A Great Capitalism Pro-Con Haidt Video

Why BO Administration Was "Scandal Free"

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/12/federal-judge-rips-doj-and-state-orders-discovery-on-clinton-emails.php

A federal judge may actually bring some folks from the Deep/Administrative State to account -- note, a weak "may". As noted in the article ...

If you thought the Republicans are now running the Department of Justice–merely because Donald Trump was elected president!–you don’t understand how the federal bureaucracy, the unelected, non-constitutional fourth branch of government, operates.

"The Party" (TP-D) **IS** the government! It is the home team providing all the refs and having the home team coaches do all the "reviews" of the "close plays".

One might note that it has been festering for a very long time. The relevant events are now six years in the past. The Obama administration was astonishingly successful at stonewalling investigations, and its stonewalling continues under a Department of Justice nominally led by a Republican, but staffed overwhelmingly by Democratic Party loyalists.

 BO / Hillary had a KNOWN disaster in Libya (actually two -- they destabilized the country without Congressional approval, THEN they lost an embassy AND and the ambassador)  THEN, they claimed it was due to an internet video rather than being a terrorist attack!

TP and the Deep / Administrative State (but I repeat myself) paid to create the Steele Dossier that is the basis for the Mueller "investigation", and they have going for over two years filling the news with "allegations", but there is still no evidence of Trump collusion with Russia, and really only ridiculously tiny examples of their supposed "interference" -- Fake FB accounts and Ads! Wow, so what????

Do you REALLY think that Russia, a huge energy producing country wanted to have Trump as president fracking everything that can be fracked, building pipelines and taking gas under $2 ???

Unless they are so stupid it really doesn't matter what they do, they wanted Hillary who would have continued the BO putting the brakes on fracking, pipelines, or anything that had a chance to lower oil prices which would result in "more carbon".

BO, Oil and Snake Oil

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/opec-s-worst-nightmare-the-permian-is-about-to-pump-a-lot-more

When BO moves his lips, you always know he is lying. In this example, he takes credit for the rise in oil production when in fact he fought it tooth and nail.

“I was extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords because — you know, I know we’re in oil country and we need American energy, and by the way, American energy production,” Obama told the audience gathered at Rice University’s Baker Institute on Tuesday night. “You wouldn’t always know it but it went up every year I was president. That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people.”

Here he is in 2012 telling us that people who claimed that gas prices could get to $2.50 were "either" lying to you, or doesn't know anything. In BO's case, I'm confident it is BOTH! He doesn't know anything, AND he is lying to you!

Without naming Gingrich, Obama appeared to target that remark Thursday, saying to cheers that "anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn't know what they're talking about -- or just isn't telling you the truth."

Truth and BO ... the ultimate logical impossibility, making a "married bachelor" seem positively realistic! 

Standing Rock and Mars

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/when-did-nasa-go-to-pot.php

In these days of insanity it boggles the mind to try to figure out what is "real" vs "fake", and if even the supposedly "real" has any sort of relationship with actual reality vs the fake reality generated by "The Party" (TP-D) and the Adminstrative / Deep State which is a major part of it's power.

Here we have a NASA administrator talking about problems with going to Mars ...

Lucianne Walkowicz: I can’t give you an example of what a decolonized Mars looks like, but it starts by having multidisciplinary conversations about the things that happen here on Earth. I often give examples of Standing Rock as an Earth-based example of interests colliding, where you have indigenous people opposing a large-scale project that, much like space exploration, ...

Sadly the techical difficulties of Mars colinization are WAY bigger than the question of wether or not the Martians are going to set up a camp and protest. 

As Power Line pointed out, today's NASA  could not have gotten to the moon -- certainly not technically, and politically they would still be arguing over how to not offend the USSR, or appear "competitive".

BOistan has a LONG way to go before there is any danger of us being remotely "competitive" again. We will likely need at least 50 years of Congressional Republican dominance as TP had from the mid 1950's to 1994, plus some 70 vote majorities in the Senate and maybe a 3 term R president like FDR in order to destruct BOistan and get a start on rebuilding something like "America" -- to the extent anyone remembers what that even was!

I think the odds are pretty solid against it!

Trump Accuses of "Mommy Issues"

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/barack-melts-down.php

Never mind ... it was BO.

Obama, speaking at the Obama Foundation Summit on Monday night, said the answers already exist to solve many of the problems facing both the U.S. and the world, but that the nation was not making progress “because we are still confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, mommy issues.”

So what is a "mommy issue"? Taking care of your kids? Getting up in the middle of the night when they are sick? Wiping their tears, etc? Always seemed to me that BO was really really big on the " Mommy State" --  taking responsibility away from independent Americans and telling them what to do from cradle to grave. BOistan is a lot like "Neverland" ... nobody ever grows up.

Let's see "confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism" ... sounds like '09-'16 to me. We got over that, and thank God we don't need to listen to BO bray in his condescending sneer very much these days. BO talked about "filtering his mothers white blood out of his veins" in "Dreams" ... glad we don't hear much of that sort of racism these days!

Oh, BTW, BO and Mooch are now a "Billion Dollar Brand" ... isn't that special! Remember, BO said there is a point where YOU have made enough money ... not HIM! ... and he is happy to condescend to tell you just how much money it is that is enough for YOU!

 

Less Important Politics, Less Political Violence

https://reason.com/archives/2018/10/30/make-politics-less-important?fbclid=IwAR2P70A5QtV_Z9JYiWUJLVMKC3r4wXl0UdmN8BQjlwg0MfPB-DCpKkmMVns

As the reach of government has grown ever larger, it's ability to have huge effects, both positive and negative on peoples lives has grown exponentially. Worse, government must be adminstered by HUMANS who are absolutely as capable of being self centered, tribal, greedy, vindictive, etc as anyone else -- and possibly more, since their work and personal lives are lived in massive beauracracies located in cities that are the seats of political power, thus very aware of the side in the "more or less government" debate.

As the article states ...

Officials can be vindictive creatures, eager to use the power of the state to penalize those whose lifestyles, economic activity, and political affiliations they dislike. Tax power was long ago turned to such misuse, probably because tax collectors had authority to intrude into people's lives before other government employees gained such clout. "My father may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution," Elliott Roosevelt observed of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Obama used "The Chicago Way"  ... "reward your friends, punish your enemies". This is ALWAYS one of the ways that people in power will operate -- and the more power we give them, the more it is worth fighting, up to and including violence to get "your side" in power!

Khashoggi, Reality, Virtue Signalling

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/opinion/trump-saudi-arabia-khashoggi.html?fbclid=IwAR0SBsXnC7IDZ3BJOtx0rBVOvAqm70KkmLKxSeYis0yA9XlK-Um-jJ4A1Iw

In an age without religion, fake virtue signalling is the primary measure of "morality". Over and over many on the left and on the right signal their virtue by ranting against the "hypocrisy" of Trump stating "maybe he did, maybe he didn't" ... but Saudi Arabia remains an ally.

As the NY Times opinion piece concudes, OF COURSE that is the case!

The murder of Mr. Khashoggi was a brutal and grotesque act. The United States has registered its feelings loudly and clearly by putting sanctions on the 17 men who were directly involved in the killing. Punishing the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia will not bring justice for Mr. Khashoggi, nor will it make Saudi Arabia a more dependable ally. It will simply diminish the influence of the United States and embolden its enemies. 

The biblical advice to be as “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” offers sound counsel to anyone who seeks to see their principles influence the world. The advice of Mr. Trump’s critics is long on abstract morality but lacking in strategic wisdom.

It is very hard to imagine "what everyone knows" these days -- so much reasoning is purely emotional and tribal. It is hard for me to imagine that ANYONE seriously wants to give up Saudi Arabia as an ally in the Mideast, especially over the murder of a single journalist. If we wanted to have a serious disagreement, it might be over Yemen for example, but I for one am not interested in going out and trying to figure out the "right" answer to that situation. 

Saudi Arabia and Iraq are locked in a political and Sunni vs Shia religious war in the Mideast that is somewhat comparable to the Cold War with the USSR and the US. They largely fight by proxy, and fighting by proxy tends to be very messy (see Tom Clancey and other novels of the US - Soviet Cold War).

The question in my mind is how many people these days actually believe what they tweet, post, etc about how they are SHOCKED at such things as Trump's comments on the Kashoggi murder!