Tag: Hillary

Endorsement

Posted on October 26, 2016October 26, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

With only a couple weeks now till the election, I’ve decided to make it plain (if i I haven’t already) that I intend to vote for Hillary Clinton.

I have a number of reasons for doing so, some of which are not quantifiable, but if I may I’d like to state a few of them.

First off, she is opposed, disrespected, and outright hated by all the right people. Her list of detractors is a grocery list of those I would like to see ousted from their own positions in government. This includes people like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, Representative Issa, and just about every firebreathing Tea Party moron who has been miring the workings of my government in the muck of intransigence like a child refusing to eat their vegetables for far too long.Â …

Trump Card

Posted on October 18, 2016October 18, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

Just a couple of thoughts.Â We’ve been hearing for months, here and there, how Donald Trump might be a trojan horse placed by the Democrats to discredit the Republican Party.Â That, presumably, a deal was done between The Donald and Hillary to run the most absurd campaign and make her look like the only viable choice.Â Not a bad idea for a potboiler political thriller.Â And the closer to the election we get, some variation of that idea is making more sense.

However.Â Despite what pessimists might say, the American electoral landscape is not really that controllable.Â And any such actual plan would long since have been discovered and revealed.Â …

Consensus Delusion

Posted on October 17, 2016October 17, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

Reading and listening to the jeremiads of impending doom and catastrophe electing Hillary Clinton will bring, it becomes clear that a significant part of her opposition is flat out delusional.Â It’s not just her, it’s this whole “lib’ral agenda” thing, wrapped up with the gay agenda and the persecution of christians and on and on.Â Some people obviously believe she descends into a secret temple every night to eat the livers of virgin meerkats and praise Cthulhu while demoniacally laughing in anticipation of the power about to come into her hands by which she can trample on our freedoms with the abandon of a Godzilla.…

New Look

Posted on October 15, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

Maybe I should have waited till January, but then again maybe I’ll change the theme again then. But I was starting to get bored with the old one and decided that–because I’m older now, but why that should matter I don’t know–it was time for a new look.Â This one has sliding images on the header.Â I grabbed a couple at random but I’ll likely change those at some point.

This has been a fascinating year. My boss asked me–because I’m older–if I’d ever witnessed an election cycle this bizarre.

No.

Contentious, yes. Clownish, surreal, weird–no. It’s been suggested that you’d have to go back to Lincoln’s election to find one even close to this in unpredictably oddball strangeness, and that’s a good contender, what with the near-demise of the Democratic Party as it split into three smaller parties, the Know Nothings, variations of fence-sitters, nativist groups, and the odd prediction of the apocalypse.…

Why We Need To Teach Civics

Posted on October 10, 2016October 10, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

Listening to the debates, not between the candidates but among the potential voters, it becomes clear that for many the workings of our government are a thing of deep mystery and frustratingly obscure. Donald hammered on Hillary repeatedly that in 30 plus years in office she had an opportunity to “do something” about certain issues and she did nothing.

She was a senator and then she was secretary of state.

Neither position affords anyone the power to just “do something” about any damn thing they want.

While morality may not be relative, politics is entirely so.Â The problem is this:Â you have a hundred people in a room who have been given a problem to solve.Â …

A Couple Of Observations About The Culture

Posted on August 15, 2016August 15, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

I’ve been working my way through Mario Vargas Llosa’s intriguing little book Notes On The Death Of Culture, which intends to be a general critique on the state of high culture and the impact its enervation has had on the world at large.Â Reading that and watching the election campaigns is a strange thing.

One of Llosa’s main themes here is that we have demoted “high” culture through a process of democratization of self-brutalization via social media and a mistaken acceptance of the idea that everyone’s opinion carries equal weight.Â That we no longer value wisdom, quality, or know how to appreciate it as distinct from middle or lowbrow culture, so-called “popular” culture.…

On History and Loyalty

Posted on July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

My mother said something to me once that has informed much of my political thinking in the years since.Â Back when Ollie North was being held up as some kind of hero.Â “No one wants to tell the truth more than I do” North who worked diligently on Reagan’s behalf to deceive Congress and deliver weapons into the hands of people who used them on schools and clinics.Â It baffled me that people could find his actions not only defensible but somehow heroic and honorable.Â When I opined that in my opinion he should be court-martialed and shot for treason, they looked at me as if I’d just stepped out of flying saucer and didn’t understand.Â …

The Campaign

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

Hillary Kaine.

Trump Pence.

Part of me—a large part—sees this as a no-brainer.Â Who, with any claim to sense or logic, would vote for Donald Trump?

But voting is as much, often more, emotional than rational, so one cannot depend on that for preferred outcomes. A lot of people are emotionally committed to Trump. Their reasons are, from what I have seen and heard, based on nothing tangible about Trump.Â It is all about their own discontent with things-as-they-are.

The problem is—for all of us—that such assessments are based on what we see.Â And a lot of what we see is scary.Â …

Unqualified

Posted on July 19, 2016July 19, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

The clown car rolled into the station, the occupants decamped, and the frollicks began in earnest.Â Lots of shouting, foot-stamping, and low-grade denunciations from the podium of this or that.

Trump is almost universally seen by all but the most ardent supporters as unqualified for the office of the president.Â We keep hearing that, squeezed in between all the other verbiage being spewed about him. That in fact the only reason for some to vote for Hillary is because Trump is so thoroughly unqualified.

And yet, it would seem that most people who support him have a “Yeah? So?” reaction.

Consider:Â that very accusation, leveled by people despised by Trump supporters, makes him all the more appealing.Â …

Pot, Kettle, Emails

Posted on July 6, 2016July 6, 2016 By Mark Tiedemann

I just have a couple of thoughts on the whole Hillary email thing.

The FBI has recommended no charges be filed.Â Which boils down to, “She did something perhaps stupid, but given all the circumstances, this isn’t worth pursuing.”Â Obviously this is going to scratch the craw of a lot of people who were hoping for a body in the landfill moment.

This seems to be the case throughout the Clinton’s public life.Â Allegations, something’s there, oh never mind, not what we thought or hoped for, but wait there this other thing!Â It has backfired this time in the embarrassing assessment that Hillary is, by a few points at least, the most honest of the candidates running.Â …