Headlines

Barr says: ‘There will be accountability’ in Epstein case

Wall Street sees even more rate cuts ahead with Morgan Stanley predicting a return to zero

Trump administration weakens protections for endangered species ...

Chinese media: Epstein’s death proves U.S. pampers rich criminals

Flights out of Hong Kong International Airport canceled as anti-government protesters occupy terminal building

Cramer: Hong Kong protests more serious than US-China trade war for global markets

[Epstein] Kept detailed diaries which could haunt powerful friends ...

Another gaffe: Biden claims he was Vice President after Parkland

Scaramucci: Trump’s ‘gone off the rails’

Bank of America raises chances of a recession to 1 in 3 over the next 12 months

USA budget gap widens 27% ...

Trump enacts ban on welfare-dependent legal immigration

Compassion

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, — Saint Bernard

There is a push in Massachusetts now to pay for poor people’s baby diapers. Who can be against such compassion? Me for one ... I’ll rather practice my compassion one on one. The welfare state keeps finding more ways of insinuating socialism into the commonweal. We give food stamps to indigents to help feed their children ... then we provide free school lunches ... then school breakfasts ... the meals for poor children when they aren’t in school. Free housing, free education, free health care, free cellphones, free everything. Why do we keep layering all these giveaways on top of previous giveaways? Is it compassion ... or is it vote buying?

Socialism is an insidious economic policy. It eats away at capitalism until it removes all incentives to excel ... and eventually it kills its host. Then we are Venezuela ... and the architects of this dystopia look around and say, “Not me!” Unless, of course, they have become part of the political elite ... and get the first ten bites at the apple ... ahead of all those souls for whom they once pretended to have such compassion.

I suppose we can write such greed off to human nature ... but, dear reader, the founders of our country understood this trope ... and that is why they designed things as they did. They wanted to protect America against the ruin spawned by hypocritical compassion. So far, their genius has helped us navigate almost 250 years of the corrosive efforts of the bleeding hearts among us.

The question then is, “How much longer can we hang on when virtually all Democrat candidates for president are so chock-a-block full of ersatz compassion.?” Hopefully the ghost of James Madison will intervene once again and keep the compassionate wolves at bay.

Adult Pacifiers

We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added. — Ronald Reagan

Back in my salad days, fresh out of college, a wealthy liberal workmate said he was happy to pay for welfare to keep the restless natives pacified. In other words, if it cost him (and me) an extra few percentage points in taxes, he would trade this for social tranquility. I was taken aback ... for I thought that this attitude was paternalistic and undemocratic. In the modern vernacular, he was suggesting keeping our lower class  “on the plantation,” black or white.

So, his being satisfied to “pay off” the poor to keep them from rioting ... was rewarding bad behavior, lassitude and irresponsibility. It typified the start of the downward spiral of family formations and the upward spiral of our drug culture ... exemplified by Woodstock and the anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations. As such, rioting didn’t go away ... it intensified. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Soviety and War on Poverty had the unintended consequences of introducing more slothful rot nto our society. The homelessness and social unrest that we see intensifying today is nothing but a continuation of the paternalism that I first experienced way back then

The West Coast billionaire oligarchy is content to pay more to keep the underclass there from up and derailing their gravy train. To them, it is a very small price to pay. This increasingly bifurcated society is the modern-day consequence of that liberal foolishness I saw all those many years ago. Human nature is such that free stuff only increases the appetite for more free stuff. Am I being cold-hearted to say that welfare should be a temporary hand up for the down-and-out? Making it wide-spread and permanent is economic insanity.

Pacifiers are for babies ... bit, they don’t work so well for adults.

Obvious Truth #38

A generous welfare state coupled with a poorly designed and enforced immigration system is a lethal combination. -- Anon.

Headlines

Cranky judge, flawed witness threaten Mieller's Manafort case

Chinese leadership is suffering rare backlash for its handling of US trade dispute

First Muslim woman headed to Congress ...

Welfare ban for immigrants could save each US taxpayer $1.6K ...

Bernie and is army are losing 2018

Tesla likely to face SEC investigation after Musk tweets and debate of market manipulation

Kamala Harris becomes Dem's betting favorite for 2020 ...

Facebook, Apple purge InfoWars over 'hate speech'

GOP Rep. Chris Collins charged with securities fraud

Chinese tariffs create headaches for US natural gas export projects

Israel pounds Hamas after 19 injured in rocket barrage ..

Senate Intelligence Committee calls on Julian Assange to testify

Democrat Manifesto

The Democrat party has moved far left in the last decade ... to a point that would be unrecognizable to the party of JFK or even Bill Clinton. It's as though George Soros has tattooed his manifesto on the donkey's rump. However, not all recent Blue candidates are using this manifesto as their platform because the smarter ones realize that it is a loser. But, once elected if elected, Nancy Pelosi tells them how to vote.

The question becomes then, how much of this Democrat manifesto will be visible in the next presidential election and maybe even in this Fall's midterm elections? But be mot mistaken, this is the guts of their agenda. So let's get on to what this manifesto contains:

- Single-payer healthcare
- World government
- Destroy the U.S. coal industry
- Increase third-world migration into America
- Higher income taxes (to redistribute wealth)
- Sanctuary cities and states
- "Strategic patience"  (passive foreign policy)
- Open national borders
- Nuclear disarmament or at least unilateral reduction
- Crony capitalism
- Promoting Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA
- Mote government transfer payments (welfare)
- Fewer illicit drug laws and lesser punishments ("sentencing reform")
- Facilitation of illegal voting
- Weaker military
- Removing Civil War (and other historic) statues
- Free higher education
- Diversity quotas and more "inclusion" of hyphenated Americans
- Nullifying the Second Amendment
-Taxpayer funded abortion and birth control
- Free but not necessarily fair (multilateral) trade
- Carbon taxes and much tighter emissions standards
- "Green" energy production at the expense of  fossil fuels
- More government regulations
- LBGTQ and transgender rights advocacy
- Suppression of "offensive" speech

This list is not by a long shot comprehensive ... and they are not all excessively malignant ... but. taken as a whole, they would "fundamentally transform" this country ... if we survive at all.

California, There You Go!

"California represents the future." -- Senator Kamala Harris

Our  once Golden State, Cali-not-for-ya, is coming apart at the seams with crushing homelessness, multitudinous genders, rampant drugs, uncontrolled annual wildfires, militant free-speech opponents, preventable droughts, massive numbers of illegal aliens (and concomitant voter fraud), fecal-paved streets, a middle-class exodus (U-Hauls leaving the state cost 15x more than those entering), a governor who giddyups on a moonbeam, prancing Hollywood effetes, officials attempting to nullify federal immigration laws, and numerous unctuous Silicone Valley lefty billionaires. All in all, this once glorious and beautiful state is rapidly becoming a festering third-world hellhole.

California has 1/8 of this country's population yet 1/3 of our welfare recipients. And despite some tremendously wealthy tech moguls, it has sadly become our nation's poorest state ... and is seemingly determined to continue to chart its own disastrous course ... even if this means departing from our American union. Perhaps the San Andreas fault might first accomplish this as a geographic reality

Afterward: I almost titled this posting "A Cryin' Shame."

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from Breitbart?

Trump gives Sisi his support after more than 200 killed in Egyptian mosque attack

WSJ's Editorial Board endorses FCC Chairman's rollback of net neutrality rules

[Black Friday] Customers use employees' uniforms to sneak into stores!

Wire: Trump wants to end welfare as Bill Clinton knows it

In his final act, Cordray blocks Trump from naming his successor at consumer protection bureau

Uma Thirman goes for Weinstein's jugular on Thanksgiving

China shuts main route into NKorea as tensions dominate ...

Turkey: Trump tells Erdogan won't give Syrian Kurds more arms

Trump: NFL's Goodell 'has lost control of the hemorrhaging league'

Lutheran church goes gender neutral, won't call God 'He'

Firm behind Russian dossier paid multiple journalists for work ...

Iran-backed militia in Iraq: 'Enemy' U.S. troops now a target for our forces

What Rules?

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More Immigration Facts

The Center for Immigration Studies has just published a new disturbing study ... over 50% of all immigrants, both legal and illegal, are on some form of public assistance (73% for those from Mexico and Central America) ... see: Powerline Blog Posting ... and I could not determine whether this study includes the Earned Income Tax Credit which is not considered by many as welfare ... but it clearly is. This contrasts with the statistic that only 30% of native-born Americans are on the dole. Yes, immigrants are contributing money to our various governments with sales taxes, income taxes for those with work permits, and FICA taxes collected on often-phony Social Security numbers. But I find it very difficult to believe that our immigrant population is contributing more to our government coffers than they are extracting.

The Free World is dancing with a dangerous dichotomy ... offering generous welfare benefits while at the same time relaxing its immigration constraints. This, as Milton Freeman says in the referenced blog entry, is a recipe for an eventual economic and social disaster.

Act of Love

Republican candidate for president, Jeb Bush, has described the motivation of entire families immigrating illegally into the United States as an "act of love." And in many cases this may be so ... an attempt to escape the third-world hell hole from whence they came. And so, many in the liberal media continually and joyfully ask the hypothetical question of Republican candidates, "How can you deport entire families back to their countries?" ... trying to paint these GOPers as heartless Simon Legrees.

Well, let me intercede and offer that there are entire families that should be or should have been deported ... and I offer, as a perfect example, the Tsarnaev family ... a family that entered into the United States fraudulently as political refugees from their native Kyrgyzstan (if they were so endangered, how could they continually travel back and forth to there and Dagestan without incident?) It also seems clear that this family has continually abused the welfare system in this country as at least all four of their children seem to have lived pretty much entirely off of the U.S. taxpayer ... and, I strongly suspect, that the parents are also receiving U.S. government transfer payments back to their homeland. The mother has also been found to be a serial shoplifter, and her two sons, serial murders ... and were the infamous Boston Marathon terrorists.

If this one family, with their then children, should have never been allowed to stay in the U.S., then there surely must be many others ... if we can gather up the gumption to identify these bad apples and deport them. And so, if U.S. immigration officials had been a little more hard hearted toward the Tsarnaev family with four little children, they would have saved this country considerable monies, prevented four, possible seven murders, and saved injuries to 264 Americans ... many with the loss of limbs. This would have been an act of love toward the people who pay these government workers' salaries.

Immigration Facts

There are oodles of hype and  misinformation surrounding our immigration issue ... I strongly suspect this is on purpose. If the real numbers cannot be easily discovered, then politicians can demagogue to their hearts content. So when reliable statistics are reported ... such as 71% of illegal immigrants with children are on welfare (a 2009 statistic) and as many as 400,000 births to illegal immigrant households (anchor babies) occur in the U.S. every year (10% of all live births in this country) ... we are not surprised ... see: National Review Article.

Previously, during immigration surges, new arrivals had to forswear that they would not go on home relief ... and had to have an existing resident guarantee this condition. Now things have swung 180 degrees and liberal politicians often prefer that immigrants become wards of the state ... so that they might control their votes.

And, if you believe than non-citizens are not voting in this country, you are a bigger doofus than Adam Sandler in one of his silly movie roles. I strongly suspect that "community organizers" are responsible for much of this circumvention of the Constitutional restrictions re our voting laws  .. they are just ground operatives of the Democrat party ... and very often the U.S. taxpayer picks up the tab for this outrage.

Anchor Babies

You've heard the liberal talking points ... you can' deport 11-12 million illegal aliens ... it would cost trillions of dollars to do so ... how are you going to overturn the Constitution? (Not that we haven't done this in the past.) These shibboleths are just a bunch of hogwash. We can indeed fix our illegal immigration problem if we have the spine to do it.

Donald Trump was confronted with a reporter's hostile question at the Iowa State Fair Monday about the high cost of deporting all the illegal aliens. His answer was, as usual, right on point ... "What does it cost us not to deport them. We either have a nation or we don't have a nation." As it turns out there is a recent analysis on what it actually might cost to round up and deport some 11-12 million illegal aliens (CNBC calls them "undocumented workers" ... we should only hope that they all are working). The number arrived at was 5 to 15 billion dollars a year over a twenty year period ... see: a somewhat slanted  CNBC Article. To me 10 billion dollars a year is a mere pittance ... a rounding error in the United States' $3.8 trillion annual budget.

I further suggest that it is vital we start these deportations with the dangerous criminals ... and leave the ones with verifiable jobs and families to the latter years. In between here would be my rough priorities in terms of who gets booted out ... gang members and small-time criminals with multiple misdemeanors ... those granted amnesty fraudulently  ... illegals from terrorist nations ... aliens carrying false or multiple identities ... the mentally unstable ... people on welfare or who have come here to drop anchor babies ... and, finally, non-core family members of illegals. But I might make an exception for illegals who have served in our armed forces for two or more years and who have been honorably discharged.

And Donald Trump's (actually Jeff Session's) suggestion on how to pay for these deportations ... with a tax on the $123 billion of remittances that aliens send home every year ... makes enormous sense ... see: Business Insider Story.  A 5% tax should do it.

Liberal Solutions

Why is it that so many liberal solutions to societal problems don't work? Now liberals generally are not stupid ... nor are they, I assume, trying to make matters worse. But all too often their well-meaning solutions to imbalances in our society end up costing a fortune and destroying an existing working mechanism. What is that old saying ... if it ain't broke, don't fix it?

It isn't difficult to come up with examples of these liberal failings here in the United States  How about their insisting on dealing with terrorists inside of our criminal justice system? How about their not enforcing many of our immigration policies (George W. Bush included)? How about their continued diminishing of our military hegemony? How about their expansion of our welfare system beyond reason? How about their creating of mechanisms that encourage voter fraud? How about their self-serving roiling of race and gender relations? How about their attempts to overthrow our gun freedoms? How about their penchant for deficit spending (ditto George W. Bush)? How about even their continued attempts to centralize powers away from the people?

To be fair, there are occasional liberal ideas that do work ... at least for a time ... like social security, and some reasonable welfare benefits. (Many might also claim that the roll-back of slavery and the Jim Crow laws were liberal wins ... but it was just the opposite.) But, when such successes are accomplished, liberals double down, triple down, and even quadruple down until such benefits are crushed under their inherent weaknesses.

Poo Poo

I’ve had my full share of poo-poo-ers in life. 

“I don’t think that it’s safe to travel to Egypt at this time.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “I think that George W. Bush is wrong about Putin.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “Wind and solar energy will never supply our needs.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “I don't think many Muslims reject violence.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “Obamacare is a travesty.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “Mexico may not be the best place to retire to just now.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “There seems to be widespread voter fraud.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “Illegal immigrants are drawn here because of easy welfare.” “Poo Poo.” 

 "There really were WMDs in Iraq before the invasion.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “Carbon dioxide is fundamentally a good gas.” “Poo Poo. 

 “Hillary Clinton has animus toward Israel.” “Poo Poo. 

“President Obama often shows disdain for capitalism.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “Late-term abortions are clearly infanticide.” “Poo Poo.” 

 “Our welfare system has destroyed the American family.” “Poo Poo.”

 Actually, I think my batting average is at least as high as Derek Jeeter's

Progressivism

The Ken Burns' documentary "The Roosevelt's" has spent considerable time on Teddy Roosevelt's progressive reforms (trust busting, pure food and drugs, civil service hiring, land conservation, etc.) ... most of which are universally lauded today.  And T.R. has had his likeness carved on Mount Rushmore as a consequence.

This has got me musing ... there is one fundamental flaw with the progressive agenda ... and that is ... after the most obvious beneficial reforms have been enacted, many "progressives" think that any change is still necessarily good. Thus change becomes an objective in and of itself … with little thought to the possible consequences. If the progressive movement was right in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, then it must still be the bright path to lasting political fame.

Once most or all of the low-hanging progressive fruit has been plucked, then progressives find sillier and sillier things that must be reformed ... many of which begin to erode the very fabric of our society. Many of these inane progressive fixes have more to do with changing social norms rather than fixing structural economic problems. Here are a few:

- Poverty is a primary target of the progressive movement … with transfer payments of all types now totaling hundreds of billions of dollars annually. The result? This country now has a huge indolent class which is now totally dependent on these government handouts … and unwilling to seek gainful employment. Yet they are still indigent because “poverty” keeps being defined upwards and most of those transfer payment are not included in such measurements. And this growing unproductive population then requires millions of immigrants to take their places at an additional economic and socially-disruptive cost. And this is called progress …

- Progressives have now determined that the government cannot now intrude into the bedroom to define deviant and often destructive moral conduct ... yet it can and must intercede to pay for the consequences of such questionable morality ... contraceptives, an AIDs cure, abortions, redefining marriage, sex-change operations, etc. So far pedophilia, bestiality, incest, and polygamy have escaped such social "progress" but, if such progressive trends continue ...

- Progressives have also decided, on very dubious “scientific" evidence, that carbon dioxide, a gas that is the basis of all life on earth, is a pollutant and must be regulated with punitive economic policies. This would be the equivalent to Teddy Roosevelt, because of the then unsanitary slaughterhouse practices, outlawing meat.

- Gender and sexual-orientation equality has morphed in the progressive mind to gender and sexual-orientation equivalence. Women are now encouraged to serve in military combat roles. Men who think of themselves as women must be allowed to intermingle with women in all their erstwhile segregated places ... and visa versa. Did Teddy, the archetypical progressive have women serving with him in the Rough Riders?

Has ‘progressivism” now devolved into something bad instead of something good? To me it has …

Open Borders

A self-described “super liberal” friend said yesterday that he believed in open borders … no constraints whatsoever on who might enter the United States. This attitude stems, I believe, from equating today’s situation with the waves of immigrants that have historically populated this country and, obviously, made it stronger. To me this is a false equivalence for a number of reasons:

1)     Past legal immigration was closely monitored to keep out aliens that had contagious diseases. Our former federal processing centers on the east and west coast would send such individuals back home or quarantine them until they were deemed safe to be released into the general population. Even illegal immigrants, once caught, would be so processed. Today the Obama administration is threatening doctors who raise the specter of such a public health crises as a result of this new wave of unprocessed illegal immigrants … see: Fox News Story.

If we were to have open borders, not only would we surely suffer a number of such epidemics, but we also would be inundated with dangerous plant, animal and insect invaders brought into our country under such uncontrolled circumstances. Imagine the Asian jumping carp or the winter moth times a thousand!

2)     In past times, immigrants of all stripes were expected to be self reliant and not go on the public dole. In fact existing U.S. citizens were required to guarantee in writing that this would not occur. Today, given the monumental growth of the welfare state, no such checks exist. The pull of free money and free high-quality health care is what draws many illegal and legal immigrants to this country… see: Breitbart Story.

If our Social Security System is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, how will it pay for millions more foreigners who never contributed a penny, yet are or will be receiving its benefits? And, if we don’t have enough doctors to treat our returning veterans, how in heaven’s name are we going to minister to the influx of all of the world’s infirmed who can make it to our shores?

3)     The United States has awoken, as a result of the 9/11 World Trade Center heinous attack, to the dangers of international terrorism, particularly that of radical Islam. Open borders would virtually guarantee that we would be inundated with such bad apples wishing to establish a caliphate here … and lop off the head of anyone who objects. I guess my liberal friend thinks that, he, being of an age, would escape unharmed … but I doubt if his progeny would.

4)     In the past, America was a "melting pot" for the millions of our immigrants. Today, this country is not assimilating immigrants to the same degree that it once did. There are now many communities of transnationals which have established themselves as microcosms of their native land. Newer Internet and television technology has enabled them to never learn English nor adapt to the American culture … even after multiple generations. (Islamic honor killings still occur in this country on a regular basis.) Yes, this diversity can enrich American culture, but the reverse is also true … if it were allowed or even forced to happen.

5)     Last point … a tsunami of immigrants into the U.S. would have an incalculable impact on the economics of both this country and the countries from which they emigrated.  Open U.S. borders would most likely draw people from both ends of the bell curve … the affluent and the impoverished of the world. Yes, Silicone Valley would get all the engineers it wants (at cheaper rates than today), but also the trade unions would be annulated by the availability of building-trade workers at well below today’s wage rates.

We see this already happening. Would these people be visible to the IRS and local governments?  Probably not.  Therefore, the only solution to the ability of governments to survive would be to impose a value-added (national sales) tax.  And of course, this would very likely be on top of existing taxes which would squeeze the middle class in this country to the point of near extinction.

Even the European Union is considering re-establishing internal border controls as a result of problems occurring there due to illegal immigrants … see: Notre-Europe Story. No, I am quite sure that open borders in the United States would be horrendously distorting and a disaster of monumental proportions. We need a lot more head and much less heart in this debate (and in our administration).

Auntie

Zeituni Onyango, President Obama’s aunt died recently in Boston. As a 14-year illegal immigrant from Kenya, she was an ungrateful recipient of much American public assistance … including (at least) public housing, welfare, special medical care, and disability payments … none, of which was she entitled to by law. To read the details of her abuse please read: Michelle Malkin Article. 

And to experience the degree of Auntie Zeituni ingratitude, please watch this 2010 interview ... see:: YouTube Video. Grrr … Much as I have often been sympathetic to such interlopers, Auntie Zeituni could nevertheless find a way to cause me to harden my heart.

Perhaps we can petition Kenya for some recompense? Nah!

Monkey Puzzle

Man has devised a clever way to capture small primates. It is called a monkey puzzle … basically a woven web or hollowed-out coconut which is attached to a sturdy post and, inside, it contains some sort of a goodie. When a monkey reaches in to get this bait, it can’t withdraw its paw without letting go of the prize … which it won’t do … therefore it was captured by its own greed.

There is a seduction analogous to this for us humans, a supposedly higher-level of primates. It’s called public welfare. Once we have our grimy paws on this government give-away, we won’t give it up … even if it means our effective enslavement. The Obama administration is counting on this primate tropism in the American public when it comes to moving health-care insurance (Obamacare) into the hollowed-out coconut. It firmly believes that the Republicans can’t or won’t roll back this offensive piece of liberal largess once they reacquire the reins of power. They might be right.

But there is an even bigger irony to this monkey puzzle theme.  And that is that the politicians themselves are enslaved by this welfare gambit.  They must keep making these public handouts bigger and bigger in order to convince the voters to let them keep their public sinecures with re-election.

So you see, we greedy voters are not the only monkeys, it’s those baboons in Washington too who also can’t let go of a good thing ... even though it might cost them their country.