Author Topic: Political Rants & interesting thought pieces  (Read 839607 times)

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Strassel: Trump Erases His Legacy
« Reply #1950 on: January 09, 2021, 06:22:14 PM »
Trump's true legacy is showing how utterly corrupt our institutions have become.


Trump Erases His Legacy
He also destroyed any chance of a political future, all on a single Wednesday afternoon.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Jan. 7, 2021 6:22 pm ET


WSJ Opinion: Trump Erases His Legacy

Potomac Watch: A politician has to work hard to destroy a legacy and a future in a single day. President Donald J. Trump managed it. Image: John Minchillo/Associated Press




A politician has to work hard to destroy a legacy and a future in a single day. President Donald J. Trump managed it.


By this Wednesday afternoon, media outlets had called both Georgia Senate runoffs for the Democratic candidates, handing Sen. Chuck Schumer the keys to that chamber. We now have a Democrat-controlled Washington. The Georgia news came as a mob of Trump supporters—egged on by the president himself—occupied the U.S. Capitol building. Now four people are dead, while aides and officials run for the exits.



It didn’t have to be this way. The president had every right—even an obligation, given the ad hoc changes to voting rules—to challenge state election results in court. But when those challenges failed (which every one did, completely), he had the opportunity to embrace his legacy, cement his accomplishments, and continue to play a powerful role in GOP politics.


Mr. Trump could have reveled in the mantle of the one-term disrupter—the man the electorate sent to Washington to deliver the message that it was tired of business as usual. He could have pointed out just how successful he was in that mission by stacking his cabinet with reformers, busting convention, and overseeing policy changes that astounded (and delighted) even many warrior conservatives.



The withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and the Iranian deal. The greatest tax simplification and reduction since Reagan. The largest deregulatory effort since—well, ever. Three Supreme Court justices and 54 appellate court judges. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. The Jerusalem embassy. Criminal-justice reform. Opportunity zones. He could have noted that the greatest proof of just how much Democrats and the establishment feared his mission were the five years of investigations, hysterical allegations and “deep state” sabotage—which he survived.

Mostly, he could have explained that all this was at considerably heightened risk if Democrats win the Senate—and invested himself fully in Georgia. Every day needed to be about fundraising, rallying the troops, making clear to his supporters that the only way to preserve this legacy was to keep the Senate in GOP hands.


That isn’t what happened. Obviously. Following court losses, Mr. Trump, in his own words, devoted “125% of my energy” to his own grievances. He declared the Georgia Senate races “illegal and invalid,” discouraging voting. He actively undercut Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler with late-game demands for $2,000 stimulus checks and with his veto of a defense authorization bill that provided pay raises and support for Georgia’s military bases. His denial of the presidential results energized Democrats and depressed Republicans. Turnout in Trump counties lagged, while turnout in some Democratic areas nearly reached that of the November election.


Mr. Trump is leaving, and thanks to his final denial of reality, Mr. Schumer will now methodically erase his policy history. Democrats need only 51 votes to eliminate the Trump tax reform, 51 to use the Congressional Review Act to undo his final deregulations; 51 to wave through liberal judges to counter Mr. Trump’s picks. And this is before Mr. Biden gets busy reversing Trump policy by executive fiat, and assuming Democrats forbear from abolishing the legislative filibuster.



So that’s his legacy, largely gone. As for his future, Mr. Trump’s role in inflaming the Capitol mob has likely put paid to that, as well. Dedicated members of his administration are resigning. Longtime supporters in Congress are turning. Millions of Americans who for years were willing to tolerate, often even celebrate, Mr. Trump’s brash behavior in the pursuit of reform or good policy, are less amused by the wreckage he has visited on party and policy. And they’ll be unwilling to go there again in 2024.


Trump loyalists may well condemn anyone who speaks honestly of all this as RINOs or spineless Beltwayers who care nothing of “election fraud.” But to quote the incoming president, “C’mon, man.” It’s one thing to scorn a Mitt Romney. But many of the senators throwing up their hands are the ones who fearlessly rooted out the false Russia collusion accusations, who defended Mr. Trump through baseless impeachment proceedings, and who understand the need for voting reform. Many of the officials resigning are bold conservatives, attracted to an administration they knew would let them break china. They too are stunned, and demoralized, by the president’s decision to tank their work.


“We signed up for making America great again. We signed up for lower taxes and less regulation. The president has a long list of successes that we can be proud of. But all of that went away yesterday.” That was Mick Mulvaney talking to CNBC Thursday. Mr. Mulvaney, the tea-party supporter, founding member of the House Freedom caucus, and the onetime Trump chief of staff. Hardly an establishment weenie.


The pity is that Mr. Trump’s conflagration will mostly burn the Americans he went to Washington to help. They will bear the higher taxes, the higher costs of regulation, the higher unemployment, the loss of freedoms. America became less great this week. And that’s fully on the guy at the top.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
Re: Political Rants & interesting thought pieces
« Reply #1951 on: January 09, 2021, 06:43:36 PM »
True that, and true that he would seem to have thrown away a goodly percentage of all the deep good he did.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Political Rants & interesting thought pieces
« Reply #1952 on: January 09, 2021, 07:10:21 PM »
True that, and true that he would seem to have thrown away a goodly percentage of all the deep good he did.

Why? Because the the people who hate him and us, still hate him and us?


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
If would pray we get someone else , not Trump 2024
« Reply #1953 on: January 09, 2021, 09:29:28 PM »
".Longtime supporters in Congress are turning. Millions of Americans who for years were willing to tolerate, often even celebrate, Mr. Trump’s brash behavior in the pursuit of reform or good policy, are less amused by the wreckage he has visited on party and policy. And they’ll be unwilling to go there again in 2024."

Quite frankly I am one who is not amused by losing the Senate possibly to miscalculations in the last 2 months by Trump .  He singlehandedly divided his own party with calling out Republicans in Georgia ,  slapping his most ardent supporter in the face (VP Pence ) at the end in desperation

he has burned endless bridges - who would want to work with him in '24?

and turning off many independents and out of no where calling for the $600 payday be raised to 2,000 dollars without thinking it through or listening to people in the party with the result was delayed longer etc.

Unless there is absolutely no one else Trump is done
for me.

By then partly thanks to him as Doug points out his legacy
is we have both houses and WH controlled by political enemies
who will surely make much of the country suffer.

And corona not withstanding what happened unexpectedly at WH
is the last memory of him as President and we all know the last memory if usually the one that stands out the most .



G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: If would pray we get someone else , not Trump 2024
« Reply #1954 on: January 09, 2021, 09:34:47 PM »
Are you going to outvote the dem fraud machines and the millions of illegal aliens who will be given citizenship?


".Longtime supporters in Congress are turning. Millions of Americans who for years were willing to tolerate, often even celebrate, Mr. Trump’s brash behavior in the pursuit of reform or good policy, are less amused by the wreckage he has visited on party and policy. And they’ll be unwilling to go there again in 2024."

Quite frankly I am one who is not amused by losing the Senate possibly to miscalculations in the last 2 months by Trump .  He singlehandedly divided his own party with calling out Republicans in Georgia ,  slapping his most ardent supporter in the face (VP Pence ) at the end in desperation

he has burned endless bridges - who would want to work with him in '24?

and turning off many independents and out of no where calling for the $600 payday be raised to 2,000 dollars without thinking it through or listening to people in the party with the result was delayed longer etc.

Unless there is absolutely no one else Trump is done
for me.

By then partly thanks to him as Doug points out his legacy
is we have both houses and WH controlled by political enemies
who will surely make much of the country suffer.

And corona not withstanding what happened unexpectedly at WH
is the last memory of him as President and we all know the last memory if usually the one that stands out the most .

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
Re: Political Rants & interesting thought pieces
« Reply #1955 on: January 09, 2021, 10:43:19 PM »
". Are you going to outvote the dem fraud machines and the millions of illegal aliens who will be given citizenship?"

it is a no brainer to me the election  was stolen
I am just saying banging your head harder against the wall dumb ass tweets and nauseating bombast and narcissism
is not the way to fight what we are up against .
we need to win over independents and having a spokesperson who is what Trump is pissed the off
He was great only when he stood by the policies like when he kept his big trap shut at the RNC with regards to yelling screaming calling everyone in sight he doesn't like names, because they don't like or agree with him

We expect strong leaders but not ass holes.

Just my view
If I had the answers on how to fight the tsunami of Leftist onslaught I could also probably figure out the unified field theory

That said the previous head up their assess Bushies are out with the long knives  going after Josh Hawley:

https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article248346830.html

BTW
it will be interesting what Mark Levin has to say as I think he was pushing the elector thing too.
 
Andrew McCarthy has been mostly right all along even if I wish his conclusions were different . He often winds up explaining how we don't have the legal weapons to fight with .
OTOH we are up against such an onslaught it is hard just getting whipped and having to take it.

What should we do?

I can tell you now I don't see how bringing out weapons and start shooting is going to help
No chance that would not be put down .

 
« Last Edit: January 10, 2021, 12:06:40 AM by ccp »

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Political Rants & interesting thought pieces
« Reply #1956 on: January 09, 2021, 11:29:15 PM »
"I can tell you now I don't see how bringing out weapons and start shooting is going to help
No chance that would not be put down ."

I'm not advocating anything, but I do expect that many dems are going to find out how rule .308 works.


https://monsterhunternation.com/2018/11/19/the-2nd-amendment-is-obsolete-says-congressman-who-wants-to-nuke-omaha/





Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
Small Wars Journal
« Reply #1959 on: January 21, 2021, 07:35:05 AM »




ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
David Gergen. speaking fee
« Reply #1963 on: February 08, 2021, 02:10:25 PM »
https://www.wsb.com/speakers/david-gergen/

I don't get it
we see him all the time on liberal stations mostly CNN
for many yrs
I have yet to hear him say anything worth one cent
Nothing insightful
nothing really imaginative
nothing we already don't know

yet he keeps getting thrown on to diss Republicans and lately of course anything Maga
as though his word means more then just anther asshole with a biased opinion.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
George Friedman: The Crisis of the Medical Establishment
« Reply #1964 on: February 14, 2021, 08:43:34 PM »
February 11, 2021
View On Website
Open as PDF

    
The Crisis of the Medical Establishment
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman

It has been about a year since the world entered a medical crisis for which there had been no cure. For much of the pandemic, the best solution was to contain the spread of COVID-19 while scientists developed a vaccine. It required a radical restructuring in how we lived our lives. More, the nature of the virus was such that any of us could be infectious without being sick. Anyone could be carrying the disease, so it was best to stay away from everyone, or so the thinking went.

Humans are by nature social animals – not just in the pleasure we take in being with others but in the way we produce the things we need to live and the things we need to live well. I went on vacation last week and felt as if I were venturing into a strange and dangerous world unlike any I had lived in before. We took a walk down a street for the pleasure of passing by strangers – a real but hitherto unknown need. The street was crowded with others who shared the need. Walking down a street is dynamic. It isn’t fighter planes holding inviolable positions relative to each other. People change course, they stumble, they stop to look in store windows or at other people. Keeping six feet of separation is impossible. Unpleasant but not impossible was wearing a mask on a sweetly warm subtropical day, inhaling and exhaling my own damp heat.

There is a constant sense of danger, a constant feeling that the pleasure of a walk, and the infusion of a Goombay Smash (if you haven’t tried a double, do), is a reckless act that not only endangers your life but threatens our social structure. Humans cannot live their lives like Phil Connors did in “Groundhog Day,” a movie that depicts a man awakening every day only to relive the previous. It is a funny and horrifying movie. Life is finite; it can’t be put on constant replay, not knowing when the song will move on. This was, in effect, the consequence of the medical solution.

This was the first vacation I took in over a year, and I took it with a sense of reckless youth. It was a good feeling, one clearly shared by many. The use of masks was random, distances weren’t kept, bars were filled. These were not the know-nothing rednecks that are imagined to be the primary source of such behavior. They were the denizens of luxury hotels. The sense of joyous rebellion was clear. It occurred to me then that the world’s ministries of health would not declare the end of social distancing and masking but rather a new way to measure risk, and I think it is taking place now.

The virus is dangerous, albeit less so than, say, smallpox, diphtheria, cholera or Ebola, and the prevailing wisdom is that those younger than 65 years old who have no comorbidities are far less likely to die. The total number of dead is horrific in spite of this. During the polio epidemic of the 20th century, which primarily afflicted children, often killing or maiming them, doctors did not decree that all of society abort their normal lives. They accepted random disease as a possibility inherent in being human. We went on, and some wept. They knew doctors were working on a vaccine, but that work had been underway for years, and no one knew when or if there would be one. In the meantime, they lived their lives. Doctors didn’t demand that we suspend our lives for an unknown period. How long can you go without seeing your children and grandchildren, without going to a relative’s funeral or wedding, without constant awareness of the risks of living?

In the end, a polio vaccine was developed and the disease went away, but we were not expected to halt our lives in the meantime. When it was developed – I was about five years old – everyone was quickly and joyously given the vaccine. It is very important to see the different views not only of the disease but of the vaccine. Everyone embraced the polio vaccine. But vast numbers of people all over the world have declared to pollsters at least that they will not take the COVID-19 vaccine. Some are afraid that microchips to control us will be inserted. Others that the whole disease was invented to enrich Big Pharma. There are those who have rejected vaccines for a long time. But there are also now those who simply do not trust the medical community. Some fear the breakneck speed at which the vaccine was developed. Others believe that the medical establishment’s pretense to scientific rectitude is an illusion. In short, they believe doctors don’t know what they're doing. And this is compounded by the belief that the risk of the disease is less than the risk of the vaccine.

I am not sure where this distrust started. For me it was with eggs, a trivial matter. When I was young, I was given eggs to eat constantly. Then I learned later that eggs were dangerous for one’s cholesterol levels. More recently, I learned that on the contrary, they were good. For most of us, our contact with science is the media declaring the latest food to promise eternal life or catastrophe all announced with utter confidence. It seems to many as if they have no idea what they are doing but are at all times certain. My perception may be wrong, but it is a social force nonetheless.

I am certainly taking the vaccine. I also understand the dynamic of scientific research, and that at each point they were doing the best they could do. But the fact is that the only solutions they had at the beginning were unsustainable in the long run and failed to take into account the price those solutions imposed. In other cases, life went on and the individual could determine action. In this case, the world changed its shape to deal with the disease. And that imposed a disease of the sort medicine is not meant to deal with, changing the fabric of the lives we have built for ourselves. I saw while on vacation on the street the eagerness, even with risk, to get on with life. I also sense the distrust that, fairly or not, has grown between scientist and civilian. The unwillingness to take the vaccine is a signal of the problem.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
Lib Clooney going after Jim Jordan
« Reply #1967 on: February 23, 2021, 08:25:43 AM »
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jim-jordan-george-clooney-ohio-state-sex-abuse_n_603490d9c5b67c32962018c5

I don't understand

if all these people supposedly knew what was going on
they could easily have fired the doctor and hired a new one

I have seen doctors losing their licenses for a huge amount less than this

of course I don't believe 20,000 + allegations either though
sounds like a gold rush to me.


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
MSM go to the Leftist lawyers, Tribe et al
« Reply #1968 on: February 23, 2021, 09:55:07 AM »
for immediate phony "fact check" of Justice Thomas the print their email/phone call etc responses :

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dissent-justice-thomas-election-case-223407739.html


DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18118
    • View Profile
Justice Thomas on the Dissent, Vote Fraud Case
« Reply #1969 on: February 23, 2021, 04:13:32 PM »
for immediate phony "fact check" of Justice Thomas the print their email/phone call etc responses :

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dissent-justice-thomas-election-case-223407739.html

Justice Thomas:

“Few things are worse for public confidence in elections than having the rules changed in the middle of the game (or after it). An epidemic of late-in-the-day changes to the rules was particularly corrosive in 2020. Courts are ill-equipped to referee those changes when partisan tempers are running hot. The Supreme Court just threw away its last opportunity to remedy that problem before the next election cycle. . . . This issue will not go away, and it may return next time surrounded by the same sorts of popular rage that led to the Capitol riot. This was the time for cooler heads to say what the law is.”

“An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence. Also important is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected.”



“That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future,” Thomas wrote. “These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”

Justice Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented, too.

“If state officials have the authority they have claimed, we need to make it clear. If not, we need to put an end to this practice now before the consequences become catastrophic,” Thomas added.

“We are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud,” Thomas went on to say. “But that observation provides only small comfort. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence. Also important is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected.”

https://thetruereporter.com/video-justice-clarence-thomas-blasts-supreme-court-on-rigged-elections/


Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
Some thoughts on the must read
« Reply #1973 on: February 27, 2021, 10:13:29 PM »
not totally analogous to Bolshevik Russia

as I think the proletariat that Lenin was opposed
would now be defined in modern US as who we call the elites and academics
and other privileged types

and from what I remember Lenin did not give a hoot about the poor or serfs
or the victims per se
he was champion of the workers
which is opposite of today wherein the workers , or in my mind , working tax payers are the enemies
of the state
not the other way around

Workers unite ! is more  phrase that Trump would use. (proletariat)

and the bourgeoisie I would think would not be the enemies of the state but the elitists and government  employees and academics who support the state

I agree with this statement:

"The answer of course was that the bourgeoisie nomenclature was inherently vague, by design, and the gulag did not differentiate between its political prisoners of one social class or another. If you were there, you were an enemy of the state."

I remember in Russian history classes and political science class ( I took of the former and one of the latter) no matter how hard I tried to figure out what was meant by the term " bourgeoisie" I could not grasp it.




 

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Some thoughts on the must read
« Reply #1974 on: February 28, 2021, 09:46:41 AM »
No matter what they claim, Marxism is always about the "elites" crushing the rest of the population.


not totally analogous to Bolshevik Russia

as I think the proletariat that Lenin was opposed
would now be defined in modern US as who we call the elites and academics
and other privileged types

and from what I remember Lenin did not give a hoot about the poor or serfs
or the victims per se
he was champion of the workers
which is opposite of today wherein the workers , or in my mind , working tax payers are the enemies
of the state
not the other way around

Workers unite ! is more  phrase that Trump would use. (proletariat)

and the bourgeoisie I would think would not be the enemies of the state but the elitists and government  employees and academics who support the state

I agree with this statement:

"The answer of course was that the bourgeoisie nomenclature was inherently vague, by design, and the gulag did not differentiate between its political prisoners of one social class or another. If you were there, you were an enemy of the state."

I remember in Russian history classes and political science class ( I took of the former and one of the latter) no matter how hard I tried to figure out what was meant by the term " bourgeoisie" I could not grasp it.


G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
CS Lewis
« Reply #1977 on: March 28, 2021, 08:32:18 AM »

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
Re: Political Rants & interesting thought pieces
« Reply #1979 on: April 19, 2021, 05:38:07 PM »
people are reading the forum .

I just posted how the swamp creatures are intermarried interbreeded go to the same elite castles estates neighborhoods yachts etc

So from the above "The Age of Over-Abundant Elites" is this



"Then the media makes useful idiots of us all, reframing as existential battles between good and evil what are really just internecine conflicts between elites who regard everybody else as serfs (in much the same way that I have always privately thought that World War 1 was, at it’s core, a family squabble among a pan-European dynasty that ruled by divine right).


Via Brookings Institute: The Family Relationships that couldn’t stop World War 1"



ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
Re: Political Rants & interesting thought pieces
« Reply #1982 on: April 24, 2021, 11:18:54 AM »
"Why everything is liberal/prog"

very depressing



DougMacG

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18118
    • View Profile

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
poll of virtually all dems and some independents
« Reply #1985 on: April 29, 2021, 01:16:23 PM »
https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/cbs-biden-speech-approval-poll-fraud/

surprise the all love the Jo

free shit on the way !!!!!!

listen to the science
  the data

 :wink:

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
Iran claims US paid billions for 4 hostages
« Reply #1987 on: May 03, 2021, 08:18:02 AM »
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/05/02/state-department-denies-iran-tv-report-of-paying-7-billion-for-four-u-s-hostages-n1444151

reason I put this here is because
it highlights
how I don't know who to believe :

Iran OR Biden administration

Is it not sad I can't trust my own government over Iran?


Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
Borrowed Benefits Syndrome
« Reply #1988 on: May 06, 2021, 08:18:45 AM »
America’s Welfare State Is on Borrowed Time
Biden has fully embraced the mad goal of giving 98% of the population lavish benefits at no cost.
By Christopher DeMuth
Updated May 5, 2021 5:46 pm ET
SAVE
PRINT
TEXT
207

ILLUSTRATION: CHAD CROWE



Has anyone noticed that the president has proposed increasing federal spending by nearly $1 trillion a year, while promising that 98% of Americans will pay nothing for it? The very idea would have seemed mad to every previous generation of Americans. Today it is considered conventional.

President Biden’s plans have been rightly criticized for the incontinence of the spending and the perversity of the taxes. Much of the spending is designed to exploit the pandemic crisis by transforming emergency income support into permanent middle-class entitlements for toddler care, higher education, medical services and much else. Other spending is called “infrastructure” but includes a list of progressive wants having nothing to do with capital investment. The tax increases—supposedly confined to the 2% with household incomes of $400,000 or more, but heavily weighted against capital investment—would seriously damage the economy and raise radically less revenue than claimed.

OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH
The Tab for Biden's Plans Hits $6 Trillion


SUBSCRIBE
But set aside these problems and take the Biden plans as advertised, as a tremendous expansion of government paid for by a select few taxpayers plus lots of new borrowing. This is the apotheosis of a political transformation that began insensibly in the 1970s and has triumphed with barely a quiver of recognition, much less debate. It may be called the borrowed-benefits syndrome.

From the founding through 1969, the federal government followed a balanced-budget policy, not perfectly but with impressive consistency. Regular operations were covered by current taxes and tariffs. Borrowing was reserved for wars, economic depressions and other emergencies, investments in territory and transportation projects. The debts were paid down through subsequent budget surpluses and economic growth.

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP
Opinion: Morning Editorial Report
All the day's Opinion headlines.

PREVIEW
SUBSCRIBED
From 1970 onward, the country shifted to a budget-deficit policy—spending more than current revenue as a matter of routine, at first a little and then going big, through years of peace and prosperity as well as of war and crisis. Deficits had averaged 3% of spending in 1950-69, a period that included two wars, a pandemic and two serious recessions.

Deficits then grew to 10% of spending in the 1970s and 18% in the 1980s. The U.S. borrowed for 22% of spending in 2019, a growth year that would have called for a budget surplus under the old regime. The deficit ballooned to nearly half of spending during the 2020 pandemic, setting the stage for another ratcheting up of regular annual deficits under the Biden plans.

Many explanations have been adduced for the shift, such as the triumph of Keynesian economics and its techniques for fine-tuning aggregate demand. But the growth of deficit spending has hardly been fine-tuning, and has been practiced energetically by non-Keynesians such as Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.


The best explanation is populist rather than academic: the shift in federal expenditures toward mass consumption. In 1970, about 36% of federal spending, net of interest payments, was benefits to individuals—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (new programs at the time), unemployment compensation, means-tested welfare benefits. Benefits spending then grew mightily, roughly in tandem with deficit spending, and is now about 76% of spending, heading briskly toward 80%. Most of this spending has been placed on autopilot and is exempt from occasional spending-reduction initiatives and government closures.

The shriveling share of spending on traditional government—defense, courts and law enforcement, parks and infrastructure, basic research—has remained subject to congressional appropriations. The Biden plans, while lacking in many details, would continue this profound change, with well over half the spending devoted to individual benefits.

Politicians and citizens have gradually discovered a powerful new principle of political economy: The government provides large numbers of voters with immediate personal benefits that greatly exceed what it charges in taxes, billing the difference to future generations. This principle is the driving force of the Biden plans, which would be financed mainly by new borrowing, not taxes.

The principle is less salient in other advanced democracies because they raise healthy revenue from broad-based and often regressive levies on consumption, such as value-added taxes. The U.S., by contrast, has long depended on a highly progressive income tax that is complex and wasteful and produces relatively little revenue. The American tax system is increasingly an adjunct of borrowed-benefits policy—a means of distributing benefits rather than a means of paying for them. The conversion of the IRS to a social welfare agency would continue apace under the Biden plans with their profusion of targeted tax credits for families and green energy.

The borrowed-benefits policy deserves to be called a syndrome for two reasons. First, personal benefits, however much needed or described as “investments” by proponents, will not generate the future economic growth needed to pay down the debts incurred to finance them. Budgeting consumption spending according to imagined futures of trouble-free prosperity, rather than current revenues, is the real political legacy of Keynesianism. This technique is on display in the Biden administration’s rosy long-term economic projections for its spending plans.


Second, whatever the future may hold, the provision of borrowed benefits is deeply corrupting of democracy. It absolves citizens of recognizing their dependence on one another and politicians of accountability for managing the conflicts and constraints of today’s society. Instead, it encourages the fantasy that there are Croesuses in our midst whose “fair share” will pay for the benefits government wants to give us. This, too, is a central element of the Biden plans.

I have no solution for borrowed-benefits syndrome, which has dissolved the consensus that the welfare state is something citizens should be willing to pay for. I can, however, objurgate the politicians who have built their careers on propagating the syndrome far and wide, now with unprecedented aggressiveness in the Biden administration and Congress.

Mr. DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. This article draws on his essay “The Rise and Rise of Deficit Government,” published this week at Law & Liberty.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
George Friedman on Bach and God
« Reply #1989 on: May 14, 2021, 05:32:25 AM »
May 14, 2021
View On Website
Open as PDF

    
An Evening With Bach
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman

A friend of ours, Shem Guibbory, who is a violinist with the MET Orchestra in New York, came to our house last week for dinner. He agreed to play Bach’s Chaconne for an audience of us and a few other friends. I do not have an ear for music, but I kept thinking that this is how God sounded during the creation of the world. The music had a perfect order that could be seen only by gazing deeply into what appeared at first to be disorder. It struck me as extraordinary that a human being was able to capture God’s spirit on a piece of wood.

My business is the relation of order to disorder. Nations appear to be disorderly things, but for me there is deep order inherent to them. When one nation encounters another, the sound it makes is the cacophony of conflict. Yet in it is an order of necessity, which is the truth underlying the noise. Necessity, the constraints that compel a nation forward, seems chaotic, but from the chaos we can comprehend and even predict the direction of nations.

That I would claim any right to a piece of Bach’s transcendent music or my friend's superb delivery is of course the hubris you all put up with. But my goal here is not to discuss the divine tedium of being human but to consider how that tedium and Bach’s brilliance must give us a sense of God.

God is not a subject ever lightly taken, especially in our time, where suspicion of speaking of God is rampant. The Enlightenment was a celebration of nature, man and science. There was room for God as a courtesy. As the Enlightenment turned into modern science, the idea of an infinite God, the cause of all things, ceased to be the common cultural belief, overwhelmed as it was by the idea that all things human and universal were the product of matter. Science never denied the orderliness of nature but could not concede that what some call intelligent creation and others think of as God’s handiwork might be the origin of the order of the universe, of the political world or of human life. Science based on causation and the mere existence of order does not make the case for a force responsible for that order. For science, but not necessarily the scientist, the origin of the order cannot be known.

But when I listened to Bach, I encountered an order surreal in its complexity, seductive if I stopped trying to dissect it and simply capitulated to it. At that point I found beauty. Beauty is a concept that is difficult to grasp. It is said to be a matter of taste and therefore the creature of taste and nothing more. But when I listened to Bach and watched the violinist draw the sounds through his bow, I realized both that this is beauty, and that if the beholder does not recognize this, then he is in some sense crippled. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but in the eye of the universe.

And when speaking of beauty, it is necessary to discuss a subject that is not appropriate to speak of in polite company: death. There are those who believe that physical death does not end life. There are those who argue that death annihilates life and consciousness. The former believe this to be a matter of faith, the latter a matter of science. For me, faith is something anyone can claim and build on it any edifice he desires. Who knows what’s true? But it is the materialistic definition of the world, and of death, that I find most troubling, and the trouble is embedded in Bach. How could a human being conceive of such sounds and construct the music? How can I pretend to understand the working of nations? How can the mind of any human being be filled with the extraordinary things it is filled with? Each of us in an hour encounters in his mind things he has seen, will see, or cannot see because nothing else like it exists. Each of us in that hour feels love, anger, lust and depression. Our minds are filled with the prosaic and the uncanny, and we live within that space expecting it to be so.

The brain is said to be the origin of thought, and all thought originates therefore in our bodies. But I know that I, George Friedman, can choose to think of things at will. Some might say that the brain generated the thought. It might contain that thought in its folds and crannies, but the brain cannot generate the complexity of thoughts that I think, because I feel myself choosing to think them, and because I experience them. The brain might be the retainer of thought, but there is an "I" here, and I know that I have chosen this word to write and that word originated from me. I may be delusional, but I think not. I might be an automaton, but Bach could not simply have been a channel for brain tissue to express the chemicals it generates.

If there is an "I" independent of the brain, then I can understand how Bach could have willed his music into existence. He chose to do so out of love for the beautiful. If that is so, then Bach was greater than his body, and when the container of Bach’s genius is broken, is Bach destroyed or is he free? Obviously, I am playing with the idea that there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies. I don’t pretend to understand the universe, and I find even myself puzzling. But the idea that the rich complexity of thought and emotion is a product of the brain strikes me as simplistic. A more elegant explanation is that there is a soul, good or evil as it chooses, that cannot be contained in the Enlightenment.

This strange wandering into metaphysics does not depart from politics. The soul of one might be chaotic. The souls of many have in them a certain logic, not because they are the mechanistic production of appetites and manufactured thoughts, but because, like the universe, there is an order beneath the chaos, and in looking for constraints, I need to look more deeply. Yes, there are constraints, but they constrain more than the body. They constrain the wildness of our minds, a wildness we share with each other. The freedom of the soul struggles against the limits of the body in everyone in orderly ways. There is order to a nation, and it seems to be that wild currents are only at the surface.

I may be completely wrong about the world, and maybe there is nothing more than my appetite driving me. But just as scientists insist on causation, I must explain Bach. How could he compose a song that elevates us into places that I thought did not exist. How can this exist in the world – and it does – as a matter of material causality rather than as a man choosing to see the uncanny?

I can’t get there from the Enlightenment, and I fear claiming I know more than I do. I am already far away from my yard. Yet listening to Bach forces me to rethink what I do, and the universe itself. I think Bach intended that to be the case.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
Snowflakes
« Reply #1990 on: June 07, 2021, 10:16:02 AM »


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
some sort of personality disorder
« Reply #1992 on: June 15, 2021, 09:18:59 AM »
the complete lack of shame

the total self serving nature of her making something that is not into some sort women's "issue":

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnns-brianna-keilar-practically-begs-katie-hill-to-return-to-congress-at-end-of-flattering-interview/

I guess it is not possible to have normal people in politics

These people simply cannot go away.

Of course Brianna who clearly has her own problems has come right on and push the leftist political agenda


Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
Re: Political Rants & interesting thought pieces
« Reply #1993 on: June 15, 2021, 10:42:29 AM »
Wrong thread for that.

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18349
    • View Profile
We need to explain "fascism" as the left misuses the word
« Reply #1994 on: June 17, 2021, 04:58:02 AM »
The Left -  more government control over our lives , more centralization , control by a few , in bed with leftist corporate America, stifling opposition speech, propaganda at schools , media , many corporations , reducing our freedoms, socialistic programs, equal outcomes high taxation

The Right - individualism, personal responsibility, free speech, less government, less control ,
  capitalism , equal opportunity, etc.

Yet the Yale philosophy professor calls the Right fascistic !   Time to defund Universities. 
Especially Yale and Harvard with billions in endowment
   
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/16/yale-professor-compares-gop-critical-race-theory-opposition-to-german-neo-nazi-aim-to-end-holocaust-education/

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
Fake Woke
« Reply #1995 on: June 22, 2021, 02:08:03 AM »




Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69117
    • View Profile
The Darryl Cooper Piece
« Reply #1999 on: July 11, 2021, 10:54:26 PM »
I posted this very important piece a couple of days ago frustrating formatting and all, and repost it now due to this version much easier legibility and formatting:
================================

Darryl Cooper, aka @MartyrMade, has assembled what might be the most accurate summation of why Trump supporters - the vast majority of conservatives - are livid after the past five years. Cooper, a researcher and writer, is the co-host of The Unraveling Podcast with retired US Navy SEAL commander Jocko Willink, and has hosted several deep-dive podcasts on a number of topics.

Read below:

(continued via Threadreader, emphasis ours)

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc). These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them.

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake.

At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen. We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying.

Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year. Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin.

This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election.

It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov't as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don't stand for the Anthem. They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them. The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period.

This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true. They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots.

They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution.

Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn't just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump ppl expected shenanigans by now. Re: "fake impeachment", we now know that Trump's request for Ukraine to cooperate w/the DOJ regarding Biden's $ activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request.

Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares? Goes w/o saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr's laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn't have been banned.

Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew.

Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real  Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!).

Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof.

Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too.

Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system. They knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct.

a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1,
b) The press is part of the operation,
c) Election rules were changed,
d) Big Tech censors opposition,
e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged,
f) Trump is banned from social media.

They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov't is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2021, 10:57:49 PM by Crafty_Dog »