Not very intelligent if you ask me

I have seen some pretty disgraceful things since the election, but this must rise to the top. This is from The Economist Intelligence Unit, sent to me by an undercover agent who will remain unknown, but does have my thanks. Even to raise the question is near enough beyond the pale – Do you think China has a better system for political transition than the US? – but the fellow who has asked it, their Chief Economist, must at least entertain the idea as a possibility, if it is not actually his own personal belief. If you were ever in doubt of the necessity in electing Trump as president, have doubts no more.

 

From Our Chief Economist
Not an election
November 24th 2016

After the recent surprises brought about by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, many are questioning whether democracy is an effective system. In last year’s edition of our annual Democracy Index, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s analysts identified public anxiety as a stress point for democracies in 2016 (watch out for the next edition of the Democracy Index, due in January). For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), electoral travails in some of the world’s leading democracies provide succour and reinforce its message to the people of China that democracy is not desirable. However, there is no avoiding messy politics; it is just a matter of the means through which it happens and to what extent it does so in public view.

China has its own messy elections. Fluid power alliances within the CCP, combined with certain set-piece events, fulfil a role similar to multi-party electoral processes in democracies. One critical such event is the reshuffling of the politburo, which will take place at the end of 2017. Just as in the US election, punditry here is based on speculation and gossip, along with occasional facts. The CCP election process can be just as messy as a democratic election, and China is not immune to the risk of unexpected outcomes.

Do you think China has a better system for political transition than the US? [My bolding.] How might the leadership changes affect your business? Let me know your thoughts via Twitter @Baptist_Simon or email on simonjbaptist@eiu.com.
Best regards,


Simon Baptist
Chief Economist

Keynesian economics refuted eight times over

Who would know this? In fact, every legislator in Congress and the American president would know this, just no one else. As we all know, the American recovery has been the worst on record, without a single year in the last eight with growth above three percent. This will help you understand why.

Absent of an actual federal budget, all spending falls under a process called base-line budgeting to determine allocation. Federal distribution of the money within the continuing resolution, is essentially a year-over-year expenditure with a statutory increase based on inflation. Essentially, whatever was spent in 2009 was respent in 2010 along with a little bit more. What was spent in 2011 was a little more than ’10, and so forth.

Debt ceiling – failed stimulisIn February 2009 congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, commonly referred to as Obama’s stimulus plan. The stimulus was just shy of one trillion ($986 billion +/-).

At the time of passage this single stimulus expenditure reflected a growth of approximately 20% in total federal spending. The spending went directly into the deficit.

Approximately 30% of that “one time” trillion dollar stimulus was spent in 2009, the remaining 70% was spent in 2010. (*note fiscal years run from October 1st to September 3oth annually).

However, absent a federal budget -and because of baseline budgeting- it became a repeated expenditure in each of the following fiscal years.

The $1 Trillion Stimulus was spent eight more times.

Obama and the Congress have been systematically impoverishing the United States. This may be the most disgusting economic story I have ever come across. And for those of us also interested in economic theory and policy, as disgusting as all this is, it is the most complete refutation of public spending as the road to recovery ever found.

Meanwhile, the fool of a president is in Greece advising the Greeks not to pay their debts. The story is titled, GREECE IN FLAMES: Riots in Athens at Obama’s visit as Greeks scream ‘Barack go home’, but this is the bit that goes with the above:

Earlier, Mr Obama, 55, had delighted his Greek hosts by supporting debt relief for the recession-battered country, which has seen its economy shrink by a quarter in just seven years.

Greece hopes Obama will be able to persuade its foreign creditors to restructure some of its debt, which stands at nearly 180 percent of national output. . . .

He said: “We cannot simply look to austerity as a strategy.

“Our argument has always been that when the economy contracted this fast, when unemployment is this high, that there also has to be a growth agenda to go with it and it is very difficult to imagine the kind of growth strategy that’s needed without some debt relief mechanism.”

Everything about him and what he has done is an outrage.

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume he’s merely delusional

Soon he’ll be gone and his views will be as significant as those of any past president, maybe even less. But this really does turn my stomach since in no moment in the last eight years has he acted on any of it: Obama warns against ‘a crude sort of nationalism’ taking root in the U.S.. Take a couple of seasick tablets and then go read this:

President Obama warned Tuesday that Americans and people around the world “are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism” taking root amid the populist movements that are gaining currency around the world. . . .

“We are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them, and I will never apologize for saying that the future of humanity and the future of the world is going to be defined by what we have in common, as opposed to those things that separate us and ultimately lead us into conflict,” Obama said. . . .

“In the United States we know what happens when we start dividing ourselves along the lines of race or religion or ethnicity. It is dangerous. It is dangerous, not just for the minority groups that are subjected to that kind of discrimination, or in some cases in the past, violence, but because we then don’t realize our potential as a country when we are preventing blacks or Latinos or Asians or gays or women from fully participating in the project of building American life,” he said. . . .

“Globalization, combined with technology, combined with social media and constant information, have disrupted people’s lives, sometimes in very concrete ways,” he said. “But also psychologically, people are less certain of their national identities or their place in the world. It starts looking different and disorienting.”

“And there is no doubt that has produced populist movements, both from the left and the right, in many countries in Europe. When you see a Donald Trump and a Bernie Sanders, very unconventional candidates, have considerable success, obviously there’s something there that’s being tapped into,” he said. “I think at times of significant stress, people are going to be looking for something, and they don’t always know exactly what it is that they’re looking for, and they might opt for change, even if they’re not entirely confident what that change will bring.”

The most divisive president in history, completely delusional if not totally off with the fairies, lecturing us on how we ought to come together with him leading the way. His approval ratings in positive territory matched against the election results are the most certain recent example of the Bradley Effect I know.

Dealing with media bias

Media bias is among the largest problems our democracies have, and I don’t have to tell you in which direction that bias goes. This election has been a truly learning experience: MRC/YouGov Poll: Most Voters Saw, Rejected News Media Bias. Here are the reported stats:

Key findings:

7 in 10 (69%) voters do not believe the news media are honest and truthful.
8 in 10 (78%) of voters believe the news coverage of the presidential campaign was biased, with nearly a 3-to-1 majority believing the media were for Clinton (59%) vs. for Trump (21%).
Even 1/3 (32%) of Clinton voters believe the media were “pro-Clinton.”
8% of Trump voters said they would have voted for Clinton if they had believed what the media were saying about Trump.
97% of voters said they did not let the media’s bias influence their vote.

It is this last one that is the most ludicrous finding. It is impossible not to be influenced by the media and anyone who thinks they are not is kidding themselves in a very comprehensive way. The media are like crowd noise at a football match which affects not just the players but the referees. The number of so-called conservatives I met with during the election who were saying things that came straight out of the New York Times was astonishing.

It was therefore interesting to read the second editorial in The Oz this morning: Making the media listen again. It begins:

Donald Trump’s victory has exposed serious flaws in so-called quality media, mainly a refusal of many ideologues to deal with facts.

If “ideologues” is the new word for journalists, I could not agree more. So this is what they think should be done, which I agree with while doubting it is even remotely likely:

Best report the facts, listen to the public and share a variety of opinions.

A variety of opinions on the pages of a paper you no longer trust is not going to work. You need to be able to balance what is found there with sources that are seeing the world as you see it yourself. What made following the election so that I could see more clearly what was going on depended on the following online sources, of which there were others from time to time. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything they wrote, or even their general political line, but they did give me a different perspective and helped to anchor my thoughts in the midst of a maelstrom. These are the ones that worked for me in alphabetical order:

Ace of Spades
Atlas Shrugs
BadBlueNews
Breitbart
Drudge
FrontPageMag
Instapundit
Lucianne
Powerline
PJ Media
Quadrant
Stefan Molyneux
Taki’s Mag
VDare

The MSM has discredited itself. For those of us on this side of politics, reading newspapers or watching the news will now and forever be an endurance test in getting through presentations and articles we no longer trust. At least, for now, there are alternatives. To a very important extent, Donald Trump is president-elect because of the alternative media. Watch below:

Voter fraud in the United States is not an accident

It is the deliberate policy of the Democratic Party. What other interpretation do you have for this: REPORT: THREE MILLION VOTES IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAST BY ILLEGAL ALIENS?

Although some states require some form of ID before voting, California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C. all require no identification before voting.

What would stop me from voting if I showed up and asked for a ballot in any of these places? Putting an end to this must be added to the Trump agenda.

Another media lie

And this one is more ridiculous than all the others: New York Times publisher vows to ‘rededicate’ paper to reporting honestly. Confession may be good for the soul, but there are limits:

The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would “reflect” on its coverage of this year’s election while rededicating itself to reporting on “America and the world” honestly.

Fool me once, etc. But the reality beneath it all is that people read the NYT so that they can avoid finding out what’s going on that might suggest that people on the right have a legitimate point of view. That kind of reporting you will never see in the mainstream American media.

Michael Moore’s idiot’s agenda

The left is filled with malice against everyone, both on their own side and on the other, where a couple of days ago everything was perfectly lined up. Michael Moore, a perfect representation of the Left and what it stands for, has it figured out. This is his Morning After To-Do List which is followed below by his Day Two list. I am not sure there is anything in either that actually mentions an action that might be taken to improve anyone’s lives, except the very last one, and that is related to Flint Michigan which has had the named problem during all the years of the Obama administration. Why doesn’t he look for change that would improve something, anything? Because he and the rest of them are too stupid and this would require actual thought. But more important, because their only interest is in power and wealth for themselves. He and the Clintons are two of a kind, in politics for what it will bring to them. Trump, on the other hand, already has wealth and power and is in it largely because he wishes to improve the lives of others. His own life is now infinitely more restricted than it had previously been. For all the power he will now have, it will come at a cost to his own ability to lead a life on his own away from others. Anyway, here are the first of Moore’s two lists of things to do.

1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.

2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn’t let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must “heal the divide” and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.

3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that’s about to begin.

4. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You’re fired!”

Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.

5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: “HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!” The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don’t. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane, 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we’ll continue to have presidents we didn’t elect and didn’t want.

You live in a country where a majority of citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).

Let’s try to get this all done by noon today.

Now there is his Day Two List:

1. Must quickly and decisively form an opposition movement, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the 1960s. I will do my part to help lead this as I’m sure many others (Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, MoveOn, the hip-hop community, DFA, etc.) will, too. The core of this opposition force will be fueled by young people who, as with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, don’t tolerate b.s. and are relentless in their resistance to authority. They have no interest in compromising with racists and misogynists.

2. Prepare to impeach Trump. Just as the Republicans were already planning to do with President Hillary from Day One, we must organize the apparatus that will bring charges against him when he violates his oath and breaks the law — and then we must remove him from office.

3. Must commit right now to a vigorous fight (including civil disobedience, if necessary) which will block any and all Donald Trump Supreme Court nominees who do not meet our approval. We demand the Democrats in the Senate aggressively filibuster any nominees who support Citizens United or who oppose the rights of women, immigrants and the poor. This is non-negotiable.

4. Demand the DNC apologize to Bernie Sanders for trying to fix the primaries against him, for spinning the press to ignore his historic campaign, for giving Clinton the questions in advance at the Flint debate, for its latent ageism and anti-Semism in trying to turn voters against him because of his age or religious beliefs, and for its anti-democracy system of “superdelegates” who are elected by no one. We all know now had Bernie been given a fair shot, he probably would have been the nominee and he — as the true outsider and “change” candidate –would have inspired and fired up the base and soundly defeated Donald Trump. If no apology is soon forthcoming from the DNC, that’s ok — when we take over the Democratic Party (see yesterday’s To-Do List, #1), we will issue the apology in person.

5. Demand that President Obama establish a Special Prosecutor to investigate who and what was behind FBI Director James Comey’s illegal interference into the Presidential election 11 days before the vote was held.

6. Begin a national push while it’s fresh in everyone’s mind for a constitutional amendment to fix our broken electoral system: 1. Eliminate the Electoral College — popular vote only. 2. Paper ballots only — no electronic voting. 3. Election Day must be made a holiday for all — or held on a weekend so more people vote. 4. All citizens, regardless of any run-ins with the criminal “justice” system, must have the right to vote. (In swing states like Florida and Virginia, 30-40% of all Black men are prohibited by law from voting.)

7. Convince President Obama to immediately do what he should have done a year ago: Send in the Army Corps of Engineers to Flint to dig up and replace all the poisoned pipes. NOTHING HAS CHANGED; the water in Flint is still unusable.

Will try to get these done by sundown. More To-Do tomorrow…

He should run for president he is so full of ideas. Nothing that would actually benefit anyone, but that is not what the left is about.

Only a Republican could be this stupid

pres trump pres clinton cartoon

I first posted this in March but I post it here now again because it seems so relevant and because it was downloaded a few times just yesterday.

What we see is a cartoon that makes sense only if you really are in a dilemma about Trump v Clinton, which means you are a Republican who is too stupid to be allowed to vote. No Democrat would ever be in doubt, and Hillary is a liar, crook and dyed in the wool leftist of the most plundering kind. There is literally no facet of Trump v Clinton that ends up on the Hillary side of the ledger. Such Republicans are Democrats at heart, lacking any genuine desire for the preservation of our Western way of life. Worrying about the effect on international trade or the future viability of the Republican Party are such irrelevancies that it only irritates me to have to listen to it.

So let me spell it out. The one and only issue is open borders. This belief that anyone can migrate anywhere and it won’t make any difference of any kind is such a stupidity that I have to say that when I hear it I can only think I am dealing with political morons who are incapable of learning any lessons from the fantastic array of social instruction to be seen at every turn.

Europe at this very moment is being invaded and only a minority of these invaders are Syrian refugees with nowhere else to go. The news we get is minimal. Every so often the media is forced to cover some part of it, such as “Cologne”, or “Malmo” or “Charlie Hebdo”, but as rapidly as it is possible to go back to other things, it is dropped and nothing more is said. Were it not for Drudge, I would feel I would not know a thing about what is going on. We have in no sense a free press, and the ridicule that Trump pours on the people who are covering him warms me. It is you, who cannot see through the media attack squads that get me down. No writer for any Murdoch paper in the world – and aside from The Daily Mail, his are the best there are – will ever say a positive word about Trump. There is this migrating evil in the world, and you cannot find it in the news you read. Trump is a phenomenon because he, for very particular reasons, does not depend on the media or outside money to get his message across.

The progressive internationalism of our present day is being driven by George Soros, a Nazi collaborator and actually much more. Go to the link. What you will find is this:

Human Events’ readers, in an online poll, recently voted billionaire financier George Soros “the single most destructive leftist demagogue in the country.”

Here is the first on the list of ten reasons given, but go on to read the entire article. If you don’t know any of this already, you should ask yourself why that is:

1. Gives billions to left-wing causes: Soros started the Open Society Institute in 1993 as a way to spread his wealth to progressive causes. Using Open Society as a conduit, Soros has given more than $7 billion to a who’s who of left-wing groups. This partial list of recipients of Soros’ money says it all: ACORN, Apollo Alliance, National Council of La Raza, Tides Foundation, Huffington Post,Southern Poverty Law Center, Soujourners, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women.

The American political system is driven by money and Soros is hardly the only one of his class and wealth who are driving this agenda. The graft and outright thievery of Hillary Clinton is no longer even hidden. She is a tool of the progressive internationalist cause. These people really do want to ruin your way of life, and it is not incidental. This is what they want to do. If you think they are well meaning socialists who want only the best for everyone, you are simply deluded. Billionaire socialists is not how to think of a working class movement. Our Western way of life – our “white privilege” – is being put to the torch and there is hardly a one amongst us who is willing to fight this one out.

But at least there is one, and he has support, and the way things are going there will soon be more. Whether there will be enough and whether it is even still possible to save ourselves, is yet to be determined. But if you cannot see what’s going on, if you really cannot see what is going on, then you will just have to keep your heads in the sand.

And it is here that left and right meet. Let me finish with a quote from Murray Rothbard discussing Ludwig von Mises in a little booklet titled, The Clash of Group Interests. The “consideration” referred to is how individuals continue to examine only their short-term interests and fail to see the long-run as clearly as Mises does.

This consideration becomes still more poignant in the noble and surprising essay, “The Freedom to Move as an International Problem,” newly translated from a 1935 newspaper in Vienna. It is surprising because it presents a remarkably sharp attack on the immigration barriers erected by the United States and the British Dominions. For Mises trenchantly identifies these barriers as creating a ruling class elite, albeit a large one, in which workers in a particular geographical area with a high standard of living, use the State to keep immigrants from lower-wage areas out, thereby freezing the latter into a permanently lower wage. Mises correctly adds that, contrary to the Marxian myth of the international solidarity of the proletariat, it is the unions in the high living standard countries who have lobbied for the immigration restrictions. Mises is hard-hitting on the privileges conferred by immigration barriers: “The oft-referred-to ‘miracle’ of the high wages in the United States and Australia may be explained simply by the policy of trying to prevent a new immigration. For decades people have not dared to discuss these things in Europe.” Mises concludes his essay with an implicit justification of overcrowded Europe making war upon the restrictive countries: “This is a problem of the right of immigration into the largest and most productive lands…. Without the reestablishment of freedom of migration throughout the world, there can be no lasting peace.”

World peace through open borders, and cheaper labour as well. If these ideas weren’t so unbelievably dangerous you would want to laugh at how stupid this is. Soros and Mises, left and right united in trying to end the civilisation of the West.

Diana West on Cultural Marxism: Political Correctness

This is about freedom of speech, both in content and in actual circumstance.

Picked up at Diana West’s website, The Death of the Grown-Up. In this case, she is talking about the roots of a worldwide problem where the left believes it has the right and the duty to silence anyone with a different point of view. It goes back a long way. A very engaging presentation as well.