Sorry, We're Already a Socialist Country [UPDATED]

The Undiepundit Socialist Index:

First, let's talk about socialism.

Strictly defined, socialism refers to government owning the "means of production".  That means business assets like buildings, fixtures, tools, machines, vehicles, goodwill, etc. all become the property of the state under textbook socialism.  But that's not what we mean when we use the word today.  Socialist Bernie Sanders isn't calling for government nationalization of business assets.  He just wants medicine, education, housing, food, transportation, etc. provided for free to anyone who wants it, whether a citizen or not. How he intends to do that and how the quality of those things will be affected is never explained.

And that's the point; socialism is not a specific policy-set.  It's more a mindset.  It starts out being about economic issues, and it ends up being about power.

Here's a simple test:  if you believe that the federal government should provide basic human services to everyone for free, then you are a socialist.  If you understand that this kind of cure is always worse than the disease, then you are not.

Again, that's when the FEDERAL government does it.  State and local governments providing basic human services is another matter.  States cannot print and borrow money like the federal government can.  This imposes "limiting principles" on their largess.  States must make ends meet when they go socialist; they cannot hide insolvency for very long.  The U.S. federal government has no such limiting principles.

The U.S. government has found myriad ways to socialize whole sectors of our economy without making ends meet or doing it openly.  For example, in the 1990s the U.S. federal government wanted to massively subsidize housing, but they were unwilling to raise the revenue to pay for it.  So, they simply changed the mortgage requirements.  All of a sudden, any person regardless of credit history could obtain a mortgage.  It worked fabulously well for over a decade until the housing market stalled in 2006.  By 2008, the entire financial system of the planet was in ruins.

Very little has changed. No one would accuse Donald Trump of being a socialist, yet under him every new mortgage in the U.S. is owned by a government sponsored enterprise (GSE) like Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.  Those same GSEs were the epicenter of the financial crisis in 2008.  The unfunded liabilities of Fannie and Freddie do not appear as "spending" until a crisis hits, as it did during the sub-prime financial mess.  You can see the effects on the graph above.

But we've been pretty socialist since about 1982.  That's when government spending first consumed over 50% of the private sector in the U.S..  50% is the tipping point.  When half the population becomes dependent on government, they tend to vote accordingly.  Before long it leads to "totalitarian" socialism. 

Why totalitarian?  Because without "limiting principles", socialism eventually requires force.  Once the predominant belief is that the federal government should provide basic needs for free, then those needs become "rights".  Once those needs become "rights", it's only a matter of time before that necessitates confiscation of wealth and power.  Your money, your power, your freedom, must all be subordinated for the "rights" of others.  Without limiting principles this has been proven throughout history.

Limiting principles are what saved the Scandinavian countries.  They reversed course from socialism because they were constrained by limiting principles.  Prior to the 1960s the Scandinavian countries were free market exemplars of health, literacy, productivity, and happiness.  Then in the 1960s they became enamored with socialism.  After about fifty years of progressive socialism they realized the cure was worse than the disease.  Wealthy citizens were fleeing, businesses were moving, economies were lagging, birthrates dropped, labor was being imported at unsustainable rates, and the fiscal trajectory was ominous.  These countries are relatively small compared to the U.S. and do not control the world's reserve currency.  Those on the Euro do not even control their own currency! They have built in limiting principles.  So they changed course.

Today, Scandinavian countries still retain some of the legacy socialist items, but the mindset has changed.  The Prime Minister of Denmark recently admonished Bernie Sanders for calling Denmark a socialist country.  In a 2015 speech at Harvard he said:

"I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy."

Sweden also backtracked, and both countries improved.

Similar results can be seen in the U.S. after the modest two year Trump reversal that is evident on the graph above.  To be clear, many manifestations of Trump's reversal cannot be seen in the numbers. Deregulation, a huge part of Trump's reversal, does not appear immediately on a spending graph.

But Trump is an anomaly.  We can see that the socialist mindset has inexorable momentum.  We were at 10% on the Undiepundit Socialist Index when WWI broke out.  One hundred years later, we averaged about 70% under Barack Obama.  Notice: the other two big spikes were for major World Wars!

So why doesn't it feel like we live in a socialist country?  If government was consuming 70% of the private sector from 2008-2016, wouldn't we sense that and change course?  No, because we were insulated due to massive borrowing, printing, and near 0% interest rates.  During that period the  federal debt doubled from $10 to $20 TRILLION and the Federal Reserve Bank added another $3.5 TRILLION to its balance sheet. You can hide a lot of economic signals when you create 13.5 TRILLION dollars from thin air.   At least temporarily.  The dollar's status as the world's reserve currency removes ALL limiting principles.

Sorry, we've been motoring towards totalitarian socialism since at least FDR.  Donald Trump is probably just a speed bump on that road.

[UPDATE]
It is also worth noting that Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto is the 3rd most assigned book at U.S. colleges today according to the Open Syllabus Project.  Of all the books ever published in history, the 3rd most assigned one is the one teaching socialism and communism to our kids.  You are what you teach. 

Evan Sayet: Why Trump is Forgiven for his Lack of Decorum

A great explanation of why Trump supporters ignore his flaws:  Evan Sayet - "He Fights"

Here's a taste:

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain? We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same.

This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

But, read the whole thing. 


As I've said before, George W. Bush's, John McCain's, and Mitt Romney's Queensbury Rules approach was a betrayal of their supporters.  It was selfishness.  Not that they saw it that way.  They thought answering the Alinsky street-fighting tactics in kind would soil them and hurt their dignity. What they forgot was that ideas, policies, and those who support them have dignity too.  Some of those ideas are even worth fighting for. The truth is,  gentleman Republicans unwilling to engage the  Alinsky Left on its own terms were putting their their own dignity above that of their supporters and the ideas on which the country was founded.  Trump has endeared himself to the keepers of those ideas because he, uniquely, is willing to fight for THEIR dignity.     

Abraham Trump

Consider the words:

• He's: a tyrant, a despot, a racist, a bigot, a dictator, a liar, a demagogue, grossly unqualified, lacking in character, ugly, an idiot, a braggart, a buffoon, a monster, foul tongued, indecent, disrespectful to women, vulgar, intellectually lazy, a white supremacist, deranged from syphilis, disrespectful of freedom of the press.

• His way of speaking is: silly, slip-shod, loose-jointed, lacking in the simplest rules of syntax, coarse, devoid of grace, filled with glittering generalities.

• He should: be impeached, be removed, go to hell, be assassinated.

 

Except, these verbatim quotes are about Abraham Lincoln, not Donald Trump! The rhetoric is  identical. In the end, Lincoln was assassinated.  After all, that was the only rational way to deal with a president IMAGINED to be the person described above.

The thing is, there's a big difference between dissent and hate. Dissenters will assert that the other side is wrong. Haters will assert that the other side is evil. When Democrats employ the vitriolic rhetoric they used against Lincoln, they are labeling Trump and his supporters evil.  Once a person is identified as evil, all tactics to eliminate them, including violence, are not only allowed but required.  It's worked against Jesus, Jews, Lincoln, Infidels, and countless others throughout history.          

In both Lincoln's and Trump's case, Democrat civil disobedience and violence began immediately after the election. Southern Democrat states began seceding the moment Lincoln was elected.  Immediately following Trump's win, Democrats were in the streets violently protesting.  In the ensuing months, the rhetoric has only gotten more hysterical, and predictably the violence has metastasized too.   

Ominously, Democrats hate Trump for the same reason they hated Lincoln; they are afraid of losing entitlements. By entitlements, I'm referring to any policy that benefits one group at the expense of another which has become entrenched.   

Slavery was such an entitlement.  It benefited Democrats (no Republican in history ever owned a slave!), came at the expense of Africans, and had been going on unabated for hundreds of years.  Along came Abraham Lincoln, a Northerner, the first Republican President, a vocal opponent of slavery, and the Democrats lost their collective minds.  Sound familiar?       

Today’s Democrats and political establishment have several entitlements under threat by Donald Trump.  Among them are the the cheap labor illegal immigrant entitlement, the open borders & new Democrat voters entitlement, the teacher's union monopoly entitlement, the government workers union entitlement, the Muslim refugee entitlement, the congressional unlimited tax and spend entitlement, the subsidized mortgages entitlement, the pop media power entitlement, the lopsided trade agreement entitlement, the EPA unlimited power entitlement, the radical LGBTQ federal rights entitlement, the federally funded late term abortion entitlement, and many, many, more including the obvious ones like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Welfare, Obamacare, etc.  

After all, Democrats are the party of entitlement and unlimited government.  Republicans are the party of limited government.  Thus, pretty much every Republican since the Progressive Era has been labeled evil. Most recently, Reagan was Hitler, Bush was Hitler, McCain was Hitler. Even Mitt Romney, perhaps the most decent man in America, was Hitler. All were portrayed as evil.  

Now it is getting dangerous. You can’t go to a play, a concert, a restaurant, or any public space and wear a hat that says "Make America Great Again" (like that's a controversial goal!).  If you do you'll be assaulted verbally and/or physically.  At this point, Trump's entire cabinet needs Secret Service escorts just to go out in public.  The only other cabinet member in history needing that level of protection was a Drug Czar under threat from the cartels! 

Look, dissent is a necessary part of democracy. Hatred, on the other hand, is a necessary part of dissolution and civil war. Once Democrats convince themselves that half the country is made-up of deplorable, fascist, evil, Hitlers bent on treason, don’t they then have an obligation to eliminate them? If you are convinced that any Trump supporter you know is evil, where does that logically lead? Hateful rhetoric disguised as dissent can paint impressionable minds into a dangerous corner with no peaceful way out. We know what that led to in the 1860s.

Tragically, we’ve seen the play before, and seem to be rooting for a sequel.


Sources:

The Anti Lincoln Tradition


How Lincoln Was Dissed In His Day

Trump Wins Again! [UPDATED]

It may not feel like it, and headlines notwithstanding, but Trump was handed a huge victory in Helsinki.

The hyperbole from Democrats, Never Trumpers, and many past supporters reads like a thesaurus of condemnation. He's committed treason, high crimes, anti-American acts.  He's clearly Putin's puppet, is colluding with Russia, is afraid of what they have on him.  He is unqualified as Commander in Chief, is in over his head, is a joke on the world stage.  He should be impeached, imprisoned, overthrown in a military coup.

What did he do to earn these indictments?

First he was asked by a journalist to call Vladimir Putin a liar to his face.  Trump refused. He knew it was a trap.  Think of it:  Trump is there to establish detente with a temperamental nuclear adversary. An adversary, by the way, which the Democrats have declared war against because they think Russia jacked their emails.  Trump is there acting as a diplomat to cool these tensions.  What purpose would it serve to call Putin a liar to his face?

Second, Trump refused to emphatically endorse the assessment of the intelligence community regarding Russian meddling in the election.  This is another trap that Trump was unwilling to walk into.  Why would he delegitimize his own presidency?  And didn't the FBI's counter intelligence chief, Peter Strzok, just spend ten hours lying in front of a congressional committee?  Who could endorse such dishonesty?  Anyone paying attention knows that the intelligence community has been plotting a coup d'etat against Trump since he came down the escalator! 

So he avoided two traps by equivocating in a typically clumsy Trumpian word salad fashion.  Just like he does every day!  Is this an impeachable high crime?  Hardly.  The American people can see that Trump's critics are falling into a virtue-signaling vortex.   It's a mob mentality.

Take his actions regarding Russia. Trump has been tougher on Russia than any president in my lifetime.  He has hurt Russia by working towards making the U.S. the worlds largest energy producer, re-building our military, re-building NATO, defeating ISIS, standing up to Putin in Syria, standing up to Iran, supporting Israel, strengthening our economy, asserting our power at the UN, strengthening the dollar, and much more.  What's more important, the atmospherics or the results?

Conversely, Obama was caught on a hot mic signaling secret concessions to Vladimir Putin.  Did the pop media condemn this behavior?  No, they covered it up!

Americans can sense hysterical over-reaction and mob virtue-signaling.  Once again, Trump's critics have crossed a line and handed him a yuuuge victory.  They constantly do this and never learn.  I expect his poll numbers to unexpectedly go up once the dust settles on this episode.

[UPDATE 7/23]

As predicted, Trump's approval rating ticked up in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, half of which was taken after the Hilsinki summit.  Trump is extremely lucky to have such inept opposition.     
 

Socialism is The Darwin Award for Economic Ignorance [UPDATED]

Socialism got a fresh transfusion the other day with the surprise victory by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (above) in a NY congressional primary.  The 28 year old Democrat is a full-on  socialist whose platform reads almost point for point like the constitution of the defunct Soviet Union.  Within hours,  supposedly mainstream Democrats throughout the country began calling her the future of the party and adopted much of her socialist agenda.  Overnight, the Democrat Party, the party of JFK and "a rising tide lifts all boats" has become the party of "let's lower the tide and ground all the boats"!

Most people paying attention to economic history know full well that all forms of socialism lead to economic collapse and untold human suffering when left in place.  It's not surprising that some would wish that fate on their fellow countrymen, after all some people are inherently cruel, nihilistic, and even suicidal.  But that doesn't account for everyone sucked into this self-destructive vortex.  Some are true believers.  Why is that?             

Pop quiz:   

1. Who is the father of modern socialism/communism?  
2. Who is the father of modern capitalism? 

Odds are you will be able to answer the first question correctly and can name Karl Marx as the father of modern socialism/communism.  You probably can do a decent job of explaining Marxism without even looking it up on Wikipedia.  You may even be familiar with the Marxist slogan, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Conversely, if you are asked who the father of modern capitalism is, odds are you'd either draw a blank, or be mostly wrong.

If you attended a public school in the U.S., chances are most of your teachers were union members. Unions were prohibited for most government workers prior to the 1960s because organized labor in the U.S. began as a communist/socialist movement.  Public sector unions were seen as a huge conflict of interest. But that changed in the 1960's under Democrat John F. Kennedy, and since then government workers, including school teachers, have flooded into organized labor. That's not to say all teachers and organized laborers are socialists.  Most probably don't even think in those terms, but the politics of organized labor leans undeniably in that direction. You may or may not have been taught Marxism in school, but you probably weren't taught anything positive about "capitalism"!  

If you attended a college in the U.S., particularly in recent years, you are very likely to have been taught Marxism.  Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" is the third most assigned book at U.S. colleges today.  That's out of all the books ever published!  The next most assigned book in economics, capitalist or otherwise, is not even close.      

So how did you answer the second question above?  In one sense the answer to that one is again... Karl Marx.  Yes, Karl Marx is both the father of modern communism/socialism AND the father of modern capitalism. Karl Marx was the person who defined that term for the masses in his risible critique of 1860s capitalism, "Das Kapital".  

Many scholars credit a Scotsman named Adam Smith as the person whose ideas most influenced our economic system.  Adam Smith’s book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” was actually published in 1776.  (That date rings a bell, no?)  But the word capitalism wasn't in common use in Adam Smith’s day.  He never used it.  We mistakenly call our economic system capitalism because that's what Marx and the critics called it.  The name unfortunately stuck. 

If everyone knows what "Marxism" is, why doesn't everyone know what "Smithism" is?  Because it’s not taught, except to select economics majors.  According to the Open Syllabus Project, Adam Smith is assigned at a rate about 25% compared to Karl Marx.  "Smithism" never became a word the way "Marxism" did.  You can go through K-12 and well beyond in schools in the U.S. and never hear the name Adam Smith, never learn about his ideas, and never understand the influence those ideas had on the founding and success of our country.

Pop quiz:  

1. What is Supply Side Economics?  
2. What is Demand Side Economics?

You are probably familiar with the first term, but can you accurately define it?  Have you ever heard of its opposite, Demand Side Economics?  

·         Supply side economics is the theory that people will SUPPLY (create) more value if they are allowed to function in a free market.
   

·         Demand side economics is the theory that people will DEMAND (consume) more value if wealth is redistributed to them.    

These are opposite approaches for achieving different economic goals.  Supply Side seeks to optimize overall economic vitality (Smithism).  Demand Side seeks to stimulate consumption (Keynesianism), or at times to redistribute wealth (Marxism).

If you look up supply side economics on Wikipedia, you’ll find a thorough entry along with plenty of criticisms.  If you look up demand side economics, you’ll get... crickets.  The language in this case does not favor the Marxist/socialist demand side ideology.   Hence, it is not even defined.  [UPDATE:  There is now a short and inaccurate entry on Wikipedia for Demand Side Economics.  When the first version of this piece was written in 2016, there was only a re-direct to "Keynesianism".] 

Pop quiz:

The financial crisis of 2008 was caused by:

      A) Greedy bankers, deregulation, George W Bush, and capitalism
      B) Socialism

Most likely, you are 100% certain the correct answer is A.  

No event had a more profound impact on this country's recent tilt towards socialism than the financial crisis of 2008.  It is said that history is written by the victors.  That has never been more true than in the wake of the financial crisis.  Democrats controlled the government commission that wrote the post-mortem.  Barack Obama won the presidency.  Democrats had both houses of congress.  And liberals made the movies and wrote the books explaining the crisis to the masses. Unfortunately, everything they told you was a deliberate deception designed to exonerate socialism, and scapegoat capitalism.   

The fact is, the financial crisis of 2008 was a perfect demonstration of the failures of socialism. Redistribution of wealth, in this case redistribution of mortgage credit, was at the heart of the financial crisis.  At times, the support for this redistribution was bi-partisan, but the ideology behind it was socialist/demand side regardless of who was advocating.

It all began with the affordable housing goals promoted by Democrats in the early 1990s, which lowered mortgage requirements.  It accelerated in the mid 1990s under Democrat Bill Clinton with further loosening of mortgage standards, pressure on banks to write loose loans, and mandates for government backed companies FNMA (Fannie Mae) and FHLMC (Freddie Mac) to buy all the new mortgages.  It finally reached its apex in 2007 under Republican George W. Bush, while Democrats including Senator Barack Obama, ran both houses of congress.

All of the risk from this socialist redistribution was supposed to be assumed by the federal government, mostly in the form of the afore mentioned government backed companies.  Fannie and Freddie were ground zero for the financial crisis.  No government official took more money from these two companies, and at a faster rate, than the junior Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.  His closest competitors in that money grab included Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Hillary Clinton.  If this is news to you,  it's because they wrote the history.

What they told you was that it was a perfect storm involving greedy bankers, deregulation, and the natural flaws of capitalism.  It was a plausible argument designed to deceive.  Bankers today are no greedier than their banking forebears.  So why did they suddenly engage in such risky lending? Because they were coerced to do so.

Deregulation also had nothing to do with it.  Canadian banks are lightly regulated compared to their U.S. counterparts and none of them failed.  Why the difference?  Only in the U.S. was mortgage credit redistributed.  To make matters worse, government regulations encouraged financial institutions to load up on mortgage backed securities.   Unfortunately, when the scheme went bad the damage quickly spread to the private financial sector bringing the entire global financial system to its knees.

The deceptions about this animated the Occupy Wall Street movement, got Barack Obama elected twice, and are responsible for the acceptance of openly socialist candidates like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez today.   They are also part of the continuing campaign that has mischaracterized the mortgage market as an example of free-market failure.

The frightening thing about this is, if history is written by the victors and they engage in deception, aren't we doomed to repeat it?  Fannie and Freddie own just about every new mortgage written since 2008, and the socialist policies promoting home ownership and borrowing accelerated under Barack Obama.  We are currently in the process of building a second real estate bubble.  Adding to that are new socialist bubbles in national debt, student loans, auto loans, and equity prices.

Pop quiz:

People love Scandinavian socialism because:

      A) Scandinavian countries are happy, healthy, productive, prosperous, AND socialist
      B) They misunderstand Scandinavian economics and history

Scandinavian success came long before their experiment with socialism.  They were happy, healthy, productive, and prosperous prior to the 1960s when they first began their turn towards socialism. Socialism had nothing to do with their success.  But sixty years of high taxes and socialism has slowed their growth and momentum.  Until recently, Sweden and Denmark spent more than 100% of their private sectors on government - an obviously unsustainable level.  In response, socialist Europe has been freeing their economies and sharply turning away from socialism.  Switzerland, Ireland, and the U.K. are economically freer than the U.S., and Sweden, yes "socialist" Sweden, is essentially tied with the U.S. in economic freedom today.  (According to the Heritage Foundation rankings.)

Here's the thing:  National socialism has never produced anything long term other than misery, poverty, totalitarianism, and death.  Think Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea.  The NAZIS, who brought about the holocaust, WWII, and directly or indirectly caused the death of 70 million people, were known by the German acronym for "National Socialists".

So, that's at the national level.  And long term.  At the local level, socialism can survive a bit longer. Local socialism does not eliminate the incentive killing aspects of socialism, but it does avoid the inevitable monetary collapse.  That's because local governments cannot create money and therefore tend to be more fiscally responsible. National governments can hide their insolvency, plunder future generations, devalue currencies, manipulate interest rates, and cause much bigger problems down the road.

This is an important point that deserves repeating;  socialism cannot work long term at the national level.  The national level is where money is created and controlled.  Our system was never designed to be a socialist system.  The Constitution implied that the states were the proper place for redistributive experimentation.  The conflict of interest at the national level is just too great.  National politicians will eventually destroy the currency, borrow too heavily, undermine the work ethic, and undermine national defense in an attempt to gain and maintain power. The founders knew that.  It is happening today.  We doubled our national debt during just Obama's eight years.  Interest rates were artificially held near zero for that entire time.  If and when rates normalize to historical levels, the debt service alone will cause the kind of pain socialist nations have felt throughout history. We are not immune.
  

In summary: You were indoctrinated to be a socialist. You were indoctrinated to call our system capitalism.  You've been deceived about the benefits of socialism.  You've been deceived about the evils of free markets.  And you've been deceived about the perils of national socialism.  If you still think socialism is great after all that, congratulations, you've earned a Darwin Award in Economics!

Why Conservatives Won’t Be The Ones Killing Reporters [UPDATED]

Yesterday was an amazing day in politics.  As we now know, a deranged gunman with a grudge (above) killed five people in a newsroom at a small newspaper in Maryland.  As if on cue, Liberals knew instantly who to blame.  In the several hours before anyone knew who the shooter was, Politicians, media personalities, and entertainers beclowned themselves by blaming Donald Trump and Milo Yiannopolous (as if he matters!).  “They have blood on their hands!”, they bellowed from their perches.  Among them several sitting Congresspeople.

While it is conceivable that a Trump supporter could commit an act like what occurred at The Capital Gazette, it was highly unlikely to have been a Conservative.  Remember, some Liberals also supported Donald Trump, which is how he got elected in the first place.  I, like everyone else, had no idea if the gunman was a Trump supporter (he was not), but I was nearly certain it couldn't have been a Conservative one. How did I know?

Pre-emptive political violence is a phenomenon of Liberal behavior.  Take the example of Presidential assassinations; no President has ever been assassinated by a Conservative:

• Lincoln, a Republican, was killed by a Democrat actor. (the Robert DeNiro of his day?)
• Garfield, a Republican, was killed by a deranged person ostensibly from the same party, but he was a lawyer who spent time on a "free sex" commune.  No Conservative, he. 
• McKinley, a Republican, was killed by an Anarchist.
• Kennedy, a Democrat, was killed by a Communist.

What are the odds of this being a coincidence?

And take for example what's been going on recently:

• Senator Rand Paul has been shot at, physically attacked at his home, and had his family threatened by an ax.  Three separate incidents, all by violent Liberals.
• Ajit Pai, FCC Chairman, has had constant threats on his life, the most recent resulting in the arrest of a Liberal who specifically threatened to murder his kids.  
• EPA Chief Scott Pruitt was verbally assaulted by a Liberal while dining in a restaurant.

And this is just the "P"s in the news today!  I could go on with almost every other letter of the alphabet.  Nothing approaching this happened during Obama's eight years when Conservatives peacefully opposed his policies by and large.

What explains this phenomenon?  

At the root of the Liberal/Conservative divide are four intertwined dichotomies: 

First, at the base level, Liberals and Conservatives make decisions through different pathways. Liberals decide emotionally, and Conservatives decide rationally.  That’s not to say anyone makes decisions entirely one way or the other.  Most people are a blend of both with one mechanism dominating on average.  Think of the Yin Yang Taoist symbol where each side has a piece of the other.  

The second part has to do with limiting principles.  A rational mind understands the concept of limiting principles and operates within those constraints.  An emotional mind knows no limits. Everything is on the table.  That’s why artists, musicians,  entertainers, and entrepreneurs tend to fit in the Liberal category.  These are the people you want to party with, and whose concerts you want tickets for.  But it’s also why violence is an option; if everything is on the table, nothing is not!

Third, is the difference between Liberals and Conservatives on the importance they place on the individual vs the collective.  Conservatives believe that individual rights are supreme over any group or collective.  Liberals believe the opposite, putting group and collective rights at the top. Leonard Nimoy's character, Spock, in the original "Star Trek" series said it most succinctly, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." Therefore, it becomes easy to see how an individual or several individuals can literally become sacrifices to aid a group or a larger collective. Millions have been killed under this Liberal assumption in Communist countries by the likes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Fourth has to do with an understanding of the nature of man.  Conservatives intuitively understand that any sustainable system must acknowledge the nature of man.  Liberals believe that they can control men, essentially denying their nature.  This cannot be done without totalitarian control, and that can only be had with force.  It goes that way throughout history when liberalism progresses to socialism and communism, as it always tries to do.       

Donald Trump is indeed capable of being misinterpreted by one of his supporters who might someday commit an act of violence against a “fake news, enemy of the people" news-outlet, but it won’t be one of his Conservative supporters.  

That, I can tell you!


[SIDE NOTE ON RACIST VIOLENCE]
Racist violence is usually portrayed as coming from the "far right", the implication being that it is Conservative violence.  It is not.  For example, when the "Alt-Right" marched in Charlottesville and a  participant drove into protesters killing one woman, the media portrayed this as being the act of a Conservative Trump supporter.  Watch this Prager U video below to understand why this is not the case.  (Hint: the alternative to the Right is the...Left.  The Alt-Right has three core beliefs that are in direct opposition to what Conservatives believe, but are in full agreement with what Liberals believe.)


              

Awaiting The Inspector General Report!!! [UPDATED]

I went on a quest to find the “Great Inspector General Reports Throughout History” to save you the time and effort of doing the same.  Watch the short video below to see what I found...



[UPDATE]

Well the IG report just came out and it’s Deja Vu all over again!  It’s exactly like the James Comey news conference in the summer of 2016 when he said, "yes, Hillary broke all these laws, but she didn’t really INTEND to break all these laws, so there's nothing to prosecute."  (Try that for your next speeding ticket!)   The OIG report basically concludes with the same kind of pass - "yes, the department was caught making really biased decisions, and yes they were caught speaking in really biased ways, and yes they were caught taking really biased actions, buuuut, there’s no actual “documentary or testimonial” proof of any political bias. None at all. Not even a smidgen." Yada yada yada.  It's Comey, two point oh.

That said, this IG report may actually prove to be rather impactful, consequential, etc. in the same way Comey’s newser was.  You see, while the newser itself was a snoozer, the people saw through the charade. It angered them and they showed up to vote against the corrupt establishment, which is one of the reasons Trump kept confounding the pollsters.  That same phenomenon will likely result from this report and the follow-ups to come.

SCOTUS Bakes a Sensible Cake

I recently heard Alan Dershowitz responding to critics who think he is selling-out his principles when he defends Donald Trump against the partisan agenda of the Mueller investigation: (paraphrasing) "I've always employed the "Shoe-On-The-Other-Foot" test, and in this I've been consistent regardless of who is in the White House."

That test comes to mind with today's SCOTUS ruling ostensibly in favor of a Colorado baker's right to deny baking a custom cake for an event against his religion.  Here's a meme I made at the time these cases were first making news:

Good for the SCOTUS for applying the "Shoe-On-The-Other-Foot" test,  even though the ruling doesn't technically address the central issue here.     

 

"Spygate" - Cutting Through the BS

Donald Trump has dubbed it "Spygate", the brewing apparent scandal that Barack Obama weaponized the federal government to spy on the Trump campaign in order to defeat it.  And when that didn't work, to destroy it.

The latest wave of revelations comes via a recent New York Times piece which exposed operation "Crossfire Hurricane", part of which involved paid government informants placed in the Trump organization to gather and possibly plant information.

"No, no, no!" say the Obama people who carried out this operation, "This was not an attack on Trump - this was to protect him!"  And on cue every Democrat and many GOP moderates are calling for giving Obama "the benefit of the doubt".

Some points: 

1.  If Obama wanted to protect Trump from Russia, why call the operation "Crossfire Hurricane"?  Hurricanes destroy, they don't protect.  Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans.  The levees were supposed to protect it.  Why not name it operation "Levee"?

2.  Why did all this come out now, and why in a leftist newspaper? The DOJ and FBI have been stonewalling congressional document requests since the beginning of the Trump administration.  At some point this will become unsustainable.  Meanwhile, the DOJ Inspector General is about to release its findings regarding the Hillary Clinton email investigation and whether or not it was done above-board.  And finally, John Huber, a U.S. Attorney in Utah has been quietly looking into the very substance of "Crossfire Hurricane", including possible FISA, unmasking, spying, etc. abuses by team Obama.

Since I've never heard of a case where an Inspector General uncovered major corruption and made it stick, and congress has no power to actually get the IC to comply with its requests, my money is on John Huber as the stealth reason all this is coming out now.  The NYT is trying to soften the blow by getting ahead of the story and giving time for team Obama to road-test their alibis. 

(UPDATE:  I don't know why, but whenever I hear about DOJ IG Michael Horowitz I picture him as Ari Spyros, the compliance guy at Axe Capital in "Billions".  Definitely not a Wilbury!  (Apologies to those who don't watch "Billions".))

3.  Why are James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, etc. doing the bulk of the alibi road-testing while Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, etc. are acting like they are in a witness protection program?  I'll let you, dear reader,  answer that one.

4.  Is "Spygate" the right nickname for operation "Crossfire Hurricane"?  Spying implies information gathering.  The more likely scenario is that Stefan Halper et al were there to plant information into the Trump campaign to form the basis of a counter intelligence operation.  Halper introduced the subject of emails and Russia to George Papadopoulos.  The unwitting Papadopoulos then repeated that information to the Australian ambassador which supposedly triggered the counter intelligence investigation.   Remember, even the meeting at Trump Tower with the female Russian lawyer was preceded and followed by her meeting with Hillary's Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS.  That whole meeting was likely a set-up, a sting operation on Donald Trump Jr.

This should be called "The Sting" or "Sting-Gate".

(UPDATE:  Here's a photo of Stefan Halper (L) with Alexander Downer (R), the Australian ambassador,  colluding at an event in 2010.)

5.  Should Obama be given the "benefit of the doubt"?  Sure, if your knowledge of history starts today, Barack Obama deserves the "benefit of the doubt".  But if you paid even cursory attention to what happened during Obama's eight years, you'd know that:

• Barack Obama weaponized every single tentacle of the federal government for political purposes.  (Here's a partial list in addition to the obvious IRS weaponization)  
• Under Barack Obama, numerous film makers who disagreed with his agenda were jailed and persecuted - just like in any totalitarian dictatorship.  (Here's a partial list)
• Barack Obama's DOJ was caught spying on journalists.
• Barack Obama lied repeatedly to the faces of the American people about substantive things, even earning the lie of the year.  
• Barack Obama brazenly lied to grieving parents for political purposes after their loved ones were killed in Benghazi. 
• Barack Obama's first Attorney General, Eric Holder, was actually found in contempt of congress.  (And then there's this from yesterday!)   

Look, I could go on for pages, but what would be the point?  As I've pointed out before, Barack Obama was the most powerful dictator the world has ever known.  He was immune from criticism and scrutiny because while the media deified him and was aligned with his totalitarian leftist agenda, his skeptics were afraid of being labeled racists.  That gave him carte blanche as candidate and President.  It still does. 
     

   

             

   

The Iran Nuke Deal was NEVER about Nukes

Now that Israel has obtained Iran's secret nuke plans and U.S. intelligence has confirmed their legitimacy, we know with certainty that Barack Obama's fake "nuke deal" with Iran was an atomic bomb of deception and duplicity.

Remember this was the deal where Barack Obama plus five other countries, which desperately wanted to resume trade with Iran, lifted sanctions on Iran, flew billions of dollars in cash on secret planes to Tehran, all in return for Iran's vague promise to put off their nuclear weapons program for... a whole decade.

Here's what I wrote at the time on, 4/2/15:      

"Great liars are also great magicians." 

Barack Obama wants you to believe he is negotiating with Iran about nukes.  Pick up a paper, watch a news show, listen to the radio, wherever you are in the world, you will be told about an historic negotiation going on with the P5+1 talks, and it's all about Iran's nuclear program.

Truth is, these talks are nothing more than cover for lifting sanctions on Iran, many of which were preemptively lifted before the talks started.  The talks are Kabuki theatre, a magic trick, to distract you from seeing what's really going on.  This is a trade deal with the world's number one state sponsor of terrorism - a rogue nation bent on bringing about nuclear armageddon, wiping Israel off the map, and achieving regional Shiite hegemony.

If you have any doubts about whether or not this is about nukes, I advise you to read Dan Henninger's piece in The Wall Street Journal, "Why the Iran Deal is Irrelevant" from 4/2.   Mr Henninger chronicles the parallels between North Korea and Iran and the pursuit of nukes.  Iran cannot be stopped by talking.  Everyone knows this.  Talking had zero effect on North Korea over three presidencies.  Sanctions, and the perception that force is an option, are the only way to prevent a rogue nation from acquiring nukes.

Not only has Obama lifted sanctions and taken the threat of force off the table, he is guaranteeing Iran the right to spin centrifuges, enrich uranium, and follow through on their promise to nuke Israel off the map.  This trade deal does nothing but make Iran richer and accelerate their ability to achieve these goals.

Barack Hussein Obama, peace be upon him, apparently shares these goals.

(Incidentally, the quote at the top is often credited to Adolf Hitler.)