November 13, 2020

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Now that it looks like Biden will be our next president, the calls for civility are being heard.

• “We need to tone down the rhetoric.”

• “We need to come together as Americans.”

• “We all need to unite behind our new leader.” 

 

It seems a bit ironic coming from the very people that said,

• “Not our president” for the last 4 years.

• The people that labeled us as “deplorables”.

• That talked about how we “cling to our guns, bibles and religion.”

Michele Obama even said in her recent unity text that Trump voters:

"...voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division.”

She continues to insult us even as she asks for unity.

 

And many on the Right are saying that this is:

• "our chance to give it back to them for the next 4 years, just like they gave it to us." 

• "This is our turn." 

• "Time for payback." 

• "Time to get even." 

• "What’s fair for the goose is fair for the gander!" 

• "Turnaround is fair play!" 

• "An eye for an eye." 

And there is something appealing about giving it right back to them.

 

But if we do the acrimony and fighting will continue for the next 4 years. And the 4 years after that and the 4 years after that. In fact it will never end, because some faction will always be paying back some other faction. 

 

Unless we decide to end it. Unless we decide to forgive and forget. Unless we are willing to move forward and treat them the way we wish they would have treated us. It’s the only way to end the cycle. 

 

Thus the scriptural injunction to turn the other cheek. If you aren’t willing to forgive after you have been treated wrong, the cycle never ends. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. It never ends until everybody's eyes have been gouged out. 

 

Which is exactly why we should treat Biden and his supporters the way we wish they would have treated us. It is the only hope we have. (Read that last sentence again)

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If we retaliate now, nothing will ever get better. So make your choice. 

 

An Eye for an Eye? or Turn the Other Cheek?

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October 2020

 

Trump Vs Biden: 2020

Well the election is getting exciting and I’ve seen some interesting bumper stickers. I saw “Ridin’ with Biden” and somebody with a different point of view with “Hidin’ from Biden”. And we’ve all seen “Dump Trump” and if you support Trump you are a “Trump Chump”.

 

I guess the lesson is, before you run for office change your name to Orange, because nothing rhymes with Orange.

 

Here is my assessment of the two candidates. Hopefully my assessment will be informed and I will strive to be fair.

 

Transparency

Transparency is important to me, and I think the public cares about this. I recall Obama said his administration would be the most transparent administration in the history of our country, so this tells me others do recognize that the public cares about transparency. 

 

Trump issued a list of names, before he was elected, of potential supreme court nominees. Voters knew what type of judge Trump would pick, BEFORE he was elected. And his nominees have come from that list.

 

Biden on the other hand, refused to indicate who he would nominate if Trump did not fill the recent supreme court vacancy. Nor did he supply a list. Even though he was asked multiple times if he would pack the court, Biden has refused to answer. I have to give Trump 2 points for transparency, Biden would get a zero for refusing to name his potential nominees, but refusing to answer the court packing question gets him a score of -2.

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Presidential Demeanor

Many people criticize Trump for his behavior. He calls people names. He tweets, INCESSANTLY. When attacked, he hits back and he hits hard. Don’t expect royal silence from Trump. Mitt Romney on the other hand was referred to as “Captain Cordial” and I really liked that. We should be polite and speak nicely, and act like grown ups. But Trump got elected and Mitt didn’t. 

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So I’m not sure what the lesson here is, but Trump’s behavior is lacking in many people's perspective. Probably have to give Trump a -2 in this category. 

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Biden on the other hand is probably not a role model in this category either. When challenged he has asked people if they want to wrestle, (yes I saw this in a televised town hall type meeting). I saw him challenge one old man to a push up contest. He tells people, including Trump, to shut up, to his face on national TV. In the same debate he called Trump a clown. But all of that is pretty insignificant compared to the way Biden puts his hands all over women, and in particular little girls. And what is the deal with Biden sniffing everybody’s hair? He does it all the time and it is weird. I saw an entire lecture on actions sexual predators will take to groom children, and each example was illustrated with a clip of Biden. He is just creepy. And we certainly don’t want a generation of young men to grow up emulating his behavior. Trump may get a -2 in this category, but we have to give Biden a -4. (For context, I would have given Obama a zero or 1 in this category, Bush senior or Bill Clinton a 2 and Reagan a 4). 

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Effectiveness

Trump has a huge list of accomplishments: record low unemployment including the lowest unemployment rate in history for black people, criminal justice reform ending unnecessary incarceration for low level drug possession charges, historic peace accords between Israel and other countries, most recently including Sudan, NATO countries paying more of their fair share for the protection they receive, tariff reform giving our farmers and factories a fighting chance of success, standing up to China’s theft of our intellectual property, job killing NAFTA replaced with a much better trade agreement, greatly reduced illegal immigration, and beginning to end the perpetual wars.

 

Biden has been in politics for 47 years. He helped pass the 1994 crime bill which unfairly locked up black people, and he was good enough to admit that the bill was a mistake, but he was not able to get a reform bill passed to fix his mistake, even as vice president. Biden blamed his failure to get this reform bill passed onto a republican congress, but Trump got the reform bill passed with a democrat congress. Obama/Biden stated manufacturing jobs would never come back, but they are coming back with the new NAFTA and the tariff reform. Biden complained about intellectual property theft by China, but did nothing. The Obama/Biden team deported more illegal aliens than any other administration (including Trump), but did nothing to secure the border.

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Trump gets 4 points for effectiveness, Biden gets 0.

 

Honesty

Honesty has to be important for the leader of the free world. We can all agree on this. Honesty is important for everybody! And the mainstream media claims that Trump lies nonstop. Everything he says is a lie, according to the media. Fact checkers dispute almost everything he says. And I have looked at quite a few reports from fact checkers and I am surprised at what I read. 

 

Let me explain. You can’t argue with somebody’s opinion. If your husband says “That turkey was delicious” that is his opinion and you can’t tell him he is wrong. If it was delicious to him, the fact that you found the turkey a little dry, does not matter.

 

After the 2018 midterm elections, Trump said the republicans did good in the election. That is an opinion. The republicans kept the majority in the senate and actually picked up 2 seats, but they lost their majority in the house, with 40 seats shifting to the other party. Typically the president's party loses seats in the house and senate in the midterm election. For example in 2010, (which is a good comparison because that was Obama’s first midterm election just as 2018 was Trump’s first midterm election), the democrats lost 63 seats in the house, and six seats in the senate. 

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So comparing apples to apples, the republicans did pretty good in the 2018 midterm election, in Trump’s OPINION. But that didn’t stop the fact checkers from stating that Trump's comment that the party did good was a LIE! 

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I have looked at many so-called lies from Trump and it seems like the fact checkers all need to be fired because they don’t seem to know the truth. Time after time, when I have researched these so-called lies, I have had to either conclude Trump told the truth, or the issue in question was an opinion.

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Biden on the other hand seems to tell real lies. Biden has stated multiple times recently that Trump was referring to white supremacists when Trump said there were fine people on both sides of the issue in Charlottesville during Trump's first year as president. Most of the public does not know what Trump actually said, and hence they believe it when Biden and the mainstream media tell this lie. But it simply is not true. Trump said there were good people on both sides of the issue of whether statues offensive to some people should be taken down. In the very comment when he said this, he said that he was not referring to the white supremacists, but to the good people, some of whom wanted to keep the statues and some of whom wanted to take them down. Below is what Trump actually said on August 15, 2017.   

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"You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. ... I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. ... So you know what, it's fine. You're changing history. You're changing culture. And you had people — and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group." 

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Even though Biden knows what Trump said he goes on and on, about white supremacists, carrying torches and chanting to kill blacks, with bulging veins on their foreheads, and Biden states “Trump called them fine people.” If you read the actual quote above you know that Biden is lying when he says Trump was referring to White Supremacists. And Biden knows he is lying.

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For honesty Trump gets 2 points, Biden gets a -2.

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Racism

Racism is a big issue these days, and Biden has accused Trump of being a racist. To me, racism is giving people certain treatment based on their race, rather than treating them as individuals. The liberals cite as evidence of Trump’s racism, the muslim travel ban, and Trump’s statement that immigrants are “animals” and that he called Mexicans “rapists". But these are just more liberal lies. 

 

The travel ban applied to all people, muslim or not, coming from certain countries that were exporting terrorism. Many other muslim majority countries with much larger populations were not included in the travel ban because they were not exporting terrorism.  

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And Trump did not refer to “immigrants” as animals, he referred to MS-13 gang members as animals. The MS-13 gang uses rape, murder and decapitation as enforcement tools. They are an extremely violent and dangerous gang. Referring to them as animals is NOT the same as calling all immigrants animals. This is a mainstream media LIE.

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And Trump did not call all Mexicans rapists. He referred to the estimate, from Doctors Without Borders, that 1 out of 3 undocumented women coming through the southern border is raped while making their way to the US. Hence stopping the flow of people through the open border would stop many of these rapes. Arguing to leave that border open is an argument to allow that situation to continue.

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Biden on the other hand appears to be a practicing racist. For example he announced he would pick a black running mate. Race was more important than her actual individual qualifications. Actually the color of her skin was the main criteria. That is racism, and she was picked based on his assumption, that black voters would engage in the same racist thinking and vote for the team because, well...Kamala is black. Her selection by Biden was a racist decision made by a racist man who assumed, or hoped, many other voters would react to his choice with the same racist thinking he used. 

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Biden himself, on national TV, stated to a black man, that if you aren’t voting for him, “you ain’t black!” That is the statement of a man who makes assumptions and judgements of people based on their race. That type of thinking is endemic in the democrat party. They have raised identity politics to an art form. The consultants and officers he rubs elbows with all day long think this way, and it could rub off on anybody, but still he has to own this. Biden pre-judges people based on race, which is the very definition of racism.

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Trump gets 2 points for no racist statements or actions, Biden loses 2 points for racist actions.

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Policies

A candidate's goals, the policies they hope to implement are the real inner kernel of what a campaign is all about. This should be central to our voting decision.  

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Biden has supported the Green New Deal, although he denies it now and states he has a better plan. His running mate was one of the senate sponsors of the Green New Deal bill. His better plan includes phasing out the oil and gas industry because it pollutes too much and he wants to support wind and solar. He has stated in the past he wants to get rid of all fracking, but currently denies it, claiming he only wants to get rid of fracking on federal land. He stated he wants to repeal the Trump tax cut, but now says he only wants to raise taxes on corporations and the rich. He wants supreme court justices that will protect Roe V Wade.

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Here are the problems with Biden’s plans.

• The Green New Deal would cost trillions of dollars and would bankrupt the country. His better plan puts ideology ahead of technology. We can’t phase out oil and gas until we have the technology to do so, and wind and solar are not ready to replace oil and gas. Fracking is an excellent technology and a big reason why we as a country are energy independent and not dependent on oil tankers from Saudi Arabia.

• You can’t increase taxes on the rich and corporations without everybody having to pay it. If you raise taxes on the corporation known as Walmart, they will raise their prices to cover those taxes and everybody will end up paying that tax. Same with Amazon, Safeway, Albertsons, and every gas and oil company in the world.

• And no supreme court justice should preserve Roe V Wade. Roe V Wade is the quintessential example of unelected justices legislating from the bench. Their job is to enforce the rules, not make new rules. Abortion is a State issue, not a federal issue. Before the 1973 Roe V Wade Alaska had already passed legislation allowing abortion. I spoke to one of the Alaska senators that voted for abortion in Alaska. He told me that they did not “legalize” abortion. Previous to their vote, doctors in Alaska were doing abortions, and it was between them and their patients. The government was not involved, it was just a routine part of the practice of medicine. The bill they passed in Alaska set some guidelines and reporting requirements for what was already happening. 

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So overturning Roe v Wade will not get rid of abortion. It will just send the issue back to the states where it belongs. If we really need a federal law on abortion usurping the individual states prerogative, congress should pass a law and make it so. It is not the supreme court's job to correct congress's oversight. A vote for Biden is a vote for more supreme court justices that support Roe V Wade and by extension support legislating from the bench. 

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On all of these issues, Trump is on the correct side. 

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Trump gets 2 points, Biden gets 0 for literally being on the wrong side of every issue.   

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So let's add up the cumulative score: Trump 10, Biden -10. 

 

Kind of a surprise for me, I assumed Biden would get some points when I started this, but he is wrong in every aspect that I can come up with. 

 

If you disagree, tell me why. If I’ve overlooked anything, let me know. If Biden is better than Trump on any issue, I would love to hear about it.