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Jay Ambrose, Columnist 8:16 a.m. CT Feb. 24, 2017

One day, President Donald Trump is at a prayer meeting talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger being lousy on TV, and on another, he is naming the brilliant Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his national security advisor. I will hereby be an unsolicited national hope advisor. Do the second kind of thing much more and wholly eradicate the first kind of thing, Mr. President, and save us from a grave public enemy.

That would be the kind of socialistically inspired future represented by Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. She wanted more freebies but less freedom, more spending, more regulations, a marketplace coerced into failures, identity-group divisiveness, contemptuous elitist supremacy and judicial power usurping democracy along with constitutionalism.

President Barack Obama was also a champ at all of this, and while the public mostly liked him, many did not like what was doing. Thus, after his eight years in office, Democrats had lost a net of 62 seats in the House, nine seats in the Senate, 12 governorships, more than 900 state legislature seats and the presidency, according to a Fox News report. Republicans took charge, and there is now an extraordinary opportunity to reverse a big-government trend threatening to encapsulate us for eons.

The thing is, we may be cheated out of that chance if Trump does not give up on his stupidities and instead provides his enemies the wherewithal to stymie the best in him and turn the country back over to their contrary dreams. If he loves America, therefore, he should please, please quit obnoxious tweeting for starters. It is absurd and makes him look like a misbehaving child with a misused toy.

Then he should quit holding zany press conferences in which he overstates everything, insults everyone and further institutes enmity. He should in fact avoid adlibbing as much as possible. He is a non-linear, now-you-see-it, now-you-dont speaker who treats us to unconnected, unexplained phrases that can mean just about anything and are advantageously interpreted by critics as saying he favors hell over heaven.

Still more advice. He should quit substituting glances at a TV set for actual study. He should quit having reckless phone calls with heads of state. He should quit putting together policy plots with minimal trustworthy advice. He should quit the small-mindedness that puts claims of crowd size above real issues.

Yes, it is absolutely the case that his critics are often far worse than he is. Sen. Elizabeth Warren? Sen. Chuck Schumer? There is nothing polite to say. The reputable press is not so reputable when its commentators, for instance, issue baseless growls about anti-Semitism.

It is also despicable that protestors carry signs referring to Trump as anti-gay when there is absolutely nothing to back them up. It is simple-minded and worse for anyone to insist Trumps criticism of someone who is black is ipso facto racism, and yet we have seen it. In terms of evidence at this point, the Russian collusion theory is right up there with the birther theory. Vandalizing college students should be required to clean up after themselves before packing their bags and going home, and the leakers in the intelligence community should be worried about criminal prosecution.

There is lots of good in Trump, as seen in his executive orders on pipelines and absolutely smothering regulations, his choice for the Supreme Court, most of his Cabinet picks and, as mentioned earlier, his choice of McMaster as a top advisor.

He may very well do something about a crime rise the left uncaringly dismisses as nothing much. Watch for an improved world order. Some of his tax ideas are excellent, if not the one on imports, and we should replace Obamacare with something better, although prudence is needed. The wonders already happening in the economy are signs of how he actually could do splendid things.

But if Trump does not cut out the bad, there are those waiting in the bushes with a ruinous future in mind.

Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may email him at speaktojay@aol.com.

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How Trump could lead us to socialism yet - Times Record News

Friday, February 24, 2017

Bernie Sanders has some of the best press in the countrynot just for a politician. Every time hes mentioned, the he would have beaten Trump line that has become so commonplace in after-election analysis immediately follows. Everyone and their mother seems to hold this line of thinking; its almost blasphemous to even mention Sanders wouldnt have beaten Trump.

So Im going to commit blasphemy: Trump wouldve easily beaten Bernie.

Its really not that crazy of a theory. Just because someone is a purportedly honest, sweet old man doesnt mean he wins automatically. He has his issues.

The clearest and most important reason for why Bernie wouldnt win can be summed up in one word: socialism. And yes, Bernie advocated for democratic socialism, which just means that people vote for socialism; its still socialism. Just because there is no forcible takeover doesnt mean its not socialism.

(Now, a discussion on the over-praising of socialism is for a different column on a different day.)

Its about how people would perceive democratic socialism. You can forget about the democratic part of democratic socialism pretty quickly. No one would remember that after the Republican marketing strategy.

The Republicans never treated Bernie as a threat in the primary season. No matter people believed that he was actually going to win the primary, he never would have. Even without the superdelegates, Sanders still lost by about 500 delegates. There was no reason for Republicans to really attack him; they focused all the money on hurting the big dog, Hillary Clinton.

If there had actually been a focused ad campaign on Bernie, it wouldnt have ended well. Everything would revolve around socialism:Do you want a socialist in the White House?

Even if people hated Trump, they still wouldnt vote for Bernie because of the socialist label. He would lose 60 percent of the country right out of the gate. And the same is true with Democrats. Sure, he wouldve initially had support, but once things got hard, they wouldve run for safer ground.

Even the Midwest working vote wouldve run for the hills. Their bread and butter is industry, and they dont want the government taking that over.

Instead of Ohio Gov. John Kasich getting some votes, it wouldve been Hillary getting those votes from Democrats.

Bernie is also really bad on foreign policy. The fact is Democrats lose on foreign policy nine times out of 10. Its not that Republicans plans are necessarily better, but Republicans know how to frame those issues in a different way. Bernie does notat all. He has his talking points, and they usually revolve around the economy and how to fix it.

Hes great at talking about the economy for hours. But foreign is not his strong suit; ask him to talk about foreign terrorism and hell tie it back to the 1 percent and the greed of capitalism. Thats not necessarily a bad thing. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was great at tying everything back to ISIS in the Republican primary debates, and it worked for him (to an extent).

But that is not good for an actual presidential debate. There are whole sections (and sometimes entire debates) dedicated fully to foreign policy. If Bernie would have tied it back to the economy, at some point, the moderator wouldve gotten tired of it and called him out.

Thats fine in the primaries, but once you get to the real debates, you better have some real answers.

Lastly, Bernie cant talk to real people. Hes good at talking those who already agree with himnamely, young, white votersbut not anyone else, especially small business owners.

Take this example from his CNN Town Hall. A small business owner questioned him on Obama-era regulatory policy. Bernies response engaged him in a fight with the owner whos actually on the ground dealing with the policies Bernie was disputing. To Bernie supporters, this was a great spat; support more regulatory policy and hit the 1 percent. To everyone else, this looked like a politician telling a struggling business owner hes not struggling.

Then there was his response to a salon owner at his debate with Ted Cruz. Whether you agree with him or not that the woman should go out of business, thats not how anyone, especially someone running for office, should respond to someone.

So Bernie Sanders is the cute, truthful old man who birds are in love with. None of this means hed have actually defeated Trump. He breaks down easily, and hes not as easy to support as people make it seem. Continue with the narrative if necessary, but at least be honest: theres no way he wouldve won.

Assistant opinion editor Jorden Smith is a political science and creative writing junior and can be reached at [emailprotected]

Tags: 2016 Presidential election, Bernie Sanders

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Socialist Sanders could never defeat Trump - The Cougar - The Daily Cougar

Last weekend, as Donald Trump prepared to rally in Florida, Barack Obama laid low after his vacation with Richard Branson, and Hillary Clinton took in some Broadway shows, 250 young leftists from across the country crowded into a Brooklyn church to learn how to spread the good word about socialism.

They were there for Democratic Socialists of Americas annual Young Democratic Socialists conference, held at the Mayday Community Space in Bushwick, a church and all-purpose organizing center founded in 2014. Inside the meeting space, young leftists noshed on bagels, drank coffee and chatted about the days events. Some wore name tags with their preferred gender pronouns. The wifi password was solidarity (all lower-case).

Unlike those raised during the duck-and-cover days of the Cold War, young Americans today dont see socialism as a political boogeyman. A poll released by Harvard University last April found that 51 percent of young adults aged 18 to 29 do not support capitalism, while a third of those surveyed said they support socialism. Senator Bernie Sanderss presidential campaign played a huge role in popularizing democratic socialism, a term that, in a new era of Big Tent leftism, can encompass political philosophies ranging from the senator from Vermonts Scandinavian-inspired social democracy to complete social ownership (and democratic management) of the means of production. Last May, DSA, formed in the Reagan era through a merger of socialist groups with histories of schisms and splits dating back to the heyday of Eugene Debs himself, had 6,500 members. Now, the organization has roughly 17,000 members, with 100 chapters in 40 states.

Among the attendees was Trevor Hill, a sophomore at New York University, who has become one of the young lefts unexpected viral heroes. Earlier this month, Hill was slated to ask a question at CNNs live town hall with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. He had told CNN producers he would ask Pelosi a softball question about the HBO show Veep, but instead asked Pelosi how Democrats might move farther left on economic policy.

My experience is that the younger generation is moving left on economic issues, and I have been so excited to see how Democrats have moved left on social issues. As a gay man, Ive been very proud to see you fighting for our rights and many Democratic leaders fighting for our rights, Hill said. But I wonder if theres anywhere you feel that the Democrats could move farther left to a more populist message, the way the alt-right has sort of captured this populist strain on the right wingif you think we could make a more stark contrast to right-wing economics.

Well, I thank you for your question. But I have to say, were capitalist. Thats just the way it is, Pelosi said with a laugh. However, we do think that capitalism is not necessarily meeting the needs with the income inequality that we have in our country.

Hill and other young leftists found Pelosis answer unsatisfying.

The whole point was that young progressives have serious concerns about the Democratic Party, and we want to know if theyll be responsive to them, Hill told me. They sort of proved, in a small way at least, that theyre not.

Hills disenchantment with the Democratic Party began when he was in high school, when the 2008 economic recession made its mark on his family. Hills parents started selling possessions and scrimping on groceries in the hopes that the recovery would eventually dig them out. He remembered his frustration watching Democrats assurances that the stock market was rebounding.

The stock market doesnt mean much to a family that cant afford a stake, Hill said. I lost a lot of faith in Democrats as far as leading the movement for working families.

When Hill arrived at the conference on Saturday afternoon, several attendees came up to congratulate him on his CNN appearance and ask for photos with him.

Wait, youre the Trevor? one student from Indiana University said. I follow you on Twitter!

For young leftists and potential recruits, Twitter has become the new Socialist Worker, spreading the Marxist dialectic one Simpsons joke at a time. Other alternative media, like the podcast Chapo Trap House and Jacobin Magazine, led young DSA members into the fold. For this and other reasons, DSAs young members tend to skew toward the white, college-educated men.

At the conference, the generation gap between the older, more earnest activists speaking at the conference and younger, more irony-fluent members they were addressing made itself known.

As the first panel of the day started, light symphony music crackled through the speaker system.

Can someone turn this mic off? It seems to be picking up the local AM radio station, the panels moderator asked.

Its the deep state! an audience member yelled with faux alarm.

Later in the day, Jose La Luz, a veteran union organizer, ended an impassioned speech by asking the young crowd to stand up from their seats and chant, S se puede! After the chant ended, a woman standing at the back of the room blasted an airhorn sound effect on her phonethe Internet equivalent of a heralding trumpet.

While many of the attendees hailed from liberal bastions like New York and California, the conference also drew attendees from states in the South and the Rust Belt, from states like Georgia, Texas and Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio.

Liz Frissell, a high school junior from Cleveland, received a travel scholarship to attend the conference. Though too young to vote, she rooted for Bernie Sanders during the primary campaign. After discovering DSA online, she moved to start her own chapter at her high schoolan act that has drawn some pushback from her own peers.

Usually what they say is, When has socialism ever worked? she said. I think the logical response to that is, Do you call thiscapitalismworking?

Some attendees, while onboard with socialisms premise, had questions about the logistics of dismantling global capitalism.

OK, fuck the system. But what does that mean? asked Alanna Salwen, a sophomore at Cornell University.

The answer to the question, What does America look like without capitalism? isnt straightforward, as anyone reasonably familiar with the history of American socialist organizations, including the various antecedents of DSA, could tell you. But post-2008 America has new blood attacking the problem, with popular young thinkers like Matt Bruenig taking valiant stabs at it. And for DSAs young members, this type of utopian thinking is a big part of its appeal. If conservatives have found so much success mainstreaming ideas that were previously considered extreme, why cant the left?

Many attendees at DSAs conference said they wanted to support a party with more political imagination than Democrats today have shown. This year marked David Littmans third time attending the Young Democratic Socialists conference. He took a 14-hour bus ride from Savannah, Georgia, where he lives with his parents.

I think most people agree with socialist positions, they just dont know it, he said. Everyone on Earth hates their boss. Thats universal!

With the global rise of a virulently nationalist and unapologetically authoritarian right, progressives have struggled to formulate an appropriate response. While Democrats in Congress have tried to brand themselves as at the vanguard of the resistance, what victories the resistance has notched in the brief Trump era have come not from elected political leaders but from mass public outrage, organized activism, and protests. The message that young members came away from the conference with was clear: If they want an effective resistance, theyll have to build it themselves.

Emma Roller (@emmaroller) is a freelance journalist living in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Journal, Slate, The New Republic, and elsewhere.

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The Kids Are All Red - Deadspin

Socialism: Want to lose weight fast? Don't worry about the latest fad diet. Just move to Venezuela. There, the new Socialist Diet has caused the population to lose millions of pounds in 12 months. Unwillingly, of course.

A new study of Venezuela's stunning decline under Hugo Chavez's socialist model, still followed faithfully by his lap dog successor, Nicolas Maduro, reports that the average Venezuelan lost 19 pounds in the last year. Today, the 2016 Living Conditions Survey finds, 32.5% of Venezuelans eat only once or twice a day, up from 11.3% just one year ago. And 93.3% of all people don't earn enough to buy sufficient food.

American Thinker blogger Ronald C. Tinnell called it "The Venezuelan Miracle Weight Loss Program."

We call it a shocking indictment of socialism, and should be a siren call to people around the world: Bring socialism to your country, and you bring misery. It's the one thing that socialism produces an abundance of.

It's a sad fact that Venezuela was once one of the wealthiest countries in South America, and even now has the second-largest oil reserves in the world. It should be a rich nation, filled with prosperous people worried about gaining too much weight, not losing it to hunger.

But as formerly middle-class Venezuelans scavenge for food some even stooping to dumpster diving and eating formerly beloved pets just to stay alive socialists allied with Maduro have changed nothing. Maduro followed Chavez's lead, spending all the money that the state-oil company earned on "social" programs, all the while attacking small businesses and companies and effectively nationalizing the supermarkets.

Meanwhile, inflation at close to 500% a year is the highest of any country on earth. Looking at the problems with declining food stocks and roaring inflation, Maduro decided to put the military in charge of the country's food distribution network. The result was predictable: Massive food shortages and rampant corruption, as armed military line their pockets by selling food on the black market.

"Mismanagement of the economy has created a humanitarian disaster beyond comprehension," wrote Ed Feulner and Ana Quintana in a piece that appeared on the RealClearPolitics website.

The country's infrastructure is collapsing from a lack of investment, while rule of law has been rejected for the rule of one tyrant. Children aren't spared; they're dying by the hundreds from curable diseases, a lack of medicine, electricity outages and no incubators for newborns. The resurgence of once vanquished contagious diseases is killing off the weak and the infirm. "Cases of diphtheria and malaria are re-emerging, and the number of Zika infections is estimated to be 'nearly 700,000', according to a Venezuelan health organization," wrote Feulner and Quintana.

Even worse is the chaos on the streets. Caracas' murder rate of 120 per each 100,000 inhabitants is the highest in the world. That's higher than in Damascus, Kabul or Tripoli.

It doesn't have to be this way. As recently as 21 years ago the Heritage Foundation gave Venezuela a 59.8 ranking on its Index of Freedom. Today it's at 27.0, just behind Cuba but barely ahead of last place North Korea. As with all nations that destroy freedom, socialist Venezuela has also destroyed whatever semblance of wealth it had.

If Venezuela seems remote and of little concern, consider this headline: "Democratic Socialists Make Headway In U.S. After Trump's Win." Yes, we know. The Democratic Socialists of America style themselves as kinder, gentler socialists. Think Sweden, they say, not Venezuela.

But the truth is, whoever practices it or whatever those who follow it call themselves, socialism is an economic system based on mass greed and class envy that has failed time and time again. There are no successful socialist nations, anywhere. Those that find this model appealing despite its obvious failures are the desperate, the poorly educated, the uninformed and those lacking entirely in basic common sense.

It is an economic philosophy of entitlement and grievance, one that always ends in poverty, wanton destruction, the breakdown of civilization and even death as the Venezuelans, who willingly handed control of their country over to the socialists, are now finding out.

RELATED:

Venezuela: Why Can't The Left Take Voters' 'No' For An Answer?

Venezuela Is Socialist, Senator Sanders. Any Questions?

Yes, There Is A Cure For Poverty It's Called Freedom

Originally posted here:
Venezuelans Now On A Forced Starvation Diet Thanks, Socialism ... - Investor's Business Daily

One day, President Donald Trump is at a prayer meeting talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger being lousy on TV, and on another, he is naming the brilliant Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser. I will hereby be an unsolicited national hope adviser. Do the second kind of thing much more and wholly eradicate the first kind of thing, Mr. President, and save us from a grave public enemy.

That would be the kind of socialistically inspired future represented by Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. She wanted more freebies but less freedom, more spending, more regulations, a marketplace coerced into failures, identity-group divisiveness, contemptuous elitist supremacy and judicial power usurping democracy along with constitutionalism.

President Barack Obama was also a champ at all of this, and while the public mostly liked him, many did not like what he was doing. Thus, after his eight years in office, Democrats had lost a net of 62 seats in the House, nine seats in the Senate, 12 governorships, more than 900 state legislature seats and the presidency, according to a Fox News report. Republicans took charge, and there is now an extraordinary opportunity to reverse a big-government trend threatening to encapsulate us for eons.

The thing is, we may be cheated out of that chance if Trump does not give up on his stupidities and instead provides his enemies the wherewithal to stymie the best in him and turn the country back over to their contrary dreams. If he loves America, therefore, he should please, please quit obnoxious tweeting for starters. It is absurd and makes him look like a misbehaving child with a misused toy.

Then he should quit holding zany press conferences in which he overstates everything, insults everyone and further institutes enmity. He should in fact avoid adlibbing as much as possible. He is a non-linear, now-you-see-it, now-you-dont speaker who treats us to unconnected, unexplained phrases that can mean just about anything and are advantageously interpreted by critics as saying he favors hell over heaven.

Still more advice. He should quit substituting glances at a TV set for actual study. He should quit having reckless phone calls with heads of state. He should quit putting together policy plots with minimal trustworthy advice. He should quit the small-mindedness that puts claims of crowd size above real issues.

Yes, it is absolutely the case that his critics are often far worse than he is. Sen. Elizabeth Warren? Sen. Chuck Schumer? There is nothing polite to say. The reputable press is not so reputable when its commentators, for instance, issue baseless growls about anti-Semitism.

It is also despicable that protestors carry signs referring to Trump as anti-gay when there is absolutely nothing to back them up. It is simple-minded and worse for anyone to insist Trumps criticism of someone who is black is ipso facto racism, and yet we have seen it. In terms of evidence at this point, the Russian collusion theory is right up there with the birther theory. Vandalizing college students should be required to clean up after themselves before packing their bags and going home, and the leakers in the intelligence community should be worried about criminal prosecution.

There is lots of good in Trump, as seen in his executive orders on pipelines and absolutely smothering regulations, his choice for the Supreme Court, most of his Cabinet picks and, as mentioned earlier, his choice of McMaster as a top advisor.

He may very well do something about a crime rise the left uncaringly dismisses as nothing much. Watch for an improved world order. Some of his tax ideas are excellent, if not the one on imports, and we should replace Obamacare with something better, although prudence is needed. The wonders already happening in the economy are signs of how he actually could do splendid things.

But if Trump does not cut out the bad, there are those waiting in the bushes with a ruinous future in mind.

Go here to read the rest:
Jay Ambrose: How Trump could lead us to socialism - Winona Daily News