Reading the news stories about what’s in the new spending bill, it is tempting to get outraged. Even if you are like me and don’t care about the spending, the other stuff tucked into it is outrageous. For example, there is a provision to limit border wall construction to a 33-mile stretch of nowhere. Of course, there is no money for the wall itself, as if it would matter. This means the project is dead, unless Trump goes Pinochet and starts throwing lawmakers out of helicopters. In this area, your vote in 2016 meant nothing. Suckers!
That’s just one thing. In a 1.3 trillion dollar bill that is over 1,300 pages of unreadable government speak, you can be sure there are thousands of “screw you” provisions in the thing. Since the government now uses a special language known only to a handful of monks imprisoned in the capitol, the bill is unreadable. Take a look at the Ceiling Fan Energy Conservation Act and try to understand what it is. The absurdity of it is the only thing that is easy to grasp. The people’s house is wrangling over ceiling fans.
Of course, not a single comma or line break is in any bill without first requiring a bribe to the legislator responsible for slipping it into the bill. The reason there is a such a thing as the Ceiling Fan Energy Conservation Act is the ceiling fan makers bribed a politician to make an alteration to the law that favors them in some way. The Alleviating Stress Test Burdens to Help Investors Act is one of those things that seems like a joke, but sadly, it is a serious effort to repeat the mistakes of the past. The free money spigot is about to open.
The response from the slightly less Progressive chattering classes will be a form “these Republicans are setting themselves up for disaster in the fall.” That’s true, of course. The GOP is looking down the barrel of a wipe out in the fall election. This monstrosity of a spending bill will make it worse, but they don’t care. The reason is the people running the GOP will retain their seats and positions. They will move into slightly smaller offices next year, but that’s just how the game is played. Everyone takes their turn in the small office.
From the perspective of the ruling class, a Democrat House is the ideal solution to their Trump problem. For the remaining two years of his tenure, nothing will make it out of the House that can pass the Senate, and nothing the President wants will pass either house of Congress. Trump will go into his primary against someone like Ben Sasse, financed by globalist money, having nothing to show for his first term in office. The ads showing a wide open border with the sound of Trump promising a wall will cripple his campaign.
Even if Trump does not face a primary, he will be so damaged that it may not matter. The interesting thing about how Washington has responded to Trump is they have mostly ignored him. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are a click away from starting a cable channel where they laugh at Trump voters 24×7. They have run Congress as if Jeb Bush won the 2016 election. Sure, they feign outrage in the media, but that’s just theater. For the most part, they have ignored Trump, making him a completely inconsequential factor.
It does not have to be this way, but Trump has proven himself to be strikingly incompetent at the basics of politics. Part of that is the professionals in DC have figured out that all they need to do is put a microphone in front of him and he will eventually harm his own cause, by blurting out something stupid. The political class has come to terms with the fact that the White House is now just a carnival they visit once in while to be amused and outraged, but otherwise they can ignore it. This spending bill is the product of that realization.
Of course, this is part of a larger problem with cosmopolitan globalism. The people in charge ululate endlessly about democracy, but the political class is immune from the effects of democracy. In years with high turnover, incumbents will win 85% of the races and those that lose, lose to be people backed by the donor class. Democratic government has always been a about representing monied interests, but usually those interests are diverse enough to create competition between the parties and factions.
In the age of cosmopolitan globalism, the monied interest all agree on the big stuff and most of the little stuff. The Koch Brothers are cast by the Left as evil monsters, but they support all the same stuff the rest of the billionaires support. The difference between a Tom Steyer and a Charles Koch is purely aesthetic. The former likes to dress up as a man of the green people, while the latter wants to play the libertarian character. In reality, they both support post-nationalism. That means open borders and global piracy.
The funny thing is that even as both parties take turns giving their constituents the finger, the public engages even more intensely with the process. My rather mild and measured critique of Trump’s gun grabbing the other day, elicited howls of protests from the MAGA hat people. Post-national democracy is a group version of battered wife syndrome. The more the ruling elite abuses the public, the more the public defends them. Of course, it helps that Trump was mostly right about the people who voted for him.
Still, the voting public seems to have developed a biological trait that allows them to justify endless abuse heaped on their heads by politicians. Perhaps it was always there, but re-purposed for life in liberal democracy. Through the Middle Ages, peasants and townsfolk put up with the excess of the aristocrats, rallying to defend their lord, as if it was a noble thing to do. In fact, obedience to the lord came to define the good subject. Maybe that’s what we have today. Voting is the pageant, but the social relations are still the same.
That said, at some point, one has to assume the public will notice that voting makes no difference. Right now, voting seems to make things worse. If a populist candidate or party does well, the political class punishes the voters with even more globalism. The results thus far suggest staying home is the best way to promote your interests. Eventually, even Trump voters will figure this out and disengage. On the other hand, maybe at some level we know it, but politics is just a way to pass the time, like going to the movies.
Personally, while I am dismayed at Trump having signed the spending bill, I do not see any alternative than to keep supporting him. There is just too much “smoke on the battlefield” to know with any certainty what is going on. So I hold my position and wait. Having said all that, I will never vote for a GOP candidate — even Trump — again. If that causes him to fail, then so be it. In my mind, the GOP — and those who support it — are the single biggest threat to America (at this time).
Regarding the wall: I heard that the bill strictly forbids ever building ANY of the prototypes. Done
This is far more than a black pill day, this is a black dildo in the ass day 🙁
Your optimism is depressing.
Voting is all we have, short of armed insurrection/overthrow. And voting is a waste of time and energy and passion. Votes mean less and less; the franchise is so degraded it’s laughable. But the only other choice is blood.
Or, we can all just suck it up, pretend it’s all good, and go on with our lives as if we’re free citizens of a mighty world power.
So – Get Out And Vote!
Even Though It Doesn’t Matter!
And Drink Beer and Smoke Legal Weed!
And Buy Stuff!
Congrats. Some of you are just not waking up to the fact that all this shit is just a way to screw Joe six pack out of his money, his life, and his freedoms. Voting doesn’t mean shit. It just like Chris Rock in Lethal Weapon 3..I think…they fuck you and then they fuck you and then they fuck you. Bend over America. Its coming for you hard.
People are too damn busy working a couple of jobs and trying to raise their family. They want to vote for someone that’s going to run the country, protect their interests and be done with it.
Granted this hasn’t happened and unfortunately President Trump is surrounded by hostile enemies of the people ( or at least the ones that voted for him )
Should things get uncomfortable enough perhaps the revolution will begin and Americans will make the same sacrifices our forefathers did. We’re just not there yet.
The Zman,
Please touch on your view that spending talk doesn’t matter. Are you saying that nothing anybody does will ever make anybody care about spending and that spending will never go down? I agree.
But are you also saying that spending cannot cause a financial collapse? I’m less sure on that one. What will prevent hyperinflation? Or are you saying hyperinflation is irrelevant?
If there is a post where you discuss this in detail please point me to it. I’m a new fan and although I’ve been trying to play catch-up I’ve only gotten so far in reading your work and listening to your podcasts.
The whole thing is a charade. The powers that be allow us to have about 10% of Congress that pretends to be with us, and they are allowed to act like they are our side. It’s a steam release. On days like today those 10% will be all over talk radio decrying the latest betrayal. Yet when it was time to select Congressional leadership none of them challenged Ryan/McConnell. If they were truly against what’s happening they would name names, they would tell everyone what’s really happening, and why nothing ever changes no matter who we elect.
Even oligarchs have to generate some popular consensus. Perhaps not an absolute majority but enough so that taxes are paid, laws generally obeyed, etc.
For generations now, there has been non-trivial support for things like Illegal Aliens voting in all elections, Amnesty, Open Borders, not arresting illegal aliens for any crimes, exempting illegal aliens from norms of behavior by White people such as littering, animal cruelty, etc. This also applies to Blacks who are assumed to have the Divine Right of Blackness to rob and beat whoever they want for whatever reason and have no requirement to obey the law such as not walking down the road blocking traffic per Michael Brown.
The people who support these things are White women. Specifically, unmarried White women. Which is unfortunately both the majority of White women and growing ever larger. As Charles Murray points out in Coming Apart, the illegitimacy rate among the White working class approaches 40% plus and is growing in the Middle class up to about IIRC 30%. Only among the upper 1% is the illegitimacy rate what it was in 1960 among all Whites: 4%.
Moreover Steve Sailer has commenters linking to articles showing White women overall vote like Black men; and Instapundit the other day noted that among White college women diversity and inclusion was more important than Free Speech (65%-35%) while for White men surveyed it was nearly reversed.
Imagine every illegal alien was a man hungry hottie from Lithuiania. How quickly would the borders be closed?
This anti-White male enthusiasm is another in the long line of White women’s eternal war on the nearest and closest enemy: their male peers. The Free Love movement of the Communes such as the Oneida in the 1840s, the Temperance Movement, The Civil Rights movement, all deeply appealed to mostly/exclusively White women. Not to many men wanted to ban drink, and not many White men thought it neat-o to make Black men their equals let alone their superiors. But White women went nuts for that stuff as evinced by the many, many married White mistresses that Martin Luther King fought with and gave the pimp hand to per even Ralph Abernathy in “The Walls Came Down” the latters account of King and his own role in the Civil Rights movement.
Ads showing half the nation is Black? Aimed at White women. Ads showing White female / Black male couples? Aimed at White women (you would not believe the number of Black women in female-oriented consumer products who hate hate hate that stuff but go along because it sells). [Black women have a particular niche in advertising, fashion, and marketing and do quite well for themselves there.]
Threaten to prevent armed dangerous lunatics who are partial to polygamy and are dominant from coming into your country and the pussy hat brigade will have an Ashley Judd sized melt-down quicker than you can say Rudolph Valentino. The striking thing about those protests — almost all women, as the protests against gun ownership are almost all women. What man wants to be disarmed and defenseless? What woman wants an ordinary man to be the equal of her secret Third World thug love object (given that she’s weighing in at 200 lbs plus these days). [Taylor Swift types have their John Mayers. Those on the Adele side have some bottom dwelling aspiring rapper and dream of Kardashian trash social fame and a quick trip to the clinic for that nagging infection.]
And this is the secret to the Oligarch’s strength. The wives even of the physical operatives, the people who kick down doors and shoot pets, the elderly, or protect Somali cops accused of shooting a White woman for being “uppity” in those yoga pants … their wives and girlfriends and daughters are fall down on the side of the poz, mostly. And it is the mostly that matters.
Trump got lucky — the Pussy Hat brigade took a Hillary win as a given, and wrote off the deplorables (Hillary’s attitudes perfectly mirror 99% of Upper Class White women who influence society disproportionately). They sadly won’t make that mistake twice and the only opening someone has is a fight for power between the players: Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, Oprah, Kamel Toe Harris, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Mark Zuckerberg, Bob Iger, and her Cankleness herself, Hillary! If Thunderdome can be arranged, the weakness of the infighting of the Oligarchs might give one space: the interests of Faceborg are not that of Disney to put it mildly and that of the FIRE industry (Moochelle Obama) not that of virtue signalling molestors (any Hollywood figure).
I dunno..Trump never campaigned as a fiscal conservative, so I don’t see why I should get my panties in a twist over this. I voted for Trump knowing he’d do a lot of stuff I hate, but hoping he’d do some stuff I like. He’s come through on the latter far more than any GOP stooge in his position would ever have even pretended, so why pout and be pissed?
sure, it’s a crap bill, but if we shit on Trump over this, cui bono? He’s gotta fight the Dems, the media, the deep state, AND the duplicitous assholes in his own party in order to get anything major done. Besides, if he signs this bill, what do we achieve by angrily taking our ball and going home to sit the next one out? Isn’t that precisely what the Dems and the MSM have been trying to get us to do from day 1, i.e., pile up as much bullcrap as possible to make us disgusted and/or afraid of Trump so that it would be easier to divide and conquer? They know the wall is his Achilles heel; did you think they were just going to let him do it without the nastiest of fights? Ffs, they’re pulling out all the tricks in the book and just waiting and hoping that we’ll all get frustrated and tired so that they can just sweep back into business as usual…but not without a vengeful purge this time, to make sure an anomaly like Trump can’t happen again…
I agree with Zman that this will not end well regardless of what Trump does, but I do think that the longer he persists, the more people wake up to how much the Left and theGOPe hate this country. So ceteris paribus I’d rather have more prep time before the shit hits the fan.
Oh, Lord Jesus. I once had hope, but now despair is all I feel. Not so much for me, because there’s a lot of ruin in a country and I’m turning 68 in a few months. But I have kids and grand-kids for whom I literally weep. They don’t know what’s coming. Maybe that’s for the best.
Buy a little cabin somewhere. Leave it to them. Stock it. I feel your pain, my niece and nephew, so like the little goats to slaughter. So many Judas goats to lead them.
Well the latest is John Bolton is replacing McMaster. Another idiot Neocon. How’s your day going now?
Oosh.
That’s to be expected. McMaster’s staff constantly leaked stuff unflattering to Trump (the call to the Aussie PM, “don’t congratulate Putin” etc.) McMaster did nothing about the leaks and protected the leakers.
He got fired. Bolton is a good choice. He lacks a power base and is a Trump man — his only play is to back Trump because if Trump is gone so is he. Likely with plenty of prosecutions as well.
Trump does not exactly have a lot of people to choose. There are no “Trump people” like there are for Hillary and her giant, decades old Patronage Machine that has all sorts of bureaucrats and such as in the FBI part of the money/power machine. Apparently she had the FBI spouses on the payroll.
That’s a new innovation the Clintons pioneered. One part of a couple is the government official. The other the rain maker. See Rose Law Firm or Michelle Obama’s 400K salary at the University of Chicago Medical Center
I see a pattern in Kudlow, Bolton, Navarro. Trump seems to be surrounding himself with people who are DC outsiders looking in (Bolton is kind of a hybrid insider/outsider). I don’t think Trump trusts anyone who is a part of DC.
Where would one find this Spending Bill? It it available online to the general public?
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4417591-FY-2018-Omnibus.html
Oh this is wonderful reading!
Page 606, about employee training…”None of the funds made available may be obligated or expended for any employee training that…contains elements likely to induce high levels of emotional response or psychological stress in some participants.” This must be the snowflake provision.
Page 608 “…an employee…has an obligation to expend an honest effort and reasonable proportion of such employee’s time in the performance of official duties”.
This is amazing stuff!
It has been said, that it is not a good thing to see how the schnitzel is made.
LOL so True! I helped my roommate’s dad in college make hotdogs once. Didn’t eat them for 25 years. Maybe 6 since then. Fuggly.
” … unless Trump goes Pinochet and starts throwing lawmakers out of helicopters. ”
I hope that will be televised.
“Demockery” is very good. Is that yours? I hadn’t seen it.
I think so. I just thought of it, but you know how these things are. Nothing new under the sun.
Voting won’t change the fact that we’re driving towards a cliff, it just influences how soon we get there.
A Constitutional Convention is cheaper than a civil war, and should occur while the country is still majority white. Stochastic Democracy may have some promise as a solution? If the “Article V” convention “runs away”, war can still be instigated, and perhaps that threat would keep the convention on point. There are two Article V movements currently underway, one of which has the approval of 12 states so far. Funny, you don’t read much about them in the MSM. The Balanced Budget movement came close to fruition, and got their attention in Washington a few years back.
Only one problem with having a CC…it’s the same fukking assholes (running it) that are causing the need for a CC!
Without a genuine counter-revolution, expect more of the same ad infinitum.
The best way to imagine the current situation in the society we live on is that society is fragile granny someone is holding hostage slowly choking the life out of her. Make a move even to rescue her, she gets it . Even so she still gets it
Unfortunately Democracy and Republics are complete failures and it increasingly seems the only option is the bloodiest global civil war in history with hundreds of millions dead and routine killings torture and disappearances.
Throw in a good chance of a complete collapse of Western civilization in a mere few decades of that into warlords and ruined states and you’ll see why no one wants to rock the boat
You can’t win that war even if you win that war.
Also the only way anyone thinks long term in terms of solutions more than a few years out is if they have a dynasty to preserve and they are young enough to see power pass on in come fashion
This means a hard man , no older than his 40’s with a large family , power and a ruthless will to more power.
He will live long enough to see the results of his actions and his family prosper since his life is 3 maybe 4 decades lest
No one meets this criteria which means while institutions thrive, people don’t. Even the huge dynasties that have plagued politicians in the US are falling apart
You can fix that but it comes down to great men.
President Trump is a decent man, maybe a good man but thus far not a great one,
Now I could be wrong here but the Swamp is deep and can swallow almost anyone. We shall see,
All that aside, the biggest trouble the President faces is his own party. They control nearly everything but have no interest in anything but virtue signaling Left and looting.
If some means can be found to toughen up the Republican party, a hell of a lot more can be done than is now.
They are not only holding fragile granny hostage, they are spending all of her savings on hookers and blow.
I can’t really disagree with anything in this post. I’ve thought for a long time that voting doesn’t matter, because the people/groups driving real change do way more than vote. They use their money to purchase political influence.
We are screwed. Lock and load.
Iron Law of Oligarchy. Votes do sometimes matter, to the extent that an oligarch or two cares what the proles like or will accept, but in the current case of immigration they are apparently unmoved.
The good news is you no longer have to invest any time in politics: the only issue that matters is predetermined.
If Trump supporters had half a brain and a bit of guts they would hound Ryan and McConnell 7×24 at home and in D.C.
Same with their subordinates. Harass them continually. Make their life hell.
But as Denninger points out they don’t.
Trump is a idiot by not pushing for the Wall and pounding on Ryan to include funding for it. It will be his undoing.
Trump could refuse to sign the porkulus bill and he should. He should let Washington blow up. Tell them you either bring me a bill I can sign or it doesn’t get signed. Throw it back at them and make them squeal.
He has nothing to lose politically by doing so.
Making Ryan’s and McConnell’s lives hell will not change anything. They would simply up their Trumpy rhetoric slightly and govern in exactly the same manner. Animals that are trained to ring the bell for their dinner will never stop ringing the bell, even if dinner stops showing up. They’ll just ring it with more vigor.
It would most certainly change a lot of things. If Trump went on national TV tonight and said he was vetoing the bill and laid out his reasons, putting the blame at the feet of Republicans and asking for public support to fix the bill, the world changes in an instant. In an hour, the time between now and November would be a race by GOP house members to get on the Trump side of this fight.
No one fears Trump. He needs to change that.
If Trump made their lives hell, it might change things. If WE make their lives hell (which is what I am talking about), it won’t, because we are not feared, and never will be feared by them. Nothing short of pitchforks, torches, rope and lampposts, employed on a broad scale, would instill fear in them from the likes of us. We have neither the numbers, the will, or the desperation that firms up the will, to go that route. Not yet, anyway.
Trump could get a lot more done, but he needs to go all in. All in. I hope he has it in him, but I am getting doubtful. He isn’t operating inside their OODA loop any more, and doesn’t seem much interested in doing so.
The uniparty has no fear of the voters, because it has no competition. The only way to put a dent in the system is a white party, similar to the conservative party of New York. The trick they used was to put the GOP nominee on their line if they liked him or run their own guy if they did not like the Republican. It was a pretty effective way of pulling the state party to the right. Most states have banned the practice now, for obvious reasons.
This is paramount: the bureaucracy needs to fear Trump. He could exercise executive power with the casual abandon that Obama did. That alone might put the fear of Zod into them.
He should organize a 20m person march on washington. I’d go in a Baltimore second.
A 5 gallon jar of the tastiest red pills in the world do no good if no one is in the mood to swallow. For years, the Republican Party campaigned on repealing Obamacare. They regurgitated millions of emails to raise funds based on this. Finally, when they have a president that would sign a bill repealing that fiasco, what did they do? Nothing. Controlling both houses, they could’ve passed dozens of bills achieving decades old Republican campaign promises. Even small potatoes matters such as repealing funding for the national endowment for the arts or Planned Parenthood. They have the power to do this but will not. Democrats sacrificed their own seats by railroading through Obamacare. They were more than willing to spend political capital, but don’t expect a Republican to do so.
The giant red pill in everyone’s medicine cabinet lies there, glossy in its rubicund materiality: Republicans are frauds. It lies there, remaining unconsumed.
People do get it. More of them all the time. The Republican Party is dead party walking. What to do about it is the conundrum. Trump has been the only alternative to just rolling over, so far. Trump’s influence doesn’t pass down the Republican ticket, because Trump supporters rightly understand that the Republican Party stands against him, not with him.
At this point, I am beginning to consider that a Democrat Congress and impeachment proceedings might actually be instructive and constructive. The average person needs to be fully aware of the powers arrayed against him.
Of course the Congressional Republicans have done nothing since Trump was elected. They have been controlled opposition at least since Nixon was impeached, and arguably since a decade before that. Trump managed to expose the Republican lie, which in and of itself is a big accomplishment when you consider how completely gaslit the American population was right up until the moment Trump came down the escalator in 2015.
Deep State is the Republican Congressional leadership, the entire Democrat Party, the entire CIA, at least half the FBI, and a good chunk of the Federal bureaucracy. Trump has his hands full right now: he has to discredit and dethrone the Republican congressional leadership, get control of the FBI, put the CIA on a leash, clean out the Federal bureaucracy, and oh yeah–dismantle the Democrat electoral fraud machine.
Anybody who expects Trump to much of anything else done before he accomplishes at least some of the above, is delusional.
Yes, Buckaroo, anyone with an IQ above room temperature should be aware by now that the whole damned system is rigged and has been for a very long time. Deep State goes down to even the local level (Scott Israel of Broward Country and his crime-coverup operations, for example). Mark Twain even noted well over a century ago that “If voting actually accomplished anything, it wouldn’t be allowed.”
All this being said, Trump could actually veto the damned bill with a stroke of the pen. This is by no means the first time the Pelosi-Ryan uniparty has passed such nonsense. Trump signed onto it last time and gives every indication of doing so again. They’re already threatening impeachment so what has he got to lose?
Maybe I am assuming too much, but your conclusion leaves legacy americans 2 choices. Either peaceful non compliance or violence. Of course the third option is slow irrelevance and eventual extinction.
Z – This part of your post stood out to me:
“Trump will go into his primary against someone like Ben Sasse, financed by globalist money, having nothing to show for his first term in office. The ads showing a wide open border with the sound of Trump promising a wall will cripple his campaign.”
Who, exactly would run such an ad? Sasse? The Democrats?
Both!
McConnel and Ryan
Voting only encourages them. 2016 was the first time for me in years. It will be my last too. I have better things to do with my time.
The NCAA basketball finals continue tonight and baseball starts soon. Sportsball beckons.
As Trump betrays us, I think I’m done with voting, too.
But instead of drowning my sorrows with sportsball or other fantasy entertainment, I am building a fairly self-sufficient country place far, far from the blue cities where the real troubles will surely start. And, I’m building tribe with my neighbors. Gravity-fed water, livestock, gardens, good fences, lots of ammo, and good neighbors that care for one another are all part of my solution to these political problems.
Watching “Trump vs. Washington” is far more entertaining than professional sports. It was worth the vote.
ZMan, the idea that Trump is “strikingly incompetent” at politics is absurd on its face. You can’t win the office of President of the United States without being good at politics even when you have the wind at your back. Given that Trump had literally the entire political establishment of both parties, and literally every mainstream media outlet, against him AND STILL WON makes for a convincing case that he knows what he is doing.
Now, you can argue that, given that he was running in the face of such overwhelming odds, maybe Trump’s opponents didn’t take him quite as seriously as they should have. But they sure learned their lessons fast, and starting the day after he was elected, have tripled down to the point where they have committed felony crimes up to, and arguably including, treason, to stop him. The term of art for that is, “dedicated opponent”. Has it occurred to you that maybe that is what has hampered his ability to get things done since assuming office?
Trump might fail but if he does, it is because we were already doomed, and we just didn’t know it yet. He still has at least three more years to work, and the results of the mid-term elections are far from decided. Anybody who gives up now is a defeatist. My message to defeatists is, just gas yourselves now and put us out of your misery.
George Bush won the White House. Jimmy Carter won the White House. Campaigning and politics are not the same thing. Trump is good at selling Trump, but he sucks at getting stuff done.
Uh…did you read my entire post? Blaming Trump for not “getting stuff done” is like calling the New England Patriots bad at football for losing a game when the other side is allowed to put thirty men on the field.
I’m sorry, but this does not fly. If the Bill Belichick quietly submitted to the other team putting 30 men on the field, sure, the analogy works. Trump is not doing much of anything, other than tweeting about a hypothetical fist fight with Joe Biden. He should be out making noise about this bill and getting people to attack their reps over it. That’s how the game is played. Reagan regularly did exactly this and it worked.
Trump is just rolling over and playing dead right now.
Trump needs to go all Slim Pickens riding the political nuke into DC. Perhaps when all the alternatives he sees get taken away, he can saddle up. The sooner, the better.
Just because you can’t see results yet, doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. As far as Bill Belichick is concerned, well, he doesn’t exactly control the rules committee, does he? Which was precisely my point. As far as Reagan is concerned, he got nothing done after his first year or two in office. What did get done after that, was done by Bush, who by 1983 had hijacked the administration and then operated the levers of the deep state to give us such gems as the 1986 Amnesty, or the laughably-titled “Firearm Owners Protection Act”, or the Iran-Contra mess.
Reagan found to his dismay that only the Deep State is allowed to get anything done in this country. He went along with it because he figured out in his hospital bed that he had been checkmated the moment he named Bush as his VP. Deep State has run the USA pretty much continuously since the JFK assassination. They lost control briefly during the Nixon administration (he got impeachment for that once Spiro Agnew was forced out and their man Jerry Ford was installed), when Reagan got nominated in 1980 (Bush was installed as his VP, then Reagan got the message after he was served up an assassination attempt), and now, when Trump got elected. Assassination is out of the question because Trump still employs his own security detail, so impeachment and/or obstruction is the Deep State’s current MO, and frankly it’s a testament to Trump’s resiliency and ability to roll with the punches that he has even stayed upright given what they’ve thrown at him.
You need to start reframing the way you look at the Trump administration.
Did we vote for Trump because we thought he was a Miracle Man, or did we vote for him because he was a finger in the eye for Washington and that useless, nasty, ranting bitch?
How many of you lasted through more than ten minutes of one of his speeches?
He hasn’t put many fingers to eyes. This is the comic trajedy of the Trump admin. Apparently Mueller has him laced up tight enough that even lawful prosecution from the DOJ is too much to contemplate. He is therefor bereft of any bite to accompany his bark. Nobody in Sacramento fears him, much less DC.
It might be out of his power to change that but whether or not it’s a matter of will, he won’t be re-elected for sounding off on twitter and doing nothing as though he were just another civilian observer.
As you point out, the imperial capital is simply ignoring the Emperor. The bureaucracy is in charge, and we will only get what the bureaucracy wants. Furthermore, the mindset and even the composition of the bureaucracy seldom changes, an effect directly related to the incumbency problem you addressed previously. There will be no wall. This is as certain as the fact that there will never be a decline in spending. In our times, even an Andrew Jackson teleported from the 19th century would be rendered as toothless as a 14 year old toy poodle.
Speaking of Jackson, if only duelling were still in fashion…
From what I am reading, the proposed budget prohibits spending on a concrete border wall. WTF? As if you need any more evidence that the Republicans stand in opposition to Trump.
Trump is not one to be able to build a consensus with people he despises (which is virtually all of them in DC). It is how he is wired. He was elected as the only hope and alternative versus the Uniparty political hive. The hive has responded, and Trump has no allies. If the best we get is a four year or eight year “up yours” to the hive, it will have to do. There is a lot of red-pilling that can be accomplished in that time.
This quote from William S Burroughs seems apt: “There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers.
The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident. Inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.”
Update me on your views when he initiates Daca amnesty.
This goes back to the whole 16-D chess argumentation, the Q-anon fantasies about a great storm on its way to arrest all the traitors and pedos, etc. The bombshell memo – essentially proving open sedition if not actual treason by the FBI hierarchy – has been out well over a month. McCabe was fired (big deal) and not one arrest, or even an indictment.
So now we have the gargantuan swamp sewerage potboiler of a spending bill from the GOP (Gay Old Pedobears) owned congress which includes (among many other things)
*Obamacare funding
*Sanctuary city funding
*No border wall
*Gun control
*More domestic surveillance power
Criminals in the deep state laugh openly because they’ve gotten away with everything – including murder (Seth Rich, 57 in Las Vegas, etc.). Unelected, unaccountable blackrobes over-rule Trump at every turn and he meekly obeys. Despite all the MAGA cheering, prayers to the Q-anon Kabbalah, etc. there is very little to show for over a year of alleged swamp drainage.
Every government’s economic motto is to “tax and spend our way to prosperity”. The question is who are they referring to in the “our” in the motto?
Congressmen and Senators spend 4 HOURS PER DAY making phone calls to solicit political donations, like a bunch of bucket shop boiler room newbies. All to raise a few hundred thousand per year each. It is part of the job, as handed down from the Ryans and Pelosis of the world.
So some sort of “higher calling” is going to change their behavior? Good luck with that.
Trump is the fly in the ointment. He is the political black swan. Enjoy him while it lasts, because there is no broader political movement around him. The hive will close ranks when he is gone, just as it did when Reagan left town.
I was once astonished at just how cheap a Congressman is. The amount of reverse leverage they operate under is amazing. For Just a couple of grand they willingly do several billions of damage to the economy.
They really are $10 crack-whores.
We are an “Empire in Decline”. Once you wrap your mind around the fact a systemic collapse is inevitable, you can then grasp how long you really have left on this planet. When the U.S. Dollar begins to lose value, everything will become out of reach because you can’t afford it.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/video/85850/playlist/92161/crash-course-chapter-15-demographics
Watch the whole thing, then buy a dvd copy while you still have internet.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/03/health-care-dilemma-10000-boomers-retiring-each-day.html
Remember, when people do decide to revolt against tyrannical government actions the MSM will call what does get reported “terrorism”. Odds are you are not prepared to live without fuel or electricity too. Plan accordingly and good luck. Ironically, Trump may become the oligarchy’s scapegoat for a potential coup as the MSM accuse’s him for the financial breakdown.
My great fear now is that, somehow, the system will hang together and we will enter a steady-state hell from which there is no escape.
You say Trump is strikingly incompetent at politics as if it is a bad thing. One of our core problems in this country is we are managed by professional politicians instead of ordinary citizens. The other core problem is the loss of morality. Combine the two and you get what you see now.
Is there a solution to avoid the inevitable? Damned if I know. It’s not like this scenario hasn’t been played out many times in the past though, so the script is available if anyone cares to read it. As for me: provide for my own, prepare them as best I can, plant some trees the shade of which I will never sit under.
“The people in charge ululate endlessly about democracy, but the political class is immune from the effects of democracy. ” Sorta like Big Tech and the SWPL elites talk about integration, diversity, etc. but never have to actually do anything or suffer from the effects; that only happens to the Bad Whites..
I used to think that once people figured out that voting changes nothing, we would be in for a very tumultuous time. However, it seems people are not only aware of this, but they expect and demand nothing more. It is as if people consider voting an exercise in mere virtue signaling and nothing else. Stepping back, for many decades now this has been the only reasonable conclusion. Given how elections have for a very long time been an exercise in rewarding incumbency, who would bother to regard politics as anything more than baseball scores?
Given that culture is upstream of politics, politics are unlikely to change substantially until the culture changes substantially. At the moment, our culture prizes things like the prospect of importing transgender sub-Saharan JavaScript coders, and television commercials that imply half the population of North America is black.
Today’s post is a giant black pill, but as some on the alt right are wont to say, “where is the lie?” Our condition reminds me of a line from a Frank Zappa song many years ago.
“…I mean, it won’t blow up and disappear, it will just look ugly for a thousand years.”
Voting is generally futile, because the Uniparty gives us only two choices, which differ almost not at all. Trump pierced the veil, but that was an anomaly. The Uniparty will make sure that doesn’t happen again. People get it, voting today is usually putting the stamp of legitimacy on the slate of nominees who will play the game as it is rigged, in exchange for personal wealth, comfort, and power. It is what it is.
The 2016 election was the last free election in the USA. Normal people have given up; busloads of fanatics will overwhelm us this Fall. And the people in control will work out the bugs to ensure that Trump-like candidates will never turn up again.
We put a hot iron on the seat of the deep staters; they are adapting and they’re re-booted. Be sure that no more stunts from the lumpenproletariat will catch them napping again.
Observation: I was trying to post a comment comparing the GOP to the Swiss Guard at the Vatican – all dolled up with ancient outfits and ceremonial weapons, but still on the same team as the SWAT boys raiding private homes, killing household pets, mowing down pregnant women and incinerating compounds filled with children; each time a ‘Hacker’ warning popped up, and disallowed my post.
Let’s see if I can post now…
(later)
Sure enough, here it is.
“Trump was mostly right about the people who voted for him.”
Okay, today you’re cynical and depressing. I agree with most of what you wrote and I’ll give you that. But why should anyone believe hearsay from Elizabeth Spiers, founder of Gawker? Or Bernie Sanders and John Oliver, for that matter? Consider the source.
I’ve never met a politician who did not think his core supporters were morons. I’ve never met one who was wrong about that fact.
Truth vs. truthiness.
I guess that makes you zynical
I gave up voting when Bob Dole got nominated and only voted again for Trump. Back to apathy.
This country, the West is, as we know, in a steady decline. One can act in accordance with dying principles because that is still rightly the way to live. But all around me I see the average American become increasingly the scammers and cheats that I loathe. Disability cheats, insurance fraud and making decisions only based on how it is an advantage to themselves.
The political class is the culmination of everything wrong with us. Diogenes would find nothing here. We are doomed.
I enthusiastically voted for Reagan in ’84. I voted for Bush in ’88, but that was primarily as a tribute to Reagan. I skipped the presidential line in ’92 and ’96. I was a Buchanan guy. In 2000 I voted for Bush, because I was sure Gore was having a nervous breakdown. His wife later admitted as much. Talk about the lesser of two evils. I’m still unsure if a deranged person would not have been better than Bush. I voted for Bush again in 2004, but that was so I could say I voted against Kerry three times. I skipped 2008 and 2012. I said 2016 was the last time I’d vote and I was right.
The last time I voted FOR anybody was Jack Metcalf for Congress in ’96. Now I just vote AGAINST the lying weasels I despise more than the other lying weasels. It’s the Evil Party vs. the Stupid Party and I despise the Evil Party more.
In fact I only vote at all because:
1) Those who don’t vote have no right to complain.
2) Heroes died for that right and I won’t waste their sacrifice.
3) My vote is worth 1 over infinity, but that’s MY infinitesimal.
4) When time comes to bust caps I can do so in good conscience knowing that I tried it the “right” way.
Eh. I don’t think whether you vote or not has anything to do with your right to object to this. If there is no one to vote for (the parties all being globalist) or I believe the system is corrupt and that voting merely serves to legitimize the corruption then I am right not to vote and I am right to complain.
I have no objection to your voting however. Do as you will, it certainly won’t harm you or anyone else.
Still haven’t come to terms with reality, I see. There is no “evil party” or “stupid party” because the country is run by the civil service and largest corporations. Before that (i.e. before FDR), we had the spoils system, which was even worse because it was all of the above plus political violence on a much larger scale.
1. Subjects have every right to complain about their sovereign. They’ll be careful where and when they do so, if they know what’s good for them.
2. People sacrifice themselves for both good and evil causes. Democracy is the latter, although I like to think those sacrifices were for the American or European people, not their rulers or their dysfunctional system of government.
3. My piss is worth 1 over infinity, but that’s MY piss. Who cares?
4. I’d actually feel much better about being part of some revolutionary movement knowing that I didn’t actively contribute to the conditions that led to the revolution. Participating in the “democratic” process and THEN taking matters into one’s own hands only proves that one is a complete hypocrite unworthy of any real power or influence.
Better times await better people.
Unfortunately I don’t think Trump cares about the spending either, so he’ll probably sign this giant pile of crap.
He would be much better off vetoing this thing, then doing a few of his carnival rallies to explain what should and shouldn’t be in the next budget to reach his desk.
I’m torn as to whether he is just clueless about politics (he got lucky and caught lightening in a bottle two years ago) or he just wants desperately to be embraced by official Washington. Nixon was largely unhorsed by his inability to come to terms with the beautiful people. As you say, he could veto this thing, go on national television to explain why, and then spend the next week holding rallies. Congress would cave and give him what he wants, as long as they get all their goodies.
Trump has never been for reducing spending or the debt. It was the biggest flaw in his agenda. No one, including the voting public, cares about the debt until it overwhelms us in a decade or two. We probably will be better with a Democrat house, because Trump will fight them in a way he won’t with Ryan and McConnell.
The problem with this bill is not the spending. Just get it out of your head that spending will ever decline. That will never happen.
The problem is the immigration stuff. They expanded indentured servant visas. They shut down border enforcement. They even boosted spending for abortion mills for cripes sake. A reasonable person would think the Republicans went out of their way to spite their voters.
Spending will decline once we can no longer afford it. Rising treasury funding rates as a consequence of Fed interest rate hike policy is going to force a dollar showdown in the next 2-5 years. This will especially be true if the Democrats are elected.
The dollar system is extremely fragile at this point and the only thing preventing a breakdown is institutional momentum and the lack of a better alternative.
Perhaps we need that to occur to return to sane politics and a sane state of fiscal prudence. Maybe the above commenter is correct in that we need to push the system over the waterfall in order to reform it.
That’s what we thought before the advent of QE. Don’t underestimate the creativity, resources, and skullduggery of Treasury and the Fed
This time they are increasing spending as rates rise. It’s a bit different.
Doubtful. I’ve seen predictions of slowdowns and crashes since the 80’s and we’ve still puttered along just slowly getting poorer as percentage GDP and less fertile
The fact is there really isn’t another choice but to back the US as reserve currency and accept that worse case scenario , they mint a few trillion more
With the economy the way it is, minting say two trillion which should cause double digit inflation will barely budge the needle
Wage arbitrage is a bitch
Eventually idiocracy will get us but this could take decades if it ever happens
Long and short, change oriented people aren’t getting an easy out. They can’t wait for the crash any more than a zombie apocalypse
They have to make change happen.
This is it. US spending is underwritten by every investor, or government, that looks in vain for safer securities than US treasury bonds. Where do you go? China? Russia?
American securities still enjoy the best ‘collateral’ the modern world offers: The accumulated wealth of the white American middle class. We aren’t citizens, we’re collateral.
It can’t be repeated often enough: Republicans are the trailing edge of the progressive wing.
I think it’s all pro wrestling. The Dems are the “faces” and the GOP are the “heels.” They both work for the same management and they are the same management. For the other half of the country, flip the face/heel labels.
Then there are the smarts and the marks. I don’t know which one I am.
the Dems did the same thing in 2008–talked a lot about single payer…then once elected, oops, they gave us an insurance company healthcare bill
Obama was niggardly and figured Hilary would win. So he didn’t bother with the work of creating a proper bill for all of his executive actions and then Trump happened. I still think they want Single Payer but they wanted it on their schedule. That schedule, whatever you think of Trump, has been interrupted. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but the schedule has changed.
“Trump has never been for reducing spending or the debt. It was the biggest flaw in his agenda.”
Wrong. Literally nobody in this country gives a shit about spending, or debt, or government finances because they simply don’t matter. Did you forget that you live in a country where half the population has more credit card debt than savings? Someday, the country’s finances will collapse, and it will be dealt with when it happens. Did you learn nothing from the Tea Party fiasco? NOBODY CARES. NOBODY.
Trump is smart enough to know all this, it’s why he got elected in the first place. He won the election because, he was the first man since Reagan to voice the concerns of the white working- and middle-classes. And right now, those people are sick of deadbeat illegals, H1-B streetshitters, violent negroes, and MS-13 gangsters. They are also sick of watching their jobs go overseas.
My guess is, Trump will let Congress diddle around for three more months in order to make them look as stupid and out-of-touch as possible. Then when they fail to pass a budget for the ninth (or tenth? I’ve lost count) time in a row, he’ll tell Congress to pass another Continuing Resolution with a Wall funding bill rider, and that he will veto anything else that crosses his desk, and challenge Trump voters to make their voices heard again at the polls in November.
Terrific comment. Trump has to step it up NOW; if the Commies win the House in November, that’s it for Trump.
DJT should veto the ridiculous omnibus bill, go on the national airwaves and clarify in naked terms what he wants to accomplish, and expose in everyday English a few choice examples of the kind of spending that gets approved in an ‘omnibus’ spending bill.
If this doesn’t happen, then I no longer see the point in supporting the man.
Just a conspiracy theory thought; Trump will be blamed for a financial meltdown and a oligarchy coup will build the new USA?
Reminds me of the TV show JERICHO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTeOYlO0UlQ
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/jericho/images/4/44/Flag_of_the_Allied_States.PNG/revision/latest?cb=20090520042823
Wow; I was thinking of that show while writing another comment here. It ran 1.5 seasons, and lapsed into silliness at the end, but the idea was sound – maybe prescient; a ‘deep state’ planning full takeover after massive national disaster.
The chief weakness of the show’s premise was that NYC, LA, and DC all “bought it” among another twenty or so US cities. But then that was made necessary by the predictable anti-Right element; a Dick Cheneyesque “evil genius” ended up running things out of Caspar WY.
My guess is that our rulers won’t set off the ‘national emergency’ with nuclear weapons, but with some pathogen invented at Fort Dietrick – if that’s the way they go in their final takeover.
Real estate guys love debt, they see it as a tool to get things done, and I don’t think Trump is any different. Real estate guys are a different breed, too. They are vultures and opportunists, and good ones successfully pick their day and spot, swoop in and capture the deal, and then figure out how to work things out as they go. The other thing about real estate guys is that they are the ugly stepsisters of the financial community. Which means they either work hard to get a ticket into the “club”, or they take the “up yours” approach. Trump has been an “up yours” guy up to now. Maybe he is wavering. DC can do funny things to people.
Adding to that, real estate guys are loners. They are in direct competition with each other, and any alliances or friendships are acts of situational convenience. Professional respect, when it is given, is done at a distance, and after the fact. Trump fits this pattern.
You are right that both parties care only for their donors and not a bit for their voters. If Trump doesn’t veto this bill he is toast. Better to let Dems win and quickly go over the progressive waterfall into third world shitholedom while I am still young enough to recover.
well, it’s more than just donors…just look at the finances of the people in congress…they are literally getting rich while in office, and then if voted out, they get even richer…insider trading for congressmen is no longer illegal…donations have nothing to do with this…they get sweetheart deals from rich and powerful people who want immigration continued, who want no budget cuts for the government (because the gov’t works for the rich these days, not the people), etc etc…and then once out of office, there are seats on boards of directors, sweet heart contracts…look at the 60 million dollar book deal the obamas are getting…
I agree–we should now vote Dem…the GOP is not following through on their promises…but don’t just vote for any Dem–vote for the most anti-white Dem available…this whole white dissident populist trend really got started during the zimmerman/trayvon trial…that trial showed lots of whites that there is no kumbaya ending to this multiculturalism/immigration thing…we want more of that…and the GOP is not going to give it to us…we want anti-white Dems to take control…just accelerate this thing as fast as possible…just get it over with…
I don’t think a veto is in the cards. Trump tweeted this morning that it’s the best we can do so it looks as if he’s going to sign it.
I’m more sanguine about November than Zman, however. It’s an eternity, politically speaking, until then. It doesn’t look good now but with Trump sentiment could change on the dime. Stay tuned.
“I’m more sanguine about November than Zman.”
I don’t know how to interpret that other than, “I feel good about the GOP’s chances to retain the House and continue stonewalling Trump and his voters on immigration.” If he can’t (or won’t) get wall funding and reductions in legal immigration now, it will never happen.
Right. There is no point in us pretending this is the 80s and Reagan is in office. Been there, done that.
We need a major upset or catastrophe like an asteroid hit or zombie virus for a reset.
A nationwide failure of the power grid would of course lead to “fewer but better Americans”. Ninety per cent of urban liberals would vanish within weeks, wandering bands of illegals and feral thugs would be eradicated by private gunfire, and the central government would no longer matter.
It would be a tough time, recalibrating civil society to the technology of 1850, burying the dead using shovels. But given a few decades, our nation would emerge as a disciplined, unified, resourceful people of perhaps 150 million. No liberals, plenty of elbow-room, and a fresh start for a chastened people.
That, or our fate as the New World India.
Studying what the zombie genre “means” is always interesting. Not long ago zombies came to represent our instinctual fear of disease (perhaps why modern zombies are usually caused by a virus instead of magic). But I see it as a PC way for the Left to voice the fears that they share in common with everyone else but they can’t admit to themselves, the fear of a vast numbers of roving illegal invaders and/or inner city looters spilling out of the projects, not organized like an army but just wave after wave of fast-breeding looters. Zombies do “breed” quickly after all, by converting the living they swell their numbers fast. I’ve personally referred to the coming SHTF as the “Zombie Apocalypse.” Zman calls it “The Revolution.” Not mutually exclusive metaphors.
I’ve pissed off my fellow right-wing friends since Trump took office, by offering bets that no wall will ever be built.
They were pissed, but they didn’t take my bet. Too bad for me.
Zman isn’t quite up to speed on Trump chess. The wall will be built by executive order “for national security” He signed the spending bill because he knows he will ultimately preside over the biggest bankruptcy in human history. Trump’s the real deal get a fucking clue.
If he doesn’t veto this bullshit, I’m voting for Maxine Waters as a write-in in 2020. Better a bullet to the head than being gradually buried alive.
it doesn’t matter who is in office in congress…dem or gop or incumbent or whatever…they do not have to vote the way they promised on the campaign…instead they vote the way big business wants them to vote…and big business will make them rich while are in office or after they get voted out…sweetheart contract deals, insider trading, IPOs…none of that is illegal anymore…so there is no political solution…we have to hurt the pocketbooks of the establishment in order to get them to do what we want…only then will they bend to our will…