Reblogged:Will Independents Save the GOP From Itself?

[Gus Van Horn blog]

New Hampshire holds its presidential primaries today. Ron DeSantis has suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. (I'd wager, given his earlier pledge to save the GOP from Trump and his over-the-top pandering to the Trump base, he's hoping Trump's legal problems represent a reentry path later.)

We thus have an early primary in a state that allows independent voters to participate in party primaries, and a two-person contest between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. This represents as good a chance as there is for a sane candidate to begin to break the stranglehold of Trump's personality cult on the Republican Party, and give Americans a real choice in the next election.

According to a headline from the Boston Globe, it is unlikely that Haley will win, but buried at the end of the story is what I think will be the decisive factor:

Most Americans are tired of this... (Morph via FaceShape from pubic domain official portraits of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.)

[T]here is one wild card that is hard to figure out: turnout. Despite the primary week being low energy overall, the New Hampshire Secretary of State is predicting there could be a record turnout.

Traditionally, there is higher turnout when voters are motivated to send a message against the status quo, in which case that could be against Trump.

Given that the contest in New Hampshire is largely a binary one between Trump and Haley, Haley could be the biggest beneficiary of a higher turnout.

Then again, she isn't turning out people in big numbers to her own events in the final weekend. [bold added]

Haley isn't drawing big crowds -- and doesn't have me raving about her here -- because she keeps committing unforced errors. So she doesn't have people excited about her candidacy so far. (I think the excitement -- or at least noticeable support -- might come if she does well, and offers real hope of keeping Trump out of office.)

The real question then, is How sick are independent voters of Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

If they're annoyed enough, they don't have to like Haley to want to vote for her, and they will.

I'd show up and vote for Haley if I lived there, but I don't know the answer to that question.

Today, we will find out.

-- CAV

Link to Original

[Grames]

2 hours ago, Gus Van Horn blog said:

the stranglehold of Trump's personality cult on the Republican Party,

Trump's policy positions are why he has any popularity whatsoever.  There is no cult.  MAGA doesn't end when Trump goes away.

[Jon Letendre]

3 hours ago, Grames said:

Trump's policy positions are why he has any popularity whatsoever.  There is no cult.  MAGA doesn't end when Trump goes away.

Can confirm. He's great, but I don't care about him, I only care about defeating our overlords/destroyers. From a strictly MAGA standpoint, I hope they jail or assassinate him. All their supporters will celebrate like the short-sighted simpletons they are. They are accommodating us with their infinite stupidity so far, now we just need them to definitively show the last few people on earth who still can't quite grasp they're not the good guys. Then, later, when MAGA ascends, we will do what needs doing free from interference or even objections from any sector.

You think his personality has an unnerving grip on people now, Gus? That's very cute. Buckle up.

Edited January 23 by Jon Letendre

[tadmjones]

[tadmjones]

Yeah.. MAGA is a cult

[Jon Letendre]

On the right isn't that the Office of Nuclear Energy official that Biden appointed? Entrusted with our nuclear technology then caught stealing three thousand dollar Vera Bradley luggage at the airport a month into the job.

All of our lives are at risk so some criminal lunatics can benefit from diversity hiring.

But MAGA is a cult. Right.

[tadmjones]

And on the left is a man who believes everyone should act as if he is a woman.

Before his federal appointment he was the chief medical officer in Pennsylvania. He pulled his mother,er sorry his mother requested to be suddenly relocated out of a senior living facility, just prior to her son 'recommending' that Covid positive patients  be housed in senior care facilities across the state. An action that warranted a promotion to the federal level. What a guy and what a team behind him !

Edited January 23 by tadmjones

[Boydstun]

The greatest threat to the future of America as a prosperous place and place of civil peace is continuation of the federal deficit budgets of the last 23 years. The federal government is stealing the life savings of Americans by inflation to cover the ongoing budgets in the red. Against continuation of that: vote for Haley against Trump. The choice between Haley and Biden or Phillips will be more difficult because the Democrats are squarely Pro-Choice. But the choice between Haley and Trump at this stage is easily Haley.  As Bastiat put it: Let us try freedom.

Edited January 23 by Boydstun

[tadmjones]

I am not aware that Haley is a deficit 'hawk', I know she is a war hawk and that means continuation of military spending( not that I am opposed to a strong and expensive military ,  though it should be for 'show' mostly). And I do not think Trump is a deficit hawk either, the dems aren't either.

Besides budgetary concerns can only be meaningfully addressed in a sound fiscal policy era, does Haley out hawk Trump in doing something about the Fed and fractional reserve policies?

Two of my biggest things that I count against Trump are his acquiescence to the prevailing 'medical experts' at the onset of covid and not pardoning Assange. Given the field of political leaders at present , Trump is still the best hedge against globalist/intelligence/corporate/health/climate/mandater oligarchs that are strangling the West. A more immediate and visceral threat than even a decade more of deficit financing.

[Boydstun]

21 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

I am not aware that Haley is a deficit 'hawk', . . . 

Just click on the link I provided in that post.

US Charges against Assange – I think US law should be enforced. If one thinks these laws are wrong, repeal them by our democratic process. (I happen to agree with the cause of American defense against foreign powers and these laws pursuant to that.) Mr. Assange, by the way is no Henry David Thoreau in the way of civil disobedience: the latter was willing to go to jail for the sake of his principle (and he actually had a principle).

I'm with you on policy of high bank reserve requirements, fractional or full. And no bailouts (see that link). 

Edited January 23 by Boydstun

[Jon Letendre]

Senator Rand Paul:

"I've seen her involvement in the military industrial complex; eight million dollars paid to become part of the team."

"It really gets to me when I see people who I think care more about the borders of Ukraine than they care about our own southern border."

"[Nikki Haley] is from the [Mitch] McConnell/Dick Cheney wing of the party."

Question: What was covered up, about covid?

Paul: "The fact that the US government, at the beheast of Anthony Fauci, funded it."

"As things come together, to me this is the greatest cover-up in our history."

Uncensored: Rand Paul (rumble.com)

Edited January 23 by Jon Letendre

[tadmjones]

16 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Just click on the link I provided in that post.

US Charges against Assange – 

Manning is a man, please square that with an 'official' statement of fact.

[Boydstun]

Tad,

It was only a few days ago that I learned I am cisgendered. I had not heard that designation before. It changed nothing about me. It is a trivial aspect of me compared to my mind and character.

I thought it a travesty that Manning was allowed to receive its sex-change while in prison. Here I use the pronoun "its" as an insult, because of the crime, the evil, against American persons, he did (in collusion, allegedly, with Mr. Assange). I understand that medical care of federal prisoners is lousy (by our modern standards). I understand that not receiving medical treatment or not being protected from physical attack by other prisoners is never part of the sentence of imprisonment that a judge hands down to a convicted criminal. The intended penalty of imprisonment is loss of liberty, not these additional negative incidents. (A long-time friend of mine was recently in federal prison for nine years. We visited him there, and by correspondence especially, I learned some about how things actually are there and how variable they are between locations. The vendors are making a fortune, that's for sure. At one of the prisons our friend was in, he and most everyone got Covid. Ten inmates died. At another prison, he was beaten up.) I don't know law concerning rights of inmates to medical care, but it seemed to me the procedure given to Manning was rather towards the luxury end of modern medicine.

My hostility to Manning (and Assange) aside, Tad, it seems right that official government documents refer to individuals who are transsexuals by the gender pronoun most suited to the result of the sex change, not the past. So far as I know, the chromosomes are not changed, but there is a lot more to the biological identity of a human than that, and in our species, person and mind are paramount to all else. I have only one personal friend who is a transsexual (woman-to-man). We have never discussed it; we have the interests in common of work and love, which is usual and what we talk of. He is a bright and good and wonderful person. He has a husband and they've been together about thirty years. When people belittle transgendered persons, it is he who comes to my mind, and it's not rocket science to figure whose side I'm on.

[tadmjones]

Stephen

My point wasn't about how one should treat their fellow human as they know them in life, btw kindness is always the rule, yeah? It isn't about 'sides' either, but barring extreme chromosomal abnormalities , a person is not ever 'in the wrong body'( here I would refer to hermaphroditic situation and wrong would denote ambiguous genitalia). People may have a psychological make up that causes them to feel that way , but that is an entirely individual consequence as in it pertains to the one.

The reason I bring the trans 'issue' up , is to point to the fact that the 'adults' in the room are running around naming you cisgendered ( a term btw I think derived from organic chemistry in order to describe and sort certain molecular structure differences among fatty acids) as if it is a ' thing'. 

The same 'adults' in positions of power in society, in a society that still gives lip service to principled thinking to justify their actions. Official government documents should contain and pertain to actual facts. Just as that press release named Manning as a female, not a fact, it states allegations against Assange as fact, which facts should we determine are true and how?

Edited January 24 by tadmjones

[Boydstun]

The facts about Manning are physical facts of his surgery, hormone injections, and consequent changes in its body. Also, its facts of action as charged in his criminal conviction. The facts in the charges against Assange will be determined by a jury from the evidence. Those facts are whatever they are already, but they will not be accepted legally unless he is convicted. We have designed that legal determination process such that some guilty people will be judged Not Guilty even though the alleged facts of the case as brought by the prosecution are indeed the facts of reality; so that fewer innocent people will be wrongly found guilty.

Persons who have their sex changed by surgery and hormones are not the same as someone who senses they are psychologically a different sex without such a physical-alteration project (I'm not entirely convinced there are any such things as male versus female sexual psychologies, such as put about by Rand and Branden, that are independent of brainwashing of the children by the culture, i.e., there may well be no such distinct psychologies that are purely an outcome of biological nature). In official government documents, I'd think the proper pronoun or salutation for them is just as for those us who don't feel that way. Manning is in a different category: the category of having undergone the medical, physical alteration, last I heard.

There is a marble sculpture of old of an hermaphrodite, which turns my stomach. Also, I dislike drag queenery. But the circumstance that such matters are top political issues for voters grossed out by such sculpture or human behaviors is bad for the future of our country. Such cultural issues promoted to political hay have gotten way out of proportion in comparison to the circumstances that people are having to pay so much for groceries or are having their life savings stolen due to government-driven inflation or, as could come in the future if the federal budgets in the red are not stopped, police protection and armed forces can no longer be paid.

Edited January 24 by Boydstun

[Jon Letendre]

RealClear Politics has Trump smashing Haley by over 30 points in her home state of South Carolina. Pathetic!!

She is the Dick Cheney wing of the party as Rand Paul says, and those in her state who know her best know this very well.

Republican voters nationwide are making it very clear they want nothing to do with this establishment clown.

They want Trump.

[tadmjones]

On 1/24/2024 at 2:30 PM, Boydstun said:

 

Persons who have their sex changed by surgery and hormones

 

How would surgery and hormones change what sex a person is?

If I have brown eyes but wear colored lenses that change their appearance to blue , do I have brown eyes or blue ?

[Boydstun]

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

How would surgery and hormones change what sex a person is?

When I first met the transexual who became our friend, his transformation had been completed. He just seemed like a man. He looks that way in facial hair patterns, and sounds that way in voice. He moves like a man. If told he was formerly a woman and you started looking for physical traces of that, I'd notice the fairly wide hips for a man. I have not checked out the thinness of his wrists. I have not seen him unclothed, and I don't know how the density of his muscle feels. I found a little online about the physical changes from woman–>man, and you may find more: 

Quote

 

The first physical changes you will probably notice are that your skin will become a bit thicker and more oily. Your pores will become larger and there will be more oil production. You’ll also notice that the odors of your sweat and urine will change and that you may sweat more overall. You may develop acne, which in some cases can be bothersome or severe, but usually can be managed with good skin care practices and common acne treatments. Some people may require prescription medications to manage acne, please discuss this with your provider. Generally, acne severity peaks during the first year of treatment, and then gradually improves. Acne may be minimized by using an appropriate dosing of testosterone that avoids excessively high levels.

Your chest will not change much in response to testosterone therapy. That said, surgeons often recommend waiting at least 6-12 months after the start of testosterone therapy before having masculinizing chest surgery, otherwise known as top surgery, in order to first allow the contours of the muscles and soft tissues of your chest wall to settle in to their new pattern.

Your body will begin to redistribute your weight. Fat will diminish somewhat around your hips and thighs. Your arms and legs will develop more muscle definition, with more prominent veins and a slightly rougher appearance, as the fat just beneath the skin becomes a bit thinner. You may also gain fat around your abdomen.

Your eyes and face will begin to develop a more angular, male appearance as facial fat decreases and shifts. Please note that it’s not likely your bone structure will change, though some people in their late teens or early twenties may see some subtle bone changes. It may take 2 or more years to see the final result of the facial changes.

Your muscle mass will increase, as will your strength, although this will depend on a variety of factors including diet and exercise. Overall, you may gain or lose weight once you begin hormone therapy, depending on your diet, lifestyle, genetics and muscle mass.

Testosterone will cause a thickening of the vocal chords, which will result in a more male-sounding voice. Not all trans men will experience a full deepening of the pitch of their voice with testosterone, however. Some may find that practicing various vocal techniques or working with a speech therapist may help them develop a voice that feels more comfortable and fitting. Voice changes may begin within just a few weeks of beginning testosterone, first with a scratchy sensation in the throat or feeling like you are hoarse. Next your voice may break a bit as it finds its new tone and quality.

The hair on your body, including your chest, back and arms will increase in thickness, become darker and will grow at a faster rate. You may expect to develop a pattern of body hair similar to other men in your family—just remember, though, that everyone is different and it can take 5 or more years to see the final results.

Regarding the hair on your head: most trans men notice some degree of frontal scalp hair thinning, especially in the area of your temples. Depending on your age and family history, you may develop thinning hair, male pattern baldness or even complete hair loss. Approaches to managing hair loss in trans men is the same as with cisgender men; treatments can include the partial testosterone blocker finasteride, minoxidil, which is also known as Rogaine, applied to the scalp, and hair transplantation. As with cis men, unfortunately there is no way to completely prevent male pattern baldness in those predisposed to develop this condition. Ask your provider for more information on strategies for managing hair loss.

Regarding facial hair, beards vary from person to person. Some people develop a thick beard quite rapidly, others take several years, while some never develop a full, thick beard. Just as with cisgender men, trans men may have varying degrees of facial hair thickness and develop it at varying ages. Those who start testosterone later in life may experience less overall facial hair development than those who start at younger ages.

 

I enjoy being a boy. I've always been glad I was not a girl. In 2000 it was discovered that I had severe osteoporosis, and very likely I had it back 6 years to when I had broken a leg just by twisting it at age 46. The specialist at U of C told my doc to check level of free testosterone, doc did, and I was low (maybe plum out—I don't recall). So doc prescribed this testosterone gel you rub on your chest. Libido born again. I bet it has that salutary effect on straight guys also. Doc took me off of it when some patients started having some heart problems, but I think other docs are not so cautious as that and still prescribe it. Tell them Boydstun testified that it can have a very good effect on you. 

[tadmjones]

So the efficacy of the hormone replacement therapy is to counteract malformed psychological effects of cultural brainwashing? 

[Boydstun]

Not at all. I know nothing of objective correctness or incorrectness of the content of what I referred to as cultural brainwashing in childhood about a male or female sexual psychology. By using "brainwashing" I did not mean to put any negative valence on it, only an impressive strength of it. Sexual psychology with its purported differences as between psychology of men and women is more than simply what acts one likes to do, how one likes to appear, or whether one is more turned on by men or women in general. No, it is the sort of thing Branden wrote about, and the sort of thing we see in older films and in psychologies Rand puts into her characters. It's fine to put those psychologies into characters (and real children), but I think it is self-delusion to think you are just discerning and reinforcing a fact deriving from human biology.

(This reminds me of how Murray Rothbard would try to pass off as natural rights, such as right specifications for ownership in land, that actually are rights shot through with inherited social conventions. Nothing wrong with such rights, only with the blindness or deception.) 

The culture, no culture, commits a crime in implanting a predominate sexual psychology in the children. (I doubt the government has to be much involved except by way of protecting individual human rights.) And the idea that one or another or another, and always only one simple one, is simply on account of one's biological development is, I conjecture, the usual situation of people wanting the world and themselves to be simpler than they really are. That's most of any population.

I have gathered, Tad, that you have not personally known anyone who is transexual, and you seem to have only a politics-sourced and -framed view of them, pretty distant from those real persons. I don't know a great deal about the subject, what I have conveyed does not seem much gotten by you or helpful to you, and it's not where I should be giving my attention. So I hope we can stop this tangent soon, interesting as it might be of itself at the level of beer-talk.

Our political priorities, anyway, should be on who among candidates thinks what about the brazen State violation of the individual rights of women going on, the federal budgets in the red, (and as Jon has raised) who is a warmonger or a Chamberlain, who will or will not continue the upgrade of our nuclear defense, who will or will not subsidize or bail out private businesses . . . .

Edited January 26 by Boydstun

[Grames]

3 hours ago, tadmjones said:

So the efficacy of the hormone replacement therapy is to counteract malformed psychological effects of cultural brainwashing? 

I suspect that the cultural brainwashing could not possibly work as well as it does if children did not grow up drenched in chemicals from plants and plastics that emulated estrogens.   Excreted body fluids contain the remnants of all birth control pills ever taken, which all flow downstream into water supplies.  

[tadmjones]

Stephen

Our nephew was dating or ‘with’ (whatever the kids say these days) a girl who claimed to be trans , and it was obvious that he was using the situation as a way to garner from his peers a certain level of social credit or esteem. He was/is a little awkward socially and never really quite ‘fit in’, but I assume he built a ‘better’ reputation or felt he did by very public displays of devotion and acceptance via daily social media postings.

Another girl I know of from a family we were close to ‘growing up’ is claiming a trans identity and the adults are bending over backwards to accommodate and accept her claims. They live in and around the ‘Hollywood scene’ , as her father is a successful and ‘known’ for his contributions and creations in the ‘business’. 
 

So you are right in that I do not have any personal experience with an adult that has ‘transitioned’. But the little personal interactions with the subject have had has shown the idea of ‘trans’ and acting on the supposed impulses is rather tightly correlated with a broader social recognition and by Rand’s standards very much a purposeful seeking of self serving second handedness.

I did see an interview with what I gathered was a ‘famous’ contemporary trans person from the UK. The person explained that they were aware that ‘being in the wrong body’ was a psychological problem , a mental illness that caused their  personal happiness and relationship with the world in general to suffered from it. Using medical and other interventions helped the person to feel better , but the person stated they knew they had not ‘become’ a woman , just that trying to approximate that situation allowed them to experience a more comfortable way of being and I say more power to that person.

As to biologically based psychological roles or types and their commonalities, there was a study of one of the Scandinavian populations that showed after like a decade of social engineering to dissuade the zeitgeist away from the effects of sexual dimorphism and their societal outcomes , the outcomes in jobs and professional choices reverted to the ‘old regime’. After purposely removing any ‘stigma’ about choice making as played out in some patriarchal scheme , the statistical breakdown of job/careers as identified along ‘the old’ ‘gender based’ regimes played itself out , almost like it was based on biology rather than some form of social engineering. Girls by and large choose girl things and so too, by and large with boys. Overall empathy is more closely associated with feminine attitudes and other such trite stereotypes, go figure.

The whole branching off onto this tangent was precipitated by the ‘cult’ reference of the OP and my pointing to the Foucaultian nihilism and queering of the West.

Trump 2024

 

Edited January 26 by tadmjones

[Doug Morris]

So far, everyone on this thread has ignored Trump's attack on our system of democratic elections and orderly transfers of power.  This is a more direct and immediate threat to our rights and our general well-being than any of the other issues mentioned.  The only alternative to our system of democratic elections and orderly transfers of power is a contest of physical force to determine who comes to power.  That is a fast track to dictatorship.

People's willingness to believe Trump's lies without evidence looks cultish to me.

 

[tadmjones]

Trump's 'attack' on the election system was to point out that allowing for procedural changes to balloting would open the potential for fuckery in the counting of ballots. And then claimed such fuckery happened. He also exhausted all legal remedies to stall the confirmation of the electoral college results, which is not an attack in the sense you seem to mean.

As to orderly transfer of power, what did Trump do to illegally impede the transfer?

Trump's election opposition on the other hand congratulated the violent rioters through out the country and gave every public indication that further violence should be expected, tolerated and welcomed until their demands were met. Biden was legally recognized as the winner of the election, based on the idea that the election was free, fair and transparent and was sworn in on Jan 21 st in DC with 30k federal troops present.

[Boydstun]

17 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

So far, everyone on this thread has ignored Trump's attack on our system of democratic elections and orderly transfers of power.  This is a more direct and immediate threat to our rights and our general well-being than any of the other issues mentioned.  The only alternative to our system of democratic elections and orderly transfers of power is a contest of physical force to determine who comes to power.  That is a fast track to dictatorship.

People's willingness to believe Trump's lies without evidence looks cultish to me.

 

Trump urging election fraud in Georgia 

I know people who supported Trump in 2016, but after such public displays of his illegal attempts to change vote counts (under a subjective faith, or at least a sales-front, "I won by a landslide"), they were not supporting him again. (That is not to say they are going to vote Democratic!) They told me that even before his indictment for illegal acts attempting to invert the results of the election. Naturally, I couldn't help but wonder why such a voter did not perceive salesman Trump back in 2016 as I thought obvious (and posted): a blowhard and con man.

But there were other supporters, some parading themselves as Objectivists, who proved to be not such innocent supporters of Mr. Trump for President in 2016 and subsequently. These are the ones who relish his subjectivism and bold lies, which they repeat. Not simply falsehoods, but repeat as lies. I've not known them in person, but One of them I thought I knew a fair bit from online talk. As the Trump term in office unfolded, it turned out that there was nothing against the free market that Trump might do which One would not rationalize away. Then, it turned out (I learned from a long-time in-person friend) that One was in fact himself, of himself, the most deceitful online companion I'd happened into.

Not that those depraved Trump ones are 100% in agreement with everything Trump says in public. They have some independent judgment on when an old lie should have been retold instead of Trump giving his honest commonsense take on something involving elections. When Trump gave a sensible look as to why Republicans did not pick up more seats in the Congress than they did in the 2022 election, these cohorts in viciousness and subjectivism would have none of it; rather, if their side lost some, it should be proclaimed as due to election fraud.

Still, there is no indication yet of a bloc of voters willing to support candidates of such proclaimed autocratic ambitions as Trump's, but are candidates who are not connecting themselves personally to Trump. Because there are not fast principles or public-affairs policies distinctive to Mr. Trump (i.e., not just Republican principles and policies had without Trump), a lot of that depravity-faction will crawl back under the rocks as the personal Madoff-sunset is repeated for Mr. Trump. Should he win re-election this year, I remain confident that the judiciary upholding the continuance of our constitutional democratic republic and the substantial continued public support for that will block the maneuvers from Trump proto-fascism to fascism. (And between you and me and the fence post, I'd expect his first interest in winning presidential power this time is to try trumping any possible criminal convictions of him in judicial process.)