still trending on Twitter this morning. Go social media.

Wisconsin Debate

Last nights Democratic debate was interesting to see in the fact that the stark differences between the two candidates was plain to see. Bernie Sanders spoke passionately, openly, and what I thought was in the moment for the most part. Someone who truly believes in what he is saying. I thought he had some good concepts on what to change to make our country better even if I differ on the methods he would use. Hillary, on the other hand, looked like a polished establishment politician who clearly had more experience in the debate forum. Her answers seemed rehearsed, even though the questions were random. I think the reason for this is a candidate like herself has a rote answer for nearly every question out there and it's always mixed with a pitch. She managed during the night to get all of the demographic groups she is trying to appeal to mentioned in her responses. I'm sure her campaign people praised her after last night. After all, she came off as the more poised professional. But is that a good thing in today's political climate? People are voicing their displeasure at political insiders, which make no mistake, Hillary Clinton is, and she presents herself as such. The opponents sparred back and forth with most of the exchanges being clean. Hillary however took what I consider to be the only cheap shot of the night. She miss-represented Bernie in what she called a forward to the book "Buyers Remorse" written by Bill Press. The "mistake" was even pointed out by the panel during the post debate analysis with a reading of the short "blurb" that Sanders said about the book. Hillary's take on what Bernie wrote was vastly different from the truth, and she made it seem like Sanders slammed Obama, not exactly true and after hearing the blurb which reads "Bill Press makes the case why, long after taking the oath of office, the next president of the United States must keep rallying the people who elected him or her on behalf of progressive causes. That is the only way real change will happen, Read this book." I don't see how Hillary can have the impression that's an attack Obama unless you're straw reaching or perhaps outright lying. Clinton also made the claim that Americans haven't had a raise in fifteen years when actually FactCheck.org says weekly income has gone up 9.2 percent in that time frame. Also according to FactCheck Bernie did a bit of exaggerating himself on the unemployment numbers for African American youth. He put the figure at 50 percent and FactCheck puts it at half of that. Hillary did the typical pandering during the night that people are getting tired of, but in fairness, Bernie kept harping on Wall Street even making the argument that going after them would help racism. Not that Wall Street doesn't need reeling in, it does, but your argument has to be more dimensional Bernie. Tying in social media to last nights debate. "Who won the debate" and "Kissinger" were both subjects trending on Twitter this morning. There were supporters and detractors for both sides on the subject of Who won the debate, and clearly at least on twitter, the debate continues on but now it is in the hands of the public more so than the candidates. The Kissinger subject seemed to be, from the tweets I read, mostly in favor of Bernie and I find that amusing because the post debate panel seemed to laugh at Bernie for bringing up Kissinger. They even made reference that the millennials wouldn't understand about Kissinger. Here's what Bernie did in a short span of time last night. He educated people about Kissinger and his roll in trade agreements and regime building, along with the connection as one of Hillary's confidants. They can Laugh all they want, but social media took notice of this and ran with it. One other thing before I give my take on the debate. Sanders mentioned good judgement during the subject of middle east and unintended consequences and I think he is spot on. Good judgement is definitely a characteristic I want in a leader, and I'm not sure Hillary has always used that in the past. Alright so my take is that Sanders took the edge last night, and if he broadens his arguments, he should be able to keep or out pace Hillary, whom I can't even believe is still a viable option to as many people as she is, but that is a subject for another post.

Social Media and Politics

President Obama promised us transparency with his administration, and while he has yet to truly deliver on that promise, social media has kept it for him. There was a time when we got our news from T.V., radio, and newspapers with information about events coming to us days even weeks after it happened. Our knowledge came in such a way that we were hearing about things with no input of our own sometimes long after the fact and in many cases too late to affect any outcome. Social media has changed that drastically. We live in a time now when minutes after words are spoken or events have happened, social media begins buzzing. Once the buzzing begins there is no stopping it, as information travels in an exponential fashion quicker that I can write this post. "You can't stop the signal Mal." Details of events, come to us almost as instantaneously as it does in the Borg collective. Unlike the Borg however, we have our own input that can be sent back just as quickly as we wish. Using hashtags we keep up on subjects and talk about ideas from the inane to the important alike with the speed of Hermes. The instant someone with technology sees or hears things that they deem as important, they are tweeting and posting and sending photos of it for their followers to see. Everyone has their say with social media. This is what makes social media so influential in politics and so cool to boot. We now can speak our minds directly or indirectly to the politicians or candidates on subject we feel strongly about. We can connect with like minded and opposite minded people as well to have our voices heard. It is a phenomenon that is not going away and one that the smart politician or candidate takes notice of and uses to their benefit. Case in point, there were supporters of Sanders that were using social media to insult and demean women. Bernie Sanders did not ignore this issue, he recognized the influence of social media and took the opportunity to distance himself from these fools by saying he didn't want that kind of support. If they want to know what the public thinks, the answer is just a few clicks away. No longer is it necessary to rely just on polls or what advisers tell them or what they hear at a rally. They can learn for themselves online, in their pajamas if they wanted. Sure there is a lot of dip shit stuff to weed out but there is also a ton of legitimate information about how we are thinking, and what we want, out there in cyberspace. Keep it up fellow social media junkies. Keep getting your opinions out there. This is an important part of our political process now. They can't ignore it, not if they're smart.

Why I don't like trade agreements

As I'm writing this I am watching the aftermath reports of the N.H. primary. Christie has left the race and so has Fiorina, no big surprise there. Ben Carson should put on his big boy pants and drop next but he is holding on like he just found out his dad was Peter Pan. I'm watching as Kasich is trying to distance himself from the GOP establishment, a tactic I don't think will work. He is more moderate than many of the GOP but I am not sure how far he strays from the machine. I do think he would work with Democrats better than most of his party, but whether or not he has the oomph of Trump remains to be seen. Watching these events transpire, I think of a subject that has ticked me off for awhile and with the recent months my flame has been fanned about this. Trade acts. In 1993 then President Clinton signed into law N.A.F.T.A. which was a Republican backed idea that a Democrat President not only signed, but worked at selling it to the public. By 1999 millions of textile industry jobs were lost to foreign lands, many of them to Mexico. I pick that year and that industry because 1999 was the year a woolen mill I was a shift supervisor at closed it's doors putting roughly 350 local workers in a small rural area out to pasture. Trade agreements seek to even the playing field between multiple countries. The problem for America in this theory is that it comes at our blue collar workers expense. Bill Clinton said that these agreements would encourage people to get higher education and better jobs. Encourage is a fancy word for force by the way. The problem with that theory is aptitude. If a persons aptitude is not one that is geared for college, then where does that leave them? In a job market that now has less good paying positions that's where. Plenty of these folks put out of work ended up in the service industry for less pay and less benefits. Not long ago, I was shopping in WalMart and ran into a fellow that I had worked with at the mill. Seventeen years later he was just catching up to where his pay had been at the mill. Seventeen years! I myself took a two dollar an hour cut in pay so I could work somewhere with decent benefits for my family. I'm still at this job seventeen years later. It's fair to say that if the mill was still open I would be there and would have gotten similar raises through the years. So that two dollars becomes four thousand dollars a year more I would have made over the last seventeen years. That's 68,000 dollars less spending power and quality of life I have had. Now times that by however many manufacturing jobs that were turned into service industry jobs and that becomes a lot of money. We just signed a Pacific trade act that as I understand it, could hurt the airplane builders and auto builders in this country. So not only did we sign away textile and other manufacturing jobs over the past decades, but now we are going after the airplane and auto workers. Didn't we toss billions of dollars to companies to "save" the auto industry? Did we do that only to turn around and tear that down as we have other forms of manufacturing? If our politicians want to strengthen our country again, they should look to reversing the power and effects of the trade acts, before we completely paralyze our work force and turn us all into needing handouts. We need a President who will work to bring jobs back into our country. People don't want handouts, they want a job they can survive on and be productive in society with. So yeah I don't like the trade acts, I have 68,000 personal reasons not to.

Who I am

Ok so a little about myself. I'm a blue collar guy with a beautiful wife and four kids that I absolutely love to death. In fact, having the great relationships with my children and my wife, is what I count as my greatest accomplishment in life. As an undeclared voter I have voted both Republican and Democrat in the past as I tend to vote my conscience and convictions. Like most Americans I have a great love of my country. In recent years I have become disenfranchised by how our country is being torn down and weakened by the political machine. I feel there is enough blame to go around to both parties. I have no degree, I'm not a student of politics but I care deeply and have opinions of my own on where we need to improve our nation. So I started this blog. You may not agree with my views and that's okay we all have different perspectives on things. If you wish to comment and post here its allowed, I am happy to defend my point of view in a civil but possibly spirited debate. I think I bring the perspective of the working person to the table, the person who needs to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, the person who has to juggle bills to get by. I hope something I write along the way makes someone somewhere go hmmmm. If that happens, then I guess I can feel good. Have great day and enjoy the blog. John

Moving Ahead

On to South Carolina for the Republicans and Nevada for the Democrats. Both races will be decided Saturday Feb. 20th with the polls at this point showing Clinton with the lead in Nevada and Trump with the lead in South Carolina. While it is early and things could change, I think Sanders will have a harder time in Nevada than he did in New Hampshire because of regional issues. He was known in New Hampshire and the Northeast but how well known in Nevada before this week I have no idea. His win in New Hampshire and loss by just a coin toss in Iowa give him a good momentum and something to build on for his constituency. He hasn’t had to run negative ads which goes in his favor, but let’s face it, he hasn’t had to. The media coverage of the emails and the reminders from the Republicans have done a good job of casting a shadow over Clinton and her trustworthiness if not her out right bad judgement. Let’s face it a private email server was not the brightest way to go when you’re head of the state department. Trump on the other hand does not face issues of region. He is as well known, if not more so to America as any politician out there. He boldly says what he has to say and thus far, defends himself strongly. He is the anti-politician in this race. Cruz and Rubio are at this point second and third respectively in the polls there. Cruz is basically GOP establishment and therein lies what I think is his downfall if what is happening in NH is happening all over, anti-establishment sentimentality. Ted seems to me to be made of wood. He seems almost expressionless and emotionless so if he doesn’t warm up and distance himself from the political machine, he could be in trouble. Rubio is a rookie senator with a bad voting record that comes off as out of his element. Sound familiar? That’s what we have now as President and let’s face it it’s been a less than stellar seven years. I’m pretty sure that at least part of the insider disdain comes from the fact that how Washington works was not changed as promised. After Feb. 20th the parties will flip flop with Democrats heading to South Carolina for a vote on the 27th and Republicans to Nevada with a vote on the 23rd That’s where we stand now with ten days to go to the next results. I do want to mention that the NY Daily news called the New Hampshire voters "Mindless Zombies" for voting for Trump. While I am a fan of the Walking Dead I have two words for that rag mag they call a newspaper, but I will refrain from posting them here.