Tag: 2020

Five Dollar Friday: Trump Florida Poll Watch

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Today’s post is a new exclusive for $5 and higher subscribers to my SubscribeStar page.  Five Dollar Fridays will be a regular feature heading into the 2020 election, with unique analysis of and insights into the presidential and other national, State, and local elections.

Also, I am pleased to announce I have reached eight subscribers!  Half of subscribers are at the $5 level, and already enjoy weekly installments of Sunday Doodles.  Of course, I’ll continue posting exclusive content every Saturday for $1 subs and higher.

Since the 2000 election’s infamous “hanging chads” and Bush v. Gore, Florida has been the quintessential swing State, the make-or-break for presidential hopefuls, and a must-win for any Republican candidate.  It’s a tricky State, as it’s really three States in one.

North Florida is basically like the rest of the South:  pine barrens and good ol’ boys.  That’s Trump Country.  Southern Florida is a melange of New York Jews and Cubans, the former of which are firmly in the Democratic fold, the latter of which historically have voted Republican, but have begun to shift blue over the last decade.  Central Florida is a mix of both regions, it seems.

In the 2016 Florida GOP primary, Trump demolished the Sunshine State’s favorite son, Senator Marco Rubio by 18.68%.  The general election was much closer, with Trump winning 49.02% to Secretary Clinton’s 47.82% (Libertarian goofball Gary Johnson won 2.2%, which very nearly spoiled Trump’s narrow victory)—a margin of just over 100,000 votes.

Trump’s win in Florida early on election night surely fed into the electric momentum of that historic night.  While other States—think Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan—have gained in importance for President Trump, Florida still remains a critical State, central to the president’s path to reelection.

Fortunately, recent polling—and some interesting nautical events—suggest that President Trump is well-positioned to a repeat victory on the peninsula.  It may even be bigger this time.

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Overblown

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I now receive ad revenue here at The Portly Politico, so if you’re using an ad blocker, please consider disabling it on this site.  Of course, you can always subscribe to my SubscribeStar Page, which is the best and easiest way to support the site and get access to exclusive weekly content.  Thanks again for your support!  —TPP

As I’ve long suspected, The Virus is not nearly as lethal as the doomsayers predicted and insisted.  It turns out that only 6% of reported COVID-related deaths were purely related to The Virus; the other 94% of victims had other underlying medical issues.

Let me be clear:  I do think The Virus is real and is potentially life-threatening, especially for the elderly and the chronically ill.  Indeed, the CDC findings indicate that is, indeed, the case.  Even when not life-threatening, it’s surely unpleasant—just like a particularly bad case of the flu is unpleasant.

But just as we’ve done in the past with bad flu seasons, we should begin returning to some degree of normality.  Indeed, Sweden’s approach to The Virus has been practical and effective:  protect the elderly and other vulnerable populations while encouraging as much normality as possible for the rest of society.  Let younger people work, play, and mingle, and develop that coveted herd immunity.

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The RNC: Normality and Sanity

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As an ostensible politics blogger I’ve been quite derelict in my duty to watch the Republican National Convention, at least with the kind of rapt attention I should.  I completely skipped out on the terrible Democratic National Convention, which was, by all appearances, a disaster in both form and substance.

That said, what I have seen is encouraging.  The theme of the RNC seems to be that a vote for Republicans is a vote for sanity, and that the Republicans are the party of normal people.  The implication, of course, is that the Democrats support insanity and the abnormal, which is objectively true.

The media has reported that the RNC is throwing out red meat for its base, but considering that Trump naturalized five immigrants and Tim Scott was calling for criminal justice and law enforcement reforms suggest otherwise.  If anything, the convention this year is a sales pitch to independents, who are no-doubt weary of seeing cities burn and cops reviled.

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RNC Night 1 Highlight: Tim Scott

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The 2020 Republican National Convention kicked off last night, and I missed all of it.  However, while drifting off to sleep after a long day of mind-molding, my younger brother and dad were blowing up my phone about Senator Tim Scott’s speech.

Tim Scott is South Carolina’s junior Senator, and enjoys immense support here in the Palmetto State.  His story is inspiring:  the product of a single-parent household, he overcame bad grades and learned the value of hard work while working at Chick-Fil-A.  He came to understand that profits don’t hurt people, but create jobs and build communities.  He’s also the first black Republican Senator from the South since Reconstruction.

While I sometimes think Senator Scott is a bit hasty to take sides against law enforcement amid ginned up race controversies, his overall instincts are solidly conservative.  He’s affable and easy-going, as well as eloquent and measured.  It’s little wonder that he’s a rising star in the Republican Party.

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Loomer for Congress

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Today marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.  The record of women’s suffrage has been dubious, but our nation has enjoyed its share of qualified and exceptional female politicians, such as South Carolina’s own Nikki Haley.

One woman to add to that group is Laura Loomer.  Loomer, 27, is running for Congress in President Trump’s home district in south Florida.  Today is the Republican primary, and The Portly Politico sincerely hopes Ms. Loomer wins.  If she does, she’ll go on to compete against Democrat Lois Frankel, who has represented Florida US House District 21 since 2013.

Loomer is the most-censored woman in America—probably the most censored person, period.  Her crime:  bucking the establishment orthodoxy.  Loomer gained notoriety a few years ago when she crashed a production of Julius Caesar that placed President Trump in the title role (remember, the Roman Senators stabbed Caesar), allowing for some macabre wish fulfillment among the well-heeled progressives in attendance.  She also handcuffed herself to Twitter headquarters to protest their double standards—banning the Right for the mildest of rhetoric, but upholding Leftist calls for violence against conservatives.

Loomer is so banned—she can’t use PayPal, Twitter, Facebook, Uber, etc.—that Comcast-Xfinity blocked her congressional campaign from sending texts and making calls to potential supporters!

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Support The Portly Politico

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As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s been a tough year for musicians.  Fortunately, things are looking up on that end, at least for yours portly.  With school starting back this week, I’m hoping some of my old students will be comfortable with resuming one-on-one lessons, especially after sitting in class all day with other students (and with our new sanitation and safety protocols).  Still, 2020 will be a down year for lessons revenue, and especially for gigs.

In brighter news, The Portly Politico has more followers and subscribers than ever.  Currently, my SubscribeStar page has seven subscribers, three of whom are subscribed at the $5 tier.  Thanks to their support, the blog is bringing in $15.38 a month after SubscribeStar takes its cut.  That may seem like small potatoes, but that support means more than the dollar figure suggests.

If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to subscribe.  $1 a month is an easy lift, and considering the back catalog of posts is growing every week, the value of that investment continues to grow.  If you’re already a $1 a month sub, you may want to consider upgrading to a $5 a month subscription.

I’m also introducing more perks for $5 a month subs.  So far, the $5 tier has been the same as the $1 tier, just with Sunday Doodles tossed in.  Last week, I included some bonus doodles.  I’ll be doing that more frequently—not necessarily weekly, but often enough to make it a fun surprise.  I’m also going to be uploading more music, especially material that can’t currently be found on my Bandcamp page.

During distance learning, I amassed a treasure trove of history and government lectures.  I’ll be uploading some of those for $5 subs, probably starting with the Second World War lectures.

Finally, select Fridays this fall will be “Five Dollar Fridays,” posts that will be largely dedicated to 2020 election coverage and analysis.  As the name suggests, those posts will be exclusive to $5 and up subscribers.

Naturally, I’ll continue to offer free weekly content Sunday through Thursday, and some Fridays.  We’re closing in on 600 days of posts, and two years is about 134 posts away.  Of course, if you’re not subscribed, you’re missing out on 116 posts (as of this writing)!  That’s a ton of content (and doodles).

If you’re interested in a subscription, sign up here or here.  If you know of someone who might be interested in paying a small fee for quality content, please forward this blog post them, or send them here.

One final pot-sweetener:  if we hit 10 subscribers—at any level—by the end of August 2020, I’ll upload some special, surprise content for all subscribers.

Thanks again for your support—and your patience with yet another sales pitch.  It is truly appreciated.

God Bless,

TPP

Trump’s Pages of Accomplishments

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Looking at national polls and predictions, it’s easy to get discouraged about President Trump’s reelection prospects.  Even with Joe Biden losing his mind, and the pick of a radical, authoritarian Kamala Harris as his running mate, “Sleepy Joe” is managing to stay up by hunkering down.

On our side there’s grumbling that Trump hasn’t done enough—on immigration, on law and order—and those aren’t entirely warrantless grumbles.  Republicans squandered—perhaps intentionally—an opportunity to fund the construction of the border wall while they controlled both chambers of Congress.  John McCain pompously and vindictively voted to keep the odious Affordable Care Act in place, a clear parting shot at Trump.  Trump did not seem to offer a robust response to the CHAZ/CHOP fiasco, but is now belatedly defending federal property in Portland, Oregon.

Those critiques aside, it’s worth remembering what Trump has accomplished—and he wants you to be reminded.  That’s why he gave Breitbart a six-page document of his achievements.  They are substantial—and make him one of the greatest presidents of the last fifty years.

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Breaking: Biden Picks Harris as Running Mate

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Sometimes being late with the day’s post pays off:  borderline vegetable and former Vice President Joe Biden has picked US Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.

I’m not surprised with Biden’s choice:  he promised he would pick a female for the VP slot, and with the intensity of Floydism and BLM these days, he was pretty much guaranteed to pick a “woman of color,” to use the Left’s trendy parlance.

But Harris is a poor choice for VP.  Political philosophy aside—her political views make her dangerous—she might not be the magic bullet to retain black voters that the Democrats hope she is.  For one, Harris is half-Indian and half-Jamaican—and the Jamaican side includes fairly recent ancestors who owned slaves.  The exotic mulatto schtick worked for Barack Obama among white liberals, and will likely do so again, but Harris will struggle with the black community in a way Obama never did for two reasons:  she was a harsh prosecutor in California, and she comes across as a phony to black people—as inauthentically “black.”  Obama was half-white and largely raised overseas and in Hawaii, but he could “pass” as a brother.

She’s also bizarre looking since her recent plastic surgery.  I’m in agreement with Milo on this one:  before she butchered herself, she was an attractive woman, at least on the outside.  Yes, yes, that shouldn’t matter, but imagine that alien face squinting out from the Resolute desk.  Shudder!

What is frightening, though, is the prospect that this woman could have access to the reins of the power.  She threatened to take “executive action” to enact gun control while running (quite poorly, it should be remembered) in the Democratic primaries.  Remember, too, that Harris rose the ranks of California politics by being Willie Brown’s concubine.  That suggests a willingness to engage in the seamiest of behaviors just to grab hold of power, fortune, and fame—immoral, excessive ambition.

Everyone assumes that Biden is going to die in office.  According a news bulletin I heard on the way home from work, Biden himself seems to think it’s a possibility, and a majority of Americans polled predict he won’t make it through his first term.

Even if he doesn’t keel over, his mental state is dubious, at best.  His Vice President, along with his (surely) ultra-radical staff of progressives will steer the ship of state.  Biden will be a mere puppet for that cabal.

That’s all the more reason to get out and vote for Trump.  If you thought Obama’s presidency was bad, a Harris presidency would be the long dark midnight of the soul.

Lazy Sunday LXXIII: Forgotten Posts, Volume II

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It’s another Lazy Sunday dive into some of my deep cuts—the forgotten or neglected posts of yesteryear.  As a reminder, here’s my loose criteria for selecting these posts, as spelled out last Sunday:

That’s all a long way of saying that I’m doing some deep dives for an indeterminate number of Sundays into some forgotten posts.  These are posts that don’t immediately spring to my mind when I’m referencing my own work.  These posts may or may not have had high or low hit counts; they are just posts that don’t linger strongly in my memory.  They’re the red-headed stepchildren of my churning mind.

The following three posts all date from Summer 2018, an important summer for me:  it’s when I relaunched the blog on WordPress, and when my old apartment flooded for the second time, prompting my ultimate move to Lamar:

  • “Breaking: Trump Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize” – I used to do these “breaking” news posts periodically—dashing off a couple hundred words about some major development.  I was perhaps overly optimistic about Trump’s peace talks in Korea, but while they might not have ended the Korean War’s long cease-fire, they definitely calmed down tensions between the US and North Korea.
  • “George Will’s Self-Destruct Sequence” – The Never Trump phenomenon was gasping for air in 2018, but it still had some loyal adherents (and still does, if you check out National Review, The Dispatch, and The Bulwark, the last of which is blatantly progressive, despite its claims to be a conservative site).  One of the first major figures to succumb publicly and wildly to the disease was George Will, the long-time WaPo columnist and tweedy neocon.  Will argued that Republicans in Congress should be voted out to avoid giving Trump dictatorial powers—a ludicrous obsession with the Left and the Never Trumpers, and completely deleterious to the future of the nation.  Sure, we Republicans might be the “Stupid Party” sometimes, stupidity in the highest halls of power is generally preferable to the “Evil Party” of intentional wickedness.  Now we have so-called conservatives plumping for Joe Biden on similarly faulty premises.  Yeesh!
  • “HSAs are A-Okay” – I’m a big fan of health savings accounts, or HSAs, thanks in large part to my younger brother’s financial wizardry.  Health savings accounts allow account holders to deposit funds that can be used to cover future, out-of-pocket medical expenses.  Since my cut-rate insurance comes with a hefty $6750 annual deductible, squirreling away cash into my HSA helps in the event of a catastrophic injury or health crisis.  But the real beauty of an HSA is that the deposited funds can be invested in mutual funds and grow in value—tax-free.  They’re the ultimate investment vehicle, and you can save medical receipts for years before using them to withdraw HSA funds (if you use an emergency fund to cover medical expenses on the front-end, the HSA funds can grow unmolested until you decide to use them).

That’s it for another edition of Lazy Sunday—one of the last truly lazy ones for some time, as I report back to school tomorrow morning.  Classes resume 20 August 2020, so I still have about eleven days to prepare for the return of students.

Now I’m off to tickle the ivories for morning service.  Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Trump’s One-Two Punch

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Trump won in 2016 running on a strong “America First” platform.  A major component of America First-ism is prioritizing the interests and the well-being of American citizens first—before the interests and well-being of foreign-born workers and immigrants, legal or otherwise.  The appeal and the concept aren’t difficult to understand:  a government should, chiefly, operate in the interest of its citizens before anyone else.  We can discuss the best immigration policies as a nation, but those policies should always place American citizens at the forefront.

It’s such a simple and pure political philosophy, it’s a wonder it comes under such fire.  But such is the world of globalists—who want cheap labor and sacrificial offerings to Efficiency—and progressives—who think anyone who is white and cares about having a job is a racist.  Take out the mercenaries (the former group) and the insane (the latter group) and you have reasonable people, those folks that might quibble around the edges of America First doctrine, but can’t disagree with its fundamental premises.

Trump has been better than most of his predecessors on immigration, though his waffling and equivocating—likely the product of Jared Kushner’s influence—have soured his some of his earliest supporters.  His turn on Jeff Sessions and the former Attorney General’s ultimate defeat in the Alabama Republican primary this summer seemed to many Trumpists to be a betrayal of immigration patriotism.  Sessions was, indeed, the leading voice in the United States government, pre-Trump, in denouncing open borders and unlimited immigration.  With Sessions leaving the national scene, immigration patriots and restrictionists have reason to worry.

That said, it bears remembering that Trump won the presidency campaigning on building a wall, prioritizing Americans over foreign workers, and keeping American industries at home.  No one in meaningful national politics (other than Jeff Sessions and Pat Buchanan) was beating that drum prior to Trump.  Trump tapped into a deep well of resentment over the Obama administration’s decade of putting middle-class Americans last, and several decades of neglect and open scorn from national politicians.

I also don’t expect Trump to reverse the postwar consensus overnight, or to get the whole loaf all at once.  I think Trump’s basic instincts are to put Americans first, while weighing the complexities of various interest groups and economic factors.

But Trump is at his best when he cuts the Gordian Knot and drives to the heart of the issues.  If Americans are losing jobs to foreign visa holders, well, make those visas less valuable.  He’s done that with an executive order barring H1B visa holders from working in federal government jobs, and barring the government from using contractors who use H1B visa holders.

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