Why Do You Support Trump?

I have a good friend, Jim McPhetres, who supports Donald Trump for President.  Here is his answer.

What I like about Trump is his non political approach. He is a good business man and he has a strong financial education that is different that our politicians today. Unlike them he understands the cost of something whether it's a commodity or a person and how that relates to the bottom line. Currently we have to many in government that only understand how to spend without regard to how they receive the money the use. I believe he will change the philosophy in government to be prudent and smart when they use taxpayer money. I also am very happy to get some of the political correctness out of the way of running our country and staying on track with our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Now I do think he is very full of himself but I also believe that because of that he will not wavier from his promises to Americans. Trump is also the only one who does not support Agenda 21 which in my opinion is a movement that will destroy our nations sovereignty. Trump I believe will bring back industry to America which will put people back to work and with all hope that Americans start feel proud again that they live in a country that provides the American Dreams to be fulfilled. Outside of Cruz and Paul I don't have any hope in the other candidates as I believe they are bought and paid for by the establishment that desires a world government with a global economy which on the grand scale of things does not benefit America. I have many more reasons for supporting him and if you ever like we can meet some time and chat. Hope your having a great week, and thank you Richard for asking my opinion.

My bottom line is that I don't trust him. I support Rand Paul above Trump. I ask you to consider moving your support to Rand from Trump.

He may not be "bought and paid for by the establishment". It also means that he will do whatever he wants. He is used to being the king of his empire. I don't want a king. Rand Paul is libertarian Republican. He certainly is not an establishment candidate.

"He is a good business man and he has a strong financial education" I have my doubts about how good a businessman he is. He strikes me as a man without aversion to risk in his business dealings. And has done about as well as what another could have achieved with less risky investments.

Donald Trump inherited a lot of money and the growth of his wealth has been in line with that of the S&P 500.
Donald Trump's self-described net worth was $200 million in 1982.
If he invested that money in the S&P 500, he'd be worth about $8.3 billion today.
Today he claims his net worth is $8.7 billion. So based on his own claims, he has barely outperformed the S&P since 1982. (quora, See also NewsMax)

"Currently we have to many in government that only understand how to spend without regard to how they receive the money the use." I do not trust him not to spend as much or nearly as much as any other candidate other than Rand Paul.

I am not sure what part of the Constitution Donald Trump advocates for specifically. I hear that he wants to deport anyone from born within the US from foreign nationals. That seems like it is against the 14th Amendment. I am for allowing for more legal immigration.

I am not sure why Agenda 21 is an issue. It was a voluntary, non-binding agreement from 1992. How is this affecting us today?

How will Trump bring industry back to America? Trump supports protectionist policies. They will hurt the economy not help. (See CNBC).

On a final note, I find Trump unnecessarily rude and insulting. "Look at that face" comment of Fiorina. Rand Paul said,

"I kinda have to laugh when I think.. hmm, kind of a non-sequitur. [Trump] was asked whether  he would be capable and it would be in good hands to be in charge of the nuclear weapons, and all of a sudden there's a side ways attack at me. I think that really goes to the judgement. Do we want someone with that kind of character, that kind of careless language to be negotiating with Putin? Do we want someone like that to be negotiating with Iran?  

I think, really, that there is a sophomoric quality that is entertaining about Mr. Trump. But I am worried, I am very concerned about having him in charge of the nuclear weapons, because I think his response, his visceral response to attack people on their appearance, short, tall, fat, ugly. My goodness, that happened in junior high.  Are we not way above that? Would not we all be worried to have someone like that." (Rand Paul, Sep 16, 2015 Debate, YouTube 11:06)

A Government So Small There Is No Influence To Be Sold

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says that Donald J. Trump is a "fake conservative. cnnpolitics.com on FB

"He's a person who promises to be conservative ... but then when you ask him why he gives money to Harry Reid, why he gives money to Charlie Rangel, he says 'well, it's because I want them to do whatever the hell I tell them to do.' That's what's wrong with government ... I want government to be so small there's no influence to be sold."


Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says that Donald J. Trump is a "fake conservative. cnnpolitics.com "He's a person who promises to be conservative ... but then when you ask him why he gives money to Harry Reid, why he gives money to Charlie Rangel, he says 'well, it's because I want them to do whatever the hell I tell them to do.' That's what's wrong with government ... I want government to be so small there's no influence to be sold."

Cyber Chip

The Cyber Chip is a card used by the Boy Scouts of America in the tradition of the Totin' Chip and Fire Chip

Programming Merit Badge

I am a counselor for the Boy Scouts of America Programming merit badge. I provide an opportunity to others to be inspired by the possibility of programming in their lives.

Programming merit badge requirements (From meritbadge.org and the PDF)

Here are more notes that I have taken as I prepared to share with the Boy Scouts.

Transforming the Election System

I think our voters would be better represented if our election system was a combination of a jungle primary and an instant-runnoff.

This way the best candidate would win regardless of how many from each party run. The instant-runoff would ensure that only one election is required instead of 2. It would eliminate the ability to game the primary voters and then run as a seemingly different candidate in the general election.

Contribute to What You Love

I love music, I love talk. I chose this morning to donate monetarily to 89.5 KBAQ and 91.5 KJZZ. Following are the reasons I gave to contribute.

KBAQ - Use Amazon to donate while you shop
It wakes me up in the morning. It soothes me on my way to church. It calms me and invigorates me almost wherever I am.

KJZZ - Use Amazon to donate while you shop
It is a calm way to get up to date. It gives me a perspective I may not agree with. I welcome it. In it, I seek and find balance in my input biases.

What do you love? Does it inspire a gift from you?

The Form of Government That Inspires the Most Trust

ti·moc·ra·cy

təˈmäkrəsē/

noun

PHILOSOPHY

1. 1.

   a form of government in which possession of property is required in order to hold office.
2. 2.

   a form of government in which rulers are motivated by ambition or love of honor.

I had a friend share that she wanted the timocracy form of government. The first image I thought of was of diving war planes into navy ships. The kamikaze of Japan in WWII.

The form of government that inspires the most trust from me is one where correct principles are taught and the people then govern themselves.

The question comes, "How do you know that correct principles are being taught?" or "Who decides what thee correct principles are?"

My answer is that there is a marketplace of ideas protected by the primacy of freedom of expression. That there is no authority able to suppress any idea or system of ideas. Neither an authority to promote one set of ideas above another.

This is enshrined in the USA as the first amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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To Persuade Ourselves Against Recreational Drugs

What is the best way to persuade ourselves, our family and friends and the rest of our communities to not use recreational drugs?

This is the question I would love to know. J. Max Wilson wrote, Reasons to Oppose the Legalization of Recreational Drugs. Following are some comments from a FB post he made that resonate with me.

One of the dangers of implied consent in regards to recreational use of drugs is that there are always those on the margin who will experiment and become addicts who might otherwise not have done so had the implied consent not been given.
I support reformation of punishments for drug abuse, but not necessarily legalization.
A danger of pushing drug legalization in the name of "freedom" is the failure to recognize that drug addiction inherently means a loss of personal freedom as well as collateral damage to loved ones and neighbors. (Brent Douglas Aaron, link)

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To me, this issue presents like the two lovers or the vase, or the young woman or the old hag, or any other illusion — I can see strong, reasonable arguments on both sides. I lean towards decriminalization primarily to mitigate the police state and other enforcement overreaches, but have never strongly advocated for decriminalization as the solution, because I would be just as happy with laws that bind the police state (but which do not lead to decriminalization altogether). 

My suspicion is that our present legal system is simply not equipped to assuage the concerns of all interested parties. Perhaps a common law system might be able to address the concerns of both sides: (1) specific wrongs brought about by drug use can be redressed (brought against the defendant by the persons harmed, or the state acting on behalf of named victims), (2) a person could still smoke weed alone in a cabin in the woods on his two-month vacation without fearing police action.  

The idea being that recreational drug use could still trigger legal action, but does not *have* to — a common law system can take relevant contexts into account in a way that our present legal system cannot. (Jeffrey Thayne, link)

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Richard, there are two main differences between drug prohibition and alcohol prohibition that make them not parallel: 

1. As Dalrymple explains in the article I linked, alcohol prohibition attempted to prohibit something that a vast majority of Americans consumed regularly or even daily, and had been culturally acceptable and widespread for millennia. Other recreational drugs have never been similarly acceptable or widely used.
2. Alcohol Prohibition only criminalized the manufacture and sale of alcohol, not possession or consumption. So it curtailed supply but not demand. Drug prohibition makes both illegal. So the dynamics are not the same. 

Attempts to make them parallel conveniently ignore these important differences. (Jonathan Max Wilson, link)

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Why Our Budget is Racing Out of Control

Farm subsidies are useful to our national budget or they are not, but that is beside the point. They keep getting funded because it costs each taxpayer only a few dollars to fund them and they get millions. They then use a portion of those millions to ensure that their congressperson keeps the money coming.

The only way out of this unhealthy cycle is to cut the government off at the knees. We need to truncate its police power. And slice off huge portions of its budget. And cut our taxes. All at the same time.

I love Rand Paul's approach:
- Eliminate FICA workers tax
- End Corporate Welfare
- Eliminate Lobbyists and Tax Lawyers
- No Special Tax Breaks
- One low 14.5% tax break

Benefits are
- Grow our economy, create 2 million jobs
- Simple tax filing, get the IRS out of our lives.
- A tax cut for every American

Free College?

Bernie Sanders wants to make public university free. I do admire his intention. I also want more people to have access to education. I just think that student loan subsidies drive up the costs of education. When there is more money in the market for education, the cost goes up. That is econ 101.

Making it free is the ultimate subsidy. Students may not pay for it but those who do will pay much more dearly.

His plan does not consider the principle of contribution. In order for the education to have full power, the participants must be willing to sacrifice.

I like the approach of Mike Rowe.
http://profoundlydisconnected.com/

Study: Yes, Student Loans Are Making College More Expensive

What Are the Most Effective Ways to Reduce Abortions.

I am not convinced that the best ways to reduce the number of abortions are education and easy access to contraception. Following are my reasons to believe this.

"In many populations, rising levels of contraceptive prevalence are not associated over time with falling levels of abortion." (Relationships Between Contraception and Abortion: A Review of the Evidence, Cicely Marston and John Cleland, Volume 29, Number 1, March 2003)

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The big question outside of a policy that is most effective in reducing abortions is the ethics of abortion.

At what point is a fetus a human with the same human rights as any other. Birth? moments before birth? 3 months, 6 months? Conception?

Whenever is that magic time in development is. Once they have reached it, it is not about a stats game. It is murder.

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I don't trust the stats that say that education contraception are always the most effective way to reduce abortions.

I imagine that it is somewhat like a bell curve. Education and contraception are effective up to a point. After that point, people will get abortions because it is easier and/or the ethics of it generally are that it is only clumps of flesh and not a human being worth defending.

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It is easy for some to recommend the advisable thing based on the evidence of the results reducing the amount of abortions.

There is a sickness in my stomach when I think of doing the advisable thing. Clumps of flesh they are NOT. They are human or at the very least the seeds of humanity.

They are worth more than rational advisement.

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FB Post that inspired these notes.
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I do trust that all will work out. Either God is or He or She or It isn't.
Either we have all eternity to work everything out or we don't.
... I could go on forever.

In the end the most effective way to transform humans to be higher evolved, it is probably not going to happen because of the President we happen to choose.

The sitting President is not the cause of most Good or Bad in the world. He or She is more a collective result of the Good and Bad in the people.

What Do You Want in a Phone?

My dad is looking for a cell phone. Following is my way of showing him the options so he gets the best phone for the money. There is a spectrum of phones and services that go from inexpensive to not. So what do you get for your money?

From what I understand, my dad wants a phone
1) That is easy to use
2) That he will be able to use in an emergency
  a) He can hear the other voice and they him
  b) He can use maps to get around
3) That he can do other fun and useful stuff with

Republic Wireless

For less than $20 a month you get free talking and texting and a limited amount of data. From my experience, using maps several times a month. Looking occasionally at web sites and other apps that are not music or video streaming apps. You also get voices that are sometimes choppy and hard to hear. You can buy more data at $7.50 per 500 MB. Whatever you do not use, you don't pay for.

This is the service I use. I bought a Moto E (1st gen) with a 32 GB SD card for about $120. It is a low end phone. It is slow for me. I drop calls now and then. The apps and phone can get bogged down. I think a lot of this is because the machine is under-powered. For a user that will not install a lot of apps, it may be satisfactory.

My wife has a Moto X (2nd gen) and 32 GB of memory for $350. She has a much better experience than I. It is about 10 times as fast. I am not sure what her experience is with dropped calls and voice quality.

Sprint

$45 Unlimited talk and text, 1GB.
$22/month lease
$22.92 installment billing 0% apr. $550
Can upgrade anytime in the cost of the plan.

T-Mobile

$50 a month, 1GB of high speed
Certified pre-owned 5S. $7 a month, $279 outright.
iPhone 6. $27 a month, $649 outright.

Verizon

We switched from Verizon to Republic Wireless in Nov 2014. We went from paying $85 a month sharing a plan with my in-laws. That is with feature phones and some texting between the both of us.  Republic wireless is less than $40 a month for two android phones. Unlimited talk and text, and some data.

For my dad I think he would have the best experience with an iPhone. He already has an iPad. He won't have to learn a new OS.

No Service contract, pay off the remainder

$50 a month, 1GB
iPhone 6 plus: $649 or $27/month
iPhone 6: $549 or $23/month

My Thoughts on the Sep 16 Debate

Here are my thoughts about the Republican debate on Sep 16, 2015.

Rand Paul
"I kinda have to laugh when I think.. hmm, kind of a non-sequitur. [Trump] was asked whether  he would be capable and it would be in good hands to be in charge of the nuclear weapons, and all of a sudden there's a side ways attack at me. I think that really goes to the judgement. Do we want someone with that kind of character, that kind of careless language to be negotiating with Putin? Do we want someone like that to be negotiating with Iran?

I think, really, that there is a sophomoric quality that is entertaining about Mr. Trump. But I am worried, I am very concerned about having him in charge of the nuclear weapons, because I think his response, his visceral response to attack people on their appearance, short, tall, fat, ugly. My goodness, that happened in junior high.  Are we not way above that? Would not we all be worried to have someone like that.
" (11:06)

Mike Huckabee
Mr T comment "You're a fool" comment was funny in more than one way.

Marco Rubio
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Ted Cruz
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Ben Carson
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Donald Trump
"Not in a Braggadocio" I don't believe it.
"A great life altogether" Not eloquent.

"First of all, Rand Paul shouldn't even be on this stage..." What? He is trying to winnow down the field? Why?

Jeb Bush
"A dedicated reformer" I don't believe it

Scott Walker
"Go big and go bold" I want to believe it. I am skeptical

Carly Fiorina
"Donald Trump is a wonderful entertainer. He's been terrific at that business." (8:57)
"One of the benefits of a Presidential campaign is character, capability, judgement and temperament of every single one of us is revealed, over time and under pressure.  All of us will be revealed over time and under pressure. I look forward to a long race. " (9:27)
"From secretary to CEO" is inspiring.
"A government so big..." my vision.


John Kasich
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Chris Christie
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FULL CNN GOP Debate: 2nd CNN Republican Presidential Debate Part 1/5 Sept. 16, 2015

A Serious Candidate?

I have a hard time taking a Donald Trump seriously when
- He insults the face of a fellow candidate
- He has a history of speaking about women without respect.
- He seems to have no discipline for what comes out of his mouth.
- Maybe he

I do not support a candidate that is 80% bluster and 20% policy content. He has all of one issue on his position page of his web site. Really? I do not support his protectionist economic policies. He does not seem to know what he is talking about in foreign policy.

Please, Trump supporters tell me why I should take him seriously.

Other questions: University Fraud?,

Donald Trump is a Protectionist

Donald Trump is more about protecting the American economy rather than getting out of its way so it can compete globally on a level playing field. I do not support him.

"Mr. Trump’s proposal to increase taxes on companies such as Ford when they source parts or make cars in countries like Mexico. The billionaire real estate developer suggested imposing a 35 percent tax on the carmaker as a penalty for such behavior." ("Business Group Assails Donald Trump for Urging Higher Taxes on Some Companies", Alan Rappeport, 26 Aug 15, New York Times)

Upholding the Law and Supporting Conscientious Objectors

There are possible win-win solutions to upholding the law and allowing for conscientious objectors to same sex marriage.

"Ryan Anderson talks some sense on Kim Davis case"

(http://www.cbn.com/tv/embedplayernews.aspx?bcid=4462155465001)