Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
But…if there is validity in Trump’s antipathy towards the Deep State (not just the part that’s trying to put him behind bars)…then Trump faces an enormously high hurdle, a conundrum that he is almost unilaterally trying to solve.
Republicans push back against Democrats’ claims that Trump intelligence pick Gabbard is compromised
Audaces fortuna iuvat
Interesting statement by the incoming AG nominee Pam Bondi. “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones…The investigators will be investigated.”
That sort of statement is a career decision. Attorneys generally circle the wagons to defend their own, particularly those in their chosen fields. She will get next to no cooperation from the target community. They don’t generally wish to weed out the bad actors, as might happen in other businesses.
It’s bad enough and difficult enough to pursue this strategy. It is 10x harder when you decide to publicize it. For better or worse, Ms. Bondi’s life is going to get very interesting.
New attorney general pick’s past vow: prosecute the ‘bad’ prosecutors who indicted Trump
The accuracy of Trump’s/Bondi’s position with respect to DoJ and FBI lawyers is almost immaterial. They’re despised at the outset.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
Theoretically, I would prefer a very low income tax and a very high estate tax, but as you note, the issue is with the concentration of power. The ideal for me is to die with zero or darn near it. That means I would hope to give away pretty much everything before death. That way the government gets very little. I don’t know how workable that is, but it’s the ideal. If the point of an estate tax is to increase tax revenue and concentration of government power, then I’m not for it. If it is to return assets to circulation in younger generations, then I’m all for it.
This would probably be good for revenue, given the amount of Silent and Baby Boom generation people who are going to pass over the next two decades. Probably be good to incentivize and compensate workers as well. Makes sense, if you think about it. Work hard all your life, pay for it at the end.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
Here’s the challenge: if we don’t try to solve the problem with a scalpel, the next generation will try to solve it with a cleaver. So when the Republicans are out, and they’ll be out in four or eight years, the incoming Dems will create a tax catastrophe. Trump (and everyone else) likes low taxes, but 60% of the country benefits from some kind of government giveback, and it will only increase as the Baby Boomers continue their retirement.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
I think the adage that we get less of things we tax comes into play here. We should tax idle and generational wealth, and subsidize founders and hard work.
Totally agree. But I feel as if we do the opposite. It seems to me that we don’t tax the 1%ers much, we crush the 5% to 10%ers, similarly crush everyone else and let the bottom fifth slide (which Im fine with).
So how does that change…keeping in mind there’s not a prayer Kamala could have done that. Next Dem president might, though.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
The good news is that labor force participation rates in the 25-54 age group are going up, nearing all-time highs. As the Boomers retire, the overall participation rate is going down.
The double-edged sword of reshoring manufacturing is going to have three effects:
- It will boost GDP as we make more of what we need in America.
- It will cause inflation and rates to increase. It’s expensive to bring back all that manufacturing.
- We will have need for bodies to do all that work. It’s unlikely that 70 year olds will return to the factories. Part of the answer is immigration. As much as the country might want to deport millions of people, it is highly unlikely that America will be able to expel more than Obama and Trump did at their peak. And Biden/Harris let in so many illegal aliens that the sheer number will overwhelm DHS’s resources. I doubt they will deport workers in agriculture, construction or hospitality.
There are 1.19 million “final removal” standing orders of deportation. If DHS deports those along with criminals, I think most Americans would be satisfied.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
Trump names former Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead EPA. Bit of a surprise, historically he’s spoken on everything but the environment and has a lifetime score of 14% from the League of Conservation Voters.
Stephen Miller will be deputy chief of policy. He’s been a senior Trump aide for more than a decade. He ran America First Legal, the conservative version of the ACLU.
Trump names former Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead EPA, adviser Stephen Miller to be deputy chief of policy
Audaces fortuna iuvat
Yup. Biden was stuck with nonentity Kamala Harris, who was purely unprepared to be VP, as a reward to South Carolina voters in particular and other black voters in general, who essentially handed him the nomination and the presidency, despite the fact that (a) he and Obama weren’t friends and Obama in fact thought of Biden as a screw-up, and (b) Obama convinced him to step aside for “sure winner” Hillary Clinton, and (c) Dem leadership including Obama forced Biden to take on KH as VP in 2020, and (d) Dem leadership including Pelosi, Obama, Jeffries and Schumer convinced Biden to step aside again in favor of the VP that had been forced upon him, threatening him with forcible removal using the 25th Amendment.
Think that Biden’s endorsement of Harris wasn’t a gigantic “screw-you” to Dem party leadership, a party he’d given his life to for them to screw him twice, at least in his eyes? He forced them to forego a mini-primary and forced the weakest candidate upon them.
And did you notice how Biden’s gaffes were exceptionally well-timed, including the “garbage” insult?
And did you notice how Joe Biden snubbed Harris on Election night?
And did you notice Jill Biden’s outfit on Election Day? I wonder who she voted for:
Audaces fortuna iuvat
The current popular vote for Trump is 74.3 million. He had 74.2 million in 2020, about the same.
The current popular vote count for Kamala Harris is 70.4 million, against Joe Biden’s 81.2 million. So it’s still 10.8 million shy. And there are votes still to be counted. So we’ll see what the final number is.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
But Trump may end up as President if his coup succeeds. I think the Democrats will win a majority in the House, as well. But Republicans will try to ensure they are not seated by January 3rd (via lawsuits, etc.) so that MAGA Mike Johnson will still be Speaker and hold a Contingent election. “Justified” by the very BS that Republicans themselves cooked up. Will it work? I don’t know. But they will try in precincts around the country. In unprecedented numbers. It may play out slightly differently. There are various permutations of what Trump’s cronies will cook up, depending on results. But ultimately a Contingent election is the game plan if Trump doesn’t win the electoral college. Keep Democrats from seating Congressmen and keep some of the electoral college votes from being certified, so that Harris doesn’t get to 270, which would result in a Contingent election, as well.
What coup? As of 6:17 a.m., he had nearly a 5 million vote lead in the popular vote. He has 277 electoral votes, and has leads in all five remaining states. He’ll likely have 312 electoral votes.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
As to why I don’t want Kamala Harris, I’ll quote Democratic geopoliticist Peter Zeihan:
“She’s an empty suit…she’s never said or implemented anything…you have to take everything she says with a big block of salt…she was with Biden for every meeting, every call, every decision and Biden’s staff didn’t want her around, so they gave her a task that they knew she would fail at, and that was going down to (air quotes) solve the border…and they were able to shove her off to the side for two and a half years.”
My suspicion is that Biden (and Clinton, and Obama, and Pelosi, and Schumer and all other Dems) can’t stand Harris, that they never wanted her as VP. And Biden resented Obama for (a) making him step aside for the failed Hillary in 2016 and (b) Biden particularly resents Obama and Pelosi and the rest of the Dems for making him step aside for this nitwit.
I think Pelosi/Obama/et al wanted to have an open, mini-primary when they told old Joe they would invoke the 25th amendment, and Biden decided to screw them over by fully endorsing Kamala Harris. Additional evidence, Biden’s propensity for well-timed malapropisms to support Harris.
All very entertaining.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
I listened to the full 2 hour+ debate between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro with their anti-Trump and pro-Trump arguments, respectively.
Three thoughts:
- Harris’ full and complete argument revolved around Trump being a bad person.
- Shapiro’s full and complete argument revolved around Harris being a bad Senator and Vice President.
- I love Bari Weiss, who moderated the debate. I want her to be the full-time moderator forever for all political debates. She challenged both Sam Harris and Shapiro in ways that neither Trump nor Kamala did, and she at least appeared neutral.
Trump or Kamala? Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris Debate.
Sam Harris’ arguments against Trump were essentially the same as BeyondThunderDome’s arguments against Trump. You can sum it up in a sentence:
“Donald Trump is a bad man, and therefore should be disqualified from running from the office.”
Neither speaks to Trump’s policies. Neither speaks to Harris’ and Biden’s abject failures as politicians.
Shapiro more than adequately summed up Trump as a fairly moderate, middle-of-the-road president, and summed up Kamala Harris as a hard-left representative of hard-left Progressives on the Hardest-Left part of the Democratic party, who is pretending that she had an epiphany and did a U-Turn not on one of her positions but on fifteen of her positions.
For me, the difference between Harris and Trump is that Trump is personally amoral and immoral whereas Harris is politically amoral and immoral.
Fundamentally, Sam Harris and BYT are advocating for high inflation, lockdown economies, completely open borders, higher crime (and trying to hide it — disgusting), and all the other excesses of the left. I just won’t have it.
BTW, just as an aside…the argument that generals don’t like Trump holds exactly zero water for me. Lefties, for some oddball reason, don’t like or appreciate the military (or the police), but somehow think generals are sacrosanct. These are people who are accustomed to having others follow their orders for their entire lives, and Trump refused to follow their orders. So…I don’t give a rip what Mattis or Mathey or any of the other generals say.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
Sounds pretty familiar. There’s a loooooooooong history of Democrats calling Republicans Nazis/Fascists.
Governor Brown of California, Jackie Robinson and Dr. Martin Luther King called Barry Goldwater — a pilot in WWII — on the American side — a Nazi. Many Dems called Nixon a Nazi, the ACLU called Ford a Fascist, William Clay (D-Mo) called Reagan a Nazi and said his ideas came from Mein Kampf, Bush and Romney were called Nazis and Fascists by literally hundreds of Dems. Gore called Bush’s supporters brownshirts.
In a debate, leftist Gore Vidal called William F. Buckley a “crypto-Nazi.”
Comparing Republicans To Nazis—Who Started It? | Investor’s Business Daily
On CNN, Scott Jennings Lists Republicans Who Democrats Compared To Hitler In The Past
Basically, it’s Godwin’s Law: the first person to compare the other to Hitler loses the argument:
Audaces fortuna iuvat
We’re talking past each other. Dems dislike Trump as a person, and believe me, he’s virulently dislikeable for every reason we’re all aware of. Harris is extremely likeable, relatively speaking. Both made terrible choices for VP. If Harris had picked Shapiro, this election would be over. If Trump had picked Nikki Haley, this election would be over.
At the same time, what makes this election unique is that there is a comparable track record of both major candidates. Let’s examine:
Trump’s 2017-20 concrete record: border security, no major wars abroad, calm in the Middle East, a deterred Russia, Iran and China, low inflation, low interest rates, lower crime, lower taxes, strong deterrent military — and opposition to mandatory electric vehicle mandates, biological males competing in women’s sports and the woke/DEI agenda.
On the other hand, is the Biden-Harris 2021-2024 record: the unchecked entry of 12-20 million illegal aliens and a destroyed border. People still struggle under Biden-Harris’s earlier hyperinflation and high interest rates, a concept that wealthy Dem donors and media don’t really understand. The horrific regional wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue. Biden-Harris embraces the unpopular DEI/Woke agenda.
Harris herself knows that the Biden-Harris years were a failure. That is why she has shed almost all of their hard left-wing agendas — policies she has embraced for virtually all her adult life, so much so that in the last 90 or so days, Harris has flip-flopped on 15 separate issues. Why? Per Bernie Sanders, she’s doing what she needs to do to win.
Harris, and you, claim that Trump is an insurrectionist for January 6th’s misguided 2,400 idiots who attacked the Capitol. Yet Harris bragged of the far more violent demonstrations of 2020 — at least 25 killed, $2 billion in damage, 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, 14,000 arrested — that the unrest would not and “should not” stop, while she drummed up support to bail out jailed violent protestors.
If fascists exist, they exist on the Left, a group who weaponized the CIA and FBI to interfere in the 2016 and 2020 elections by peddling the fake Steele dossier and suppressing all the embarrassing news about Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop. As awful as Trump is, Trump certainly did not coordinate, as Biden did, with local, state and federal prosecutors to wage lawfare prosecutions to destroy his political opponents. He did not use the FBI to partner with social media to suppress the news. Trump and the Republicans never coercively removed the party’s primary-winning nominee. They did not nullify the will of 14 million primary voters. And in backroom fashion, they did not anoint a candidate who had never entered a single primary in her life. Biden’s son Hunter shook down regimes in the East, it’s been recorded.
The Left hates Trump because he didn’t come from The Machine. He’s the only President in history who didn’t come from government or the military. And all the forces in America that desperately depend on make-believe and a reality other than that which currently exists (Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the media, academia) hates Trump because he’s a comparatively regular guy who lives in a comparatively regular world. Therefore, he’s uncontrollable, therefore he Must. Be. Stopped.
At the end of this long Presidential season, only two criteria matter: Which candidate’s past record and current agenda best appeal to voters? And which candidate seems the most authentic and genuine?
I will make just one guarantee. America’s voters will get the President that they truly and richly deserve…whoever wins tomorrow night.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
