Category: National GOP

Civil Asset Forfeiture

Posted on by Vladimir

Civil Asset Forfeiture has to be the single most boring title I have yet used in this blog. But it is a subject that is fraught with passion for many people.

This, to me, is one of those initiatives beloved of policy makers that must have sounded good in whatever committee room they were in.

“Those drug dealers! They use their ill gotten gains to pay for fancy schmantzy shysters to get off!”

“You’re right but what can we do?”

“We can freeze their assets when they are arrested so they cannot use it to wriggle away. If they are found innocent with their public defender then they can get their money back”

And just that easily we have turned prosecutors, AGs, police chiefs and Sheriffs into unlicensed, unsupervised and relentless tax collectors. They collect their taxes by seizing money and assets from public people – some accused of a committing a crime, some not. Like the Mob, the takings are shared upwards and downwards, and an innocent person can find themselves fighting an entire system to get their property returned to them.

And I have been disturbed to find that Jeff Sessions – whom I had considered to be a Conservative is very much in favor of this grotesque practice of taking money from the public BEFORE any conviction.

I am not any kind of a lawyer – I do not understand how this procedure can pass any kind of muster as “Constitutional” I just do not. But it would appear that now there is far too much budget wrapped up in this subject for anyone in the “Judicial-Criminal Complex” to want to upset the applecart. If the Attorney general of the US is all for it – I doubt he is going to get much pushback from all the people who report up to him.

But no matter what weasel wording is used – it is not Conservative. It is not something I wish to be associated with and I will agitate and push to get rid of it wherever I can.  It is not “rule of law” it is “misrule of law”. I have no problem, at all, with a convicted felon having his ill gotten gains seized by the state AFTER  he or she is convicted.

 

Enough of being collegial

Posted on by Vladimir

Well OK [name removed] – let’s be honest. the first campaign that the Dems and Libs ALWAYS wage is that the current GOP POTUS is “stoopid”. It was the campaign waged against Reagan (Ronnie Raygun and the rest of it) GWB and now Trump. That simple fact alone should give us all pause.

I do not know Trump at all. From my cultural upbringing as a Brit he is almost the epitome of every caricature we get exposed to about crass Americans. And believe me that exposure is continuous.

Would Trump have survived against the Dems that Reagan had to deal with? I cannot answer that question – would Reagan have been able to survive the onslaught of sewage that Trump is enduring? Both questions are unanswerable.

I have become, over the past few months, totally disillusioned with Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard because of their relentless use of meme writing to attack Trump.

As I have said before – when the primary campaign started I was a Scott Walker person. Nancy and I have supported Scott in our small ways for a long time. To my mind he is one of the finest examples of Conservative political executives that we have had in a very long time. I was saddened when he pulled out of the contest so early though I came to appreciate that it was a very smart decision on his part. Ted Cruz was, for me , the next best . In terms of Conservative legislative thought, action and sheer energy, he is a leading light but I did have some reservations about his experience as an Executive.

Even now I am not always, or even often, comfortable with President Trump’s style. I find his live speeches very hard to listen to for example. But I have never assumed that he does or says what he does because of “stupidity”. I find it an endlessly fascinating piece of people watching to see how Trump brings cognitive dissonance to so many people. He is fairly successful as a business man, surviving and flourishing in a cut throat and competitive environment. He ran a two year political campaign that defeated BOTH political establishments – with ease. And he did those campaigns cheaper than his opponents. Yet somehow, just like Reagan, he is portrayed and spoken of as “stupid”? Doesn’t this make you stop and wonder for a minute?

How did someone so crass and so dumb blindside almost everyone? You say that he would not have survived against the “quality of democrat Reagan had to deal with” . Using an unfalsifiable “test” is a rhetorical device and a fallacy as I am sure you are aware. In my opinion – and really this is JUST an opinion, I do not know if any of the other Republican candidates could have won this recent general election even against such a flawed candidate as Hillary, He did it. How does your comment about “Forrest Trump” deal with that outcome? Some fictional character fails upward and that is the explanation for a real life victory by a real ife person? Oh, come on.

I never expected that kicking over the applecart and trying to drain the swamp was going to be an orderly, friendly and warmly collegial affair. I am sick to death of the warm collegiality of a corrupt DC establishment. I am sick to death of electing GOP Majorities and seeing those smug gits fail their way to glory and let down the very people who voted for them.

I am sick to death of watching “conservatives” cut and run because the battle gets hot and people say nasty things about us.

I am sick to death of watching conservatives take the histrionics and theater of the left seriously.

If it takes someone who can out-insult them, outlast them and out maneuver them to get this job started – so be it. I will put up with his taste for diet coke rather than wine, his extra scoop of ice cream, his occasional OTT twitter performance. I would rather have that than the platitudes and mealy mouthedness of what was on offer from a lot of the candidates (Jeb Bush being my favorite target for this).

What I see is opportunity to achieve some serious conservative goals – not everything maybe, but some progress at long last. And yet I see some Conservatives mired deep in the morass of trying to make this all fit within some gentlemanly non threatening and polite framework that only exists in the Pollyanna Conservative Mindset.

National GOP on the horns of a dilemma

Posted on by Vladimir

The current swirling tide of sewage emanating from the extreme leftist media here in the USA is doing a fine job of stirring up its own base. And creating the faux image of a dilemma.

The base are those who loyally marched to vote for Hillary. The audience that cheered when Colbert announced that Comey had been fired – not realizing that they were not supposed to cheer. Comey was no longer a “bad guy” but a “good person” and the audience had not been clued in on the change in the approved view.

Colbert had to let them know that they had got it wrong. Winston Smith would have been so proud. The audience pivoted and did the approved thing and started to boo.

So the leftist mob has been primed and pumped.

There are occasional reports gurgling out of the House and the Senate that seem to indicate that some of the GOP are worried that this sewage might strike a chord with voters and, horror of horrors, they might not get re-elected.

The House GOP – with very few exceptions – is not a hotbed of courage and conservatism. But now they are going to have to be – they are not being left with much of a choice.

speaker ryan
Speaker of the House

The Speaker of the House is going to need to rally his wobbly troops and actually pass legislation that forwards Trump’s agenda. The main planks of getting tough on immigration, building the wall, tax reform and healthcare reform should be pushed through as soon as possible.

Here is why it is in their interest to actually do this.

If their fears are correct –  if the slime that is being tossed around does have an effect – then there is certainly a possibility that there might be a surge in voting for some Democrats.

But the Main stream media – the ones slinging the slime and the sewage – have already utterly failed in their bid to win the last general for Clinton. Despite months and months of unrelenting effort, rumor, grind, lies. They lost. The House GOP should have an evening of popcorn and soft drinks and watch the youtube videos of the leftist meltdown on the news channels on election day. (and if you have not looked in on them in a while – maybe you should too).

The lesson the wobblers need to re-learn is that it was NOT the media that elected anyone.

What won the election for the GOP  and President Trump were the millions of voters who have utter disdain for the media and the leftist herd. They (including me) pay no attention at all to what CNN, NYT, MSNBC, NBC, ABC  and the rest of the idiocracy keep churning out.  Those “sources” long ago lost any journalistic credibility that they may have had left.

If the members of the House think they can hedge their bets by appeasing the leftist scream machine – they are sadly mistaken. The Dems are not going to vote for them no matter how much they grovel. The only votes the House GOP can earn are the votes of the Trump supporters.

If the House GOP does what it said it supported then the chances are good that we will turn up again. If they do not there is a good chance many will not.

The House and the Senate need to grasp – at long last – that if they wish to stay in their offices in DC they are going to actually have to do something.

To get off the horns of this dilemma they need only do what they said they wanted to do.

But in a total change of pace for a lot of them – they are actually going to have to do it.