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Trump’s Stepford Wives: Palin, Carson, & Hannity

by Annie | Leave a comment

Endorsed Trump

Chris Christie’s conservative bona-fides fell away years and years ago, and O’Reilly’s just an ass, but the rest of them? WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU PEOPLE?

There’s been an Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A Stepford Wife transformation in Tea Party Land. There are humans among us who look normal (“normal” as in the same as they always were) but aren’t… Like really, REALLY aren’t.

We conservatives have experienced a kind of human earthquake. Fellow conservatives we thought were terra-firma conservatives have revealed themselves to be subject to liquefaction when nudged by a Trump on the richter scale. Think of it this way:

Having lived in San Francisco for five years, I can tell you one of the phrases you don’t want to hear, but is uttered too often for comfort is, “Did you feel that?” One of the most profound betrayals there is is an earthquake: when the earth itself betrays you. Where do you go? Aside from the superficial advice about doorways, you’re still, quite literally on earth. Terra-Not-So-Firma. You can’t FLOAT. You can’t all of a sudden DEFY GRAVITY. That’s why it’s so terrifying, on a primal, indeed cellular level. I’ve been through a big earthquake and I can tell you, it’s a transformative experience.  There’s your life before the earthquake and your life after. You don’t ever feel quite the same about the brown on our little blue dot on the Milky Way. You don’t ever trust it – the very ground beneath your feet – with the same confidence ever again.

Thus has been the great culling of conservatives lo these last months. People we thought were solid, bedrock conservatives, have given way.  Sarah Palin was one of the first, and the hardest. Many of us have spent years defending her. Until a few months ago, I can’t think of a single thing she ever said I disagreed with on the merits. Sure, you can mock her God-awful speaking voice, but the substance of what she said was true, in the truest sense of the word: she meant it, and it was consistent with the conservative principles she articulated, well, consistently! That’s the thing about principles: they don’t require a degree, or noble birth. They’re free. Accessible to all. If only you will claim them. And she did, bravely. There were millions of us who were horrified at how she was treated by the media (and even fellow conservatives) and came to her aid on blogs, social media, and comments sections, etc.

Then she endorsed Trump. To be stringently accurate, the first tremor was when she endorsed Newt in 2012, a progressive Republican. We hated it when she endorsed McCain for Senate in 2010 but we understood it. She was being loyal to the man who plucked her from obscurity and made her a household name, such as it was. But Trump…? What? Why? When she endorsed and campaigned for Cruz for Senate in 2012? With full-throated support, having clearly thought about it, and articulated her reasoning? She knows him. Knows him well. What happened to her?

Person after person after person has given way, so when I read this post at Red State, I thought I’d post it here as a kind of plea to her and all the victims of Trump liquefaction.  It’s addressed to Sean Hannity but is applicable widely. If you call yourself “conservative” or “Tea Party” please spend a few minutes with it take it on bravely and fairly and honestly.

We’re supposed to be better than this…

RED STATE: Dear Sean Hannity: Are You REALLY a Conservative?

Consider me your conscience. Your real conscience, not the one in which you are temporarily blinded by the campaign of one Donald J. Trump.

First of all, you claim you are a conservative. In fact, I don’t doubt that you are, and have been all of your life. In fact, you are a member of the Conservative Party, which means you are a practitioner of its tenets. You have professed you want a limited government, strong national defense, lower taxes, real spending cuts, and a return to American values through individuals, not mandated by government. That type of government can only be presided by a limited government executive. The last such chief executive was Ronald Reagan, and you have constantly wished for someone like that to run and win in the primaries.

You have also espoused a strong dislike for the GOP Establishment. You, just like I and every other conservative that I know, have been horrified to see the leadership of the GOP sell out to the Democrats. You are tired of special deals being given to some corporate cronies of both the left and the GOP establishment, and you want it to stop, starting from the top.

So during the current campaign, we have two candidates running in the GOP primary who are left with a chance at the nomination. One of those candidates has stood out, displaying the conservative tenets that you yourself have craved. A candidate who has stood up to the establishment, not just rhetorically but through his actions. He is running against a candidate who, by any objective manner, is more in line with Establishment cronyism, shows a preference for making deals rather than using his core convictions to guide his decisions in line with his ideology.

In short, you have a no-brainer decision. One that you, a conservative, should not hesitate to make. And certainly not one that you can show ambivilance.

So why in heavens name are you promoting Donald J. Trump, a candidate with no core beliefs, a candidate who espouses not just moderate positions, but positions from every point of the political spectrum? And how can you NOT promote Ted Cruz, a man who checks EVERY box that a constitutional conservative could want?

To be honest, I am flummoxed. I don’t know if it’s your personal association with Donald Trump, your feeling that if you support Cruz that you will suffer a loss of ratings, or other reasons. But one thing I do know: You are NOT true to your professed conservative beliefs if you actively promote Donald Trump over Ted Cruz.

How do you do this? First, you let Donald Trump set the agenda for your interaction with Ted Cruz. When you interview Trump, you defer to his agenda, you don’t hit him hard on many issues as you would other candidates, you don’t call him out on his many flip-flops, and you aren’t even concerned about his lack of decorum.

Do this. Picture Donald Trump as a liberal. You would be constantly reminding the voters how we cannot elect such a candidate who has absolutely no core beliefs. One who constantly demeans his opponents. One who is ABSOLUTELY AFRAID of debating with his primary opponent without the filter of at 7 other people on stage. Seriously, Sean. Step back out of the fog and seriously rate Trump not as an anti-establishment champion of the “little guy,” but as someone who cannot even converse in a manner without sounding like a repetitive macaw.

So why are you dissing Ted Cruz? He matches your positions, every single one of them, more than Donald Trump, based upon your historical conservative position. In addition, you usually don’t fall for the diversional trick of callers claiming to be an independent, then trashing the conservative position. Donald Trump callers have mastered this art. They argue by criticizing everything Cruz has done, without arguing substance, and you fall for it. Every time. But when Cruz supporters try to call you out, you come out with that tired, worn out reply: “Well, if you lose, will you support Trump over Hillary? You won’t? Seriously? SERIOUSLY?”

Finally, your ignorance of how the GOP convention with regard to the nomination of the party reprentative for president is disappointing. Very disappointing. You don’t understand that nominating a president is a process that is not just about the popular elections. Yes, popular elections are important, but just as important is knowing the rules of all 57 states and territories with regard to delegates. You listen to Trump’s claim that Cruz is stealing delegates that Trump “won,” which is an ABSOLUTE falsehood. All (well, most) delegates are bound to the delegate allotment on rules for the first round, and Donald Trump has all of them. What he doesn’t have is the subsequent round support of those delegates. And you don’t think it’s fair that Cruz is getting them to vote for him if Trump doesn’t have the majority on the first round.

Then let me ask you this: Why even HAVE a convention? Why even have delegates? Well, you ignore the obvious reason: That a plurality is NOT a majority. For instance, Cruz split the vote with Rubio, Carson, Bush, and Kasich, of which added with his votes constituted 65-70% of the entire vote. So why does someone with a large minority of votes get the nomination? In addition, some voters aren’t even Republican, yet their votes factor in the delegates. How can that even be FAIR? Finally, the delegates are the epitome of grass roots activists.

Now, Sean, I can see your confusion. Since Ronald Reagan, we’ve not had a primary where the Establishment candidate was not the runaway choice as the nominee starting from March 15. Therefore, the Establishment candidate usually got his delegates to be selected or voted on by the state conventions, and those delegates were on the rulemaking committee. In turn, those delegates usually worked with the National GOP leadership, which was establishment.

But make no mistake: The DELEGATES are the rulemakers. And Cruz has been working the hardest to EARN…NOT “steal”…those delegates, while Trump has been sitting on the sidelines. Again, this is the epitome of grass roots activism, and in fact results in a candidate that is more conducive to all the voters at convention time.

For you to be ignorant of this process, Sean, is inexcusable for a constitutional conservative. There is so much more, and I’m sure others will add to this list of observations.

I doubt you will be making any changes, but this letter will be here after the convention. Then, after the general election. It will be here for me to remind you of your own ignorance. At least until the FCC shuts RedState down.

One word of advice: Have a long, long talk with your friend Mark Levin. Listen to his reasons. You’ve had countless meetings and discussions with him before, but you and he are as far apart as Levin is with Bernie Sanders. Well, now I’m being rhetorical, but seriously: Play the audio of your show and compare it with Mark. The contrast is stunning.

Sean, please come back. Before it’s too late.

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Who’s Zoomin’ Who, Donny?

by Annie | Leave a comment

I have long contended that if the GOPe (GOP Establishment) were forced to choose between the two, Cruz or Trump, they’d choose Trump in a heart beat. Why? Here’s why (You can click the image on the right to enlarge it):


Gravy train. “Trump train” my ass . It’s the gravy train that’s now a’rollin’. Of the two, Trump will deal. Cash. Cruz will always choose the Constitution.

And cash is more fun, isn’t it?

Add in this excellent article below from American Thinker by Daren Jonescu, and it appears my thinking is now being actively validated.

 

Is Trump a McConnell-Rove Establishment Tool?

On January 19, Donald Trump, the loudest Republican claimant to the anti-establishment label, filled out his recent attacks on Ted Cruz in a very telling way, as revealed on Mark Levin’s radio program (click here, select the 1/19/16 podcast, go to the 23 minute mark):

We've been contacted by the establishment types.  They all want to know, how do they get involved with the campaign?  They're giving up on their candidates…and I mean these are real establishment people, that I've known when I was a member of the establishment -- meaning a giver, a big donor.  But they are contacting us -- Corey [Trump's campaign manager], I think we can say that very honestly, they're contacting us left and right about joining the campaign, and these are serious establishment types.

Who might these “real,” “serious” establishment types be?  Perhaps there is a hint in this subsequent comment, a follow-up to his recent pro-establishment assault against Ted Cruz:

So when you talk about temperament, Ted has got a rough temperament, I don't know.  You know, you can't call people liars on the Senate floor, when they're your leader.

This, of course, is a direct reference to Cruz’s criticism of Mitch McConnell regarding the GOP establishment leader’s secret deal with Barack Obama prior to a trade vote.

Donald Trump defending Mitch McConnell, you ask?  The answer is yes, and the explanation may be found by examining Trump’s recent history as a political donor.

Back in early 2013, Tea Party conservatives, fed up with McConnell’s feckless (to be generous) Senate leadership, his semi-tough talk that never seems to match his legislative decisions and results, and his relentless suppression of the conservative minority in the Senate, sought to supplant this establishmentarian’s establishmentarian by supporting a conservative rival in the 2014 Kentucky primary.

In response to this challenge, a super PAC called “Kentuckians for Strong Leadership” was formed to raise funds for McConnell’s scorched earth campaign against not only his own Tea Party rival, but the whole Tea Party movement.  I put the group’s name in scare quotes because, of its fifty-eight major donors — those who had given $1000 or more as of May 15, 2014 — the Louisville Courier-Journal identified only five with Kentucky addresses.  “Kentuckians for Strong Leadership” was in fact, as Tony Lee reported at Breitbart at the time, a re-branding of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, an organization expressly dedicated to destroying the constitutionalist movement in favor of the old guard GOP establishment.

The big donors to Mitch McConnell’s anti-Tea Party defense fund gave amounts ranging from $1000 to $250,000.  In the upper half of this donor list appears one Donald J. Trump, who gave $50,000 to the group.  Five days earlier, he had already donated a few thousand dollars to McConnell’s campaign directly.  This total donation is far and away the largest contribution Trump has ever made to any individual Washington politician’s campaign — at least ten times larger than any other contribution he has made to a national Republican candidate.  Indeed, one has to cross over to the Democrat side of his donor history to find anything comparable to this contribution at any level of government.  That would be his $50,000 donation to Rahm Emanuel’s mayoral campaign in December 2010.

Mitch McConnell has been perhaps the single most prominent leader — certainly the most powerful — in the Republican Party’s long-standing effort to “crush” (McConnell’s word) the grassroots constitutional conservative movement that threatens the privileged status of the Washington Brahmin caste, aka the American political establishment.

In 2014, the Tea Party had the temerity to challenge McConnell directly on his own home turf.  He did indeed crush them there, as he would happily crush them in the Senate.  His effort to annihilate the constitutionalist resistance was funded heavily by a nationwide group of donors affiliated with Karl Rove, who presumably shared McConnell’s and Rove’s desire to defend the establishment against the belligerent serfs who were daring to assert their liberty against its permanent privilege.

Donald Trump was a major donor to that effort.  He even threw another $10,000 into the pot in October 2014, to bring his total contribution to McConnell to more than $60,000.

Now he is attacking his primary rival, Ted Cruz, on the grounds that “Nobody in Congress likes him,” and, more specifically, that “you can’t call people liars on the Senate floor, when they’re your leader.”

Donald Trump is no longer making a generic accusation against Cruz’s demeanor or reputation.  He is slapping him on behalf of the Republican he has supported most generously, Mitch McConnell.  I have previously argued that Trump’s reputation as anti-establishment is all hot air, corresponding to nothing he has ever really done.  Here we have just one more clear example of that.

A conservative blogger friend recently suggested to me privately that he is not ready to reject outright the possibility that Trump is actually the establishment’s clever creation — that, after years of deepening threats from an increasingly serious constitutionalist faction within the GOP, the progressive Republicans may have surmised that the best path to victory is, as my friend puts it, to “run against themselves.”

Whether strategic or merely fortuitous, the alliance between Donald Trump and the GOP establishment, which has lurked verifiably behind Trump’s brash mask for years, has now become an open feature of his primary campaign.  And the chief target, Enemy Number One, of both parties in this alliance is Ted Cruz.  Cruz is “nasty” and “nobody likes him,” as Trump says, because he is brazenly defiant toward the GOP establishment’s leaders.

And you thought the whole point of being anti-establishment was to be brazenly defiant toward the establishment’s leaders.  Silly you.  Apparently, a real anti-establishment candidate would not donate $60,000 to Mitch McConnell’s “crush the Tea Party” campaign.

###end###

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Ben Carson and The Party of Slavery

by Annie | Leave a comment

American Thinker has yet another brilliant piece.  This time it was inspired by the schadenfreude arising from The Left’s Ugly Hatred of Ben Carson as observed by a writer new to me, one Peter Heck.

You see, from a Tea Party perspective, the Democrats have never changed.  They’re exactly the same party as they were 200+ years ago.  They still believe the black man can’t survive without the white man.  Then, it was a place to live, some food to eat, and a job to do in the form of slavery.  Now, it’s government housing, food stamps, and a jobs program in the form of the government plantation.  In exchange then, as now, they expect absolute fealty. Then in the form of forced labor until you drop dead, now in the form of a vote for your sustenance until you drop dead.

What the hell’s the difference?  Just because it’s been made more palatable doesn’t make it any less evil or paternalistic.  The Democrat impulse to control people’s lives burns just as brightly now as it did then, only now it’s even better: they get to spend other people’s money to do it.  No crop failures for Nancy Pelosi to worry about, oh no…

So herewith are some excerpts from Mr. Heck’s excellent piece, though I heartily recommend you read it in its entirety.

It’s a small man who delights in the misfortune of others, but I can’t help myself. As much as I regret that he is being forced to deal with (it)… I am having a blast watching the left try to deal with Dr. Ben Carson… Liberals are having to come to grips with the reality that Carson is a legitimate contender. And it isn’t going over well.

Why? First, it proves that the annoying habit liberals have exhibited the last seven years of shoving their fingers in their ears and screaming “racist” at any person who opposed the presidency of Barack Obama… (Republicans don’t) mind electing a black president at all -– they just haven’t enjoyed a socialist one.

But the rise of Carson stirs a more primal reaction on the left that shouldn’t be ignored… As the party of big government social welfare spending, liberals have enacted policies that have locked blacks in (all manner of) failing (civic institutions)… Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are disciples of leftist icon Saul Alinsky. It was Alinsky who articulated the strategy that in order to control a group of people they, “must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.” While gutting the black community with their policies, Democrats have managed to successfully portray themselves as that group’s only hope. …

The only thing that upends such a diabolical electoral scheme is the emergence of a self-made member of the oppressed group… Ben Carson, a man born into the crucible of inner-city strife, but who escaped the cycle of poverty intended for him to become a brilliant neurosurgeon.  Carson’s message of a smaller government, self-reliance and Christian faith offer a stark contrast to the grievance mongering, victim mentality that’s been force fed to blacks for decades by Democrats…

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has decided they don’t really want all “colored people” to advance –- just the ones with liberal politics. They’ve even declined to condemn racist slurs hurled at Carson. … When you come to believe that a person must think a certain way simply because of their skin color, and you despise them when they don’t, you are the one with the race problem. That is the uncomfortable truth Ben Carson’s candidacy is revealing, and it’s why the left will stop at nothing to destroy him.

Amen!

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The Charleston Shooting & Tea Party America

by Annie | Leave a comment

This… x 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I could not have explained my feelings on the Charleston shooting, or why I am Tea Party, any better than this TownHall article (below the line). I agree with every single syllable of it. It is as pure a distillation, with absolutely sparkling clarity, on what I think and why I think it, as I have ever seen.

And while, by virtue of choosing it as his opening sentence, Mr. Hawkins clearly meant for us to pay special attention to it and what flows from it, the sentence, in isolation, really deserves to be marinated in our own quiet contemplation all by itself:  “The mass murder of nine innocent black Americans attending a Bible study in a Charleston church by a drug-addled, racist, terrorist thug was as close to universally condemned as anything can be in a country like America.” 

What he’s saying here, if you take the time to really let it sink in, is that, in a country where something like 20% of the population thinks Elvis is still alive, 99% of us condemn the actions of the shooter in Charleston!  (Sure doesn’t sound like a country with “pervasive” “structural” racism, hm?  Remember the OJ verdict?  How black America cheered and white America sat slack-jawed?  I don’t see white America cheering the Charleston shooter, do you? I’m just throwing it out there as an example of what a truly racist nation might do in the wake of Charleston.  Whites would cheer, right?)

And what about the 1%?  Well, unless you re-engineer human DNA into something barely resembling a terrestrial homo-sapien, there will… wait for it… always be racists among us!  That’s why the the constant, reflexive hectoring from Obama et.al. is so offensive to so many of us.  “We” (America) doesn’t “need to have a conversation on race.”  We need to recognize that we are human, that evil exists, and because of both stubborn facts, there is no amount of big government that will ever produce a progressive utopia where these things never happen.  So whaddaya say we ascribe the same level of caution to white America and the hideous incident in Charleston, that we do to shootings preceded by “Allah Akbar”, hm, Mr. President?  (“This is not the true face of Islam.”) Well, Charleston is not the true face of white America.  So stop shaking your finger at us Mr. President and start lifting us up, and embracing the good and generous heart of this great nation.

And thank you, Mr. Hawkins for the brilliant article below!

 

An Open Letter To Black Americans About The Mass Murder In Charleston

6/20/2015 12:01:00 AM – John Hawkins
The mass murder of nine innocent black Americans attending a Bible study in a Charleston church by a drug-addled, racist, terrorist thug was as close to universally condemned as anything can be in a country like America. Expressions of sorrow over what happened and loathing for the killer are everywhere. Moreover, the shooter was quickly apprehended and the governor of South Carolina has already called for the death penalty. Hopefully, she’ll get her wish.

Supposedly, the shooter had the same lunatic dream as Charles Manson did back in 1969: he was hoping to start a race war.

That won’t work any better today than it did back in the sixties.

However, what this evil piece of human debris did manage to do is sow a little more hatred and division between Americans. There are already enough people doing that.

We always have ghouls who gleefully try to exploit every tragedy for their own political ends and there are more of them than ever before. They’re trying to tie this into their campaigns against police, trying to whip up voter registration, trying to convince black Americans that white people in general and conservative whites in particular hate their guts.

It would be nice to just shrug that off, but it has become so easy for people to talk past each other in today’s social-media-driven environment where every molehill is blown up and repeated and intensified until it’s made to look like a mountain. So, I want to try to cut through the clutter.

I think of myself as a typical white Tea Party conservative. I’m pro-cop, tough on crime, anti-Affirmative Action and I can’t stand Obama. In fact, if you put pretty much any black liberal (or for that matter, any liberal) and me in a room, we probably wouldn’t agree on ANYTHING political.

There are liberals who will tell you all day long that people like me are racist, that we hate black Americans and we secretly send “dog whistles” to each other about it all day long. If you believe them, you’d think people like me don’t care about black Americans at best and want to see them suffer at worst.

Now, here’s the truth about me and people like me.

I support the policies I do because I think they’re good for all Americans, including black Americans.

I think tough policing benefits black Americans more than anyone because they’re most likely to be the victims of crime. I think Affirmative Action undercuts the accomplishments of deserving black Americans by making people wonder if they earned their achievements. I think Obama has been a disaster not just for America as a whole, but for black Americans in particular. Given the fact that liberal policies have been failing black Americans for fifty years, I think I can make a good case for what I’m saying.

Of course, if you look at it a different way, I understand that, but since I can give you a coherent, intellectual explanation for why I think the way I do, you should at least give me the benefit of the doubt when I tell you I don’t hate you.

The words “racism” and “bigotry” get tossed around so quickly and easily these days that they’ve lost a lot of their meaning. So, rather than talking about those words, let me just say this: I don’t think anyone is inferior because of his skin color. I think black Americans are just capable as white Americans. In fact, I think people should be judged by merit and the content of their character, not skin color. People are just people.

So, we may disagree. In fact, if you’re a black Democrat, we probably disagree on a lot of things. But, I want you to know that people like me don’t hate you. We may oppose you and we may support policies you don’t like, but it’s not out of hatred. It’s because we love our country and because we want as many Americans as possible to be successful and have good lives. Disagree with us all day long, but no matter what anyone tells you, we don’t hate you.

==end==

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A Socialist Lemonade Stand

by Annie | Leave a comment

I happened upon this quite by accident and thought it was so awesome, I would repost it in full here. It’s from a rather impolitic site I think I’ve seen once or twice before called “News Machete.” Their title for the below (the line) article is “How to Teach Kids About Socialism.”

Now, I can already hear the cries from the left: “Well, what do you want? Anarchy? There has to be some regulation!” Yes, there has to be some regulation. Of course there does. We don’t want our budding entrepreneurs setting up their lemonade stands in the middle of intersections on the reasoning they will get more customers under the banner “Lemonade So Good It Stops Traffic.”  We don’t want pot brownies sold with the lemonade (Or maybe we do… Never-mind).  We don’t want some bureaucrat dropping by and shutting down little Timmy’s lemonade stand and letting little Sally’s lemonade stand across the street stay open because Sally’s parents have the “right” campaign sign on their front lawn. That’s Russia. We are a nation of laws, not men. Equal application of the law. With first amendment rights protected. A certain amount of regulation flows from these rights that provide Timmy & Sally the liberty to pursue their lemonade happiness regardless of their family’s political leanings. The Tea Party, conservatives like me, love that. Want that. Crave it. It’s when equal justice transmogrifies into social justice that it all turns to sh… Russia.

The cherry on top is another wonderful social experiment I came across years ago.  There are many iterations of it, but in short, college students in favor of wealth distribution aren’t so generous with their GPA’s.  Why?  Well… they “earned” it.

Hm.  Imagine that.

So when you’re done with the socialist lemonade stand, below the line, hop on over to CNS (an excellent site, by the way) for “Students Sign Petition To ‘Redistribute’ GPAs, But Some Are Too ‘Greedy’ To Lower Their Grades For Others.”  (Another excellent little site, by the way, for some some moral clarity to bleach away the progressive sewage being vomited all over America every hour of every damned day by ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, etc., is Exposing Leftists.)

How to Teach Kids about Socialism

It used to be that if you wanted to teach kids about capitalism, tell them to open a lemonade stand. By producing a product, marketing it, and selling it, they would get a small taste of what it is like to run a business.

But now telling your kids to open a lemonade stand is the best way of teaching them about socialism, not capitalism. First tell your kids to open a lemonade stand. Watch as they make lemonade, paint a sign, and move a table and chairs and a pitcher and cups to your front lawn.

Then let them sell for a few minutes unimpeded. Then come along and tell them you’re from the Department of Agriculture, and want to see where the calories count for their products are posted. If there is no calorie count, take 25% of what they have earned as a fine.

Then leave them alone for a few minutes and come back and ask if they are aware that they are violating child labor laws. When they tell you they are unaware, take 25% of what they have remaining as a fine.

Then come back a few minutes later and ask for the environmental impact statement for their lemonade stand. When they ask what that is, explain that before stand can be allowed to open, you have to study whether the ants under their feet or the squirrels in the trees above them are discomforted by the lemonade stand. If you notice any ice cubes melting on the ground to form a little puddle, say that is navigable waters and can be regulated by the EPA as well. Assess a 25% fine of what they have left.

Then come back a little while later and ask if they have been investing in healthcare for their employees, and withholding money for social security and medicare. If they haven’t, assess a 25% penalty.

Then come back a little while later and ask why there are no girls working there. Or if there are girls, ask why there are no blacks. Or if there are blacks, ask why no hispanics. If there are hispanics, ask why no gays. If there are gay kids, ask why no transgendered. Say that the absence of one group is evidence of discrimination, and assess a 25% fine.

Then leave them alone for a few minutes and set up a competing lemonade stand right next to them, with the sign “Luis Gutierrez Lemonade, 5 cents”. When the kids ask what you are doing tell them you are an illegal alien come to this country to compete for their jobs. If they start crying tell them that crying about it is racist and they could be fined.

At the end of the day count how much they have earned remaining after all your fines and take 50% of it. When they ask why, say it is for federal, state, and sales taxes. Explain that it was not they who sold the lemonade, but the government, who made the roads and sidewalks by which people came to buy it, and that they, the small business owner, are the “rich”, and need to pay their fair share.

After all this is said and done, ask your kids if they identify more with the producers of lemonade, or the government inspectors. Then you will have explained socialism to them.

==end==

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