Category: Politics

Trying not to start the public floggings

Propositions

Elections, Politics

Also in last Tuesday’s Republican ballots were a series of “propositions” — basically, a way for the Texas Republican Party to gauge the feelings of their supporters for ideas that should be considered for inclusion as planks in their party platform in future elections.  They make for interesting reading (with my vote + reasons):

Proposition 1:
Texas property taxes should be assessed at the purchase price and phased out entirely over the next six years through spending reductions. — Yes (government should get only one bite at the cherry, not an annual one;  if they need more money, let them beg for it at election time, or sell bonds)

Proposition 2:
Texas should require any local government budget that raises property taxes to be approved by voters at a November general election. — Yes (one of my buddies recently moved to a “growing” area, and was presented with a 40% increase in his property tax for next year;  municipalities should never think they have an open checkbook)

Proposition 3:
Texas should prohibit denial of healthcare or any medical service based solely on the patient’s vaccination status. — Yes (screw those Covid-type excrescences)

Proposition 4:
Texas should require its public schools to teach that life begins at fertilization. — Yes (although I have some reservations about this, I can see why it’s been suggested)

Proposition 5:
Texas should ban gender, sexuality, and reproductive clinics and services in K-12 schools. — Yes (if the kids feel they need any of those, they can do it with their parents, outside school)

Proposition 6:
Texas should enact term limits on all elected officials. — Yes (although I sometimes like it when we get a good ‘un, I don’t like any politician to get too comfortable in a sinecure)

Proposition 7:
Texas should ban the large-scale export or sale of our groundwater and surface water to any single private or public entity. — Yes (we don’t have a lot of water in the Lone Star State, and we need to guard it jealously)

Proposition 8:
The Texas Legislature should reduce the burden of illegal immigration on taxpayers by ending public services for illegal aliens. — Yes (especially education, which has stuck in my craw for decades)

Proposition 9:
The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature should stop awarding leadership positions, including committee and subcommittee chairmanships and vice chairmanships, to Democrats. — Yes (because Democrats are not to be trusted with any levers of power)

Proposition 10:
Texas should prohibit Sharia Law. — Yes (to address any First Amendment qualms on this issue, see what’s happened in Britishland)

I’ll be interested to see how this all plays out.

Primary Colors

Elections

Went early to vote in the Republican primary elections yesterday.  The place looked like an AARP/VFW convention, no doubt because Republican youngins in my district have things like jobs.  Anyway, my local choice for the U.S. House did okay:


…but that wasn’t unexpected.  Come November, I expect him to win again against whomever the Democrats place on the altar.

In other local news:


…damn, I thought Pax had it in the can, but Cornyn’s got huge support from the RINO element, and he outspent Paxton by something like 10:1.  Oh well… it’s going to be a close-run thing even with most of Wesley Hunt’s voters (Hunt is more conservative than either of the two, so his support will likely go to Paxton and not to the RINO).

The TexGov primary was predictable:


…which means a reelection in November seems likely.  (I know that many Texas Republicans don’t think too highly of Abbot, and I can see why.  But I agree with his actions about 80% of the time, and I’m not going to let perfection be the enemy of the good.)


Ditto the vote for Dan Patrick.  (The position of Lt. Governor is an important one in Texas, unlike in many other states.  For one thing, the Lt.Gov sets the agenda for the Texas legislature, which is highly influential.  Patrick’s done well in the job, so he’s justifiably popular.)

But Wait!  There’s More!

In national news, there’s a Good Thing What Happened in the U.S. House race, over in the Evil Party:


Bye bye Jasmine (who is predictably saying her voters were excluded or “suppressed”, the lying bitch).  I have no idea who Talarico is, but he can only be an improvement — assuming, that is, that he wins in November against his Republican opponent, whether Paxton or Cornyn.

Glad to have done my bit.

Whatever

Politics, Third World, Wars & Other Fun Games

This whole Iranian adventure has been framed in terms of its being “regime change” for Iran, and I don’t care.

Frankly, I’m uneasy with the entire concept of “regime change” as a foreign policy goal, because if history has taught us anything — especially in the Middle East — it’s that most of these noble efforts are pretty much doomed to failure, because the entire premise is faulty.  Changing a regime is no guarantee that the next regime will be any better than the previous one.

Here’s the unalterable fact:  democratic capitalism, as a concept and guiding socio-political principle, doesn’t work outside the confines of Western civilization, and by “Western civilization” I mean pretty much the United States.  This is because Western civilization cannot coexist within a nation along with lunatic and highly-flawed political systems like Marxism and/or lunatic medieval social systems like Islam.

One only has to see how the UK, to use but one example, has been undermined by the baleful effects of both the above — Marxism as a home-grown poison (hello, Labour Party) and Islam as an imported poison (hello, untrammeled Muslim immigration).

And that’s within a nation which pretty much gave birth to democratic capitalism.  (They did, too;  we just perfected it.)  Now try to see how well democratic capitalism has worked in other countries which have never had that system as a bedrock principle — Iraq, Syria, Egypt, China, the whole of Africa etc. — and all you’ll find is a constant and comprehensive list of failures.  You can change regimes, by all means:  but the plain fact of the matter is that democratic capitalism is probably going to fail as the “new” regime will pretty much be just a (watered-down at best) copy of earlier regimes, none of which have espoused democratic capitalism.  They’ll be kleptocracies like all the African shitholes, or neo-Communist like Vietnam, or military juntas like [insert South American country of choice here].  (Augusto Pinochet’s Chilean junta, by the way, was very much the exception.)

So I’m simply regarding the destruction of the current Iranian Islamic regime as a side-benefit of the whole exercise.

What we should be stating, in no uncertain terms, is that any regime which exports terrorism or socio-political poisons like Islam or Marxism are on notice that the United States may, at our own discretion, pound these regimes back into rubble rather than allow them to subvert peace and prosperity — the two are very much linked — in the names of their respective ideologies.  “Regime change” is very much a subset of that goal, and not its primary purpose.  (SecWar Pete Hegseth, at least, has the right of it.)

That the United States should be hesitant, indeed resistant to the idea of allowing said poisons into our own country should most definitely be a guiding principle and not government policy.  The noble sentiment on the base of the Statue of Liberty should not only not be taken as government policy, but should also contain the codicil:

“And don’t try to change our country to be more like yours of origin because we’ll toss you out if you do.”

The essence of what I’m saying is that we should not be beguiled into changing our own regime from democratic capitalism into any flavor or subset of the above excrescences.

You may argue with me on any of the above, but you’d be wrong.

Yeah, Right

Foreign Affairs, Wars & Other Fun Games

From Russki Strongman-In-Chief:

Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Sunday, calling the death, which came amid strikes from Israel and the U.S., a “cynical violation” of norms.

Uh huh. Let’s talk about “cynicism” for a moment.  Lessee:

  • Murdering dozens, perhaps hundreds of political opponents and even jailing people who dare to criticized his rule:  A-OK
  • Murdering said critics and opponents even when they’re living outside Russia in places like the UK:  A-OK
  • Executing generals and other military officers who failed to conquer Ukraine in three days, as promised, taking instead over three years (and still failing):  very much A-OK

But killing the head of a terrorist state which has financed and encouraged terrorist acts all over the civilized (and not-so-civilized) world for the past half-century… well wait a minute, that’s just beyond the pale, you know.

Fuck you, Vlad, and that fucking horse you rode in on.

Just be thankful there wasn’t a rocket sent in your direction.  (It could still happen.)

Nothing Wrong There

Conservatism, Good Stuff

Via Insty, this:

Two things to note here: firstly, Keith Self is my local guy and yes, I’m going to vote for him every chance I get.

Secondly, that fucking Muslim-only  EPCOT  EPIC City was planned to be built in Keith Self’s district (or very close to it — the maps are a little unclear).  Fortunately, that festering shithole was nuked by our worthy TxGov* but the assholes have renamed the thing and keep pushing it forward.  Self and Roy’s caucus would (I hope) stop it dead, forever.

Like I said, we need an asterisk in the First Amendment, and this is a good start.  It’s not enough just to trust the Constitution to protect our republic — see countless Second Amendment transgressions for examples — we need to start doing what the Texas constitution does and put in measures that actively resist and ban bullshit like shari’a.

*Yeah, Greg Abbott is also going to get my vote every time.

Yeah, We Know

Marxists, Morons & Idiots, Politics

Finally, the rest of the world discovers what we conservatives have known for years:  the Brooklyn Barmaid is a vacuous Marxist with little intelligence and an astonishing ignorance of, well, just about everything.

I actually started to watch AOC’s little speech at the Munich conference and had to quit because I was embarrassed by the spectacle of her complete meltdown.  I mean, she had no idea of any of the topics she was quizzed on — she couldn’t even recall her party’s talking points, let alone formulate any cogent or reasoned responses to the simple questions put to her.

The only negative outcome I can see coming from this is that she should have been exposed during the 2028 primaries instead of now.  She wouldn’t be able to debate prospective candidates from her own party*, let alone heavy hitters like Marco Rubio or J.D. Vance.

*I’m assuming that the Social Democrat Marxists might actually have a better candidate than this fool, but I could be mistaken.