Headlines

U.S. unemployment rate fell to 8,4% in August

Payrolls increase by nearly 1.4 million as unemployment rate tumbles

DNI Ratcliffe accuses Dems of creating misleading classified document

McCarthy: ‘I don’t want the U.S. Chambers endorsement because they have sold out’

Suspect in Portland death killed by investigators, source says

Pence says Congress will move to avoid shutdown without coronavirus aid

ICE investigation leads to 19 illegal aliens charged with voter fraud

AXIOS: Biden’s centrist image ‘mirage’ ...

DeVos to enforce school testing mandates amid pandemic

Coronavirus live updates: Trump’s vaccine chief says unlikely one is available by November

Pentagon orders “Stars and Stripes” newspaper to shut down by end of month

Washington Post says election will end in violence unless Biden wins

STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

A Suggestion

If, as the liberal drums are beating, we are to get rid of our Electoral College in national elections, why don’t we also then eliminate all early-state primaries and caucuses in selecting each political parity’s presidential candidate? Oh hell, even better, let California by itself select the candidates ... and then the eventual winners?

Looming Recession?

A recession is the Democrats’ wet dream. They know that an economic swoon would help their chances in the presidential election next year. So what might cause a recession? Certainly the U.S.-China trade war could be a significant factor. In fact, it is clear now that the Chinese now are not going to agree to what day of the week it is until after November, 2020 ... hoping that Trump will be bounced and a squishy Democrat will be then sitting across the negotiating table. Trump clearly knows this and is reducing expectations.

Another possibility is the trade deal with Mexico and Canada ... not as big as China, but still important. Nancy Pelosi is sitting on the USMCA like it is a hard-boiled egg. She will not give Trump a win this close to the next election even if it damages our country. How patriotic!

And, of course, the Fed has a potentially huge roll in how well our economy does. It really screwed the pooch last December when it continued raising interest rates when much of the rest of the developed world had negative rates to stimulate their economies. There then was over a three percentage point differential in rates which strengthen the dollar and hurt exports. Trump’s jawboning has caused Powell to reverse himself and start to lower rates once again ... and to halt quantitative tightening (reducing the money supply). Is the Fed doing too little, too late?

And I am sure that there are other schemes being concocted inside the DNC to shoot our economy in the head ... or at least in the leg. Even though many of the poobahs on Wall Street are liberals, they still like money better ... and there have been times where a falling stock market led the economy down. So if they can nudge the economy down by shorting the stock market, they might just do it. However, they also need to worry about a low-probability whiplash caused by a breakthrough in the trade war. There is a limit to this type of economic manipulation.

We’re all in for an exciting 15-month roller coaster ride. Stay buckled in!

Elections

I’m not a pollster pundit, but I do have a few studied thoughts about America’s recent elections:

In 2016, Trump won the presidential election because so many voters could not pull the lever for Hillary Clinton. In 2018, the Republicans lost the House of Representatives due primarily to effective sliming of Republicans with the Mueller investigation into Russian collusion. In 2020, Trump will win or lose based upon what he has done for the American economy, no matter who the Democrat candidate ... and how successful his foreign policy initiatives have been ... no matter how much the media tries to cloud these efforts.

So far Trump is winning on the first count ... and the jury is out on the second one.

Race to the Bottom

Can you recognize the announced Democrat candidates?

Unfortunately, politics has a basic flaw ... being often it’s a race to the bottom. Throughout history, politicians who have promised the voters something for nothing have invariably had an advantage in any elections. — Anon.

Quotable Quote

Those who vote decide nothing. Theos who count the votes decide everything. -- Joseph Stalin

2018 Predictions

Every year, as part of a group of friends' New Years festivities, I (and others) make some predictions for the coming year. Here are my latest forecasts:

 Republicans will retain the Senate, modest losses in the House

 Economy will soar ... up almost 4%, stock market, flat to slightly down

 Mexican wall will be at least half completed

 Mueller will end things with a whimper ... no convictions due to tainted process and evidence

Big infrastructure bill will be overwhelmingly enacted

Tesla Motors' stock will be at least halved

Russia will cooperate with Trump on Iran and NKorea ...

Iran and Turkey will erupt in violent protests

RIP: Bush 41, Jimmy Carter,  John McCain, Leonard DiCaprio

US Treasury will issue its own electronic (crypto)currency

ISIS will be blamed for at least 10 terror attacks worldwide

NKorea will implode ... Kim disappears

Taliban suffers big losses in Afghanistan

Huge Nationalist movements throughout Europe

Tax Cut

Republicans are high-fiving each other while Democrats are besides themselves ... claiming that the opponents are stealing from the U.S. Treasury. This first big legislative win for the Republicans looks like it will boost economic growth ... possibly dramatically. Is it perfect? No ... carried interest still exists, the highest bracket has been reduced, and there are plenty of cutouts designed to get the necessary Republican votes. But the sausage making is done and, overall, this bill will likely do the job.

And, if and when it does, quite a few of the Democrats who kowtowed to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and voted "nyet," may wish they can take a Mulligan ... particularly if they are on the ballot next year. If they realize that they are out on a limb being sawed off by their ideology, we might then get some cooperation toward fixing the remainder of the problems that B.H.O. never minded to either remedy or even pay attention to.

To paraphrase Uncle Wiggly, if the deep-state lollipop vendors don't force Trump to step down and disown all his deputies ... and if the cotton-candy Earth doesn't get a fatal fever ... or if the pecan-pie stock market doesn't swoon into the arms of Bernie Sanders ... then Trump might just pull a "beautiful" bunch of establishment Rinos over the finish line next November.

Tax cuts can cut both ways ...

Lament of the Day

Alas! If the Democrats could only run our country half as well as they run elections ...

Afterwards: Oops!

Power of the Purse

Desperate to counter the profoundly negative effects of Obamacare on this year’s upcoming Congressional elections, the Obama administration is attempting to bribe as many voters as possible.  This includes trying to extending unemployment benefits, forgiving the penalties for neglecting to sign up for Obamacare, expanding the food stamps program (see: CNS News Story), (over)using the canard “equal pay for equal work (for women)” and now abandoning attempts to collect hundreds of million of dollars of past Social Security overpayments … see: CNBC Story.

As long as President Obama has the power of the purse … and can capture two minutes of every nightly TV news broadcast with these saccharine promises, it will be a more difficult for the Republicans to make significant headway in this November’s elections. The term “buying votes” really does have meaning … and the Democrats seem to know most of the old tricks.  Alexis de Tocqueville famously said that “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” He clearly neglected to include the President in this insight.

But stay tuned … over the next six months I am certain that this administration will discover and propound even more voter bribes. Watch and wait.

King Barack

Government is a lot more efficient when you can ignore the will of the people.  The Dream Act was introduced over 12 years ago as an attempt to solve our illegal immigrant problems (see: Wikipedia  Entry).  Congress was deluged with complaints that this was an amnesty program and eventually had to abandon this legislation.  Now with the stroke of a pen, “President” Obama has circumvented this country’s Constitutional process and has executive-ordered many of the tenants of this deep-sixed law into effect.  Yesterday, this ukase was implemented around the country to an overwhelming reception from hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of those who have, until now, been living in the shadows (see: AP Story and NBC Chicago Story).

Independent of the charity arguments surrounding our tsar of tsar’s action, Obama has clearly and cleverly ignored the legal protocols that have been in place since our country’s founding. He is thumbing his nose at Madison and Jefferson and that great document they crafted.  And why is there not a hew and cry from Republicans?  Because they are unfortunately realistic … and know that many Hispanics would been even more inclined to vote against them in November.  And, to politicians, getting elected usually comes before all other considerations.

But my question is: Is it not also realistic to assume that a large percentage of these newly documented immigrants will also vote against Republicans … despite all laws to the contrary? And, if this travesty of justice does grease the skids for Obama’s re-election, will his highness not take even grosser liberties with that manuscript for which he once was a college lecturer?

Ditch the Republicans?

Yesterday at a Democrat fundraiser, our august prexy, Barack Obama, gave his partisan argument as to why a Democrat Congress deserves to win the elections in November. Basically, he said that Bush and the rest of the Republicans drove our economy into the ditch in 2008. Obama was subsequently elected and thus he [sigh] was required to patch up this accident. With that sly grin of his, he went on to say that the Democrats have gotten the car (our economy) out of the ditch and back on the asphalt. And he added with a snide guffaw … now the Republicans want the keys back. In his best sophomoric manner, he said, “No! You can’t drive. We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.”

Perhaps what he said has a modicum of metaphoric truth to it, however please allow me to modify and extend his remarks with the following observations:

- The Republicans were not alone in driving our economy into the ditch. Clearly, by insisting on the irrational expansion of sub-prime mortgages, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and their cronies in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did their share of reckless driving. The major sin that Bush and his Republican compatriots in Congress can be accused of is not pushing back hard enough.

- Yes, the Democrats have stopped our economy from sliding further into the ditch. But to say that we are back on the asphalt is, at best, political hyperbole. At worst, it is demagoguery. Economic growth is clearly anemic and unemployment still hovers around 10%. In fact, we are in serious jeopardy of slipping back into negative GNP growth. And this is occurring after monstrous government deficit spending that cannot be sustained. Such a Keynesian economic experiment has once again been proven misguided … and if the Bush tax cuts are left to expire this coming January, it is quite likely that Obama’s stretch limo will also end up back in the economic ditch.

- Even public opinion has now decided that it is Obama’s recession. See: Obama's Fault. After 18 months in office, Obama needs to stop pushing his ultra-liberal agenda at the expense of job seekers and economic growth. He is rapidly losing Bush as a scapegoat and would be advised to start accepting responsibility for our economic malaise. Perhaps, as Obama was decrying at the fundraiser, the Republicans might make an equivalent mess of things if they win back majorities in Congress this fall, but then we would still have some hope that things will finally change. I kind of suspect that if the tea partiers have anything to say about it, things will.