WHY VOTE REPUBLICAN?
El Rushbo
President Trump tweeted late yesterday (5/02):
“The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate, which are not there.”
He’s talking about the budget deal. Well, how about going the route of reconciliation? Which was designed for budget deals. Reconciliation means you only need 51. Well, why not veto it?
Now we’re back to “We can’t do anything ’cause we don’t have 60 votes.” But we can. We can veto it or we can blow up the filibuster here and say we’re gonna go budget reconciliation just like they got Obamacare passed. I mean, if we really wanted to do this.
Following the tweet above, the President then tweeted:
“We either elect more Republican senators in 2018 or we change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good shutdown in September to fix this mess.”
If a shutdown is gonna be good in September, why isn’t it better now?
Join the forum discussion on this postTIME TO FIRE CORRUPT JAMES COMEY, MR. PRESIDENT!
He was helping to bring down President Trump, “Buzzfeed Ben” Smith thought when he published the Steele dossier Jan. 11.
Instead, he may have sealed the doom of FBI Director James Comey.
Vladimir Putin began plotting to make Mr. Trump president more than five years ago, claims the dossier compiled by former MI-6 officer Christopher Steele. It consists of 17 reports allegedly made between June 20 and Dec. 13 last year.
Parts of the dossier began circulating in Washington last July. Senior U.S. intelligence officials gave President Obama and President-elect Trump a two-page synopsis of the allegations in it when both were briefed on Russian meddling in the election, CNN reported Jan. 10.
That prompted Buzzfeed Ben to publish all 35 pages of the dossier – a blunder of epic proportions.
Innuendo-rich stories implying Mr. Trump was in Putin’s pocket could be justified by oblique references to the Steele dossier – the Washington Post, for instance, has mentioned it 150 times to date -- but only so long as the dossier itself was kept in the shadows.
Once those knowledgeable could read it, the jig was up.
“Garbage,” said one former CIA officer. “A rather ham-handed attempt at fabricating a document,” said another. “Hokey as Hell,” said a third.
“It is hard to believe how anyone who claims to know anything about intelligence operations, propaganda and disinformation would believe anything in it,” said a former senior National Security Council staffer.
Anyone in the National Security Division of the FBI who didn’t realize immediately the Steele dossier is a clumsy fraud has no business being in the National Security Division of the FBI. Any FBI Director suckered by the fraud has no business being FBI Director.
THE DIRTY RED SECRETS OF THE LEFT
American Leftists celebrated the venerable Communist holiday of May Day in the traditional fashion. Portland grad students, who have never worked a day in their lives, marked International Workers Day by smashing the windows of local businesses.
There's a long proud tradition of the revolutions of the working class being led by rich Leftists like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Castro to whom work is an evil mystery that they spent their miserable lives resolving never to become acquainted with.
The New York Times, which has far too many of its own windows to go around smashing those of others, instead offered some sickening nostalgia for the red dead past with a little piece titled, "When Communism Inspired Americans."
Communism didn't inspire Americans, it inspired the Left to try and turn America into a totalitarian state. It still does. This is the dirty little secret that leaks out of the Left.
When the media runs these evocative nostalgic pieces about Communism, it's the equivalent of a pedophile sharing snapshots of summer camp. It's the disgusting secret of truly vile people leaking out.
And the vile people are the cultural Leftist elites claiming to be our moral superiors on account of their commitment to total government control of everything... for the benefit of the people. Sound familiar?
HOW CAN AMERICA AND CHINA SUPPORT A WORLD OF DEBT?
Equity investors across the world are positioned for the nirvana of synchronized and accelerating global expansion led by China and the US.
What they may instead get is a synchronized Sino-American slap in the face. Analysts at UBS say the international credit impulse has already "collapsed". The two economic superpowers are both tightening policy into an approaching storm.
There has been a steady drip-drip of hard facts that support the fears. The $12.5 trillion market for US bank credit has sputtered out, for example, with flat growth over the last three months. Commercial and industrial loans are falling at the fastest rate since the Lehman crisis.
The latest Chinese mini-boom has been a wonder to behold. We can now see that the authorities panicked after the economy hit a wall in early 2015. They abandoned reform and reverted to extreme debt creation, pushing corporate debt to 171% of GDP.
The key question the world must face now is where the pain threshold lies for a dollarized global system that is more leveraged than at any time in market history. The Institute of International Finance says global debt has reached $217 trillion, a record ratio of 325% of world GDP.
WHY HIGH-TAX POLITICIANS ARE ALWAYS WRONG
If you were really hungry and given the choice of half of an eight-inch pizza or a third of a twelve-inch pizza, which would you choose?
Already, the normal group of know-nothings among the political class and the press are proclaiming that President Trump’s proposed reduction in the corporate tax rate will only benefit the rich. The safe bet is all those folks are wrong, once again.
Those who view the world in static rather than dynamic terms, including some of the official revenue-estimating offices, claim that reducing the tax rate on a company that made a $100 million profit from the current 35 percent to the proposed 15 percent will cost the U.S. Treasury $20 million.
That statement is only true if the tax change was made retroactive for last year’s income. The wiser person understands that there are no constants, perhaps with the exception of the speed of light. When everything is a variable, including time, first-order observations are usually at least in part wrong.
This is why models that claim to statically forecast entire economic systems (which depend on accurately predicting human behavior) or climate systems over long periods of time are close to useless.
DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU
Yesterday (5/04), Australian Prime Minister met with President Trump. TTP would like to honor the US-OZ relationship by presenting the most popular song currently in Australia.
It’s a response to a Moslem group called Hizb-ut-Tahrir Australia. At the bottom of its homepage, you will see its declaration:
“Hizb ut-Tahrir is an Islamic political party that works globally to resume the Islamic way of life through the establishment of the Khilafah [Caliphate] in the Muslim World. In the West, Hizb ut-Tahrir carries Islam intellectually as the solution to the malaise of secular liberalism.”
It’s currently in the Aussie news for calling for Moslem apostates to be executed, and advocating “wife-bashing” domestic violence.
So, enjoy Don’t Bite the Hand that Feeds You! Hurray for the Aussies. We need their spirit – and their songs – here in America.
HALF-FULL REPORT 04/28/17
Incoming! There’s been such a barrage of news lobbed into the HFR this week that we thought we’d have to duck for cover. But it turns out that most of it is good. Not all, though. Might as well get that over with first. Which means you need to read a new book just out…
Meanwhile, on Monday (4/24) the Spectator offered a marvelous way to end Congress’ obstinacy on Obamacare Repeal: terminate, by a stroke of Trump’s pen, Congress’ illegal exemption…
The actual prospect of criminal prosecution by the Justice Department is the way to end UniParty corruption and bring RINOs to their senses. It’s also a way to do the same with corrupt Obama judges…
OK, let’s switch gears to the good stuff. And it involves something unbelievably cool. Here we go…
QUESTIONS CONSERVATIVES SHOULD HAVE ASKED THE PRESIDENT
Late Monday afternoon (4/24), 60 or so conservative journalists and editors gathered in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for their own private press conference with President Trump. I was not there as I was, and still am, in Eastern Europe.
Another fellow who was not there was a writer for The Hill, Jonathan Easley. He interviewed a number of the attendees, many of whom whined and complained to Easley like spoiled brats. So he reported (4/25): Conservative Media Figures Disappointed with Trump Meeting.
One fellow who was there and not one of the complainers is Scott Johnson of Powerline. Not only is Scott a solid clear-thinking liberty advocate, he’s also a true gentleman. His account of the meeting (4/25): At the White House with Trump.
Scott’s is well worth reading. His conclusion at the meeting’s end: Trump gave “an impressive performance” in both substance and demeanor. He answered questions calmly and graciously, with “fluency and facility.”
What was not impressive was the lack of good questions from the President’s audience. Here was a golden opportunity, and with exceptions like Roger Kimball’s on Iran and others, the questioners blew it. Fully half, reported Scott, of the 30 minutes given them, was devoted to in-the-weeds questions on trade.
So here are a half-dozen Questions Never Asked but should have been. Like you, I sure would like to know the answers. Ps: There’s a Bonus Question.
THE CHIEF CULPRIT IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS IRAN AND HEZBOLLAH
Iran’s Hezbollah Terrorists
If we are speaking honestly about conflict in the Middle East, we need to start with the chief culprit: Iran and its partner militia, Hezbollah.
Iran and Hezbollah conspire together to destabilize the Middle East, and their actions are expanding. For decades, they have committed terrorist acts across the region.
Today, they prop up Bashar al-Assad’s brutality, fighting alongside his forces, adding to the killing of thousands of civilians and the misery of millions of refugees. They train deadly militias in Iraq and arm Houthi militants in Yemen.
While this [UN Security] Council has paid too little attention to this growing menace, the United States will not. We are going to speak up about Iran and Hezbollah, and we are going to act against their lawlessness.
PUTIN IS LEFT OUT IN THE COLD
This past week’s big and still developing story is the sharp escalation of confrontation on the Korean peninsula. But Russia, which has made itself a key actor to many current global dramas, from the French elections to the civil war in Libya, is not a part of it.
Given that Russia borders North Korea—the distance from the Punggye-ri nuclear test site to Vladivostok is shorter than to Pyongyang—this abstention is rather surprising.
Perhaps most upsetting for the Kremlin is that the main format for managing the North Korean crisis was established at the recent meeting in Mar-a-Lago between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping – and Beijing has shown no inclination to discuss these matters with its “strategic partner” Moscow (Republic.ru, April 21).
Putin has not seen Xi since last November and has not spoken with him on the phone for months; neither Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev nor Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu have had any recent contacts with their Chinese counterparts.
The fact is, Putin is being left out in the cold by Washington, Beijing, and most everyone else. Ever since Trump took his pants down in Syria, he doesn’t seem so important anymore.