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Blaming David Frum
I am in rural Pennsylvania on vacation. The sole general retail store in the largest town (one stoplight, 1,500 – 2,000 residents) within 15-20 miles has a wide selection of Trump hats, stickers and banners for sale. Selena Zito would not be surprised, but a similar retail offering in my home county in the DC suburbs would likely result in some pretext for removing a business license after the police were called multiple times.
Assuming that free academic inquiry will be permitted in the not-so-distant future, a major question should be why it was left to the “extreme right” in Europe and the USA to address obvious ongoing defects in governance. The performance of the “expert” class during the COVID-19 outbreak was appallingly bad. The institutional self-interest of government entities is out of control. Lois Lerner was a symptom, not an exception. Clapper and Brennan presided over (personified?) an era of incompetence, dishonesty and raw unlawful partisanship. The bizarre horror show of students and faculty at our most elite schools cheering Hamas on behalf of sexual libertinisms leaves only the issue as to whether the intellectual or the moral deficiency is greater. We cater to the alarmist nonsense of grifters and the ignoratti while substantive men of the scientific method (Bjorn Lomborg, Roger Pilke Jr., Roy Spencer) are labeled fringe “deniers.” The historical distortions and statistical denials underpinning the tendency to label the American project as a uniquely immoral, racist phenomenon permeate all levels of education and gut the impulse to protect our borders against an onslaught.
Why is it up to the typical Sam’s Club customer to mobilize to oppose this rot with the very limited means of the voting booth? Where the hell are the privileged, the elite? Why do they not perform the diagnosis and use their superior access to public platforms to address real issues?
Our Democracy™ was never opposed to the Mueller attempted coup, the suspension of rights and liberties by overtly bogus “expert” opinion during COVID, the ongoing destruction of urban jurisdictions where law enforcement has been suspended, the collapse of our borders or the weaponization of federal law enforcement.
Preventing a “takeover” (i.e., winning an election) by the Far/Extreme/MAGA Right could be done easily. Fairly and honestly acknowledge the existing moral and intellectual rot, purge grifters and ideologues, preserve the borders and offer better, more competent leaders who respect the values, traditions and legal heritage of the people, and the anger of the “extreme” right will dissipate faster than Facebook can block centrist views.
There ought to be an opening in major media for an American Cicero or Cato the Elder, but our elite is dominated by unoriginal, zeitgeist-surfing zombies, like David Frum (another symptom rather than an exception).
About an hour north of my current location is French Azilum, the site of an abortive attempt to build a refuge for French victims of the Terror in France and of slave uprisings in Saint-Domingue. Some had even suggested that Marie Antoinette be smuggled out and brought there before it was too late. I wonder if Her Majesty had been given the choice between a log cabin on the Susquehanna in Bradford County or the guillotine, she would have opted for the latter. Similarly, our elite chattering class would rather risk the supposed apocalyptic rise of The Right than sober up ideologically, find some humility and discover common cause with their working-class fellow Americans, and thus dissolve the righteous resentment driving so many of us.
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I didn’t know that. He’s mentally ill. He’s a mentally ill Democrat.
That’s insane. SMH.
I can’t understand how people like this actually exist —>
I’m a little bit through his stupid Wikipedia page and it’s unbelievable. He should be working in a New York bodega. What a (redacted).
Why do we need to do this?
It’s because we print too much money, which idiots like him love.
DING DING DING
I realize nobody is going to listen to this, but I think this is the solution to all world problems —->
https://ricochet.com/podcast/federalist-radio-hour/is-government-intervention-killing-capitalism/
We print too much money. We have been doing this since the day Alan Greenspan came in. Or actually since they started the Federal Reserve except we had to do it to “win” all of the wars. I think we are 10 out of 13 or something since the Federal Reserve started. lol
Inflationism is idiocy and we don’t know how to manage it. We don’t measure inflation, even close to right. Now everybody whines about why we can’t afford anything. Plus all of the unfunded liabilities. We pay more in interest, then we give to the Pentagon. Just genius. there are idiots that think this is a good idea. They believe in experts. Blah blah blah. They believe in centralized power. Blah blah blah.
People get mad about the GOP and libertarians not gaining traction. It’s because we print too much money and nobody gets it or they have way, way too many vested interests. Then they whine about socialism and Trump and populism. Blah blah blah.
But, but David Frum was a G.W. Bush Republican, doncha know.
Larry Arnn went up against a Dubya Bush appointee wrt education (don’t remember her name). I used to defend Dubya because I thought he was treated unfairly. No more. Bushies are some of the worst Uniparty enemies of We the people.
They had to win the 2004 election against that idiot John Carey so they could finish off Iraq. Karl Rove thought up Medicare Part D, which was an ***instant $9 trillion unfunded liability***.
If they don’t invent nuclear fusion, we are all doomed.
We
print
too
much
money.
I pay money to listen to hedge fund guys talk about this stuff.
The only thing the Fed cares about now is printing enough money so everyone can roll over their debt.
Government. Private. Etc.
We can’t let the stock market go down very much. lol
Then everybody whines about why they can’t afford anything. Supposedly 60% are living paycheck to paycheck and the news hardly reports it.
Iowa farmland went up 50% in the last three years. Does that make any golf delta sense to anybody?`
Is that because subsidies make it more profitable to “farm” wind energy than food? Especially if they don’t have to pay for removal and clean-up later.
Both are true. He was treated unfairly and Bushies are among the worst.
There is no way in hell it’s going go from $8000 an acre to $12,000 an acre in that short of time just from wind power or anything else except printing money. Think if it went down $4000 an acre. It’s insane.
Didn’t last too long in the Bush WH.
I don’t know if it makes sense or not. I have paid a little bit of attention to Iowa land prices over the decades, but certainly haven’t kept up. This website at the Iowa State University Extension service provides more information that you can peruse, and discusses various factors. It also links to things such as a spreadsheet to help you determine prices at which you can buy farmland and expect to make money. You can also find information on the types of buyers and sellers of farmland.
This snippet from one of the charts in the article might help provide some context: The fourth column is the annual change in farmland prices. Note that the 2021 increase was 29 percent, which is high but wasn’t the highest since 2007. In some years the value goes down, too. The article provides some of this information in graph form, too.
The economy produces constant deflation.
The inflation rate needs to be zero or lower, because they don’t manage the side effects at all.
They don’t come close to measuring it right.
Libertarians and conservatives aren’t going to get enough traction in this situation.
Then it all falls apart.
Frum was one of the first anti-Reagan, anti-Market “Reform” Conservatives. This was after the end of the Bush 43 administration which had already produced disaster by abandoning Reagan’s principles.
Funny Trump who first campaigned as a market skeptical guy governed as a free market guy and got great results for Americans of all colors and incomes.
So true. Trump governed like Reagan but talked like Tucker Carlson.
Hard to predict which Trump we will get this time, assuming he wins. I am not a Tucker fan.
I vehemently disagree Trump is “hard to predict.” We know exactly what he’s like — brash, coarse, competitive New Yorker who wants America to win. He even says out loud precisely what he thinks. You just dislike the way he is. Which is fine, so long as you vote against the destroyers of our beloved country: Democrats, and whoever they put up as candidates, from president to dog catcher.
Ok, You know Trump better that I do. Will he be the maniac from the 2020 campaign who lost by driving away Independents and some Republicans? He lost to an already brain dead Biden of all people — Biden just hid and let people listen to Trump and vote against Trump? Or will be be restrained, like at the debate, and let people see Biden for who Biden is , and just compare the results of the two administrations? The Trump of the debate will win; the Trump of 2020 has the ability to pull off a loss.
What about Abortion? Pro Life people were a big contributor to his 2016 win? Is he going to actively Pro Life? Neutral? Strategically Silent? Pro Choice? What is it going to be?
Ukraine: Trump has stated he was going to end the Ukraine War quickly by cutting off Ukraine. He later stated that an independent Ukraine was important to the West and the U.S.A. What Biden is doing is incompetent (Surprise!). What is Trump going to do? Cut and run? Face down Putin? Will Ukraine survive long term, and what will it look like?
China: How is Trump going to respond to China bullying the Philippines? Taiwan? South Korea? Japan? Australia? Does Trump think America has a substantial role in South East Asia or not?
How actively does Trump want the government involved in economic development. He was a big and successful deregulator in his first term– a market capitalist. A lot of what I hear now out of MAGA is industrial planning / industrial policy — similar to the Democrats, just with a Republican Flyover Country spin on it. So— Free Markets or a Planned Economy?
He recently rejected a Heritage Foundation plan as “Too Extreme”. Is Conservatism Too Extreme?
Other than not being Biden and getting Revenge on the Deep State ( both good things , to be sure ), I have no idea what Trump is for or what he will do. You do know these things, so tell me what Trump is going to actually do.
I am definitely pro-Trump and all of your questions are sound and important. In this latest debate, I noticed he hedged some on abortion, softening his position while stating the truth. Dobbs does not outlaw abortion. I think he needs to press that point often while continuing to emphasize the horror of the extreme abortionists on the left. On foreign policy issues, he must be careful about specifics while emphasizing his record of world peace. But the border is one of the biggest issues and we all know where Trump stands on that one. He can rage all he wants there.
Abortion went up 15% after they defeated Roe versus Wade.
15 weeks is as good as you’re going to get politically. Take 15 weeks and leave it alone for two decades.
By the way, what level of prenatal care can the government force?
I think Trump is handling abortion pretty well. I don’t know what he would do differently.
He’s always negotiating. He’s been handed a bad hand on this.
Or we could leave it to the Democrats.
Trading with the Chinese mafia was the dumbest thing we ever did.
The second dumbest thing was the structure of the financial system, and all of the inflation that the Fed produced. We ended up importing deflation from China so they could inflate everything else.
I don’t envy the next president’s position.
You can’t make ordinary conservatism and libertarianism work with the structure of the Fed and the financial system right now.
(I don’t think many of you get it, but the financial system and the Fed forces everything to change.)
Everything Moves Left All Of The Time™
http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2017/07/26/the-roundtable-insight-george-bragues-on-how-the-financial-markets-are-influenced-by-politics/
Why do they unleash so much lawfare on him? Why in god’s name are the bar associations so terrible?
Why won’t the deep state let him govern?
Why is the media so biased and worthless?
Why shouldn’t we just give up?
Well said. Democrats are insane. Trump is trying.