If you think it’s bad now…

This is Victor Davis Hanson saying much of what I think myself: Trump Compared with What? Or to be more direct, we should feel the blessings of seeing the most unlikely presidential victor in American history. How much worse things might have been is easy to recognise, except all too few seem to be able to. Ann Coulter has gone seriously mad, but if it is really true that some massive percent of those who voted for him in 2016 would abandon him if he cannot get the Wall constructed, seems to me borderline insane. Trump with or without the wall is fantastically better than anyone else I can think of, and no one else will build the wall either. But he might, and he certainly wants to.

This is now where the Democrats are heading which is the alternative government of the US. No one in 1969 could have imagined America as it now is, so anything is possible fifty years from now. These are just wisps of an indication where the middle of the road is now heading, which is what Trump is advised to lay out in his State of the Union. And these are the known knowns.

Trump should deviate from state-of-the-union custom and also point out that we are at a national intersection, in which the Democrats are offering a vision of America that is arguably the most socialist and radical since 1972 — if not ever.

The Green New Deal would essentially ban internal-combustion engines ten years after passing of the bill, and in effect destroy the current U.S. oil and natural-gas renaissance that has empowered the middle class with inexpensive fuel, provided millions of jobs, and ended our strategic reliance on the Persian Gulf.

The emerging new Democratic position on abortion is not just third-trimester abortions, but in theory infanticide upon dilation or delivery. At a time of near Medicare insolvency, many Democrats would expand it for all and thus for nobody, virtually ending private insurance.

Student debt would be abolished and college free — without discussion of where the trillions of dollars needed would come from in a nation running nearly a $1 trillion annual deficit and approaching $22 trillion in aggregate debt.

Anti-Israel and pro-Chavista Venezuela are the de facto New Democratic positions, as well as a new iteration of left-wing anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. As far as the border goes, the agenda is clear: Abolish ICE, issue blanket amnesties, expand sanctuary cities, and allow “refugees” to enter without documentation.

In sum, Trump should review the stark alternatives ahead — reminding the American people that the Democratic party is abandoning many of its old principles and becoming unrecognizable: Centrists are replaced by liberals who are overwhelmed by progressives who are now themselves being absorbed by neo-socialists.

The level of employment is unrelated to the level of aggregate demand

Mill’s Fourth Proposition on Capital is the element of classical economic theory most foreign to the modern mind. In seven words, Mill stated a truth that has stood the test of time and has never been refuted by any event in history.

Demand for commodities is not demand for labour.

Or in modern words, the level of employment is unrelated to the level of aggregate demand. It is refuted every time public spending is raised to lower unemployment, which has never succeeded on even a single occasion. It was refuted when Peter Costello cut public spending in 1996 and 1997 eventually eliminating not just the deficit but the actual existence of public debt while unemployment disappeared and personal incomes grew at record rates.

And now here from John Hinderaker at Powerline is another instance showing the validity of classical theory over modern macroeconomic junk science: AMAZINGLY, ECONOMY DIDN’T CARE ABOUT “SHUTDOWN”.

I never did notice the extremely-partial government “shutdown,” but some people thought it was a big deal. Not private employers, apparently:

Private payrolls grew in January at a much faster pace than expected as the labor market shrugged off the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, according to data released Wednesday by ADP and Moody’s Analytics.

“Shrugged off”? I don’t know, maybe they welcomed it.

Companies added 213,000 jobs this month, the data show. Economists polled by Refinitiv expected payrolls to grow by 178,000.

The strong jobs growth comes even as the U.S. government was shut down for 35 days in a standoff between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats over his demand for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Even as.”

“The job market weathered the government shutdown well. Despite the severe disruptions, businesses continued to add aggressively to their payrolls,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

“Weathered.” “Despite the severe disruptions.” Really? What disruptions were those? Did they consider that a brief respite from a small portion of government heavy-handedness may have been irrelevant to job growth, or even a positive factor? Evidently not.

There is more good sense in Mill’s 1848 Principles of Political Economy than in any Keynesian text written since 1936. The evidence is overwhelming, but when has evidence ever counted for anything when ideology said something else?

Born yesterday

To truly appreciate how born yesterday politicians of the left and their followers actually are, you really do have to read Joseph Priestly’s 1791 Of the Prospect of the general Enlargement of Liberty, civil and religious, opened by the Revolution in France which is the last of his Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. He wrote these letters well before the Reign of Terror commenced, which was then followed by the Napoleonic dictatorship, which in turn led to the Napoleonic Wars which roiled Europe for almost two decades, so perhaps there is some excuse for his naive and inane views. But what excuse is there for anyone to hold similar views today. It is remarkable to read Priestly in the knowledge we have of governments by Nazis, by Communists, by totalitarians of every kind, and yet Priestly-clones continue to populate the world. You still hear the same kinds of arguments from the left to this minute, that is from people whose ignorance of history is matched only by their vicious natures, vacuous minds and lack of common sense. You can read the whole thing for yourself – it’s not particularly long – but let’s pick a few highlights.

These great events [the French Revolution], in many respects unparalleled in all history, make a totally new, a most wonderful, and important, æra in the history of mankind. It is, to adopt your own rhetorical style, a change from darkness to light, from superstition to sound knowledge, and from a most debasing servitude to a state of the most exalted freedom. It is a liberating of all the powers of man from that variety of fetters, by which they have hitherto been held. So that, in comparison with what has been, now only can we expect to see what men really are, and what they can do….

Together with the general prevalence of the true principles of civil government, we may expect to see the extinction of all national prejudice, and enmity, and the establishment of universal peace and good will among all nations. When the affairs of the various societies of mankind shall be conducted by those who shall truly represent them, who shall feel as they feel, and think as they think; who shall really understand, and consult their interests, they will no more engage in those mutually offensive wars, which the experience of many centuries has shown to be constantly expensive and ruinous. They will no longer covet what belongs to others, which they have found to be of no real service to them, but will content themselves with making the most of their own.

The causes of civil wars, the most distressing of all others, will likewise cease, as well as those of foreign ones. They are chiefly contentions for offices, on account of the power and emoluments annexed to them. But when the nature and uses of all civil offices shall be well understood, the power and emoluments annexed to them, will not be an object sufficient to produce a war. Is it at all probable, that there will ever be a civil war in America, about the presidentship of the United States? And when the chief magistracies in other countries shall be reduced to their proper standard, they will be no more worth contending for, than they are in America. If the actual business of a nation be done as well for the small emolument of that presidentship, as the similar business of other nations, there will be no apparent reason why more should be given for doing it.

If there be a superfluity of public money, it will not be employed to augment the profusion, and increase the undue influence, of individuals, but in works of great public utility, which are always wanted, and which nothing but the enormous expences of government, and of wars, chiefly occasioned by the ambition of kings and courts, have prevented from being carried into execution….

If time be allowed for the discussion of differences, so great a majority will form one opinion, that the minority will see the necessity of giving way. Thus will reason be the umpire in all disputes, and extinguish civil wars as well as foreign ones. The empire of reason will ever be the reign of peace….

There will be magistrates, appointed and paid for the conservation of order, but they will only be considered as the first servants of the people, and accountable to them. Standing armies, those instruments of tyranny, will be unknown, though the people may be trained to the use of arms, for the purpose of repelling the invasion of Barbarians. For no other description of men will have recourse to war, or think of disturbing the repose of others; and till they become civilized, as in the natural progress of things they necessarily must, they will be sufficiently overawed by the superior power of nations that are so….

Government, being thus simple in its objects, will be unspeakably less expensive than it is at present, as well as far more effectual in answering its proper purpose. There will then be little to provide for besides the administration of justice, or the preservation of the peace, which it will be the interest of every man to attend to, in aid of government….

The enormous debts which our present systems of government, and the follies of our governors, have intailed upon us, like all other evils in the plan of providence, promise to be eventually the cause of the greatest good, as necessary means of bringing about the happy state of things above described. And the improvement of Europe may serve as an example to the rest of the world, and be the instrument of other important changes, which I shall not dwell upon in this place….

If the condition of other nations be as much bettered as that of France will probably be, by her improved system of government, this great crisis, dreadful as it appears in prospect, will be a consummation devoutly to be wished for, and though calamitous to many, perhaps to many innocent persons, will be eventually most glorious and happy.

To you, Sir, all this may appear such wild declamation, as your treatise appears to me. But speculations of this kind contribute to exhilerate my mind, as the consideration of the French revolution has contributed to disturb and distress yours; and thus is verified the common proverb, which says, One man’s meat is another man’s poison. If this be a dream, it is, however, a pleasing one, and has nothing in it malignant, or unfriendly to any. All that I look to promises no exclusive advantage to myself, or my friends; but an equal field for every generous exertion to all, and it makes the great object of all our exertions to be the public good.

Burke, the first conservative, was so clearly right and Priestly, and all who follow in his wake so clearly wrong, that you have to wonder whether the world will ever be cured of the madness that comes from the politics of wishing-it-were-true.

Advice on how to run our economies from the last people who would know

An organisation made up of third world tyrannies wishes to teach the rest of us how to run our economies. A couple of examples.

From Scientists Warn the UN of Capitalism’s Imminent Demise

Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN Secretary-General. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources.

Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequalityunemploymentslow economic growthrising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems, the new report says that these are not really separate crises at all.

Rather, these crises are part of the same fundamental transition to a new era characterized by inefficient fossil fuel production and the escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict, or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age, the paper says.

And then this from David Archibald: Stop The Climate Stupidity wherein we find:

You should read David’s article right through to savour just how mad you would have to be to follow the UN’s lead. And how could we leave this out from just today?

CHICAGO’S DEEPEST FREEZE
COLDEST IN LIFETIME!
MIDWEST FEELS LIKE -75°
CHILL MAP

Green is the stupidest colour

This is most of an article by David Archibald titled, Stop The Climate Stupidity. You know they won’t because for some of them there is so much money in it, and for others this is their religious observation. My only suggestion is that when we have to cut electricity, we should first cut off power to any electorate that voted for the Greens, and then work out from there. Anyway, David’s post:

When I got involved in global warming over a decade ago, the promoters of that cult wanted Australia to reduce its coal consumption by 20%. It was easy enough to predict that doing that would damage our economy and reduce our standard of living.

Here we are today. The damage has been done, and is getting worse. State governments have gleefully blown up coal-fired power stations in fits of religious ecstasy.  As a consequence we have just had the summer blackouts that were also so easily predicted. One sign of an advanced civilization is a stable, cheap, and reliable electrical power. We used to have one of those. We now rely upon diesel generators in part, like most third world countries.

The cost of following the whacko religion of global warming isn’t just economic. It is also destroying lives, ending some before their time, and destroying businesses, hopes, and dreams.

It need not be this way of course. We can go back to having a first world power system, and we could choose the correct path to go from here. This is not a multiple choice exercise though. There is only one correct path.  If we don’t take that path we will be staring into the abyss, before we fall into it.

First of all, let’s understand how we got into the dreadful situation of having whackos in charge of our power supply.

Brazil had an election last year and the corrupt and incompetent socialists were thrown out and replaced by people who seem to understand how the world works. The first words out of the mouth of Brazil’s new foreign minister were that climate change is a Marxist plot.

Why would he say that? Actually he is only repeating what the Marxists doing the plotting have been saying.

Maurice Strong, organiser of the first UN climate summit, 1992:
“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrialized civilization to collapse.”

US Senator Tim Worth, 1992:
“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Richard Benedick, US State Department, 1992:
“A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect.”

Christine Stewart, Canadian Minister of the Environment, 1988:
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

Mikhail Gorbachev, former chief communist of the planet, 1996:
“The threat of environmental crisis will be the international disaster key to unlock the New World Order.”

Jacques Chirac, former president of France, 2000:
“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance, one that should find a place within the World Environmental Organization which France and the European Union would like to see established.”

The roots of the global warming plot go back to the 1980s but got a kick along with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Suddenly the left wing side of politics had no basis for existence. Socialism was discredited by its failure — so there was no need to rule the world, interfere in people’s lives, and take income from workers and give it to bludgers.

So the threat of global warming was conjured up on no evidence. Thus that last statement that a global warming treaty didn’t need evidence. That is, it didn’t need to be based in scientific fact. Science fiction will do the trick.

It wasn’t just high level bureaucrats making these statement about what the real motives for global warming are. Heads of state and ministers of state were and remain fully on board for the New World Order. This is the real reason for the global warm hysteria we have endured.

What about the climate officials and scientists? What do they think it is about? They are all on the same page. It is about taking from workers and giving the fruit of their labor to bludgers. And being in charge of the whole process. The scientists involved have realized that they are paid to lie in public, to mislead the public. And also that their voodoo science doesn’t have anything to do with what is really happening in climate.

Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC official, 2010:
“…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.  Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”

Stephen Schneider, lead author of IPCC reports:
So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of the doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

Kevin Trenberth, lead author of IPCC reports:
“None of the models used by the IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed state.”

See that last statement — that none of the climate models even remotely correspond to the current state of the climate? That has been going on for at least 20 years.

Tom Wigley, National Center for Atmospheric Research, to 
Michael Mann:
“Mike, the Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC …”

Tim Wills, Swansea University, 2007:
“What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multi-decadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably…”

None of these people have died for what they have done – only
little old ladies in Australia who can’t afford heating in winter.

The first quote above, from the Climategate emails, reflects the normal dishonesty and lying that goes on in official climate science. The second one sounds a note of alarm at this sort of behavior. He also raises the possibility that we could be experiencing just a normal climate cycle –- something that doesn’t have anything to do with carbon dioxide.

There was a story in Quadrant last year by a bloke who lost his mother to pneumonia. With the rapid rise in power prices she thought she couldn’t keep the heating on, and never recovered from catching a cold. Mortality does start rising as the temperature of a home falls below 17 degrees Celsius. Her story was told and documented. There are so many others that aren’t, their lives foreshortened by a whacko religion, dying in the cold and the dark.

Thanks to the global warming believers amongst us, each winter now comes with a bitter harvest of dead grannies. We can blame the global warmers for this situation — but if we don’t do what we can to stop this and set things to right then we share the blame for not acting. We are the responsible adults, with a grip on reality, and so the deaths of little old ladies in unheated homes and all the other attendant destruction that the global warming cult has wrought is also on our heads. We should know better, we can do better and we must not abide this.

The threat to Australia is also existential. Destroying our power supply weakens us economically, so we are also less able to defend ourselves. The ultimate goal of the global warmers is to subsume our country into a UN-run third world morass. We know that because people from the UN have said that is their plan — witness Ms Figueres above, as nasty a leftie as God has ever breathed life into.

The rest of the post continues at the link.

Capitalism out, Venezuelan model in

From Scientists Warn the UN of Capitalism’s Imminent Demise

Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN Secretary-General. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources.

Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequalityunemploymentslow economic growthrising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems, the new report says that these are not really separate crises at all.

Rather, these crises are part of the same fundamental transition to a new era characterized by inefficient fossil fuel production and the escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict, or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age, the paper says.

Meanwhile, back in the real world:

CHICAGO’S DEEPEST FREEZE
COLDEST IN LIFETIME!
HEAT OFF IN BUILDING
WARNING: DON’T TALK
MIDWEST FEELS LIKE -60°
CHILL MAP

“We have a story to tell and yet, great goals to achieve”

The virtual absence of any mention of Nancy Pelosi’s sudden decision to allow the State of the Union address to go ahead, as if this were always on the cards, astonishes me. The notion that PDT gave it all away with nothing in it for himself, turns out to be not true at all. It may actually be that it was the Dems who will turn out to have given the game away since not so surprisingly, PDT has won the public relations battle, and may yet win the rest as uphill a battle as it may look: Pelosi Suffers MASSIVE Backlash Over Shutdown As She Watches Her Popularity Plummets, which adds this detail:

Also pressure on Pelosi and the Democrats is building as the United States Border Patrol just released the latest apprehension data at our southern border deflating their narrative:

Today, United States Customs and Border Protection released new information regarding the number of family units apprehended along the southwest border and the demographics of large groups apprehended in recent months by the United States Border Patrol (USBP).

As of today, USBP has seen a surge in Family Unit Aliens compared to the same time from last fiscal year by 280%. Fiscal Year 2018 was a record year and this year will surpass that if the current trend continues without any legislative fixes. Overall apprehensions between the POE’s are up 81%.

APPREHENSIONS

Over the past few months (FY19 to date), USBP has seen a dramatic increase in the number of large groups of 100 illegal aliens or more being apprehended along the southern border.

In the El Paso, Rio Grande Valley, Tucson, and Yuma Sectors over the last four months, smugglers and traffickers have delivered 53 large groups, totaling 8,797 illegal aliens.

This should also be at the core of the Australian election. We have effectively stopped the boats, but you may be sure whatever success we have had up till now will disappear the day the election ends in a Labor government.

But where’s the concern about a socialist government in Australia?

Israel, Australia Join Growing List of Countries Recognizing Venezuela’s Opposition Leader

You don’t often see this: an Australian foreign minister in overseas news.

“Australia recognizes and supports the President of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, in assuming the position of interim president, in accordance with the Venezuelan constitution and until elections are held,” Australia Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement.

Late in the game and timid. Sticking to constitutional proprieties. Would prefer something along the lines of a full-throttle disquisition on the evils of socialism, kind of trying to warn us about the potential consequences of a Labor government here in Oz. You gotta hope they will eventually get it.

What do you think, is he going to mention the wall or not?

Then

And now:

A border skirmish with more to come

Three posts drawn down from Lucianne with the last one from Instapundit. Feb 15 is coming, the one just after Valentine’s Day.

No, President Trump Didn’t Cave
On The Border Wall…
DC Whispers, by Staff    Original Article
Republicans in Congress were reportedly feeling the heat from the 24/7 “I’m a federal worker and I’m losing my house” media stories and subsequently begging President Trump to give them a window of opportunity to strike a longer term deal with Democrats. The president wasn’t immune to the pain being felt by federal workers either. (Snip)Democrats were getting desperate. Some were openly breaking with the leadership and demanding President Trump be given his $5 billion for the wall. So, here comes President Trump, rising above all of the petty finger-pointing, to declare a three-week period of

 

Why Trump went for a 21-day
suspension of the partial shutdown,
and what happens next
American Thinker, by Thomas Lifson    Original Article
 
President Trump’s Rose Garden declaration of an end to the partial shutdown was a tactical retreat, a rejection of a Little Big Horn strategy. He found himself in a no-win situation, and rather than bear unacceptable costs, has redefined the contest on better terms: sending the issue to a House and Senate conference committee charged with coming up with a deal that prevents a resumption of the shutdown, and provides border security, something that Democrats say they believe is important. It is important that Nancy Pelosi declined to rule out funding for a physical barrier.

 

Gee, I Guess Now I’m Going To
Have To Be Happy With Only 90%
Of The Stuff I Wanted Trump To Do
Townhall, by Kurt Schlichter    Original Article
 
Chill. Just chill. The wailing and gnashing of teeth on the hardcore conservative side over Trump’s delaying action – really, a hudna – in the battle for the wall is way over the top and typically overdramatic. Trump’s caved-in! We’re doomed! Pelosi annihilated him with her master stratagems and it’s all over for conservatism! Oh please. Lighten up, Francises – and many of you are my pals. But you need this bucket of cold water. What happened Friday doesn’t matter. Not at all. Well, that’s not quite accurate. It could matter,

LAURENCE JARVIK AS KENNY ROGERS: President Trump Knew When To Fold The Shutdown.