Yankee Doodle - Donald Trump Style

In this age of talking points, stunted discourse, and politicking-by-twitter, it's easy to lose sight of the beauty of the English language at its best. In the spirit of making politics more eloquent (while at the same time lightening up the mood), I've put my thoughts on my favored presidential candidate into verse, to the familiar tune of Yankee Doodle:

A New York Yankee tried and true,

who earned a lofty station,

who loves the red and white and blue

and treasures freedom's nation.

Twenty thousand he employs;

his wealth is in the billions.

He shares the bounty he enjoys

with soldiers and civilians.

When he look’d at our statesmen

and saw their poor condition,

to make our country great again

became his only mission.

Seventy's a ripe old age

to brave the grand election.

The Donald's mind is sharp and sage;

his health is all perfection.

Donald Trump will build a wall

along the southern border.

He'll build it beautiful and tall

with steel and bricks and mortar.

Donald Trump will take a stand

for legal immigration;

he'll bring the jobs back to our land

and safety to our nation.

Our country's lost respect abroad,

The world can barely hear us.

In Moscow, Beijing and Riyadh

our foes no longer fear us.

Clinton goes to ev'ry length

to understate the crisis,

but Trump will bring us peace thru strength

and cut the head off ISIS!

He'll bomb the hell out of Iraq

and take away their oil;

our troops will know he's got their back

when ISIS' plans are foil'd.

Never shall we drop our guns

to kneel before Jihadis;

our enemies will be the ones

who count their comrades’ bodies!

We'll get the truth from Donald Trump

while Clinton's lies are leaking,

For we know when he takes the stump

it’s from the heart he’s speaking.

Here’s a man who’s never shy

to say the controversial;

'tis better far than one fresh lie

with ev'ry new commercial!

He's hir’d the best of personnel:

The Trump Organization.

And we know he'll do just as well

with his administration.

If things ever get too far

in foul corruption mired,

he'd find out who the culprits are

and then he'd say 'You're fired!'

And to our highest Court he'll name

originalist judges,

whose Constitution stays the same

so freedom never budges.

Vindicating each who fights

to keep and bear his rifle,

and with our sacred Bill of Rights

the Feds will never trifle.

The outcome far from certain is,

for Trump we labor daily.

But if we make the vict'ry his

we'll sing our triumph gaily.

And the joyous prize we win

shall live in song and story!

America made great again

in all her shining glory!

And the joyous prize we win

shall live in song and story!

America made great again

in all her shining glory!

GUEST ARTICLE - The Truth About Evan McMullin – And Why I Am So Disappointed in My Mormon Friends For Falling For This - by Stacy Stine

The Truth About Evan McMullin – And Why I Am So Disappointed in My Mormon Friends For Falling For This

                I challenge any Evan McMullin supporter to tell me what they knew about Evan McMullin a year ago. Unless you are one of maybe a hundred people who ran into him at your ward picnic, the answer is nothing. That’s my answer and I am a huge political junkie. To the dismay of my family I can rattle on about all sorts of obscure politicians and behind the scenes players who influence elected politicians, but for the life of me I couldn’t have told you a thing about Evan McMullin... because he was a nobody.

                McMullin worked for the UN for a bit. He worked for the CIA for 10 years – doing what? He can’t really tell us much….“It’s secret.” He worked for the bankers at Goldman Sachs for a few years…. “His work was private.” And then he went to work for the Republican House Conference where he did… well he can’t really say…“it’s confidential.”

                On his Facebook page for the three years prior to running for President, he never posted about social issues, economic, or domestic issues. He says now he is personally against gay marriage but thinks the Supreme Court's decision is fine and wants to move on. Summer 2016 rolls around and political outsider Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination and suddenly Evan McMullin is the 3rd party choice of establishment Republicans from the Bush and Romney families and of the Wall Street donor wing of the GOP.

                I have been a Republican since I first registered to vote. I have worked with hundreds of Republican campaigns going back 20 years, I have served in party office here in Arizona. I have always supported Republican candidates but I will be the first to tell you that there are a lot of dirty Republicans. The reason so many people look at politics today and say there is no difference between the Republican and the Democrat on their ballot is because all too often it’s true.

                There is a powerful and established section of the Republican leadership (elected officials, party members, big donors) who do not support the values of grassroots conservative Republicans. They are bought and paid for by large corporate interests. They seek the approval of the liberal media, academia, and Hollywood. They support open borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, free trade even when it’s not in most Americans’ best interest, gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia, and a plethora of foolish wars and bad foreign policy.

                These Republicans are terrified that if Donald Trump is elected president there will be major shakeups in Washington. He will shine a light on the dark backroom deals that have resulted in policies like Obamacare, The failed war in Syria, and 20 trillion dollars in debt. The livelihoods of their wealthy corporate backers are on the line and with that their own power and perks in Washington. For that reason they would rather see Hillary Clinton become president than Donald Trump. They feel like they can work with Hillary.

                So enter Evan McMullin, Crony Capitalist Spoiler. No one in the world including Evan McMullin believes Evan McMullin is going to be elected President. What the corrupted Republican establishment and the Clinton campaign hope is that he will keep Donald Trump from getting to 270 electoral votes and thus guarantee a Hillary presidency.

                But How? Enter the Mormon Suckers. I am proud to be a Mormon so it pains me to say what I am about say. When the GOP Establishment Never Trumpers and their Clinton allies went looking for a 3rd party spoiler they needed someone with a constituency of sheeple who would follow him regardless of the obvious logical outcome (President Hillary.)  There were plenty of Republican politicians who had lost to Trump in the primary or who had foregone a run in 2016 and didn’t like Trump much or were outright hostile to him, but not a one of them would put their name on the line and be the fall guy who put Hillary in office. So plan B – find a weak-minded demographic and create a leader for them.

                I know a lot of Mormons. Most of them are Republicans. Most of them are pretty conservative Republicans. A good number these days still vote Republican but are registered independents because they support more conservative or Tea Party values than they see in the current Republican Party. There are great Mormon conservatives serving in DC and in state offices throughout the country. Mormons are proud to point out that Utah is the State where Bill Clinton didn’t just lose, he got 3rd place in the 1992 presidential election.

                The LDS Church does not endorse candidates. The LDS Church leadership does however strongly encourage it members to be informed, to be involved, to vote and to serve. The Mormon demographic is overwhelmingly pro-life, pro-family, anti-communist, and protective of the Constitution they believe was divinely inspired. So how do you get these folks to throw an election to Hillary Clinton, someone whom most of them revile? It’s a complex but straightforward sociological scheme. In addition to being hardworking, God fearing, Mom, Apple Pie and Baseball loving Americans, Mormons are also some of the biggest suckers in the nation.

                Utah leads the nation in financial fraud schemes. Anti-Mormon critics like to point out the huge amount of Ponzi schemes, real estate fraud, and stock swindles and say it is because Mormons are sneaky, greedy liars.  Make no bones about it. Like in any community there some bad apples and Utah has its fair share. In that fair share there are plenty of Mormons but Mormons are no more criminal than most, in fact statistically they are quite a bit less criminal than the average American. But the real reason that Utah frauds are so successful is not that the conmen are any wilier than a Baptist or Catholic conman. It’s because they have a highly homogenous market of overly trusting people. They want to believe you’re a good person and they want to help out the good person.

                In 2016 that good person is Evan McMullin. The Never Trumpers couldn't talk Romney into another run, or Huntsman or any Mormon politician you had ever heard of.  So they created Evan McMullin from thin air and Goldman Sachs receipts. Evan is a good member of the Church. Mormons are tight knit and like to support their own, hence Mitt Romney's 93% win in the 2012 Utah primary despite the fact the many Utah Republicans had more in common politically with Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum.

                So here comes the conman’s pitch – “Evan is a good man, he’s one of us, you don’t have to vote for dirty nasty Donald Trump who has been divorced twice, who swears a lot, who won’t apologize when he hurts people’s feelings.” This is where not all, not even most, but a sadly sizeable number or Mormon patsies reach for their wallet, or in this case their ballot.  They've been told and sold that by voting for Evan they don’t have to shed their values and principles. They don’t have to choose the lesser of two evils. But that is the lie that the Evan McMullin candidacy is built on, because in 2016 you do have to choose between one of two people who will be the next President: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. A vote for anyone but Trump helps Clinton to move ahead and to defeat Trump.

                A Hillary Clinton presidency is one where she will most likely appoint three Supreme Court Justices. They will be radical liberals. They will stand against everything political that good and faithful Mormons believe in. They will gut the 1st, 2nd, and 10th Amendments. They will force all Christians denominations to have gay clergy and to perform gay weddings in their churches or temples.  They will bring back abortion on demand at any time during the pregnancy, paid for by taxpayers, performed in church owned hospitals, performed by Christian doctors who will be forced to do so or lose their license. Euthanasia will be the law of the land, not just for the terminally ill and elderly but for handicapped and unwanted children.

                Did you imagine 20 years ago that gay marriage would be legal in all 50 states, mandated by liberal judges despite the sentiment of voters? Did you imagine you would be forced to buy overpriced and underperforming health insurance or be fined by the government? And these things came about with a Supreme Court that was evenly split between conservatives and liberals. Hillary’s new liberal Court will steamroll the America you once knew. You won’t recognize it anymore.  Her tried and failed economic policies of higher taxes and more spending will eventually bankrupt our nation. Her support for wars and conflicts not in our interest will bleed the best of our youth.

                This is an election with dire consequences. Donald Trump is no saint, Latter Day or otherwise, but he loves America, he respects the rights of Christians, he has vowed to appoint judges who will protect life, the rights of churches, the rights of gun owners and our Constitution as it was written. It's OK to vote for Donald Trump.  Read Dennis Prager's excellent article ‘In Defense of Pro-Trump Christians,’ and then join the millions of other Christians who will be voting Trump to save our country from the terrible alternative. Most of the Mormons I know are voting Trump but you can and should be more vocal about it. You need to let your friends and neighbors know that it's OK. You need to encourage the less likely voters to go the polls and you need to keep them from the conman.

                Please Mormons don’t get suckered into the Con of the Century.

Donald Trump and the Return of a Great Era

This article originally appeared as a letter to the editor in Prescott's newspaper, The Daily Courier.

Donald Trump’s statement that the late 1940s and ‘50s were a great era for America has come under unfair criticism from Democrats. I write in defense of this past era, not because I believe in a perfect past, but because I realize that much that was good about America has been lost. While I can understand why Mr. Trump’s rhetoric would worry people who think only about the uglier aspects of our nation’s history, it seems quite ridiculous to assume that every social change was a move in the right direction. I’d like to point out three specific ways in which our country has been backsliding over the years.

I'll begin with what Mr. Trump has said is “a big issue, a horrible issue, and a very important one. It's called law and order. We want law and order.” According to the FBI, murder rates are now higher than in the mid 1950s, and rape is nearly three times more common than in 1960, the earliest year in the dataset. Robbery has risen 70%, and burglary is up by 260%. The inner cities, where Democrats have ruled for the last half century, are suffering the worst.

The second issue concerns employment. In 1950, 86% of men aged 16 and older were working. Now the figure is barely 69%. The fraction of men not working has more than doubled. Industrial workers have suffered the most, with mining and manufacturing jobs being outsourced. As the ability of men, especially young high school graduates, to support a family has declined, so have marriage rates. In 1960, 72% of American adults were married; that figure has now shrunk to 50%.

Hillary Clinton believes in abandoning blue-collar workers and instead focusing on high-tech and service sector jobs. She boasts of putting coal miners out of business. But America can do better than building an economy that only values the most skilled laborers. When Benjamin Franklin wrote to Europeans considering immigration to America, he admitted “there are very few [in America] that in Europe would be called rich,” and instead emphasized America’s favorable conditions for the working poor. Unfortunately, in recent decades these conditions have largely disappeared. Mr. Trump’s opponents have criticized him for getting so much support from voters without a college degree, but perhaps they neglect to consider that he may be the only candidate who cares about these people’s future?

The third issue I will address is abortion. In the 1950s, this abhorrent practice was illegal in all 48 states. Now, it is legal nationwide, and many of the largest abortion providers are funded by the government. Quite frankly, not much can be said in support of a society that abandons one fourth of its children to such an awful fate. It can hardly be called progress when a nation decides that someone whose life once had legal protection now has none. Has there ever been a country that came to regret granting basic human rights to too many of its inhabitants?

It isn’t without reason that Mr. Trump has promised to make America great again. “Every day I wake up determined to deliver for the people I have met all across this nation that have been ignored, neglected and abandoned,” says Trump. “These are people who work hard but no longer have a voice. I am your voice.”

It’s time for their voice to be heard.

Republicans, Democrats, and the Deficit

When election season comes around, one can expect Republicans to emphasize their role as the party of fiscal responsibility, while the Democrats trot out their old argument to the contrary. They say that since recent Democratic presidents, such as Clinton and Obama, have left office with a smaller deficit than they started with, while Republicans like Bush and Reagan have done the opposite, we should actually be looking to Democrats for leadership in taking on the debt.

My desire is to refute this argument, and also to expose a fundamental flaw in the way Democrats think about our Republic. While it is true that Clinton and Obama have left (or will leave) office with the budget in good condition, one shouldn’t forget that they’re also leaving office with a Republican Congress.

Under our Constitution, it’s up to Congress, not the President, to write the budget, and the House of Representatives plays the dominant role. Not satisfied with what people in the media (who tend to give all the credit or blame to the President) had to say about the relationship between parties and debt, I decided to research the issue for myself.

From 1955-1995, a span of 40 years, the House was controlled by Democrats without interruption. During the latter half of this period the average deficit was 3.5 percent of GDP.

From 1995-2007, America had a Republican House. The average deficit was 0.8 percent of GDP.

After the Democrats came back, in 2007-2011, the deficit reached an obscene 7.2 percent of GDP.

During the present period, with Republicans in the majority, the figure fell to 4.0 percent of GDP.

I think we tend to make a grave mistake by assigning all the praise or blame for these things to the President, especially on an issue like the budget, where he has little direct control. The Democrats’ lust for centralized power often leads them to regard our nation as a monarchy where the President is in charge and the Congress’ job is to advance his agenda. But Republicans and Independents can do better than to follow this line of reasoning.

So let’s be proud of the fact that, in our system, decisions are in the hands of the many and not the few or the one. We got rid of the monarchy for a reason. And if you’re concerned about the burden of debt we leave on future generations, then vote Republican. We are, after all, in a Republic.

Why I'm Still Supporting Trump

I write this blog post in response to a recent scandal involving leaked audiotapes of Donald Trump discussing his many adulterous affairs. While I am certainly dismayed by these revelations, I am not surprised by them, and I stand firm in my support for the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

I have no illusions regarding Mr. Trump's lewd and lascivious private conduct. I knew of it in the primary, when there were still virtuous men in the running, and I voted for one of Trump's opponents. That he is a rake is beyond question, but I will not allow the dark underside of Donald Trump's personal history to distract me from what this election is really about.

Sordid as they may be, the private lives of politicians should not take precedence over the things they intend to do with the powers they seek. Anyone who has voted for John McCain, who is an adulterer, or who admires the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the first divorced president, can understand this. There are two people who might win in November. One of them, for all his flaws, has nonetheless shown a sincere desire to stand up for the rights of Americans. The other is openly hostile to everything that conservatives such as myself believe in.

The addition of another womanizer to our nation's list of presidents simply does not compare to the abolition of free speech, religious liberty, and second and tenth amendment rights that would surely be accomplished under Hillary Clinton and her chosen bureaucrats and judges. A solid majority of five liberal Supreme Court Justices would strike down the Hyde Amendment and break down all other right-of-conscience barriers that prevent religious people like myself from having to engage in activities which are repugnant to us.

In a country where decent men and women are in the minority, we can't survive without allies among the heathen. I see Mr. Trump as one of those allies.

The Young Conservative

I realize that, in my last post, I spoke of a single future article explaining how my conservative principles on a list of issues are based in my belief in individual rights and respect for the Forgotten Man. Since then, I've come to doubt the usefulness of such long articles, so in the future, I plan to stick to brief posts more narrowly focused on specific conservative ideas.

What follows is my first such post. I originally wrote it in response to a question on another website asking why a young person would buck the trend and choose to be a conservative. Here's my answer:

As a conservative, I base my politics around basic human rights: life, liberty, and property. The purpose of government is to protect these rights, and America owes her greatness in large part to the fact that government has, throughout most of her history, been restrained to this purpose.

Liberals, in general, do not share conservatives' respect for inalienable rights. Rights are brought up frequently in liberal discourse, but easily discarded when they don't fit the narrative. The liberal will respond to one person’s sympathy-inducing problem with a solution that runs roughshod over the rights of others. Applied repeatedly, this leads to rampant "legal plunder" where nobody's rights are secure.

Children and young people, being out of power and easily ignored, generally get the raw end of liberal policies, especially on entitlements and deficit spending. I see conservatism as the natural choice for someone my age - conservatives are more concerned about the future generation, and don't see policies that harm them as being appropriate solutions for the current generation's problems.

All liberal policies hinge on what Yale professor William Graham Sumner called "the Forgotten Man" - he who, while totally absent from the liberal rhetoric surrounding a policy, nevertheless pays the cost of that policy. Liberals win by making the issue look like it’s about everyone but the Forgotten Man.

Consider the debacle of the Affordable Care Act. The law's benefits are clearly visible, in the form of millions of people who credit it for their health insurance. It's easy to accuse anyone who's against the law of hating these people. But look for the Forgotten Man, and you will find him. People who lost their insurance or saw their premiums rise, but more especially those who can't find work because the law makes hiring more difficult. Is the Forgotten Man easy to see? Hardly. Nobody gets a call saying that he would have been hired except for the new regulations on anyone with more than 50 employees. All of which goes to show that this law is a classic example of the concentration of benefits and obfuscation of costs, a classical tactic for progressives.

Similarly, one can identify (with varying degrees of difficulty) the Forgotten Man in liberal policies on deficit spending, entitlements, corporate taxes and regulation, education policy, environmentalism, and, most tragically, abortion. The victims are often poor (consider who hurts the most when the price of energy goes up) but even more often they are young; perhaps they haven't been born yet. All of which plays well into the hands of liberal policy-makers, whose goal is to make the general public forget about them.

I refuse to forget, and that's why I'm a conservative.