AOC just doesn't get it

One has to wonder how far Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will go in her quest to destroy the status quo in America and replace it with her beloved socialism. The ridiculous attacks are an almost daily occurrence.

One day she blasted Amazon for paying ‘starvation wages.’ The next she accused Donald Trump of setting up ‘concentration camps’ on the border. Both accusations are almost too ridiculous to warrant response, but since she wields a lot of influence on the left, especially with young voters, her ludicrous accusations cannot go unchecked.

As far as the ‘starvation wages’ at Amazon are concerned, that company has bent over backwards to the socialists who demanded a $15 minimum wage. The starting wage at Amazon is now $15. Apparently Fight for $15 was just a rallying cry. It was a first step in dismantling the capitalist companies that didn’t pay up. Now that they have the AOCs of the world moved on to their real target which is to ultimately bankrupt American corporations.

In an opinion piece for Forbes, Ed Rensi, the former CEO of McDonald’s, pointed out how a $15 minimum wage won’t spell the end of companies like McDonald’s. What it will spell the end of is entry-level opportunities for thousands of people. We see that already with Amazon. Higher wages have pushed Amazon to move toward automation for their warehouse jobs. While most of the warehouse work is still done by humans, the company’s director of robotics said full automation is a little more than ten years away. Robots are expensive, but they don’t strike and they don’t complain about a living wage.

AOC and others like her are also the ones ginning up hysteria amongst millennials. They’ve convinced them that no jobs will exist in the near future, that robots will take over everything. A generation that has grown up with gadgets is now going to therapists to deal with their threat. And the threat is coming from the very people they support.

Let’s face it, the fear of becoming obsolete is at least as old as the automobile. While the horse and buggy industry was put virtually out of business the jobs that sprang from the automotive industry far exceeded them. In that sense the socialists may be doing us all a favor. If their goal is to save the ‘working class’ then the immediate effect will be unemployment. Or at least a work force that has to be retrained. All at the government’s expense I’m sure.

The more egregious scare tactic from AOC was her ‘concentration camp’ nonsense. Let’s get some things straight. President Donald Trump was not the first to put illegal aliens in detention center. As for the cages, we know for a fact that Barack Obama was separating kids by age and putting them in ‘cages,’ if you want to call them that. They were (and are) chain-link fenced-in areas where minors are kept safe. The left loves to talk about ‘family separation,’ but we have a rich history in this country of not putting children in jail with their parents. I guess the guy who robs the bank and is locked up is a ‘victim’ of family separation too, but few would shed any tears for him.

Concentration camps were used to house Jews during World War II before they were sent off to be gassed en masse. To claim that kids who get three meals a day, a comfortable bed, and soccer games are in a concentration camp just illustrates the lack of judgement (or sense) of anyone who claims it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

Trump wins big on Mexico

Nothing succeeds like success, the old saying goes. That is unless you’re Donald J. Trump. All we heard from the mainstream media in the run-up to the threatened tariffs against Mexico was how devastating it would be for the American consumer. Talking points filtered through the press that avocados would go through the roof because of the proposed tariffs. I did a spot check of avocado prices around the country. Most were selling for 88 cents, a near all-time low. The worst the first wave of tariffs would’ve done would have been to drive the price up to 92 cents an avocado. That’s a far cry from the crisis they were trying to manufacture.

Then they pivoted to car prices. Nothing had changed on that front either. Then it was all about how Mexico was our best trading partner and how dare we treat them this way. Mexico may be an important trading partner, but they are a corruptocracy. Some refer to them as a narco-state. Then comes the reality. Mexico’s Finance and Tax Secretariat (SHCP) has been tracking suspicious transactions that lead back to drug cartel-linked human smuggling. In other words, many of the caravans heading to the United States have been linked to drug cartels.

Here’s how this works. They fund thousands of migrants to swarm the border at once in an effort to overwhelm U.S. Border Patrol. While our border watchers are processing the onslaught of asylum-seekers the drug cartels are traipsing across the border with large quantities of drugs. President Trump was well aware of what was going on.

Thwarted by lawsuits from the likes of the ACLU and aided by open-borders judges the Trump administration had run out of options to stop the illegal invasion. President Trump turned to the only weapon left in his arsenal: Tariffs. And they worked.

Mexico’s negotiators hopped a plane to Washington and before we knew it we had a deal whereby Mexico would send their national guard to their southern border to stop the flow of migrants coming up from Guatemala. They also agreed to keep asylum-seekers in their country until they could be processed in ours, something the courts had stopped Trump from doing unilaterally. 

Almost as soon as the president had tweeted the victorious results of the agreement the New York Times was out with a story about how there was nothing new here. What was new and groundbreaking was Trump had managed to get the Mexicans to finally agree to living up to their responsibilities by threatening to hit them in the wallet. By the way, the tariffs are suspended, not canceled. If Mexico doesn’t live up to its end of the bargain then the tariffs go forward.

The New York Times editorialized in their news account by writing that Trump “was driven in part by his obsession with stopping what he falsely calls an invasion of the country.” Although some quarters of the mainstream media remain in denial, this is truly an invasion. Over a million migrants will attempt to enter our country this year. If that’s not an invasion I don’t know what is.

Trump continues to confound his critics on both sides of the aisle. Some Republicans, who place profits ahead of principles, had bashed the president for his tariff threat. Now it looks nothing short of genius.

Trump joked on the campaign trail that we’d get so sick of winning. I had to laugh to myself when I read his tweet announcing the Mexican deal. So far I’m not even close to being sick.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

The Dems are openly fighting over how socialist they are

Who’d a thunk it just a few years ago? Democrats are openly feuding over socialism. The party that has long denied it’s a cover for socialists is now unashamedly run by them. So much so that left-wing kooks like Nancy Pelosi look like centrists by comparison. A couple of prospective Democrat presidential contenders came out against socialism and Medicare For All at the California Democratic Convention. They were roundly booed, one for more than a minute straight. No, this ain’t the party of JFK anymore.

The likes of Bernie Sanders and AOC have taken over the party. No longer is the word ‘socialism’ merely whispered in the corners of Washington cocktail parties, it’s now being debated for all the world to see. There is no longer any denying that the Democrat Party is the party of socialism. The only question is how much? And how far will the next Democrat president take America down that socialist road? Those who dare speak out against it in the party are thrown to the curb.

And the open socialists have now adopted a defiant tactic. If you say you’re opposed to socialism they demand that you don’t like firemen or cops or roads because that’s all socialism. Bull. Not all government services are socialism. The military, for example, is not socialism. It can operate like a dictatorship sometimes, but not socialism.

Allow me to explain this so everyone can understand it. The government is there to do what the private sector won’t, can’t, or shouldn’t do. The private sector, left to its own devices, won’t supply everyone with firemen or cops or build roads everywhere, so the government does that. It doesn’t mean it’s socialism.

The socialists try this little trick to convince you that socialism’s good. It isn't. I read someone’s explanation one time of the difference between socialism and communism. The firing squad. In other words, there ain’t much difference. Socialism is just more polite about how it controls your every move.

But in this day and age of more and more young folks living with their parents for longer, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that socialism is all the rage with the 20-somethings. Instead of mom and dad taking care of you it’s the government. And that’s on us as parents. (And I include myself) We have to do a better job of making our kids independent. If they learn to become independent from us they’re less likely to become dependent on the government. And isn’t that what we truly want for our kids? Is for them to be totally on their own?

You love your kids, right? Loving your kids means you want them to be all they can be. They’ll never reach their full potential as long as they’re dependent on you. Well, the same goes for people dependent on the government. Have you ever met a successful person on welfare? Neither have I. Dependence on the government is the very opposite of success.

If we love our children enough that we don’t want them dependent on us then why is it not the ultimate expression of love to want the same for everyone else’s children? Instinctively we know this, yet we’re browbeat into submission by the socialists that we should somehow take care of everybody. We should only be taking care of those who can’t take of themselves. Everybody else? Get your butts to work. Make something of your lives. You know this to be true because it’s exactly how you treat your own kids.

See, you’re not such a bad person after all.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.