Friends, my article this week will come as an anti-climax to those of you in the "in-crowd" here at WaddyIsRight. That's because it's a slightly reworked version of my blog post from earlier in the week, when I attempted to calm your fears of Bernie Sanders. Well, here it is at WND, for your reading pleasure:
https://www.wnd.com/2020/02/conservatives-shouldnt-panic-bernie/
Stay tuned for a great article on America's favorite pseudo-Indian, Liz Warren, in the coming days.
I am going to stand with my original thought that Bernie Sanders will not get the nominee. My husband said to tell you, "Dr. Waddy, my wife is wrong. He will be the nominee."
ReplyDelete--I just don't see the party going that far left.
I just read your article and it cheered my up quite a bit. Actually a Bernie Presidency might even be better than a Mayor Pete or someone else, because by the time Bernie gets done, and as you say, the Republicans will have an outstanding chance to win (and hope keep) the Presidency again. Good article. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: You make alot of sense in this article. Still, it reminds me of those who grab venomous snakes by the tail. They know what they are doing but the possibilities are appalling.
ReplyDeleteThat this man is a serious candidate at all is a disturbing reality. Then again major party candidates have included Henry Wallace (had he been renominated for Vice President in 1944 he would have become President and he thought the far left was the place to be; he would have succored Stalin), George McGovern (who would have gutted the military just as the Soviets were gearing up for their final self destructive push for military supremacy - just think, the fall of Communism might not have materialized with a U.S. military weakened by this dreamer) and Gov.Michael Dukakis, who thought that men such as one who had stabbed a young man so many times he was completely drained of blood and who had casually dismissed the uh, "inconsiderateness" of his act; that that monster deserved a "furlough" from his preventive incarceration (damn the law abiding public, yes) but that the couple consequently and predictably savaged by that thing deserved not even an audience, at which to express their displeasure with His All Knowing Cuomoesque Governorship. Well, we survived their tries for the Presidency but someday we may not be so fortunate.
Yet then again; I've realized lately all I need to know about Bloomberg. I didn't realize his responsibility for Nancy Pelosi's anarchic resettling, two steps from the Presidency, as Dissembler in Chief; of his nurturing of the liberal usurpation of Virginia's legislature and of the extent of his willingness to do whatever necessary to impose his views on an erring U.S. (as it appears in his NYC corrupted and myopic view). Devoutly to be wished: Bloomberg's manna goes down the drain and Bernie makes a perfect ass of himself and his contemptible cause in November.
Dr. Waddy, Linda and Anonymous: An incidental aside: the term "furlough" derives from the military and describes an honorable temporary excuse from service. That it was presumed by the disdainfully Dem Dukakis or his factoti to describe the vacationing of imprisoned murderers in consideration of their hurt"feelings", thereby exposing the public to their tender mercies, the prevention of which was presumably the object of their sentences (even in Mass.), uhh, does show a certain bias and lack of judgement does it not? Observe NY today and consider, criminal loving Cuomo ( it is said he experienced a moment of "enlightenment" while sojourning for an afternoon, surrounded of course by the armed defense he would deny to New Yorkers, with an articulate and manipulative slayer who excited his fancy). As an experienced Corrections employee, let me assure you, I saw that plenty of times; we all went through it. Trouble is, Dukakis would have taken such fantasy to the highest levels. Bernie is as destructively irresponsible.
ReplyDeleteLinda, I see your house is as fiercely divided as the Democratic Party! Well, not THAT fierce, and not that divided... I assume you're not throwing toasters at one another -- yet? Ha ha.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anonymous! There's always a silver lining, and in politics a win is often the mother of a loss, and vice versa. Think about it: Obama was one of the best things that ever happened to the Republican Party. It flourished in 2010 and 2014. It hasn't been this strong at the national level since the 1920s. Sadly, presidential wins do bring with them power over the courts, and that means a loss, which might otherwise be a blessing in disguise, comes with real costs to the nation.
Jack: good point that we've dodged some bullets before as a nation. Henry Wallace would have been a doozy! I guess even FDR had more sense than that. But, as you and Anonymous have pointed out, the moral fiber of America is not what it once was, so a Bernie victory can't be ruled out. The role of the media in such a campaign would be very interesting to observe. Oh, how they hate Trump...but to embrace Bernie? A real Sophie's choice that, for a business-friendly or moderate Dem. Bloomberg, since he seems unlikely to get the nod himself, would be in a similar pickle. I wonder: might some lefties concede four more years of Trump, and concentrate their efforts on turning the Senate blue? Perhaps.
Not to rain on your parade re: furloughs, but Dukasis and his staff didn't invent the term or the practice, although the Massachusetts furlough system may well have been flawed in ways that Bush, Sr. was right to draw attention to.
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/12/us/study-says-53000-got-prison-furloughs-in-87-and-few-did-harm.html
HA! Not quite yet...although the men in the house had to well, let's just say, had to eat a little crow when Donna Brazile was yelling on TV this morning. I think they are seeing the light now, LOLOL.
DeleteDr. Waddy: Thanx; point well taken. But still, Dukakis did choose to embrace the term and did presumptuously free terribly dangerous people (pure madness). The only justification I know of for these leaves of absence are to help inmates who will be released in the foreseeable future maintain family ties. What ever could ever justify turning proven sociopaths out on a target rich public?. They forfeited family life when did that evil and their families are probably better off without them.Dukakis scorned the victims with his indifference and I am so very glad it cost him what he thought his due.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: In my experience, candidates for brief respites from prison were carefully screened and that may account for the Times' observation that few offended. It appears that in Mass., with Dukakis' OK, standards for approval were "relaxed". (My computer would not allow me access to the article but its probably safe for me to assume the article sought to excuse and advance Dukakis(?) given its timely publication and of course, its provenance ).
ReplyDeleteYour assumption is correct, Jack! The NY Times definitely wasn't rooting for Bush, Sr. in '88... Naturally they would have regarded all allusions to Willy Horton as crass racism. And I take your point about the senselessness of releasing dangerous sociopaths, but remember -- we're talking about the same party that won't even deport said sociopaths when they're not even U.S. citizens or legally entitled to reside here. Never has an ostrich buried its head so deeply in the sand!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: It was accepted among most of us who worked with criminals everyday that all you would have to do to disabuse bleeding hearts is give them, oh say, a week in 24/7 contact with them, enough time for the novelty to wear off. They'd learn. Our certain knowledge is that these idealists hold we who have such experience(and access to criminals' mile long rap sheets) and very much more, in contempt. Knowing that is one of my main reasons for my conservative convictions. The left lives in a dream world.
ReplyDeleteJack, that makes perfect sense, but is it not true that many super-leftists inhabit the criminal justice system? I wonder -- how do their delusions survive "contact with the enemy"???
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I had direct contact with those (some of them in control of millions of dollars in tax payer and crime victim funds), convinced that criminals were victims, in my corrections career. My explanation for their influence? First, their ascendent position on bureaucratic organizational charts. Second, their insulation from day to day contact with "the guys". Third: in NY, of course, their probable and often obvious college educated leftist bias against punishment and their airily
ReplyDeleteenacted disdain for the concentration on criminals of personal responsibility for their savagery.
In NY Corrections Central Office practice, the ideological prejudice of subordinates is often ignored due to their ability to insulate the higher ups from criticism and interference with their three hour martini lunches.
Jack, I can readily believe that, the more insulated one is from the realities of the criminal mind, the more one can indulge fantasies about the sociopath-as-victim, but surely there are guards, prison staff, parole officers, public defenders, etc. who are convinced leftists. I never underrate the human capacity for sustaining delusions, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The human will is a powerful thing!
ReplyDeleteFor instance, you wouldn't think that a public school teacher, who sees daily evidence of the weaknesses of state-controlled mass education, could possibly believe that MORE government control of education would benefit students...but they do believe it (sometimes even while sending their own children to private schools)! Cognitive dissonance, you say? Tish tosh!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: In my experience the vast majority of Correction Officers believed that most incarcerated criminals deserved that "inconvenience". They are the ONLY people anywhere (aside from the victims and the families and that is often the same thing) who have 24 /7 contact with criminals. And some of that contact, believe me, is of a nature which would cure all but the most drug addled dreamer of weepy concern for most of these victimizers. Yes,I know there are some prison staffers who let inmates have their way. That is because they are spineless and disdainful of their duty to the tax payer and crime victim or because they have found themselves in a facility the culture of which is shamefully compromised. I have direct experience of such a disgraceful state prison and I have talked to my state law makers about it.
ReplyDeleteAs for civilian prison staffers: because so many are college educated, there are some who will never learn and who, further, display open contempt for those who HAVE learned (both civilian and Correction Officers). And that has been the cause of very intense resentment on the part, mostly of C.O.s, of these presumptuous know it alls. And some of the civilian supervisors in insulated NY Corrections Central Office; some of them are ferociously apologetic for criminals and disdainful of ANY who disagree, even crime victims and tax payers. Their subordinates must comply to some extent or face job ending charges of insubordination.
In order to function as responsible Corrections employees it is necessary to assume a working model of the criminal personality. This does not preclude attention to individual circumstances but it is an antidote to an irresponsible idealism which the inmates will perceive at an instant. Sorry bleeding hearts (but not devoted leftist friends of the criminal); that is the real world at work and those of us who inhabit it are on the ascendent, in reaction to your foolishness.
Dr. Waddy: I once had a very disdainful Central Office "evaluator" sent to inspect my prison library's Spanish language collection, on which I had spent much time and some money, employing in large part, advice I had from Hispanic inmates and which was much used (actually, I was informed by knowledgeable people that many Latino males avoided libraries for fear of accusations of "flacco", an emasculating insult). But they came to my library! She sneered at my collection and imperiously bade me conform to a list she asserted was far more "relevant". It included Spanish translations of Joseph Conrad. Really! Few people read him in English anymore.I later learned she had not worked in a prison library, not for one day. I ignored her ignorant pronunciamentos and she never reemerged from the swamp of bureaucratic humbug.
ReplyDeleteThis is a telling example of the kind of supervisory attention (at a very comfortable distance) exercised at least in NY, by criminal apologists and their ancillaries. Their detachment is their definition.
Jack, how I wish we could deploy the likes of AOC in our prisons for a tour of duty among the law-breakers. Can you imagine the culture shock??? Intellectual leftism thrives in a sheltered environment. Somehow, we must find a way to force the sneering Marxists to join us in the real world (and, yes, I realize the irony of a college professor making that statement!).
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I do not gainsay you in any way for your Professoriate and I trust there are others like you, despite the fact that the far
ReplyDeleteleft dominates the American academy. I do not look to Marxists ever to join the real America. They must never be trusted, because of their demonstrated disdain for conventional morals and values and their proven record of deceit.
Rather, they must be politically defeated and returned to the tawdry margins of our society from which they emerged with the help of the hopelessly naive leftist faction of the multitudinous Boomers (even a portion of that MASS had decisive weight). There let them SQUEAK in impotence. With the ever increasing demise of the Boomers at the hand of the Father Time, of which so many of us expressed such presumptuous contempt back in the day, this is an ever more viable hope.
Biden's current rise may well be a realization on the part of Dems that Bernie's honest radical loonieness is unelectable. (Now why is that?!) It is motivated by their realistic expectation that Bernie's reckless frankness about doctrines which they would, in power, celebrate, yet cannot be sold to any silly accomodating rump of the real America (like Romney and those who applaud him).
Jack, the decline of Bernie and the rise of Biden is both good news and bad news for the real America. It's good news because it means the Democrats are backing away from naked socialism. It's bad news because that maneuver is, as you observed, merely a feint on their part. All leftists are headed in the same general direction: statism. Some are barreling forward impatiently, and others approach "utopia" with a little more subtlety. I'm inclined to think the subtler shades of leftism are ultimately more dangerous, because they're more viable...
ReplyDelete