A Fair Look At Donald Trump’s Record

By William Teach March 19, 2016 – 10:30 am

Is Donald Trump a liberal in Republican clothes? A progressive? A Conservative? Where does he stand? Let’s take a look at where he has stood on issues over the past. Over course, we cannot look at a voting record like most politicians, since he has never served in an elected position. On The Issues as a fantastic place to look at a candidates record, such as it is, and rates Trump as a Libertarian-leaning Conservative. How do they arrive at this? Let’s look (hit the link to see the full details and quotes).

  • Abortion: Since 2011, he has been pro-life, after being pro-abortion back on 2000.
  • Budget and economy: he’s been remarkably consistent in leaning towards Republican/Conservative/Libertarian policies
  • Civil Rights: was against gay marriage before Supreme Court decision. Seems to want to move on. Against political correctness
  • Corporations: very much pro-corporation, but has also noted that being a know-it-all shuts the door on new ideas
  • Crime: Trump is very tough on crime
  • Drugs: he’s no fan of drugs or alcohol, but, does favor legalization, mostly leaving it up to the states
  • Schools: favors school choice and competition, against Common Core and teacher’s unions, against much of the silly stuff taught in schools
  • Energy and Oil: for drilling, doesn’t believe in ‘climate change’
  • Environment: against circuses and their abuse of elephants, thinks environment should be considered in development, and thinks the EPA is a disgrace
  • Foreign policy: has long had a concern with China. Very concerned with Middle East
  • Free Trade: has long been concerned with trade imbalances, especially regarding Mexico and China
  • Government reform: thinks private sector can do it better, the role and scope of government should be limited
  • Gun control: he used to be for gun control and an assault weapons ban, before changing his mind in 2011
  • Health care: he was for universal health care before changing to being a free market guy against Obamacare in 2011
  • Homeland security: he’s been for a strong military and strong homeland defense, especially against radical Islam.
  • Immigration: This is a very mixed bag, with some statements against illegal, and to a degree, legal, immigration, some are in support of legalization of illegals and expanding legal.
  • Jobs: Trump has been pro-America, bringing jobs back, is against a minimum wage, prefers more opportunities, and against raising business taxes
  • Principles and Values: I’d recommend reading all these for judgement
  • Social Security: he’d prefer people invest in their own retirement, but, understands SS isn’t an entitlement, it’s honoring a deal
  • Tax reform: against flat tax, but, wants a simple tax code with low rates. Did advocate for a 14% tax on wealthy back in 1999 to erase national debt. Flipped on Bush tax cuts in 2011.
  • Technology: is big on supporting tech
  • War and Peace: big supporter of Israel, as well as the US military. Wanted to attack North Korea. Slurred John McCain multiple times, going back to 2000. Supported Iraq War before flipping.
  • Welfare: supports workfare, and limited food stamps.

The only thing I’ll note in letting you make up your mind, is that several of Trump’s positions flipped in 2011, when he decided to run for President as a Republican. His position on the Iraq War flipped at the exact same time as when the Democrats decided to use the war to attack President Bush of political purposes. Also, the quotes generally do not go back that far, sometimes only since 2011. Of course, in a lot of cases, no one would have been asking Donald questions about political positions before 2011. He seems to be, for the most part, a moderate Republican who is pro-business, wants limited government, supports the military and Israel, is against radical Islam, and wants people to succeed through hard work, education, and increasing America’s economy.

What are your judgements?

 

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Swedish Town Cancels Earth Hour Due To Threat Of Refugee Violence

By William Teach March 19, 2016 – 7:13 am

Why yes, it is almost that time, when members of the Cult of Climastrology are supposed to turn off all their lights for a massively long hour to show their support for Other People Doing Something about anthropogenic climate change. This is a bit of a problem in one town in Sweden

(Breitbart) The annual virtue-signalling festival known as ‘Earth Hour’ won’t be celebrated in one Swedish town this year, thanks to a sex-crime epidemic sweeping the municipality.

The small Swedish town of Östersund — population 44,300 — is presently living in a state of fear. Police have instructed women to not go outside alone at night following a spate of sex attacks, and police patrol in search of the perpetrators who have so far avoided capture.

There have now been 14 separate reports of sex attacks in the town, with victims ranging from grown women to 10-year-old girls. Police have refused to release details of the suspects they are seeking — as is usual in a country where police took the decision last year to combat racism by not discussing the ethnicities of crime suspects — but victims have described “foreign origin” attackers.

The danger is considered so great the symbolic act of turning the town’s municipal lights off for one hour is considered too much of a risk, and police have requested the event be cancelled. The final decision was taken in consultation with local officers on Tuesday, with Social Democrat spokesman for the local council Ann-Sofie Andersson remarking:

“Earth Hour is a good and important event, but this year we chose to have the street lights on in view of what has happened. We want everyone to feel safe”.

The town had earlier told women to not go out at night due to the threat of rape, sexual assault, and violence from all the “refugees.” They’ve expanded their night patrols by adding volunteers to the police force. Leftists have refused to acknowledge the threat to citizens, and especially women, from these migrants streaming into Europe. They’ve chosen to put extremist Muslim men over the safety of women in the hierarchy of Things Liberals Care About. Will cancelling Earth Hour be the final straw that makes Leftist give up their support of a segment of a religion that overwhelmingly treats women with a profound lake of respect? Of a religion that has a large segment that treats women as pleasure toys for men? Probably not.

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Fox News: “What’s Up With Donald Trump’s Extreme, Sick Obsession With Megyn Kelly?”

By William Teach March 19, 2016 – 6:59 am

Donald Trump has been attacking Fox News’ Megyn Kelly for months, ever since that horrible debate for which she was a moderator. One would think Trump would move on. No. He’s continued on and on and on, and has, as of late, started to refer to her almost exclusively as “Crazy Megyn” in Tweets. This culminated in this tweet

Fox News responded (via Mediaite)

Donald Trump’s vitriolic attacks against Megyn Kelly and his extreme, sick obsession with her is beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate who wants to occupy the highest office in the land. Megyn is an exemplary journalist and one of the leading anchors in America — we’re extremely proud of her phenomenal work and continue to fully support her throughout every day of Trump’s endless barrage of crude and sexist verbal assaults. As the mother of three young children, with a successful law career and the second highest rated show in cable news, it’s especially deplorable for her to be repeatedly abused just for doing her job.

While I’m not sure this rises to sexist, it certainly is crude, rude, deplorable, and beneath a presidential candidate. Sure, politics is a rough and tumble game, and high end people should be ready for others to respond. But, people in elected office or who are seeking elected office should certainly limit condemnation of Citizens engaged in using their 1st Amendment rights. What does Trump get out of these constant assaults on Kelly? His supporters apparently like this school yard brawl type of tweeting, but, will it play well during the General election? Does it simply reinforce that Trump is a vulgar, nasty person?

Let me say that I’m not a big fan of Kelly. She’s a moderate squish, and, much like Bill O’Reilly, I do not like the way he treats guests. And, yes, she does go far in attacking Trump. Perhaps Trump could take the high road. Alas, no. Trump will attack almost anyone who has even mild concern or opposes him. He’s recently gone after Mitt Romney, Lindsay Graham, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager Stuart Stevens, Marco Rubio, the Wall Street Journal, and, of course, Ted Cruz, among others. Can you guess who he rarely attacks?

That’s right, Hillary Clinton. He has no special name for her, like he does for Crazy Megyn and Lying Ted Cruz. He almost never even mentions her on Twitter, which seems to be his preferred method of communication. The most recent mention is

If it was another Republican, he’d be attacking them, calling them names. But, with Hillary? Mild chiding. Perhaps that should give Republicans a clue as to whom Trump sees as his real enemies. If Trump wins the Republican nomination, will he go after Hillary as hard as he’s gone after Conservatives and Republicans?

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Ivanpah Solar Plant Could Be Soon Shut Down For, Get This, Not Producing Enough Power

By William Teach March 18, 2016 – 4:16 pm

Color me shocked!

(Daily Caller)  California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds.

The Ivanpah solar plant could be shut down if state regulators don’t give it more time to meet electricity production promises it made as part of its power purchase agreements with utilities, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Ivanpah, which got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, only produced a fraction of the power state regulators expected it would. The plant only generated 45 percent of expected power in 2014 and only 68 percent in 2015, according to government data.

This is what happens when Big Promises are made on technology that is less than viable. That $1.6 billion could have been spent on research and development to produce solar that works well. Nope. Had to go to an Obama donor (also, Harry Reid). The cost is rated at $200 a megawatt hour, almost 6 times the cost of natural gas. Said natural gas is also need to supplement the running of the plant, since it apparently cannot produce enough electricity to run itself.

And, the plant has till July 2016 to supply more power or it could be shut down. Which could mean big problems, considering that the owners asked for a $539 million grant to help pay of the $1.6 federal loan.

One has to wonder, if this technology is so great, why is it necessary to finance it with taxpayer money? If it worked well, the private sector would be dumping oodles of their own money into it.

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 18, 2016 – 1:00 pm

…is a water intensive orchard making orange juice for The Rich, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The H2, which, of course, does their Big Boob Friday, and has an art post on Louis Lozowick.

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Huh: Who Knew That Solar Is For The Affluent And Not The Poor?

By William Teach March 18, 2016 – 10:30 am

One of the things about the push to build solar, along with other “alternatives” (when the actual projects aren’t actually being blocked by hardcore enviros), is that they are expensive, and the increased cost in energy will harm the poor and middle class. Interestingly, the hardcore Warmist, George Soros funded, Joe Romm website Climate Progress agrees, and says we should Do Something

Low-Income Communities Might Need Solar More Than Anyone Else

Solar power has been criticized for helping the wealthy and punishing the poor. Some groups — largely, it should be noted, utilities and advocacy groups funded by fossil fuel interests — say only affluent people can afford solar, leaving less-affluent people to pay more than their share for the grid.

Who receives most of the benefits when it comes to expensive solar power? The rich. Who benefited from all the money thrown towards building solar from all the stimulus programs passed by Democrats? The rich. Who can afford to pay the increased cost for solar energy, both at the base energy level and with the following cost of living increase? The rich. Who suffers? Those who are barely making ends meet in the first place. Those who are on fixed incomes. Those who are middle and lower class.

Who benefits most from affordable energy? The poor and middle class. Seems like this push for solar is for The Rich. It’s easy for them.

But there are some basic impediments to getting every low-income community to go solar. The challenge is in the financing. For starters, many of the financing programs for rooftop solar are only available to people who own a home.

And, typically, those who are poor and middle class cannot afford that high cost to install solar, nor will the building owners generally pony up tens of thousands of dollars for installation, which would mean a rent increase. The Warmists can spin this all they want, but, it is bad for the lower and middle classes at this time. Instead of pissing money away and raising the cost of living for citizens, why don’t these Warmist groups dump their own money into research and development? Without massive government subsidies…not tax breaks, but actual subsidies…solar cannot sustain itself. Why is everything from Progressives about harming the middle and lower classes in practice?

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Salon: Say, Liberal Cities And States Are Really Horrible Places For Sexism And Hatred

By William Teach March 18, 2016 – 7:15 am

I’m not sure Salon really thought about it when they re-posted an article from ultra-leftist Alternet regarding sexism and race hate and stuff

The 10 most bigoted cities in America, according to Twitter
New research measures the frequency that social media users across the country resort to hate speech

In many ways, social media provides an unfiltered look into the American psyche, its prejudices and biases included. Just last week, when a young Mexican-American man sang the national anthem at a Democratic debate, racists took to Twitter to express their indignation. And when a film trailer revealed that the cast of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens included several non-white actors, including a black lead, several people tried to launch a boycott because the film had “barely has any whites in it.”

Language aimed at women on social media often takes on sexist and misogynist overtones, particularly when women write about issues such as feminism. And for women of color, the intersection of racism and sexism can create a particularly hostile environment, thanks to every anonymous troll with 140 characters worth of bile to spill.

Words matter, which is why this side of social media is both ugly and telling. You can learn a lot about a community by the frequency of its residents’ use of racial slurs on social media. Abodo, an apartment hunting site, decided to take a close look at tweets sent from around the country. Between June 2014 and December 2015, they assessed 12 million tweets, looking out for racist, sexist, fatist, transphobic, ableist and other types of slurs, and were able to identify where those users were most concentrated.

We used to say “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Nowadays, any minor little word can cause Offense where no offense was meant and mean we need a National Conversation. The article contains all sorts of charts showing this Offense. The states with the worst and least derogatory language are a smattering of both Republican and Democratic ones. This applies similarly to “anti-black” language by state and city.

Anti-Hispanic tweets are primarily in Democratic Party run cities. I think they forgot the one about States, as there are two of the same graphics by city. But, what about negative language against women?

While it is certainly spread out, we can certainly see a disproportionate amount of derogatory language against Women in Democratic Party states. How about cities?

Of all those cities, only Baton Rouge and maybe Arlington, Tx, can be consider right-leaning cities. The rest are lock, stock, and barrel Leftist cities.

What about gays? Liberals are super supportive of gays, right?

Once again, the majority are from Democratic Party run cities. There was no state graphic. So, how about Transgender hate by state?

There’s quite a bit in Liberal run areas. Shouldn’t they all be green for best? Breaking it down by city, all Democratic Party run cities. We see the same pattern when it comes to “cognitively disabled” and overweight people.

Why are Democrats using such ugly, racist, bigoted, misogynistic, and hateful language on Twitter?

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Conservatives Against Trump Looks To Stop Trump

By William Teach March 18, 2016 – 6:53 am

Red State’s Erick Erickson and a smattering of other Conservatives have banded together, calling themselves Conservatives Against Trump to stop Trump, and has released the following statement as a whole

We are a group of grassroots conservative activists from all over the country and from various backgrounds, including supporters of many of the other campaigns. We are committed to ensuring a real conservative candidate is elected. We believe that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump, a Hillary Clinton donor, is that person.

We believe that the issue of Donald Trump is greater than an issue of party. It is an issue of morals and character that all Americans, not just those of us in the conservative movement, must confront.

That is true, but, as I’ve mentioned prior, you can have your principles, but, this is politics, so you also have to be pragmatic. The idea is to win the election. Trump is already behind the eight ball when it comes to defeating Hillary or Bernie in the national polls. Of course, national polls are meaningless, it is the state polls that are important. Can Trump take all the states Bush did in 2000 or 2004, which would give him the White House? Will all this Stop Trump, this #NeverTrump, cause the GOP most assuredly lose the 2016 general election, which should have been a slam dunk against these terrible candidates? Do you really want Hillary or Bernie over a guy who at least says he’s a Republican?

We call for a unity ticket that unites the Republican Party. If that unity ticket is unable to get 1,237 delegates prior to the convention, we recognize that it took Abraham Lincoln three ballots at the Republican convention in 1860 to become the party’s nominee and if it is good enough for Lincoln, that process should be good enough for all the candidates without threats of riots.

We encourage all former Republican candidates not currently supporting Trump to unite against him and encourage all candidates to hold their delegates on the first ballot.

Lastly, we intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump. Our multiple decades of work in the conservative movement for free markets, limited government, national defense, religious liberty, life, and marriage are about ideas, not necessarily parties.

Cruz is the Conservative candidate. Of course, he’s not liked by the Establishment, what is being referred to as the GOPe, because he is Conservative, and has been willing to stand on Principle. Trump is an even squishier Republican than the GOPe usually pushes. And Cruz polls better against Hillary and Bernie, willing said national vote.

This has made the Trump supporters very angry, as you can guess. Many bloggers, including many I have on my blogroll and feedreader, are angry. It goes without saying that the leadership at Breitbart, which is as in the tank for Trump as liberal sites were for Obama, is furious. Politico notes that not all Republicans are against Trump, particularly if he gets the required delegates, or gets close.

Ultra-squishy Newt Gingrich had this to say

I’m not sympathetic at all to the Erick Erickson of the world. If they want to form the let’s elect Hillary Clinton club, fine. But they ought to be honest about it. Any effort to help anybody but the Republican nominee helps Hillary Clinton. And if you think giving Hillary Clinton the Supreme Court, having Hillary Clinton run our foreign policy, having Hillary Clinton support the unions to continue ruining our children in schools. If you think that’s acceptable, do it. Erick Erickson’s not playing a risk-free game. It’s not like there is some pure middle way. If he does not support the Republican nominee, he is functionally supporting Hillary Clinton in the general election.”

Pragmatism? Even if you loathe Trump, when it gets closer to nomination time, people really need to think about making sure Hillary (or Bernie) does not win. I think Trump is a horrible candidate, he’s not conservative in the least, and he won’t beat Hillary or Bernie. Let’s see what the polls say as we get closer to the convention. And what happens now that Rubio is out. Big battles at conventions are nothing new. We have months to go before any sort of floor fight should be considered.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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“13 million Americans could become climate refugees” Or something

By William Teach March 17, 2016 – 3:34 pm

Dooooooooom

(CBS News) More than 13 million Americans could become climate refugees by 2100 if the worst sea-level rise comes to pass, new research suggests.

Rising seas caused by climate change could permanently flood hundreds of U.S. counties, according to the study. The hardest-hit county will be Miami-Dade, Florida, where 2 million people could be forced to relocate. In fact, Florida is home to about half of these potential U.S. climate refugees. (Snip)

In the NOAA’s worst-case scenario, the oceans will rise about 6 feet (1.8 meters), on average, by 2100. These NOAA estimates account for permanent coastal flooding but not other potential hazards of climate change, such as increased hurricane numbers and intensity or storm surges.

If there is no climate change mitigation, 13 million people would be forced to move because their homes become partially submerged under water, the researchers found. In a better scenario, with only 3 feet (0.9 m) of sea-level rise, only 4.2 million people would be forced to move, the study found.

Of course, the actual data from taking actual measurements shows nothing even close. But, we can’t let Facts get in the way of a good garbage in garbage out computer model driven hysteria, now, can we?

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Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach March 17, 2016 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil manicured garden for an evil fossil fuels using 1%er, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jammie Wearing Fools, with a post on where Fast and Furious guns have been tracked.

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