It's the Constitution Stupid!

Now that this election is over, and as I reflect on the eventful months that have transpired since President-elect Trump first announced he was seeking the highest office in the land, one pervasive argument from his opponents comes to mind, and that is that he is “…fundamentally unqualified to be [the] President.”

Now, I ask you, who makes that assessment?  Who decides what the qualifications are?

Are you qualified to be President because you have been in the Congress, either as a Senator or as a Representative?

Are you qualified because you have spent decades in Washington D.C.?

Are you qualified because you have been a governor of a state?  A famous mayor?  A former House Speaker?

 

No wait!  Maybe you’re most qualified if you have a family member who has already been the President.

Or, maybe your qualifications have nothing to do with you directly.  Maybe you’re not qualified because you are vilified by the press, mocked by late night comedians, ridiculed by daytime talking heads, insulted by foreign leaders, audited by the IRS, ostracized by Silicon Valley, and burned in effigy by coddled students.

None of the above?  How about you’re not qualified because the talk radio audience likes you, or that you are popular throughout flyover country, or wherever guns are sold.  Maybe you’re unqualified because your supporters keep getting banned from social media sites.  That’s got to be it, right?

It’s all so confusing to me, so I went to the source of the presidency, the United States Constitution, to see if it could shed a light on what the qualifications are, and lo and behold, they are right there written in ink and entrenched in the soul of our American experience under Article II, Section 1:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

Hmmm, sounds pretty clear to me in a straight forward kind of way, but what else does the Constitution have to say on the matter?  It has, after all, been amended several times since the above words were penned.  Let’s see what Amendment XXII, Section 1 adds to the matter of qualifications:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.  But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

A bit more winded than what we see written in Article II, and more related to what happens after one is elected President.

So, in conclusion, what does this say about whether Donald J. Trump is qualified to be President?  Well let’s see, I am pretty sure he is over thirty-five years old though I haven’t seen his birth certificate to prove that.  And he is likely a citizen, but again, I haven’t seen his birth certificate to prove this either, but since we took his predecessor’s word for it I’ll give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt here.

I know this much though!  Nowhere in the Constitution did I find qualifications such as how long someone has been a politician or if they have even been one at all, or need to be.  Nothing there about being a former military leader either (and we’ve had a few of those as presidents), and certainly nowhere did I see it written that you deserve to be President because you are of a certain race or sex, or that you paid your dues!

So it seems to this “deplorable” white guy with no college degree, who had a black man as his best man at his wedding, grew up with friends who were of Chinese, Armenian, Russian and Persian descent, saluted female officers during his military career with the same admiration and respect he did the male ones [sometimes even more so] that I did weigh Donald Trump’s qualifications very carefully and am satisfied that voting for him was the right thing to do.

Romney's Requiem for the Established Order

It has been a long time since I last posted anything.  Eh, it happens.  But, today, something happened that spurred me to resume my blog.  Something was said that was in one respect unprecedented in my lifetime.  A former party nominee came out against the clear front runner in this year's primary season.  What Governor Romney did today was shameful and reprehensible (and to some degree McCain, too); not even the democrats would do this to one of their own.  But, then, that's just it, in the eyes of Romney and McCain they do not see Donald Trump as one of their own. 

Thank God for that! 

The established order of the Republican Party gnashed its teeth and bared its claws today; revealing who they truly are and why it is so important that we destroy them this election cycle.  We have given them the House, but they ignore us.  We then gave them the Senate and the control of the Congress, and they still ignore us.  Now two prior party nominees have chosen to ignore us.  According to Romney if we support Trump we're just a bunch of "...suckers."  

And they say Trump lobs insults! 

Until recently I did not have a dog in this fight.  The person I wanted to see run chose not to, but then the attacks started coming against Trump:  from every angle.  The press (mainstream and otherwise), the several other Republican candidates, our own President and Vice President.  In fact the only two who haven't attacked Trump personally yet, are Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. 

Who'd have thought!  

In light of these attacks on Trump I had to ask myself, "What is it about Trump that scares them?" 

Yes, what scares the established order? 

It has to be the fact that in recent years the Republican presidential candidates and many of our Senators, Representatives and governors sound and behave more like Democrats to the point that we don’t recognize our own party anymore.  The established Republican Party basically have given President Obama a free ride because they were deathly afraid of being labeled racist.  If the established order of the Republican Party had not given us McCain and then Romney, Obama may well have never been President or, at the very least, a one-termer. 

That’s it in a nutshell folks.  They sacrificed their principles, their duty and their honor for the sake of image.  What good did it do them?  If Romney and McCain, et al, think that they are the Congressional Black Caucus’ new friend good luck with that! 

Okay, so now Mitt Romney is on the record for agreeing with the mass hysteria on the left that Donald Trump is a racist, bigoted, anti-Muslim, fraudster and con-man.  This means that he has just joined the leftists; that Mitt Romney in one speech has taken the party of Lincoln and Reagan and dragged it into the left wing of America. 

Lock, stock and barrel! 

Mitt Romney gave a requiem mass for the Republican establishment today.  Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the convention will be its eulogy. 

Finally, and of utmost importance, if Mitt Romney and John McCain do not immediately leave the Republican Party then I have to urge Donald Trump to do so.  Trump must go on an independent run.  He will leave all others behind if he does.  He will garner more popular votes in the general election than the democrat will, and whoever the Republican establishment gets stuck with be he Cruz, Rubio or Kasich, will see the least amount of votes ever cast for a Presidential candidate.  The establishment candidate won’t garner anywhere near the 19% Ross Perot did with his Reform Party back in 1992.  In fact, I believe, that the establishment party candidate, in a three person race, would actually pull votes away from the Democrat.

Won’t that be a laugh? 

While I believe Trump will win a two person race, he will definitely come out on top of a three person one.  I hope it doesn’t come to this, but our honor as true members of the Republican Party is at stake as is the honor of Donald Trump. 

Since Mitt Romney and John McCain cannot and will not do the right thing then Donald Trump has to or America may never be great again.

It's Treason, Plain and Simple

Okay! What's the problem? The Times Square Bomber turns out to be a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan. That he is Islamic is obvious considering the reports that he has admitted to training in Pakistan to build bombs. Guess he left the instruction manual at home, eh?

Well, here's what I think is going on. The evil Islamic terrorist organizations around the world have now figured out that they can send their own over to America where they will live long enough to apply legally for citizenship. Once they are citizens they are dispersed to commit acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. This way if they survive the attack and are apprehended they are subject to the rights of citizenship and therefore will receive Miranda Rights, which will allow them to lawyer up. Surely the ACLU has enough tearjerk lawyers lined up ready to take on the defense of such cases.

Well, today U.S. Attorney General Holder announced the several charges against Shazad, yet not a one of them is treason. This is an outrage. If he is a U.S. citizen, and has attempted to harm other Americans as a member of a militant force bent on our destruction than he must be charged with treason. He must be!

We Americans will not learn how to truly deal with this terrorism threat until more lives are lost. It's unfortunate that our due diligence will depend on mass murder.

A Winning Ticket?

This will be the Republican/Conservative Presidential ticket come 2012:

Palin/Bachmann

America! What have we done?

Every time we allowed a politician to remain in office who supported no smoking in restaurants, who voted to require use of seat belts, who have lowered the legal drinking limit for driving, who raised property taxes, who allowed for bans on texting while driving, who campaigned to remove saturated and trans fats from foods, who passed laws reforming campaign financing, who increased tax withholdings from earned income, who perpetuated class warfare in a supposedly classless society, who answered the call to create WIC and Medicaid and EBT and utilities subsidies, we authorized mandates that allowed for these politicians to control more and more aspects of our lives.

These things did not happen overnight and they know it. This has been an orchestrated plan for decades (most of the political lives of those who now run the government) and they won't stop at health insurance reform. There power is now absolute. There is no way to stop them. America has been on a road to socialism for decades. Where socialism fails around the world it survives like the cancer it is in of all places the Land of the Free. Who would have thought?

We will not be able to reverse what happened on March 21, 2010, when the Democrat majority rammed this reform down America's throat. It is too late.

Unless...

...we repeal everything that government has successfully done to intrude in our lives, like those items mentioned above -- and more besides.

Yes, we need to stop allowing the takeover of our lives with phrases like: "for the children" and "spread the wealth" and "the rich have to pay their fair share" and "conservatives are all racists".

Yes, we have to allow restaurants to decide if customers can smoke, not the government.

Yes, we have to let individuals choose whether they will wear a seat belt, not the government.

Yes, we have to rely on individuals, their families, their friends, to reduce drunk driving, not the government.

Yes, we have to stop funding failing schools with property tax increases. How much money has to be spent before we realize that the problem is not the money, but the fact that we have allowed children to get away with more and more disobedience by limiting how and when they are disciplined?

Yes, we have to leave it up to food suppliers, and retailers to decide whether saturated or trans fats are used, not the government.

Yes, we have to support anyone's (be they individual citizen or corporation) right to speak through financing the campaigns of politicians who support their interests not the interests of Washington D.C.

Yes, we have to repeal Amendment XVI to the U.S. Constitution, if we are to put an end to the government taking our money and using it against our will.

Yes, we have to discontinue WIC and Medicaid and EBT and subsidies and instead put into structured homes and orphanages those who have "caretakers" unable to fulfill their responsibilities to them.

Yes, we have to stop giving politicians any mandate that infringes on our Constitutional rights.

To do all of this will not be easy, because even those who consider theirself conservative have already drunk the "kool aid" and as a result have failed America miserably. It will require an entirely new generation of politicians, and I for one have absolutely no clue where they will come from.

Gold at 1200 and rising!

Does anyone understand this nonsense?

The Stock Market is up. Oil is up. Gold is way up! Where's the catalyst? Where's the money coming from?

People, nationwide unemployment is almost at 20%. Yes, I meant to write 20%, not the bogus 10.2% figure quoted by most in the media and government. With so many folks out of work there has to be less money floating around to buy things. Remember, even the Cash for Clunkers and First-time Home Buyer tax credit is not an influx of cash into the market. They are an increase in the indebtedness that we cannot pay back.

Many economists already predict that there will be massive repossessions within six months, in part because the fools who fell for the Clunkergate did not realize how much their insurance would go up for a new car versus the more than likely liability coverage they carried on their paid off clunkers. This only adds to how much they will have to fork out to keep paying on their new car. Not to mention that they still need to pay their rent/mortgage, put food on the table, and gas in that car.

Recently it was reported that home buyers are already in arrears for homes they bought just this year. Come on, we're gutting ourselves here! Mark my words, if we don't stop this keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality our world is going to come crashing down hard and fast.

Things are very bad, folks. Very bad.

Still, the consumer robots are running around to all of these so-called Bleak Friday sales (yes, you read right). Buying flat screen TVs because they can, because they want one. I guarantee you these same folks have a perfectly functioning CRT TV in their homes right now. What are they going to do with that? Read one of my earlier blogs to get the gist of how I feel about HD and all that. My CRT TV happens to be over ten years old. I will NOT buy a flat screen TV until I absolutely have no choice. Yes, that means my CRT TV will have to go out completely. Dead. Kaput.

I spent today with family thankful for them and only them on this Thanksgiving Day. I am not thankful for my government, I am not thankful for the greedy and selfish among us, and I am not thankful for the apparent stupidity that is working to destroy this the greatest nation on earth.

Gold at 1200. Please!

A Day to Think

Like many Americans today, I spent time reflecting on what happened September 11, 2001, and continue to try to make sense of it all. You can't really.

Some have said we need to identify who did this to us and not be so politically correct. Others go on believing and espousing that George W. Bush was behind the attacks, or knew of them in advance. The conspiracy theories abound across the web. Others, still, think we have not gone far enough or done enough damage to the "other side" to make a difference in the conflict.

It is not enough, I don't think, to say Muslims did this to us. Islamic extremists attacked before 9/11, attacked on 9/11, and go on attacking. They want an end to America so don't kid yourself thinking otherwise. I stopped blaming Muslims a long time ago, even though they make that difficult. After all, one is hard pressed to find any Muslim anywhere who publicly denounces what Islamic Extremists do.

September 11th comes and goes every year and I don't really do much about it, not really. Then I come across a video on YouTube from a young man just talking to his audience and partway through his talk he says something brief, yet absolutely remarkable. "What can you say [about 9/11]?...a day to think..."

Wow! That hit home. Of course, it is so simple, it takes a young man to explain it to me. Today is not a day to remember; it's not a day to grieve; it's not a day to blame. September 11th is a day to think. And that is exactly how I will honor the victims of 9/11 from now on.

Wow! A day to think.