Most people who will read this saw my announcement towards the end of 2017 saying that I intended to change my blog format over into video rather than written. There have been a lot of bumps along the way, and every time I put a video out, I learn a little bit more about how to make it better. But I'm 20 videos along right now, and I want to make sure my audience stays with me
If you want to see what I've been up to since February, and subscribe or leave a comment, I can be found here
J Edgar/Ed's World
Additionally, all of my videos are linked to the Twitter account that I associate with this blog. That is @edsblogtw1tter
I've had to wave the white flag on writing even though I'd love to do both. With my full time job, I had to pick videos or written word, and I hope that my videos will improve my audience to both
Always remember, never take the words of bloggers, podcasters, or journalists as gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusions
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Sunday, January 28, 2018
The Announcement
Hello, readers
I want to start by thanking everyone who has read my blog. I started out writing about lifestyle and dating, but the Socialist movement and the fact that I couldn't really get a good job in the market that was going on when I started writing really fired up my passion about the state of the country, and my blog gave me an outlet to express how I interpreted the events in the various governments that affected me from day to day, and occasional policy advice. Writing about politics and policy really forced me to look things up and ask a lot of questions, so I could have a decent understanding of what was going on above me. While I don't consider myself an expert, I do find that I'm usually more informed than comment thread extremists on both sides. But that's what I strive for. My goal is to get enough information that I can present a logical argument, and a defense for my point of view. I don't necessarily set out to change anyone's belief system, but I do hope to present some information that you may have never heard, or never considered in a particular context.
As some of you already know, but many of you will be finding out for the first time, my girlfriend of 2 and a half years decided that she didn't want to be with me anymore. I know some of the people who I told initially told me how terrible it was, and I felt the same way at first. But it was honestly a long time coming. We'd been having problems for nearly a year, but while we were starting to have some progress again over the last two months, there really hadn't been any fix to it. While we were having problems, we spent a lot of time apart and started discovering passions about ourselves, and we both really changed. I'm not writing this article to air our dirty laundry for the world. I do want to say that what I've just told you changed the timeline of my big reveal. I also want to say that I am ok, and it's honestly for the better.
In 2014, when I moved, there was no reliable internet where I lived. I could try and get some bits and pieces of writing done where I worked, but I never finished an article, because I found it so hard to piece one together between phone calls, and from day to day. I was posting articles twice a week, and plenty of people were reading them, as I had Facebook to transmit them. By that time, I also was going half and half about on lifestyle and politics. After my ex and I moved in together, and life slowed down a touch, I realized that I had broadband internet again. I also realized that California was trying to secede from the union and I had strong feelings about that. The problem that came along with this is that print fell kind of dead somewhere in the interim. It was already dying when I started blogging. I remember when 100+ views was a common number for every article. By this point I'm lucky to get 30-40. I've had one 50+ since I came back to the medium.
I wrote in an earlier article that a part of my inspiration to return to political commentary came from current political pundits. (see My Journey from a Quiet Democrat to Conservative Commentator). Steve Crowder, who has stated numerous times that he started his webshow from absolutely nothing, started to inspire me. Everyone knows about Hannity, who is backed by Fox News money, or Rush, or the trio that transmit every day from the Daily Wire. These are people that are backed by big money, and get big sponsorships to deliver news and commentary from an alternative viewpoint to what's accepted as the Mainstream. But over the last few years, there has been a surge in people, like Crowder, who started production from nothing and have made a name for themselves, along with a pretty comfortable bankroll that they use to hire other bloggers and vloggers. Those bloggers and vloggers are people who started out, coincidentally, just like me.
Before my breakup, I was already planning on making a format change. I had reached out to some people who already were active in the media, and started pricing out equipment. On Christmas weekend, I had actually planned for my first video to hit YouTube this weekend. Unfortunately, a week after that, I was put in a position where I was spending hours after hours drawing and re-checking budgets, and hoarding money away for a down payment, and to pay a couple items out of my credit report. After today, I think I'm in a position where I am ready to start moving forward. And I think I'm at the start of something good.
Over the last six months, I've been listening to and watching a wide variety of podcasts. I've put an analytical eye on all of them, so I can look at what I like and what I dislike about them. I've also asked people what works and what doesn't work for them in podcasting and talk radio in general. With all of the information circling in my head, I think I've come up with some formats that will probably work.
A solo analysis and presentation of items in the news is where I got my start, so it stands to reason that I am going to continue with that format. It's been the primary starting point that has helped propel anyone who's made a name for him or herself in commentary into web fame. The advantage to presenting my news and commentary in this fashion is that I'll wind up doing about the same level of research to each show, but it takes the chore of typing and replaces it with a shorter recording. There are chores that come along with the format, but they take the place of 6 hours of typing for an article that typically takes 5 to 15 minutes to read.
When I started recommending podcasts to people, one of the comments I got back consistently was that it is hard for people to listen to a solo voice for a half an hour. I find the same difficulty honestly. Nightvale is the only single voice podcast I can really get the entirety of the script out of. I do ok, with the Daily Wire Guys, but with Hannity and Rush, I tend to only get about 50% of their monologues out of. I usually get more out of their call-in segments, but those monologues get hard to follow. Many of the famous vloggers like Matt Christiansen, Blonde, Roaming Millenial, and the Conservative Millennial draw audiences, but their single-voice videos are much shorter than the average podcast. I'd like to have a longer podcast once a week, with a co-host, where we discuss various news stories back and forth. I'm up in the air on who I want my co-host to be. I have some names in mind, but I don't know if I should have someone established, or find a new voice, and promote him or her, and perhaps even inspire that person to create some content of his own. I'll probably spend a few weeks or months just doing a solo vlog, but I do want to get into having a discussion show, and I'll most likely rotate a few hosts in until I find someone who is the right fit.
Lastly is my dream for podcasting. A couple of people do something similar, but no one on the conservative side of the aisle does a show quite like I've envisioned. I mentioned Steven Crowder before, who has a segment of every show that is a roundtable discussion. What I dislike about Crowder's show is that even though the speech tends to flow pretty freely, it's always a discussion between the same three people: Steve Crowder, Not Gay Jared, and Gerald Morgan Jr.. Michael Knowles also has a regular segment on his show called the Panel of Deplorables. Knowles has a different set of guests on each week to discuss the news, but it's highly turn-based, where Knowles delegates the news story and the question to each guest, one at a time. My dream is different. I have a podcast in mind in which I get 3 or four guests on each week, and just read news articles to them to discuss. I don't want to delegate my stories to them. I just want them to go at it, and discuss, and maybe even argue over them. It's important to me to have a rotating panel of guests, so we don't fall into an echo chamber on the roundtable. I also want the chance for people to shill for their own endeavors. Since it will most likely be a Skype show, if I have a business owner in, I want him to have as much opportunity to have his logo in the background. If I get Shapiro on, I'd expect him to be drinking from the Leftist Tears tumbler with The Daily Wire Logo all over the background.
I'm still looking at a few weeks minimum before I start changing format, but I determined over the last week that it will be best for me to start doing solo shows in my old apartment. That gives me practice with recording, angles, lighting, and editing before I start inviting people to discuss the events of the week with me. But this is definitely coming down the pipes. This is something that I've been looking forward to for a long time. The dream of a writer is to reach an audience, and I hope that this move lets me reach out to a whole new audience
Thank you everyone again for three years of reading, and I hope the majority of you follow me into this new adventure. I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
I want to start by thanking everyone who has read my blog. I started out writing about lifestyle and dating, but the Socialist movement and the fact that I couldn't really get a good job in the market that was going on when I started writing really fired up my passion about the state of the country, and my blog gave me an outlet to express how I interpreted the events in the various governments that affected me from day to day, and occasional policy advice. Writing about politics and policy really forced me to look things up and ask a lot of questions, so I could have a decent understanding of what was going on above me. While I don't consider myself an expert, I do find that I'm usually more informed than comment thread extremists on both sides. But that's what I strive for. My goal is to get enough information that I can present a logical argument, and a defense for my point of view. I don't necessarily set out to change anyone's belief system, but I do hope to present some information that you may have never heard, or never considered in a particular context.
As some of you already know, but many of you will be finding out for the first time, my girlfriend of 2 and a half years decided that she didn't want to be with me anymore. I know some of the people who I told initially told me how terrible it was, and I felt the same way at first. But it was honestly a long time coming. We'd been having problems for nearly a year, but while we were starting to have some progress again over the last two months, there really hadn't been any fix to it. While we were having problems, we spent a lot of time apart and started discovering passions about ourselves, and we both really changed. I'm not writing this article to air our dirty laundry for the world. I do want to say that what I've just told you changed the timeline of my big reveal. I also want to say that I am ok, and it's honestly for the better.
In 2014, when I moved, there was no reliable internet where I lived. I could try and get some bits and pieces of writing done where I worked, but I never finished an article, because I found it so hard to piece one together between phone calls, and from day to day. I was posting articles twice a week, and plenty of people were reading them, as I had Facebook to transmit them. By that time, I also was going half and half about on lifestyle and politics. After my ex and I moved in together, and life slowed down a touch, I realized that I had broadband internet again. I also realized that California was trying to secede from the union and I had strong feelings about that. The problem that came along with this is that print fell kind of dead somewhere in the interim. It was already dying when I started blogging. I remember when 100+ views was a common number for every article. By this point I'm lucky to get 30-40. I've had one 50+ since I came back to the medium.
I wrote in an earlier article that a part of my inspiration to return to political commentary came from current political pundits. (see My Journey from a Quiet Democrat to Conservative Commentator). Steve Crowder, who has stated numerous times that he started his webshow from absolutely nothing, started to inspire me. Everyone knows about Hannity, who is backed by Fox News money, or Rush, or the trio that transmit every day from the Daily Wire. These are people that are backed by big money, and get big sponsorships to deliver news and commentary from an alternative viewpoint to what's accepted as the Mainstream. But over the last few years, there has been a surge in people, like Crowder, who started production from nothing and have made a name for themselves, along with a pretty comfortable bankroll that they use to hire other bloggers and vloggers. Those bloggers and vloggers are people who started out, coincidentally, just like me.
Before my breakup, I was already planning on making a format change. I had reached out to some people who already were active in the media, and started pricing out equipment. On Christmas weekend, I had actually planned for my first video to hit YouTube this weekend. Unfortunately, a week after that, I was put in a position where I was spending hours after hours drawing and re-checking budgets, and hoarding money away for a down payment, and to pay a couple items out of my credit report. After today, I think I'm in a position where I am ready to start moving forward. And I think I'm at the start of something good.
Over the last six months, I've been listening to and watching a wide variety of podcasts. I've put an analytical eye on all of them, so I can look at what I like and what I dislike about them. I've also asked people what works and what doesn't work for them in podcasting and talk radio in general. With all of the information circling in my head, I think I've come up with some formats that will probably work.
A solo analysis and presentation of items in the news is where I got my start, so it stands to reason that I am going to continue with that format. It's been the primary starting point that has helped propel anyone who's made a name for him or herself in commentary into web fame. The advantage to presenting my news and commentary in this fashion is that I'll wind up doing about the same level of research to each show, but it takes the chore of typing and replaces it with a shorter recording. There are chores that come along with the format, but they take the place of 6 hours of typing for an article that typically takes 5 to 15 minutes to read.
When I started recommending podcasts to people, one of the comments I got back consistently was that it is hard for people to listen to a solo voice for a half an hour. I find the same difficulty honestly. Nightvale is the only single voice podcast I can really get the entirety of the script out of. I do ok, with the Daily Wire Guys, but with Hannity and Rush, I tend to only get about 50% of their monologues out of. I usually get more out of their call-in segments, but those monologues get hard to follow. Many of the famous vloggers like Matt Christiansen, Blonde, Roaming Millenial, and the Conservative Millennial draw audiences, but their single-voice videos are much shorter than the average podcast. I'd like to have a longer podcast once a week, with a co-host, where we discuss various news stories back and forth. I'm up in the air on who I want my co-host to be. I have some names in mind, but I don't know if I should have someone established, or find a new voice, and promote him or her, and perhaps even inspire that person to create some content of his own. I'll probably spend a few weeks or months just doing a solo vlog, but I do want to get into having a discussion show, and I'll most likely rotate a few hosts in until I find someone who is the right fit.
Lastly is my dream for podcasting. A couple of people do something similar, but no one on the conservative side of the aisle does a show quite like I've envisioned. I mentioned Steven Crowder before, who has a segment of every show that is a roundtable discussion. What I dislike about Crowder's show is that even though the speech tends to flow pretty freely, it's always a discussion between the same three people: Steve Crowder, Not Gay Jared, and Gerald Morgan Jr.. Michael Knowles also has a regular segment on his show called the Panel of Deplorables. Knowles has a different set of guests on each week to discuss the news, but it's highly turn-based, where Knowles delegates the news story and the question to each guest, one at a time. My dream is different. I have a podcast in mind in which I get 3 or four guests on each week, and just read news articles to them to discuss. I don't want to delegate my stories to them. I just want them to go at it, and discuss, and maybe even argue over them. It's important to me to have a rotating panel of guests, so we don't fall into an echo chamber on the roundtable. I also want the chance for people to shill for their own endeavors. Since it will most likely be a Skype show, if I have a business owner in, I want him to have as much opportunity to have his logo in the background. If I get Shapiro on, I'd expect him to be drinking from the Leftist Tears tumbler with The Daily Wire Logo all over the background.
I'm still looking at a few weeks minimum before I start changing format, but I determined over the last week that it will be best for me to start doing solo shows in my old apartment. That gives me practice with recording, angles, lighting, and editing before I start inviting people to discuss the events of the week with me. But this is definitely coming down the pipes. This is something that I've been looking forward to for a long time. The dream of a writer is to reach an audience, and I hope that this move lets me reach out to a whole new audience
Thank you everyone again for three years of reading, and I hope the majority of you follow me into this new adventure. I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
Monday, January 15, 2018
DACA and Shithole Countries
I wanted to take a hiatus from blogging while I sorted my life out and worked on getting a home secured, but Trump and Congress had other ideas. Also look for my upcoming reply to Oprah attempting a Presidential Run. I may have cut the cord, and particularly detest Hollywood Awards shows, but don't think for a second I missed that one.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump called an open door meeting with members of both parties and both chambers of Congress to discuss the Dream Act. Most people following the news will remember that back in September, The Donald rescinded the executive known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. When he did, he put a condition in place stating that he was not going to take any action until March. So Now it's January, and with Tax cuts in the books and a repeal of the funding mechanism for the ACA now in place, It's time to take on the next issue.
When Trump said he would wait until March to enforce DACA, he did it for a reason. The act was an Obama-Era Executive Action, and as such, could be wiped away with the flick of a pen. The President insisted that Congress, instead, should propose a bill that would give any consideration to the childhood arrivals permanent, whichever direction it goes. It's really only fair. I hate to cite Hollywood elites, but they are partially right in this issue. The Dreamers, under their current status, are in a state where they are both Legal and Illegal immigrants who's fate can literally change day-to-day. It's impossible to live a life when you're under that kind of stress all the time. Therefore, Congress must decide which direction to carry the law. As I mentioned, Executive orders can disappear with another executive order, but Congressional laws take months and years to repeal, along with getting enough people out of 535 on your side.
So a meeting was called, and in an unprecedented fashion, the Main Stream Media was allowed in to record the majority of the event. The video is still on my to-watch list, but the highlights that have made the news are pretty much common knowledge. Pelosi said that she wanted a Clean DACA bill, Trump said that they would get nothing without funding for the wall, and he said that he would sign anything that came across his desk. He also said that ICE agents tell him that we can't get border security without a wall in places that aren't naturally defended. The right went nuts over that last comment. Everyone went into a panic thinking that Trump was turning back into a Democrat, and rescinding his promise to build a contiguous wall all across the southern border. When I read and heard the quote, I don't believe that was the case. Trump was attempting to quote federal agents, saying that there are places along the border that are already protected, and they don't have to enforce those areas as heavily. Trump never said that he didn't want to build the whole wall, just cited that the immigration enforcement knows that there are areas that don't need it. But it falls into the same line as the clean DREAM act and Trump saying he would sign anything.
The more right leaning Conservative show hosts started tripping over themselves to defend Trump saying he would sign whatever came across his desk. I'm very surprised that the hashtag #4dchess didn't trend on Twitter that day. The younger, less established, and more libertarian among us tended to turn on the President, saying that he was turning his back on his campaign promises. Many of them claimed that he was going to turn into a Democrat, or at least a Democrat shill. I had a different idea, but if the shithole comment that I will touch on in a moment happens to be true, then I wound up being dead wrong, too. I'll never say "4D chess" seriously, except to quote someone else, but I will say I thought it was strategic. Trump came in saying he was going to drain the swamp, referring to lifelong politicians who fight with each other on CNN and social media, but are figuratively in bed with each other out of the media eye. As we learned with the tax cuts, the Republican party has a majority in both chambers, but they still really need to get support from the Democrats to do anything effectively. So the Republicans have a hard time just drawing a bill up in the dead of the night and sneaking it over to the White House without the Dems knowing. If Trump were to sign a bill that didn't reflect the immigration policies that got him elected, Republicans who ran with the same agenda would suddenly have to own that bill. And they would have to go back and explain to their constituents at home why that bill hit the Oval Office. With a March Deadline, they would also have to do so before primary votes take place in an election year. With all of the seats that are considered "safe" because they are in red or majority red districts, I'd probably pay money to see a press conference for that explanation.
On Thursday night, there was a closed door meeting in the Oval Office to discuss a bill that was being proposed. According to CNN, along with 60% of Twitter and Instagram, Trump is cited as asking "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" As soon as it happened, the majority of social media jumped up to defend Haiti and Sub-saharan Africa. At the same time, the Trump army jumped back to express the fact that these countries are war-torn shitholes. Only a handful of people have realized that there is no evidence to this. Let us not forget that just a month ago, the Democrats were going to take to the streets because Trump was planning on secretly firing Mueller while the Christmas season was masking the events. And while they were taking to the streets, they would be repeating the seven words that Trump allegedly said weren't allowed to be said in any budget proposal. The two stories were both found to be fabricated, but they launched massive social media and physical protests. Right now there is no reason to believe that Trump said this about these countries. But what if he did?
If this is true, it means that our President saw something in a bill about these countries that he didn't like. Perhaps it was a level of amnesty, or a way to shuttle more refugees from war-torn countries and give them automatic citizenship. To my knowledge, the contents of the bill have not been released to the public yet. But perhaps the alleged expletive came from the Democrats showing their hands. Trump claimed he would sign anything that came to his desk, and now that he's spoken out on it, I think the majority of America wants to know what he cursed about. Maybe the Social Justice Left doesn't care, but I can't believe that if the bill gets released to the public that they will be able to ignore it for long. Meanwhile, Congress should be working on finding a common ground to get border security in place, and find a way to make a definitive decision on the Dreamers, because they can't stay legal and illegal at the same time forever.
Do you think Trump said "Shithole Country"? Do you want to see what was in the proposal? Do you think it was 4D chess to have the President state that he would sign anything? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump called an open door meeting with members of both parties and both chambers of Congress to discuss the Dream Act. Most people following the news will remember that back in September, The Donald rescinded the executive known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. When he did, he put a condition in place stating that he was not going to take any action until March. So Now it's January, and with Tax cuts in the books and a repeal of the funding mechanism for the ACA now in place, It's time to take on the next issue.
When Trump said he would wait until March to enforce DACA, he did it for a reason. The act was an Obama-Era Executive Action, and as such, could be wiped away with the flick of a pen. The President insisted that Congress, instead, should propose a bill that would give any consideration to the childhood arrivals permanent, whichever direction it goes. It's really only fair. I hate to cite Hollywood elites, but they are partially right in this issue. The Dreamers, under their current status, are in a state where they are both Legal and Illegal immigrants who's fate can literally change day-to-day. It's impossible to live a life when you're under that kind of stress all the time. Therefore, Congress must decide which direction to carry the law. As I mentioned, Executive orders can disappear with another executive order, but Congressional laws take months and years to repeal, along with getting enough people out of 535 on your side.
So a meeting was called, and in an unprecedented fashion, the Main Stream Media was allowed in to record the majority of the event. The video is still on my to-watch list, but the highlights that have made the news are pretty much common knowledge. Pelosi said that she wanted a Clean DACA bill, Trump said that they would get nothing without funding for the wall, and he said that he would sign anything that came across his desk. He also said that ICE agents tell him that we can't get border security without a wall in places that aren't naturally defended. The right went nuts over that last comment. Everyone went into a panic thinking that Trump was turning back into a Democrat, and rescinding his promise to build a contiguous wall all across the southern border. When I read and heard the quote, I don't believe that was the case. Trump was attempting to quote federal agents, saying that there are places along the border that are already protected, and they don't have to enforce those areas as heavily. Trump never said that he didn't want to build the whole wall, just cited that the immigration enforcement knows that there are areas that don't need it. But it falls into the same line as the clean DREAM act and Trump saying he would sign anything.
The more right leaning Conservative show hosts started tripping over themselves to defend Trump saying he would sign whatever came across his desk. I'm very surprised that the hashtag #4dchess didn't trend on Twitter that day. The younger, less established, and more libertarian among us tended to turn on the President, saying that he was turning his back on his campaign promises. Many of them claimed that he was going to turn into a Democrat, or at least a Democrat shill. I had a different idea, but if the shithole comment that I will touch on in a moment happens to be true, then I wound up being dead wrong, too. I'll never say "4D chess" seriously, except to quote someone else, but I will say I thought it was strategic. Trump came in saying he was going to drain the swamp, referring to lifelong politicians who fight with each other on CNN and social media, but are figuratively in bed with each other out of the media eye. As we learned with the tax cuts, the Republican party has a majority in both chambers, but they still really need to get support from the Democrats to do anything effectively. So the Republicans have a hard time just drawing a bill up in the dead of the night and sneaking it over to the White House without the Dems knowing. If Trump were to sign a bill that didn't reflect the immigration policies that got him elected, Republicans who ran with the same agenda would suddenly have to own that bill. And they would have to go back and explain to their constituents at home why that bill hit the Oval Office. With a March Deadline, they would also have to do so before primary votes take place in an election year. With all of the seats that are considered "safe" because they are in red or majority red districts, I'd probably pay money to see a press conference for that explanation.
On Thursday night, there was a closed door meeting in the Oval Office to discuss a bill that was being proposed. According to CNN, along with 60% of Twitter and Instagram, Trump is cited as asking "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" As soon as it happened, the majority of social media jumped up to defend Haiti and Sub-saharan Africa. At the same time, the Trump army jumped back to express the fact that these countries are war-torn shitholes. Only a handful of people have realized that there is no evidence to this. Let us not forget that just a month ago, the Democrats were going to take to the streets because Trump was planning on secretly firing Mueller while the Christmas season was masking the events. And while they were taking to the streets, they would be repeating the seven words that Trump allegedly said weren't allowed to be said in any budget proposal. The two stories were both found to be fabricated, but they launched massive social media and physical protests. Right now there is no reason to believe that Trump said this about these countries. But what if he did?
If this is true, it means that our President saw something in a bill about these countries that he didn't like. Perhaps it was a level of amnesty, or a way to shuttle more refugees from war-torn countries and give them automatic citizenship. To my knowledge, the contents of the bill have not been released to the public yet. But perhaps the alleged expletive came from the Democrats showing their hands. Trump claimed he would sign anything that came to his desk, and now that he's spoken out on it, I think the majority of America wants to know what he cursed about. Maybe the Social Justice Left doesn't care, but I can't believe that if the bill gets released to the public that they will be able to ignore it for long. Meanwhile, Congress should be working on finding a common ground to get border security in place, and find a way to make a definitive decision on the Dreamers, because they can't stay legal and illegal at the same time forever.
Do you think Trump said "Shithole Country"? Do you want to see what was in the proposal? Do you think it was 4D chess to have the President state that he would sign anything? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Trump Supporters
As I've mentioned before, I spent just about my entire life espousing both views that were conservative and were more liberal at the time, but would be considered conservative extremism by today's standards. I called myself a Democrat growing up (Wisconsin doesn't require you to register for the party you intend to vote for), but I began openly calling myself a Conservative only in 2009, as I outlined in an earlier article. I am also a writer, and I share my beliefs on Social Media. It's no surprise that I've taken much more than my share of abuse online over the last 8 years. None of this is surprising. What has surprised me is this past year. I expected the usual hatred from Obama holdovers, Union Republican Haters, and the mainstreamed supply of Bernie Socialists who suddenly found themselves out of power, and I get that here and there. Shockingly though, both on and offline over the last year, I find myself getting screamed at and cursed out by Trump voters than Berniecrats.
Donald Trump held a lot of appeal for a lot of people in a lot of different ways. One of the first promises made was that he was going to repeal the ACA, which rang loudly with a lot of business owners and employees alike. His big business background made a lot of small-business owners confident that a business-friendly administration would relax some of the regulations that were making it hard to survive and hire. Down-the-ticket Republicans and people who were vehemently against Hillary Clinton respected the R next to Trump's name. But Trump was something of a unique enigma that made his message ring true in the middle American States that carried him to victory.
When I get into a social media exchange with someone who doesn't particularly agree with me, I always try to retain the moral high ground. The most severe name I call someone is "snowflake" (even though that name has really lost it's appeal. It got old). I try to use generally accepted names like liberal and progressive, rather than slurs like libtard. "Berniecrat" feels like a neutral term to me, as it identifies an opponent as an ideological supporter of Senator Sanders's message without using a disparaging supplement. I go high because the people that I engage with go low, and have for as long as I've been paying attention. One of the draws to the other side was the fact that the party I left was so well-known for striking below the belt, and I wanted to have more intellectual exchanges of ideas without hurling insults at each other. For the most part, that was the general attitude of almost all conservative politicians, and probably about half of the conservative online supporters. No matter where you go, you're going to get bullies and name-callers, but the people to the right seemed to more often be willing to ask a question rather than throw a slur. More importantly, our elected representatives tended to stick to the high ground at a more common rate than their online supporters. Many Republican voters would make sure the more crass politicians never made it past the primaries. Donald Trump came along, though, and changed all of that. A lot of people felt it would be easy to go low against Trump. With an R next to his name, it was assumed that there would be a standard that he would be held to lest there be no votes flowing in for him. And there was plenty to go low with against him. But Trump was willing, and even eager to go low back at anyone who brought a blow against him.
Trump's willingness to fight back seemed to put a change in the political landscape. It's difficult to pinpoint what changed, whether it was the people or the politician. I've discussed at length in a couple of previous articles that Mr. Trump is a lifelong big government classic Democrat. With the Socialist takeover of the Democrat Party, Trump's Liberal roots, along with the message of bringing jobs out of foreign countries stateside again, there is likely a large number of people in the Union wing of the Left that has jumped ship to follow The Donald. Since many of them were conditioned to be outspoken against any opposition who would seek to rob them of their jobs. Then there's the other faction. As I mentioned, there are bullies everywhere, no matter what crowd you are in. Conservative circles have always had a minority of people willing to go low against liberal combatants. They offered themselves up in place of their elected officials who wouldn't dish out the same verbal blows for moral reason. The rest of us have spent years trying to suppress them. While their views are often in line with our own, the delivery is at a level which we are not willing to engage at. But like it or not, we elected one of them, and they feel empowered by it.
So what are we running into by emboldening some of these people? At the mildest, comment threads have become...well, let's say more interesting. A new wave of more conservative keyboard warriors have been guarding the social media comment feeds and the feeds of every Fox News online article looking for a fight. That is a fight that Leftist and Socialist keyboard warriors are very willing to give them. They are not as prevalent in the feeds of more leftist sources, but a liberal use of blocking/reporting generally accounts for that. Conservative outlets tend not to block as often, as most of us are willing to at least hear the other side out. Also, the people reviewing the report generally share the ideology of the leftists assaulting conservative comment feeds, so reporting often gets a reply that boils down to "I didn't see anything wrong."
On a more severe level, Conservatives on social media have taken to some of the tactics of the left. I've seen physical threats coming from our more extreme friends wide out in the open on comment threads. More disturbingly is the doxxing. For the last 8 years, the progressives on the internet have been posting the home, work, and contact information for anyone that dares to disagree with them on the internet. The end result usually comes with a wave of protesters calling the person, or his work, or his mortgage company, or a host of other aspects of the victims life, generally resulting in loss of job or other primary aspects of a person's life. Over the last year, I've run across three instances of someone on the right doing it to someone on the left. The last time I saw it, I actually called the poster out. It's not right to dox people. When I brought that up, a left wing commenter called me a cuckservative and explained that the right never gets anything done because we are unwilling to get our hands dirty.
That leads me to the final change in the new right. In November, the majority of people on varying levels of conservatism and centrism banded together and united behind an outsider in order to remove a dynasty of socialism from the executive branch of the federal government. Some of us did so begrudgingly, but many of us did so with a proud excitement. However, now that Trump is in office with almost an entire year behind him, the discussion has changed. When our President does or says something good, I praise him. When he does or says something stupid, I vocally accost him. I have no desire to fall into the same pattern of idol worship that the followers of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders have formed within their camps. That thought is not universal among conservatives, though. When I vocally oppose anything the President does, I generally get comments like "You're just pretending to be conservative" or "RINO". The same goes for anything else that goes against their belief system. To cite my article on PragerU, my support for Google as the private company that it is rather than the Title 2 utility that Prager wants it to be was met with great hostility. "I too pretend to be a conservative when it suits me..." was the scathing comment that I was left on Instagram that inspired that whole article. It does seem that if you're not with them 100%, you're against them. It's an ideology that frightens me deeply to the core, because it's the ideology that the left espoused under the Obama administration. It's what the Berniecrats would have pushed on all of us if he came to power. While it's fictional, the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi ring loudly in these exchanges. "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." In real life, as well as in a galaxy far far away, an all-or-nothing ideology is a path to dark things.
Do you find yourself regularly accosted online by one side, the other, or both? Where do you stand on ideology? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
Donald Trump held a lot of appeal for a lot of people in a lot of different ways. One of the first promises made was that he was going to repeal the ACA, which rang loudly with a lot of business owners and employees alike. His big business background made a lot of small-business owners confident that a business-friendly administration would relax some of the regulations that were making it hard to survive and hire. Down-the-ticket Republicans and people who were vehemently against Hillary Clinton respected the R next to Trump's name. But Trump was something of a unique enigma that made his message ring true in the middle American States that carried him to victory.
When I get into a social media exchange with someone who doesn't particularly agree with me, I always try to retain the moral high ground. The most severe name I call someone is "snowflake" (even though that name has really lost it's appeal. It got old). I try to use generally accepted names like liberal and progressive, rather than slurs like libtard. "Berniecrat" feels like a neutral term to me, as it identifies an opponent as an ideological supporter of Senator Sanders's message without using a disparaging supplement. I go high because the people that I engage with go low, and have for as long as I've been paying attention. One of the draws to the other side was the fact that the party I left was so well-known for striking below the belt, and I wanted to have more intellectual exchanges of ideas without hurling insults at each other. For the most part, that was the general attitude of almost all conservative politicians, and probably about half of the conservative online supporters. No matter where you go, you're going to get bullies and name-callers, but the people to the right seemed to more often be willing to ask a question rather than throw a slur. More importantly, our elected representatives tended to stick to the high ground at a more common rate than their online supporters. Many Republican voters would make sure the more crass politicians never made it past the primaries. Donald Trump came along, though, and changed all of that. A lot of people felt it would be easy to go low against Trump. With an R next to his name, it was assumed that there would be a standard that he would be held to lest there be no votes flowing in for him. And there was plenty to go low with against him. But Trump was willing, and even eager to go low back at anyone who brought a blow against him.
Trump's willingness to fight back seemed to put a change in the political landscape. It's difficult to pinpoint what changed, whether it was the people or the politician. I've discussed at length in a couple of previous articles that Mr. Trump is a lifelong big government classic Democrat. With the Socialist takeover of the Democrat Party, Trump's Liberal roots, along with the message of bringing jobs out of foreign countries stateside again, there is likely a large number of people in the Union wing of the Left that has jumped ship to follow The Donald. Since many of them were conditioned to be outspoken against any opposition who would seek to rob them of their jobs. Then there's the other faction. As I mentioned, there are bullies everywhere, no matter what crowd you are in. Conservative circles have always had a minority of people willing to go low against liberal combatants. They offered themselves up in place of their elected officials who wouldn't dish out the same verbal blows for moral reason. The rest of us have spent years trying to suppress them. While their views are often in line with our own, the delivery is at a level which we are not willing to engage at. But like it or not, we elected one of them, and they feel empowered by it.
So what are we running into by emboldening some of these people? At the mildest, comment threads have become...well, let's say more interesting. A new wave of more conservative keyboard warriors have been guarding the social media comment feeds and the feeds of every Fox News online article looking for a fight. That is a fight that Leftist and Socialist keyboard warriors are very willing to give them. They are not as prevalent in the feeds of more leftist sources, but a liberal use of blocking/reporting generally accounts for that. Conservative outlets tend not to block as often, as most of us are willing to at least hear the other side out. Also, the people reviewing the report generally share the ideology of the leftists assaulting conservative comment feeds, so reporting often gets a reply that boils down to "I didn't see anything wrong."
On a more severe level, Conservatives on social media have taken to some of the tactics of the left. I've seen physical threats coming from our more extreme friends wide out in the open on comment threads. More disturbingly is the doxxing. For the last 8 years, the progressives on the internet have been posting the home, work, and contact information for anyone that dares to disagree with them on the internet. The end result usually comes with a wave of protesters calling the person, or his work, or his mortgage company, or a host of other aspects of the victims life, generally resulting in loss of job or other primary aspects of a person's life. Over the last year, I've run across three instances of someone on the right doing it to someone on the left. The last time I saw it, I actually called the poster out. It's not right to dox people. When I brought that up, a left wing commenter called me a cuckservative and explained that the right never gets anything done because we are unwilling to get our hands dirty.
That leads me to the final change in the new right. In November, the majority of people on varying levels of conservatism and centrism banded together and united behind an outsider in order to remove a dynasty of socialism from the executive branch of the federal government. Some of us did so begrudgingly, but many of us did so with a proud excitement. However, now that Trump is in office with almost an entire year behind him, the discussion has changed. When our President does or says something good, I praise him. When he does or says something stupid, I vocally accost him. I have no desire to fall into the same pattern of idol worship that the followers of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders have formed within their camps. That thought is not universal among conservatives, though. When I vocally oppose anything the President does, I generally get comments like "You're just pretending to be conservative" or "RINO". The same goes for anything else that goes against their belief system. To cite my article on PragerU, my support for Google as the private company that it is rather than the Title 2 utility that Prager wants it to be was met with great hostility. "I too pretend to be a conservative when it suits me..." was the scathing comment that I was left on Instagram that inspired that whole article. It does seem that if you're not with them 100%, you're against them. It's an ideology that frightens me deeply to the core, because it's the ideology that the left espoused under the Obama administration. It's what the Berniecrats would have pushed on all of us if he came to power. While it's fictional, the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi ring loudly in these exchanges. "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." In real life, as well as in a galaxy far far away, an all-or-nothing ideology is a path to dark things.
Do you find yourself regularly accosted online by one side, the other, or both? Where do you stand on ideology? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
Sunday, December 17, 2017
Google and Net Neutrality
In the same time period that Prager University decided to lobby against Google in order to use the government gun to force them to do business in a way that goes against their wishes, the rest of the world exploded over the ending of a regulation that.......really wasn't doing anything anyway. The internet is in peril, and Everybody is angry.
On November 9th, Right wing educational advocate Prager University put a video up featuring the infamous Google Memo Writer James Damore. The title of the video was "What happens when Google disagrees with you." Very shortly after that, they put out a petition that request a congressional demand for Google to treat all webpages equally in terms of Search results. The comment section on Instagram exploded, and I can't imagine Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube being any different. I admit, I left one of the comment, but it wasn't what any of my readers would guess.
I write a blog, and the platform I write it on, the very platform that you, dear reader, are using right now, is owned by Google. When I placed my first critical comment, I prefaced it by saying "I write a conservative blog that is currently being censored by Google." It's nearly impossible for me to get page hits on a Google search. I've looked. It frustrates me, but it's really ok. As many of the left leaning critics pointed out in the Instagram comment feed that I participated in, the situation is actually quite similar to the gay wedding cake issue. While most of the liberals who jumped at the chance to cite that issue were using it to sneer Republicans, it was actually right on the money. Google is a private corporation, that is run by individuals with rights. Like the bakery owners, the Directors at Google have the rights to conduct business in whatever way they choose. Those who wish to utilize the service have to deal with it, or find another medium to use. It's the same argument that conservatives use when they speak out against YouTube for demonetizing their videos. It seems to be the entire reason that CRTV was created. It is difficult to get around Google in today's world. Chrome seems to be the most stable browser out there. The most common mobile device on the market is run by a Google Operating System. The only real major alternatives out there are Apple, Microsoft, and Kindle, but all three are owned by people who have very similar ideals, so we'd be having this discussion again a year later with a different name in it
The millennial left loves to throw the word fascism around when it comes to any idea that the right has, so it's been largely discredited over the years. But I have to call it the way that it is. Calling on the government to force a business to conduct itself a certain way at gunpoint is textbook fascism. It's no different from forcing the baker to make the cake that violates his beliefs. I found myself to quite enjoy Prager's videos in the past, but this is a double standard that I can't ignore. It must sting to have your videos demonetized, but Google has every right to control the private medium by which they are shared. The message of the university is protected by the freedom of speech, but Google and YouTube are not public utilities, and they are protected by the freedom of the press. That means, as long as it's not libelous, they can post anything that they want, and control what comes up on their search bars. They can also choose what not to post, by their own beliefs. Just like the baker.
It's very interesting that this issue came up in the wake of Net Neutrality. I was very surprised with the sheer number of people that were completely passionate about the issue. It's funny, because in 2015, I completely missed the news when this became an issue. I was paying pretty close attention to the news by 2015, and somehow that didn't make it into any of my feeds. With the level of passion that surrounded it, you'd thing that it would have as many memes when it was formed as when it was being repealed. The reality is that when the issue of Net Neutrality being rolled back first came up, all of the news outlets and opinion podcasts had to explain what it was before they could throw their particular bias at the story. I actually had to go and look it up for myself, and I still couldn't find a story that isn't full of bias. What I've been able to sort out of the bias is that Net Neutrality is an Obama era regulation that forces every internet service provider to handle all web traffic equally. This is any easy regulation for the big companies to abide by, but smaller startups struggle to handle it.
What interested me the most is that every conservative commentator out there is completely opposed to Net Neutrality (myself included). It's a pretty obvious party line to follow. Net Neutrality is a government regulation that is not very friendly to small business, and modern conservatives tell everyone that they are against government regulation. But Prager is insisting that their followers sign a petition in order to form a regulation. I know that I've suggested a regulation in this very blog before. The difference is that when I did suggest regulating the Credit Industry, I came up with a way to sell it so it could benefit the industry as well. Prager's Google petition is a request to use the government strong arm to force an unwilling private company to bend. For once, I have to side with the left on the Google issue. It sucks, but it is their right.
Where do you land on Net Neutrality? Did you sign Prager's petition? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
On November 9th, Right wing educational advocate Prager University put a video up featuring the infamous Google Memo Writer James Damore. The title of the video was "What happens when Google disagrees with you." Very shortly after that, they put out a petition that request a congressional demand for Google to treat all webpages equally in terms of Search results. The comment section on Instagram exploded, and I can't imagine Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube being any different. I admit, I left one of the comment, but it wasn't what any of my readers would guess.
I write a blog, and the platform I write it on, the very platform that you, dear reader, are using right now, is owned by Google. When I placed my first critical comment, I prefaced it by saying "I write a conservative blog that is currently being censored by Google." It's nearly impossible for me to get page hits on a Google search. I've looked. It frustrates me, but it's really ok. As many of the left leaning critics pointed out in the Instagram comment feed that I participated in, the situation is actually quite similar to the gay wedding cake issue. While most of the liberals who jumped at the chance to cite that issue were using it to sneer Republicans, it was actually right on the money. Google is a private corporation, that is run by individuals with rights. Like the bakery owners, the Directors at Google have the rights to conduct business in whatever way they choose. Those who wish to utilize the service have to deal with it, or find another medium to use. It's the same argument that conservatives use when they speak out against YouTube for demonetizing their videos. It seems to be the entire reason that CRTV was created. It is difficult to get around Google in today's world. Chrome seems to be the most stable browser out there. The most common mobile device on the market is run by a Google Operating System. The only real major alternatives out there are Apple, Microsoft, and Kindle, but all three are owned by people who have very similar ideals, so we'd be having this discussion again a year later with a different name in it
The millennial left loves to throw the word fascism around when it comes to any idea that the right has, so it's been largely discredited over the years. But I have to call it the way that it is. Calling on the government to force a business to conduct itself a certain way at gunpoint is textbook fascism. It's no different from forcing the baker to make the cake that violates his beliefs. I found myself to quite enjoy Prager's videos in the past, but this is a double standard that I can't ignore. It must sting to have your videos demonetized, but Google has every right to control the private medium by which they are shared. The message of the university is protected by the freedom of speech, but Google and YouTube are not public utilities, and they are protected by the freedom of the press. That means, as long as it's not libelous, they can post anything that they want, and control what comes up on their search bars. They can also choose what not to post, by their own beliefs. Just like the baker.
It's very interesting that this issue came up in the wake of Net Neutrality. I was very surprised with the sheer number of people that were completely passionate about the issue. It's funny, because in 2015, I completely missed the news when this became an issue. I was paying pretty close attention to the news by 2015, and somehow that didn't make it into any of my feeds. With the level of passion that surrounded it, you'd thing that it would have as many memes when it was formed as when it was being repealed. The reality is that when the issue of Net Neutrality being rolled back first came up, all of the news outlets and opinion podcasts had to explain what it was before they could throw their particular bias at the story. I actually had to go and look it up for myself, and I still couldn't find a story that isn't full of bias. What I've been able to sort out of the bias is that Net Neutrality is an Obama era regulation that forces every internet service provider to handle all web traffic equally. This is any easy regulation for the big companies to abide by, but smaller startups struggle to handle it.
What interested me the most is that every conservative commentator out there is completely opposed to Net Neutrality (myself included). It's a pretty obvious party line to follow. Net Neutrality is a government regulation that is not very friendly to small business, and modern conservatives tell everyone that they are against government regulation. But Prager is insisting that their followers sign a petition in order to form a regulation. I know that I've suggested a regulation in this very blog before. The difference is that when I did suggest regulating the Credit Industry, I came up with a way to sell it so it could benefit the industry as well. Prager's Google petition is a request to use the government strong arm to force an unwilling private company to bend. For once, I have to side with the left on the Google issue. It sucks, but it is their right.
Where do you land on Net Neutrality? Did you sign Prager's petition? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
Sunday, December 10, 2017
My Journey From a Quiet Democrat to Conservative Commentator
Our last few election cycles in this country have had a lot of surprises and drama, but there has been one recurring theme among them. All of them have been punctuated with the assertion that the whole thing would have been different should only millennials voted. The sentiment surrounding the idea is that all members of that particular generation fall into a sort of group-thought that aligns them all into the progressive movement as a single entity. Anyone who would pay half-hearted to Twitter or Facebook could easily be convinced to believe that it's true. Progressive and socialist memes are retweeted and shared over and over again with a disproportionately small number of conservative answers. The world that is presented by social media is indeed portrayed in such a way that once my generation come to power, the United States will suddenly come out of mass poverty and turn into a Communist...er, Socialist utopia with absolutely no resistance or opposition. But the truth behind millennials may be even more surprising. There is a pattern emerging. It is a pattern that I actually believed at first was only me, but as I pay attention to sources other than mainstream media, I start seeing that there are more and more people like me, especially after the last presidency.
I address a lot of social issues from points of view that range from centrist to fully right-wing, and I feel that I fall somewhere between Libertarian and Republican on our present political spectrum. What I don't discuss very much is where I come from, politically. I've mentioned it here and there in passing, but I definitely grew up in a Union-worker Democrat household. My dad works through a union as his father did, and while my mom does not work through a union, her father did as well. I can honestly say that my sister and I were raised to form our own ideas and draw our own conclusions based on the facts that were presented to us, but that does come on the heels of saying that there was always some pressure to vote straight down the ticket Democrat no matter what. It wasn't all from my parents either. One of the communities that I grew up in was largely supported by the same union job that my father worked at, which meant that many of the members of that community held the views that the AFL-CIO insisted upon them. I remember in 1995 during a community fair, I was given an opportunity to have my picture taken with a picture of Then-President Bill Clinton edited onto the picture, then put onto a button (Photoshop was still in it's infancy at the time and a novelty booth was still one of the premier ways to get such an item at the time). An elderly gentleman was talking politics at the booth and I remember him saying "He's a Democrat. You know, the good guys." It was that sentence that unfortunately held with me for the remainder of my formative years and into early adulthood.
There should have been a lot of signs early on in my adult life that I wasn't really a good little millennial progressive, but I largely ignored them at the time for the sake of being on what I considered the right side of history. Some of these things I can attribute to being a sign of the times and a rural upbringing. I can honestly say that even if I had stayed with the progressive movement, I'd never be able to be in the faction of Muslim apologists. My last year of High School saw too many Muslim jokes for that, and I'd definitely be a hypocrite for trying. However, that is very easily attributed to the fact that it was right after 9/11, and I was living in a homogeneous community of people who had largely never been outside of a handful of Wisconsin and Minnesota counties. Shortly after I left home for college, the military goal of our country shifted from a search and recover mission in the mountainous region of Afghanistan into a mission to overthrow the dictatorial government of Iraq. While, at the time, I didn't understand the tactical position of Iraq (I still don't, entirely), I understood enough to know that we were in a state of conflict with extremist factions of the Muslim world at the time, and that did include cells in the nation of Iraq. When the invasion happened, I saw my first real life protest. A group of students, mostly freshmen, marched the halls singing "give peace a chance" for hours on end. That was the day that I wrote my first freelance article. It was mostly a criticism, but I did hold enough of an objective stance to try and lay out the side of the protesters as well. I emailed the article to some friends, and quickly got my first politically charged comment back from a friend in the ROTC.
As time went on, the signs continued. But I did continue to vote straight down the ticket on the left. I remember a particular conversation that I had about finding a way to stop welfare for serial abusers of the system. The conversation was with a man I now know as a socialist activist, and I had a disgusted wrench of the stomach as he threw the children of these system abusers up as a shield. The man was a co-worker, and we were actually working a union job at the time. Mind you, it was a grocery store, but it was definitely union controlled. I actually remember the day that my romance for the Labor Unions ended, and it was while I was working there. We had a co-worker, an older woman in her 40s. She was one of those people who spent 30-plus years wrecking her body in every way possible, then found Jesus at the end of her 30s and was suddenly ultra-christian, and ultra-right-wing. I'm not saying any of this to put her down, she has the freedom of religion and speech just like the rest of us. I'm just setting up an outline of her convictions and her views of the union. So she obviously refused to join.
A grocery store, prior to Right To Work laws, was obviously a little different than a factory job. Especially given the fact that the majority of people that do work in that type of job are part-timers in high school or college. Therefore, at the time, the union was an option, but not a requirement. I had joined because my parents told me it was the only way to keep my dad's job from getting shipped overseas, but Kathy didn't. One day, she was late to work, which was unheard of. It got to be a half hour, and I was getting ready to call a replacement for her and she finally came in, clearly shaken. When I asked her what happened, she informed me that one of the union leaders was standing at the front door to the store, recognized her, and attempted to prevent her from going to work. She was being "ousted". My activist friend berated her, in his usual jovial voice of course, for not just joining the union, but I felt sick to the idea that someone has to join a club in order to go to work somewhere. At the time, I was completely unaware of the political ties between the unions and the Democrat Party. That would come later.
When I started to realize that I didn't belong with the way I was voting came when I was 23, as the second Bush administration was beginning to wane. It was during the primaries of 2007 that I first heard the name Barack Obama, and began to hear dissent against the young senator as a president. I knew that in some of the more recent elections, a couple of my cousins had begun to turn away from their union roots and move over to the right as far as voting, but in the beginning the cycle, I stood by what I had heard 12 years prior about the democrats being the good guys. Very early in the primaries, I was considering putting some support behind Clinton, assuming already that she was going to play the woman card and win. The discussions were starting to come up in mainstream during the 08 cycle. I definitely recall a roommate that I had at the time who told me in a discussion of the possibility of the first Black President that he couldn't see himself be a Republican, but he could never bring himself to vote for someone named "Barack Obama." (This would be the ultimate time for this to be a podcast rather than a written article. It was the voice/inflection that Timmy used that made his argument rather than the name itself.) A couple months later I would wind up moving as the rest of my roommates had graduated from our three week cyclical school, and I still had about 4 months left to go. My new roommates were a very different sort. All three were from Connecticut, and two were raised in a much higher tax bracket than I was, and the third was as well, but loved describing himself as a country redneck. All three were conservative, but only one was outspoken about it. He loved to yell about it to anyone who would listen, along with loud racial slurs. I did ask him one day why he was a Republican if he was as dirt of the earth as he tried to pass himself off as, and all he could respond with was "Why am I a Republican? Because I'm a Redneck." Growing up in farming area Unionland, I wouldn't see the connection until almost election day, but I was already having huge second thoughts about the way I had been voting. The final shift for me would come a few weeks later after Obama was officially nominated.
The day after the nomination, I was sitting in class, and a girl that I had once been very close friends with started texting me. "Obama is going to run for president. What are we going 2 do if he wins? I don't want to give away half of my money." Chelsea has no idea, but that was the the moment that ended my relationship with the Democrat Party. There has been fearmongering since the beginning of the United States, but this was the first time I had ever seen real fear over the thought of a person losing the fruits of her labor because of the executive. I quickly tried to calm her down, remembering my 7th grade Civics class and the lesson that our President is essentially a lightning rod for government criticism, and that the real power laid in the Congress. At the time I had no idea that our previous president would spend 8 years transferring more and more power into the executive branch and away from the other two. For the first time ever I started listening to the speeches and doing other research on what the President I would have otherwise voted for had said and promised, and I didn't like that I kept seeing promise after promise of a handout with no real answer as to how to pay for it, and when anyone asked for a method of payment, he was essentially shrugged off as a hate breeder and evil.
For the majority of the last 8 years, I actually considered myself as an anomaly. I knew there was such a thing as a swing voter, and that voter is the real target of political advertising. But I was never really a "swing voter". I was a pretty steady, down-the-ticket guy who turned into a steady, down-the-ticket guy for the other side. Base voters aren't known for switching sides, especially to the level that I have switched, where I became a conservative commentator and have thrown around the idea of a congressional run with an R next to my name. However, the more I pay attention to news and commentary, the more I find that this is becoming a common theme. I've heard others say it before, but Conservative podcast host Matt Christiansen was the person who caught the most of my attention.
Christiansen, like me, started a run in mass media on a completely different topic. I started writing about dating, and Matt started in gaming, but we both found our way into interpreting political news and presenting it as we see it. Mr. Christiansen has admitted on his show to being an Obama voter, and in an interview with Steven Crowder he also claimed that he was more fiscally liberal than most. But the message of freedom and smaller government rings through in every show that he does. Watching his solo YouTube show was my inspiration to revive my three year dead blog and start presenting the facts and my outlook to the people again. Others out there like Klavan, Knowles, Red Pill Black, and even Mr. Crowder himself have come forward saying that when they were younger, they also espoused views that more aligned with Democrats than Republican.
I've proposed the idea before, such as when I wrote about the President's history as a big-government Democrat. When I look at the migration of people away from the Democrat party, I don't really believe that we all left The Party. More often I feel as though The Party left us. I've heard my left-voting parents yell that the way to get people back to work would be to end welfare, and then I listen to Democrats advocate for a universal basic income (welfare for all), with the charge being led by the new face of the Democrat Party: Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders. The days of Republicans being for the already wealthy and Democrats being the representatives of the worker are far gone, replaced by a series of wealthy elites who offer to trade you an income and healthcare paid for at the expense of flyover country taxpayers, in exchange for your freedom, and your eternal vote. When I was a kid, being left-wing meant fight the power, rage against the machine, full anarchy and down with the establishment. Now, it seems that all of the liberals are only interested in the concept of "fall in line, or we will destroy your life publicly," and "support the establishment, and give them all the wealth so they can tell us how to live our lives." The spirit of near-anarchy and rebellion are still there, but they do not belong to the Democrats anymore. True, their hashtag is #resist right now, but the rebellion is to go back to a system of give it all to the government and let them provide. so we can go back to being good little followers. The "rebels" want to go back to an overreaching executive branch continuing to funnel more power away from the states and Congress into the chair in the Oval Office. No, back in November, all of America rebelled, and the #resist movement is desperate to give the power back to the overlords.
Did you swap from one political side to the other? What drove you? How deep into the opposite side were you? How dedicated are you to your current home side? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
I address a lot of social issues from points of view that range from centrist to fully right-wing, and I feel that I fall somewhere between Libertarian and Republican on our present political spectrum. What I don't discuss very much is where I come from, politically. I've mentioned it here and there in passing, but I definitely grew up in a Union-worker Democrat household. My dad works through a union as his father did, and while my mom does not work through a union, her father did as well. I can honestly say that my sister and I were raised to form our own ideas and draw our own conclusions based on the facts that were presented to us, but that does come on the heels of saying that there was always some pressure to vote straight down the ticket Democrat no matter what. It wasn't all from my parents either. One of the communities that I grew up in was largely supported by the same union job that my father worked at, which meant that many of the members of that community held the views that the AFL-CIO insisted upon them. I remember in 1995 during a community fair, I was given an opportunity to have my picture taken with a picture of Then-President Bill Clinton edited onto the picture, then put onto a button (Photoshop was still in it's infancy at the time and a novelty booth was still one of the premier ways to get such an item at the time). An elderly gentleman was talking politics at the booth and I remember him saying "He's a Democrat. You know, the good guys." It was that sentence that unfortunately held with me for the remainder of my formative years and into early adulthood.
There should have been a lot of signs early on in my adult life that I wasn't really a good little millennial progressive, but I largely ignored them at the time for the sake of being on what I considered the right side of history. Some of these things I can attribute to being a sign of the times and a rural upbringing. I can honestly say that even if I had stayed with the progressive movement, I'd never be able to be in the faction of Muslim apologists. My last year of High School saw too many Muslim jokes for that, and I'd definitely be a hypocrite for trying. However, that is very easily attributed to the fact that it was right after 9/11, and I was living in a homogeneous community of people who had largely never been outside of a handful of Wisconsin and Minnesota counties. Shortly after I left home for college, the military goal of our country shifted from a search and recover mission in the mountainous region of Afghanistan into a mission to overthrow the dictatorial government of Iraq. While, at the time, I didn't understand the tactical position of Iraq (I still don't, entirely), I understood enough to know that we were in a state of conflict with extremist factions of the Muslim world at the time, and that did include cells in the nation of Iraq. When the invasion happened, I saw my first real life protest. A group of students, mostly freshmen, marched the halls singing "give peace a chance" for hours on end. That was the day that I wrote my first freelance article. It was mostly a criticism, but I did hold enough of an objective stance to try and lay out the side of the protesters as well. I emailed the article to some friends, and quickly got my first politically charged comment back from a friend in the ROTC.
As time went on, the signs continued. But I did continue to vote straight down the ticket on the left. I remember a particular conversation that I had about finding a way to stop welfare for serial abusers of the system. The conversation was with a man I now know as a socialist activist, and I had a disgusted wrench of the stomach as he threw the children of these system abusers up as a shield. The man was a co-worker, and we were actually working a union job at the time. Mind you, it was a grocery store, but it was definitely union controlled. I actually remember the day that my romance for the Labor Unions ended, and it was while I was working there. We had a co-worker, an older woman in her 40s. She was one of those people who spent 30-plus years wrecking her body in every way possible, then found Jesus at the end of her 30s and was suddenly ultra-christian, and ultra-right-wing. I'm not saying any of this to put her down, she has the freedom of religion and speech just like the rest of us. I'm just setting up an outline of her convictions and her views of the union. So she obviously refused to join.
A grocery store, prior to Right To Work laws, was obviously a little different than a factory job. Especially given the fact that the majority of people that do work in that type of job are part-timers in high school or college. Therefore, at the time, the union was an option, but not a requirement. I had joined because my parents told me it was the only way to keep my dad's job from getting shipped overseas, but Kathy didn't. One day, she was late to work, which was unheard of. It got to be a half hour, and I was getting ready to call a replacement for her and she finally came in, clearly shaken. When I asked her what happened, she informed me that one of the union leaders was standing at the front door to the store, recognized her, and attempted to prevent her from going to work. She was being "ousted". My activist friend berated her, in his usual jovial voice of course, for not just joining the union, but I felt sick to the idea that someone has to join a club in order to go to work somewhere. At the time, I was completely unaware of the political ties between the unions and the Democrat Party. That would come later.
When I started to realize that I didn't belong with the way I was voting came when I was 23, as the second Bush administration was beginning to wane. It was during the primaries of 2007 that I first heard the name Barack Obama, and began to hear dissent against the young senator as a president. I knew that in some of the more recent elections, a couple of my cousins had begun to turn away from their union roots and move over to the right as far as voting, but in the beginning the cycle, I stood by what I had heard 12 years prior about the democrats being the good guys. Very early in the primaries, I was considering putting some support behind Clinton, assuming already that she was going to play the woman card and win. The discussions were starting to come up in mainstream during the 08 cycle. I definitely recall a roommate that I had at the time who told me in a discussion of the possibility of the first Black President that he couldn't see himself be a Republican, but he could never bring himself to vote for someone named "Barack Obama." (This would be the ultimate time for this to be a podcast rather than a written article. It was the voice/inflection that Timmy used that made his argument rather than the name itself.) A couple months later I would wind up moving as the rest of my roommates had graduated from our three week cyclical school, and I still had about 4 months left to go. My new roommates were a very different sort. All three were from Connecticut, and two were raised in a much higher tax bracket than I was, and the third was as well, but loved describing himself as a country redneck. All three were conservative, but only one was outspoken about it. He loved to yell about it to anyone who would listen, along with loud racial slurs. I did ask him one day why he was a Republican if he was as dirt of the earth as he tried to pass himself off as, and all he could respond with was "Why am I a Republican? Because I'm a Redneck." Growing up in farming area Unionland, I wouldn't see the connection until almost election day, but I was already having huge second thoughts about the way I had been voting. The final shift for me would come a few weeks later after Obama was officially nominated.
The day after the nomination, I was sitting in class, and a girl that I had once been very close friends with started texting me. "Obama is going to run for president. What are we going 2 do if he wins? I don't want to give away half of my money." Chelsea has no idea, but that was the the moment that ended my relationship with the Democrat Party. There has been fearmongering since the beginning of the United States, but this was the first time I had ever seen real fear over the thought of a person losing the fruits of her labor because of the executive. I quickly tried to calm her down, remembering my 7th grade Civics class and the lesson that our President is essentially a lightning rod for government criticism, and that the real power laid in the Congress. At the time I had no idea that our previous president would spend 8 years transferring more and more power into the executive branch and away from the other two. For the first time ever I started listening to the speeches and doing other research on what the President I would have otherwise voted for had said and promised, and I didn't like that I kept seeing promise after promise of a handout with no real answer as to how to pay for it, and when anyone asked for a method of payment, he was essentially shrugged off as a hate breeder and evil.
For the majority of the last 8 years, I actually considered myself as an anomaly. I knew there was such a thing as a swing voter, and that voter is the real target of political advertising. But I was never really a "swing voter". I was a pretty steady, down-the-ticket guy who turned into a steady, down-the-ticket guy for the other side. Base voters aren't known for switching sides, especially to the level that I have switched, where I became a conservative commentator and have thrown around the idea of a congressional run with an R next to my name. However, the more I pay attention to news and commentary, the more I find that this is becoming a common theme. I've heard others say it before, but Conservative podcast host Matt Christiansen was the person who caught the most of my attention.
Christiansen, like me, started a run in mass media on a completely different topic. I started writing about dating, and Matt started in gaming, but we both found our way into interpreting political news and presenting it as we see it. Mr. Christiansen has admitted on his show to being an Obama voter, and in an interview with Steven Crowder he also claimed that he was more fiscally liberal than most. But the message of freedom and smaller government rings through in every show that he does. Watching his solo YouTube show was my inspiration to revive my three year dead blog and start presenting the facts and my outlook to the people again. Others out there like Klavan, Knowles, Red Pill Black, and even Mr. Crowder himself have come forward saying that when they were younger, they also espoused views that more aligned with Democrats than Republican.
I've proposed the idea before, such as when I wrote about the President's history as a big-government Democrat. When I look at the migration of people away from the Democrat party, I don't really believe that we all left The Party. More often I feel as though The Party left us. I've heard my left-voting parents yell that the way to get people back to work would be to end welfare, and then I listen to Democrats advocate for a universal basic income (welfare for all), with the charge being led by the new face of the Democrat Party: Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders. The days of Republicans being for the already wealthy and Democrats being the representatives of the worker are far gone, replaced by a series of wealthy elites who offer to trade you an income and healthcare paid for at the expense of flyover country taxpayers, in exchange for your freedom, and your eternal vote. When I was a kid, being left-wing meant fight the power, rage against the machine, full anarchy and down with the establishment. Now, it seems that all of the liberals are only interested in the concept of "fall in line, or we will destroy your life publicly," and "support the establishment, and give them all the wealth so they can tell us how to live our lives." The spirit of near-anarchy and rebellion are still there, but they do not belong to the Democrats anymore. True, their hashtag is #resist right now, but the rebellion is to go back to a system of give it all to the government and let them provide. so we can go back to being good little followers. The "rebels" want to go back to an overreaching executive branch continuing to funnel more power away from the states and Congress into the chair in the Oval Office. No, back in November, all of America rebelled, and the #resist movement is desperate to give the power back to the overlords.
Did you swap from one political side to the other? What drove you? How deep into the opposite side were you? How dedicated are you to your current home side? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
Friday, December 8, 2017
The Last Word on Moore
The Alabama Special Election that the country has been talking about takes place in five days, and we will finally get the answer to whether or not the good Judge will be the next representative. As the day draws nearer, every commentator in the world has made this an increasing fire about the Moore case, and in an unprecedented move, Democrats have come together to expel people in their ranks who also had sexual skeletons in their closet. We are at a point that half of the Republican Commentators want to hang Moore without a trial, and the other half want to hang the accusers. But what is the right choice to make?
This article does come on the heels of the announcement that the yearbook was faked. Beverly Young came forward today to say that she forged parts of Moore's entry. At the last minute that changes the story entirely, but I promise you that it won't be good enough for people like Pelosi, Feinstein, and in an odd turn of events, Conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro. It seems to be a general consensus that Moore should be tried in the court of social media, and hanged because the accusations from 40 years ago are apparently credible.
The biggest problem that I have with this is the fact that it was 40 years ago. I don't know whether or not any of it even happened. Only Moore and his accuser really know what happened back then, and anyone else who has come forward was either in a consensual situation or discredited. Shapiro is the one that really rubs me the wrong way on this. I continue to enjoy the Ben Shapiro Show and the Daily Wire, but continually listening to the commentator rail on a man for something that happened so long ago makes me sick. As I mentioned before, people change. I can't tell you that I'm the same person I was 5 years ago. I'd hate to be judged about something I did when I was 14. I can tell you from experience, it sucks. My family remembers EVERYTHING and never lets anything go. Furthermore, the statute of limitations is a thing for a reason. I would think that a Harvard Law graduate would know that. The statute of limitations protects people in situations exactly like this one. I'm going to take a move from Mr. Shapiro's playbook on this one. I'll gladly start a motion with you to get Moore removed from the race, and a pending Senate Seat because it's creepy for a man over 30 to go out with a girl that is barely over the age of consent, and it's even worse for that same man to fool around with a girl who is below the age of consent. My condition: show me something from a time frame that is relevant. Show me a transgression from 5 years ago that would definitively show a flaw in judgement that may leak into a proposed legislation, and after I help you unseat Moore, I will eat a big plate of Oven Roasted Crow with a big smile on my face.
Not everyone waited to have his first kiss until there was a diamond ring on his wife's hand. I honestly feel that aside from the alleged assault of Ms. Young, Roy Moore represents the majority of us better than a lot of conservative commentators out there. He did make mistakes when he was younger, but he settled into a calmer monogamous life as he grew older. Most of us don't fall into a religious zealotry to the level that the good judge has, but the majority of Americans do find a level of religion as the grow older. I still consider the fact that this all came in after the Sore Loser law came into effect, rather than in the 30 years that Moore was in the public eye prior to that, stinks like burnt gear oil. But ultimately, the people of Alabama have the decision, and no one else does. We can let the voters decide. All we can do is present the facts
What are your final thoughts on Moore? What about the Commentators that can't stop talking about them? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading.
This article does come on the heels of the announcement that the yearbook was faked. Beverly Young came forward today to say that she forged parts of Moore's entry. At the last minute that changes the story entirely, but I promise you that it won't be good enough for people like Pelosi, Feinstein, and in an odd turn of events, Conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro. It seems to be a general consensus that Moore should be tried in the court of social media, and hanged because the accusations from 40 years ago are apparently credible.
The biggest problem that I have with this is the fact that it was 40 years ago. I don't know whether or not any of it even happened. Only Moore and his accuser really know what happened back then, and anyone else who has come forward was either in a consensual situation or discredited. Shapiro is the one that really rubs me the wrong way on this. I continue to enjoy the Ben Shapiro Show and the Daily Wire, but continually listening to the commentator rail on a man for something that happened so long ago makes me sick. As I mentioned before, people change. I can't tell you that I'm the same person I was 5 years ago. I'd hate to be judged about something I did when I was 14. I can tell you from experience, it sucks. My family remembers EVERYTHING and never lets anything go. Furthermore, the statute of limitations is a thing for a reason. I would think that a Harvard Law graduate would know that. The statute of limitations protects people in situations exactly like this one. I'm going to take a move from Mr. Shapiro's playbook on this one. I'll gladly start a motion with you to get Moore removed from the race, and a pending Senate Seat because it's creepy for a man over 30 to go out with a girl that is barely over the age of consent, and it's even worse for that same man to fool around with a girl who is below the age of consent. My condition: show me something from a time frame that is relevant. Show me a transgression from 5 years ago that would definitively show a flaw in judgement that may leak into a proposed legislation, and after I help you unseat Moore, I will eat a big plate of Oven Roasted Crow with a big smile on my face.
Not everyone waited to have his first kiss until there was a diamond ring on his wife's hand. I honestly feel that aside from the alleged assault of Ms. Young, Roy Moore represents the majority of us better than a lot of conservative commentators out there. He did make mistakes when he was younger, but he settled into a calmer monogamous life as he grew older. Most of us don't fall into a religious zealotry to the level that the good judge has, but the majority of Americans do find a level of religion as the grow older. I still consider the fact that this all came in after the Sore Loser law came into effect, rather than in the 30 years that Moore was in the public eye prior to that, stinks like burnt gear oil. But ultimately, the people of Alabama have the decision, and no one else does. We can let the voters decide. All we can do is present the facts
What are your final thoughts on Moore? What about the Commentators that can't stop talking about them? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)