2024 Election - Biden vs Trump - The rematch

[temptation]

Debate set for 9/4 in PA, moderated by Fox.

What’s the catch?

[BTF]

On 8/3/2024 at 10:22 AM, temptation said:

Debate set for 9/4 in PA, moderated by Fox.

What’s the catch?

I guess we'll see if Harris will agree to debate in front of an arena full of people. She's a complete airhead, so I doubt she'll agree to that term. Doing something like this in front of an audience is pretty intimidating for someone of her low level intelligence. Love how fake news media is touting Trump as "terrified" to debate this dim-witted woman. 

[swordfish]

"Tampon Tim"  Could she pick a worse running mate than him?  And they call Trump/Vance "Weird"......

A mob of "mostly peaceful" thugs burn a police station to the ground.....unless anyone forgets.....

[swordfish]

The EU sends Elon Musk a letter ahead of the Trump interview to potentially stop him from talking to the former President. 

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/08/12/eus-breton-reminds-musk-of-legal-obligations-ahead-of-trump-interview

SF listened to the Elon Musk/Donald Trump "chat" on X last evening and learned a bunch about the man that solidified my belief since 2012 (yes 2012) that we needed someone like him in charge of the executive branch of government who is not able to be bought and influenced like many members of both houses of Congress.  

Basically Elon flipped the middle finger at the EU and did the interview anyway and has offered the same opportunity to the Harris campaign - even though he has already endorsed Trump.  

[Muda69]

Mr. Greenwald is right.

[swordfish]

So, the DNC has fenced off very large portions of Chicago in preparation for this week - proving once again that walls do indeed work!

(Remembering the previous administration getting turned down after asking for almost $6 billion for a border wall and being told "walls don't work" - although over $175 billion has been sent to Ukraine to protect their border)

AND - According to the story, they will be checking ID's (which I thought was going to be pretty difficult for people to get according to the arguments made by the anti-voter ID wing of the DNC.......)

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/dnc-security-gates-downtown-magnificent-mile/

CHICAGO (CBS) -- The preparations for the Democratic National Convention are in high gear, and on Saturday security measures surprisingly spilled over into neighborhoods nowhere near the United Center or McCormick Place.

At the Dirksen Federal Building in the Loop, security gates popped up overnight to prevent anyone from vandalizing the courthouse, while people living along the Magnificent Mile and Gold Coast discovered unexpected more security gates and road closures miles away from the DNC sites.

"They put this up like 5:30 in the morning. So they kind of did it under the wraps," Chris McClendon. "I live right over here at the Hancock Building. When I came outside, I had to go check the map to see what's going on. I thought this was at the United Center."

Along the Magnificent Mile near Chicago Avenue, roads have been blocked off, police officers are on standby, and large security gates have partially cut off access to sidewalks. The measures popped up overnight, leaving McClendon a little perplexed.

"I had to go back and get my wallet to make sure no one checked me, because I heard they're going to do checks and stuff like that," he said.

 

[Muda69]

Trump's Proposals Would Add $5.8 Trillion to the Deficit: https://reason.com/2024/08/28/trumps-proposals-would-add-5-8-trillion-to-the-deficit/

Quote

The major proposals pitched by the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump would both expand the federal budget deficit—though Trump's plans would require significantly more borrowing over the next decade.

Trump's proposals would add an estimated $5.8 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a fiscal policy think tank at the University of Pennsylvania (Trump's alma mater). Most of Trump's deficit-increasing policies result from proposed changes that would reduce Americans' tax burden. He's called for permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts, which would add an estimated $4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade (unless Trump comes up with offsetting spending cuts). His plan to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits will add another $1.2 trillion.

Harris, meanwhile, rings up an estimated $1.2 trillion in larger deficits over the next decade, primarily by increasing government benefits.

She supports expanding the Child Tax Credit and other welfare benefits delivered via the tax code, which would add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over a decade, according to the Penn Wharton analysis. However, her plan to increase the corporate income tax would offset some of that deficit spending by hiking federal revenues by around $1 trillion.

The biggest difference between the two estimates is the dynamic consequences of Trump's and Harris' tax plans. The tax cuts proposed by Trump would boost economic growth and offset some of the costs of his other proposals. When those consequences are taken into account, the Penn Wharton estimates show that Trump would add merely $4.1 trillion to the deficit over a decade. Harris' proposed tax increases naturally have the opposite impact. As a result, she would add about $2 trillion to the deficit when the economic effects are included.

There is one huge missing piece in the Penn Wharton estimate, which fails to account for the potential costs and fiscal impact of Trump's proposed tariff hikes. The group says that is unable to model that because "key implementation details" are missing, such as what products would be subject to the tariffs and how high the import tax rates would be. "While new import taxes and tariffs could raise several trillion dollars in new revenue over the next decade, they could also lead to revenue losses due to potential retaliatory actions from other governments and other economic dynamics," the Penn Wharton report warns.

It doesn't take an advanced economic analyst to realize that neither Trump nor Harris seem interested in reducing the federal budget deficit. Indeed, Trump borrowed more than $8 trillion during his four years in office, and Harris has been complicit in the Biden administration's efforts to borrow another $4.3 trillion over the past four years. There has been little discussion on the campaign trail of cutting spending or trying to balance the budget (or even stabilizing the debt), even though polls show that voters are worried about the potential consequences of more borrowing.

Some conservatives and libertarians might argue that Trump's deficit-hiking policies should be more acceptable because he's aiming to produce greater economic growth. That might be true if the budget weren't already so wildly out of whack, or if Trump provided some indication that he'd be interested in cutting government spending to offset his planned reductions in future tax revenue.

For now, however, both Trump and Harris are effectively promising to continue the foolish status quo of the past few decades: Giving Americans a more expensive government than we are paying for, and putting the tab on the next generation.

Yep, you can't have meaningful tax cuts without also a meaningful reduction in the size, scope, and power of the federal government.   And these power hungry politicians,  like Mr. Trump & Ms. Harris, are complicit in just kicking the deficit can down the road, dooming this country for our children and grandchildren.

 

[BTF]

8 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Trump's Proposals Would Add $5.8 Trillion to the Deficit: https://reason.com/2024/08/28/trumps-proposals-would-add-5-8-trillion-to-the-deficit/

Yep, you can't have meaningful tax cuts without also a meaningful reduction in the size, scope, and power of the federal government.   And these power hungry politicians,  like Mr. Trump & Ms. Harris, are complicit in just kicking the deficit can down the road, dooming this country for our children and grandchildren.

 

I wouldn't trust that. Every article has an ulterior motive nowadays. Trump understands economics, Harris does not. Bottom line. 

[Muda69]

Why You Shouldn't Fret Much Over Russian Election Interference: https://reason.com/2024/09/09/why-you-shouldnt-fret-much-over-russian-election-interference/

Quote

If you missed the news, Russians are interfering in American politics again. If you missed history, Russians are always interfering in other countries' politics—and so is everybody else, including the U.S. Screwing around with foreign elections is a popular sport for the world's regimes, though it's not clear that websites, bogus social media accounts, and funds funneled to a political-commentary network will return more bang for Putin's rubles than did past social media shenanigans.

 

Russia, Again

"The Justice Department today announced the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as 'Doppelganger,' in violation of U.S. money laundering and criminal trademark laws," according to a September 4 government press release. "In conjunction with the domain seizures, the U.S. Treasury Department announced the designation of 10 individuals and two entities as part of a coordinated response to Russia's malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election."

The indictment specified "the defendants, have deployed nearly $10 million, laundered through a network of foreign shell entities, to covertly fund and direct U.S. Company-I [which] publishes English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube."

"Many of the videos published by U.S. Company-I contain commentary on events and issues in the United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy," adds the indictment. "While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia's interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine."

Based on details in the indictment, Company-1 has been identified as Tenet Media (since shuttered), which managed a stable of right-wing pundits including Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Taylor Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson. The company promoted, the indictment says, "nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone."

Very nefarious, right? Well, maybe not. While Tenet founder Lauren Chen has gone quiet and lost her gig with Blaze TV and channels on YouTube, Tenet's contributors seem baffled by the whole thing.

"The Culture War Podcast was licensed by Tenet Media, it existed well before any license agreement with Tenet and it will continue to exist after any such agreement expires," insists Tim Pool. "Never at any point did anyone other than I have full editorial control of the show."

Benny Johnson also says, "I am the only person who ever had editorial control of my program."

Translated Russian documents outlining a "guerilla media campaign in the United States" caution their intended audience that "in the United States there are no pro-Russian and/or pro-Putin mainstream politicians or sufficiently large numbers of influencers and voters. There is no point of justifying Russia and no one to justify it to." The campaign was meant to exploit "the high level of polarization of American society" by paying commentators to say things they were already saying.

It's not clear they got a lot of mileage from that program.

Not a Lot of Bang for the Ruble

"Numbers like those might sound impressive," independent journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote of the Tenet pundits drawing 16 million YouTube views after receiving $10 million. "But my Twitter analytics informs me that over the past year, my posts garnered 463 million views. So Russia's dastardly scheme reached a small fraction of the people my dumbass posts do."

That's typical for foreign meddling in our already messy domestic politics.

"It would appear unlikely that the Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter could have had much more than a relatively minor influence on individual-level attitudes and voting behavior," concluded a 2023 analysis of Russian interference in the 2016 election published in the journal Nature Communications. The authors added, "we did not detect any meaningful relationships between exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts and changes in respondents' attitudes on the issues, political polarization, or voting behavior."

In 2020, foreign influencers worked against each other, including supposed allies in the latest Axis of Evil. A 2021 report from the government's National Intelligence Council, which reports to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), found "Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party" while "Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump's reelection prospects." Also meddling were forces including "Lebanese Hizballah, Cuba, and Venezuela."

This sort of sounds like a cost-effective means of funding U.S. elections—just let foreign intelligence operations pay for them. But the ODNI report cautioned these schemes "undermine public confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the US." Which means getting us upset and pointing fingers about foreign interference is a goal of these schemes.

The same can almost certainly be said when U.S. agencies join the fun.

Election Interference Is a Game the U.S. Also Plays

"I was alarmed in 2016 by how policymakers and commentators frequently described Russian interference in our election as unprecedented," according to the Wilson Center's David Shimer, who wrote Rigged (2020) on the topic. "Many former CIA officers told me in interviews that they viewed the '48 operation in Italy as the agency at its best. And in the aftermath of that operation, as the CIA's chief internal historian put it to me, the agency and the KGB went toe to toe in elections all over the world."

The National Endowment for Democracy, founded by Congress in 1983, is "dedicated to fostering the growth of a wide range of democratic institutions abroad, including political parties, trade unions, free markets and business organizations." It does so through "grants to support the projects of non-governmental groups abroad." I find the NED and its goals less troublesome than those of Russians funding U.S. political pundits, but I bet lots of people elsewhere disagree. Fundamentally, it's all part of the same international contest to screw with the internal debates of allies and adversaries alike.

So, take reports of Russian interference in American elections with a grain of salt, knowing that Putin is paying Americans to say what they already believe, and the U.S. does the same in other countries. Importantly, none of that interference prevents you from making your own decisions.

Agreed. 

[temptation]

5 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Why You Shouldn't Fret Much Over Russian Election Interference: https://reason.com/2024/09/09/why-you-shouldnt-fret-much-over-russian-election-interference/

Agreed. 

 

[Muda69]

350 million people and the best the uni-party can come up with is Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris?

[temptation]

Congrats to Kamala on becoming the 47th POTUS.  She managed to avoid any fastballs last night, deflect about her positions and record and with the help of the “unbiased” moderators avoid any fact checking on her statements while triggering Trump and allowing him to sink himself.

Truly astounding stuff.

[Muda69]

2 hours ago, temptation said:

Congrats to Kamala on becoming the 47th POTUS.  She managed to avoid any fastballs last night, deflect about her positions and record and with the help of the “unbiased” moderators avoid any fact checking on her statements while triggering Trump and allowing him to sink himself.

Truly astounding stuff.

That doesn't seem to be very hard to do.  The man is his own worst enemy at times.

 

[Muda69]

Trump and Harris Both Favor Tax Hikes That Would Hurt Ordinary Americans:

https://reason.com/2024/09/11/trump-and-harris-both-favor-taxe-hikes-that-would-hurt-ordinary-americans/

Quote

Former President Donald Trump wants to increase tariffs, while his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, wants to raise the corporate income tax rate. They say you need not worry about the consequences of these tax hikes because someone else will pay the tab.

Don't believe them. Both proposals would impair economic growth and impose substantial costs on ordinary Americans, extending far beyond the advertised targets.

Last year, Trump proposed a "universal baseline tariff" of 10 percent, more than four times the 2023 trade-weighted average. More recently, he has pitched a general rate as high as 20 percent. He thinks Chinese imports should be subject to an even steeper tariff: 60 percent, maybe more.

When Trump set off a disastrous trade war by raising tariffs during his first term, he claimed the cost was borne by exporters. "China is bearing the entire burden of the tariffs," his top trade adviser averred in 2019.

Although tariffs are designed to raise the prices of imported components and finished goods, Trump is still pretending they do not hurt American businesses and consumers. Analyses of Trump's tariffs tell a different story.

In 2020, for example, Pablo Fajgelbaum and three other economists reported that "U.S. consumers have borne the full incidence of U.S. tariffs," which was consistent with the results of another study published the same year. Fajgelbaum and his colleagues calculated a net U.S. economic loss of $16 billion a year, which rose to $25 billion when they considered the impact of retaliatory measures by other countries.

The Tax Foundation estimates that a 10 percent general tariff "would raise taxes on American consumers by more than $300 billion a year," "reduce the size of the U.S. economy by 0.7 percent," and "eliminate 505,000 full-time equivalent jobs." Retaliation could "further reduce U.S. GDP by 0.4 percent and eliminate another 322,000 full-time equivalent jobs."

Trump's proposed tariffs, including a 60 percent levy on Chinese goods, "would reduce after-tax incomes by about 3.5 percent for those in the bottom half of the income distribution," the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates. They "would cost a typical household in the middle of the income distribution at least $1,700 in increased taxes each year."

Just as Trump ignores those costs, Harris wants voters to believe that raising the corporate income tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent is simply a matter of "ensur[ing] the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations pay their fair share." But that is true only if you overlook the broader economic impact of that change, which would hurt non-wealthy Americans as employees, consumers, and investors.

"Studies have shown that the corporate income tax is the most harmful tax for economic growth," the Tax Foundation warns. On the flip side, recent research indicates that the Trump-backed 2017 reduction in this tax rate, which moved the U.S. from the high end among industrialized countries to the middle of the pack, "significantly boosted domestic investment."

By raising the cost of doing business in the United States, a higher corporate tax rate inhibits investment, drives down wage and benefit growth, encourages offshoring of jobs, and reduces the return on retirement savings. "Under a 28 percent corporate rate," the Tax Foundation estimates, "GDP would fall by $1.84" for "every $1 of higher revenue."

It gets worse: "In the long run, when the economic effect of that higher rate fully phases in, we estimate an even steeper drop in GDP of $2.19 for every dollar raised." Although Harris promises that "no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes" under her fiscal plan, that does not mean people of relatively modest means will be spared the indirect costs of sticking it to "the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations."

Like Trump, Harris wants voters to overlook the predictable results of her tax agenda. In both cases, Americans should be asking the questions that the candidates are keen to dodge.

Meaningfully cutting government spending is the answer, not raising taxes and tariffs.

 

[Muda69]

https://reason.com/2024/09/11/trump-rambles-about-immigrants-eating-pets-forgets-to-challenge-kamala-harris/

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Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump met for their first presidential debate on Tuesday night. While Harris' performance was hardly masterful, it didn't matter, as Trump was too consumed by conjecture and fake stories from social media to make an effective case for himself.

Harris had arguably the tougher job of the night—to make a positive case for her candidacy while somehow also distancing herself from the unpopular Biden administration in which she has served as vice president—and it's hard to argue that she did so effectively.

For example, on the very first question of the night, moderator David Muir asked Harris, "When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?"

Harris then gave a discursive two-minute response in which she never managed to use the word yes. Given the opportunity to make an affirmative case for President Joe Biden's administration and her role in it, Harris instead gave a meandering answer in which she touched on her upbringing and her policy proposals while never explicitly defending her record since taking office in 2021.

But instead of capitalizing on any of her stumbles, Trump proved unable to overcome his preoccupations with long-disproven claims more suited to your uncle's Facebook page than a presidential debate. Muir asked why Trump helped kill a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year.

Biden and Harris are "allowing…millions and millions of people to come into our country, and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States," Trump replied. "In Springfield, [Ohio,] they're eating the dogs, the people that came in; they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame."

Trump was regurgitating an allegation that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were killing and eating people's pet cats. The claim originated on social media as a third-hand account from an anonymous Facebook post but was picked up by right-wing commentators earlier this week. Even Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), Trump's running mate, repeated the claim on X. ("It's possible, of course," Vance admitted in a later post, "that all of these rumors will turn out to be false," but nonetheless, "keep the cat memes flowing.")

The rumors did, in fact, turn out to be false, and Muir pushed back on Trump's claim: "You bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community."

"Well, I've seen people on television, the people on television say, 'My dog was taken and used for food,'" Trump retorted, doubling down. "So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager, but the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there."

For much of the time since Trump left office, there has been a surge of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. (In fairness, the number of crossings plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic). Springfield, in particular, has struggled with the large number of Haitian migrants who have come to the city since 2020. Gallup polls indicate that over the same period of time, Americans have soured on immigration, with 55 percent of respondents saying in June that migration into the U.S. should be decreased.

Muir's question was a perfect opportunity for the former president to contrast himself with the Biden administration on immigration, one of Trump's favorite topics. Instead, Trump meandered through an unfounded conspiracy theory he had likely seen online and refused to back down when pressed on the specifics, a process that repeated throughout the evening.

It wasn't just that Trump lied, which is to be expected—saying that crime rates are up, when they are down, or claiming yet again that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It's that he seemed so incapable of living in reality that he couldn't even make an effective case for himself or against his opponent. And that seemed to be exactly how his opponent preferred it.

"It was clear she did not want to talk about inflation—not wanting to get drawn into a discussion about Biden's record, in contrast to her own tax plan," wrote Vox's Andrew Prokop. "Asked why she no longer supported some very progressive positions she took while running for president in 2020, she really didn't give a clear answer on why." But given Trump's tendency for incoherent rambling, she didn't have to.

"A similar back-and-forth happened time and again in the debate," noted Reason's Christian Britschgi. "Harris would offer a rudimentary defense of her record, perhaps engage in some pablum about Americans' hopes and dreams, and then bait Trump into going on extended 'too online' free association that's hard to follow for all but the most dedicated Truth Social users."

Given the weakness of the affirmative case she made for herself, the outcome was as good as Harris could have hoped for: watching, bemused, as Trump continually spun up conspiracies and tall tales that only the most perpetually "online" viewers had any hope of understanding.

In a segment on foreign policy, Muir asked about Russia's war in Ukraine, "Do you want Ukraine to win this war?" Trump replied, "I want the war to stop," before then saying, "People [are] being killed by the millions. It's the millions. It's so much worse than the numbers that you're getting, which are fake numbers."

Both the Russian and Ukrainian casualty numbers are disputed, but it's hard to see where Trump gets the idea that the casualties are in fact in "the millions," nor how he feels that he alone possesses the correct figures.

While Russia's actions in Ukraine are indefensible, there is room to criticize the way the Biden administration has provided aid in the conflict and the potential lack of effective oversight—in January, Ukrainian officials were caught embezzling $40 million of U.S.-provided aid.

Instead, Trump couldn't help but spout meandering conspiracies, getting lost in the weeds of his own bizarre claims rather than taking a swing at Harris' policy glass jaw.

 

[temptation]

Can't wait for the CNN/ABC fact check on yesterday's attempted assassination...

"Trump was holding his 7 iron up in a dangerous fashion, thus a good samaritan who just happened to be passing by opened fire on the former president to eliminate any threat."

[swordfish]

In a rare move, the Teamsters Union has decided not to endorse any candidate this election......(even though membership chose a clear favorite)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13865923/Union-1-3-MILLION-members-makes-shocking-2024-election-announcement-despite-data-showing-rank-file-backing-Trump.html

According to data released by the union, rank-and-file picked Trump over Harris by 60-34 percent.

 

[Muda69]

[Muda69]

A Reminder Of What Will Happen When The Filibuster Is Gone: https://reason.com/volokh/2024/09/24/a-reminder-of-what-will-happens-when-the-filibuster-is-gone/

Quote

Today Vice President Harris announced that she would support eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade:

"I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe [v. Wade], and get us back to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom."

Senate Majority Leader Schumer likewise said eliminating the filibuster is "something our caucus will discuss in the next session of Congress." Translation: Democrats will nuke the filibuster if they win the White House and have majorities in both houses.

I agree with the Wall Street Journal that once the filibuster is eliminated for abortion, it will be eliminated for all other legislation.

She's couching this procedural coup as related only to imposing a national abortion law on all 50 states. But anyone paying attention knows that's a ruse. Once the 60-vote filibuster rule ends for one piece of non-budget legislation, it will end for everything.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, recently said he wants to break the filibuster for a national abortion law and pass a bill that would impose California-style voting rules on all 50 states. Good-bye voter identification, and hello nationwide ballot harvesting.

It won't stop there. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says he wants to break the filibuster to restructure the Supreme Court. Sen. Bernie Sanders has recently given up on his former institutional objections and now favors 51 votes to pass his proposals.

Every interest group in the Democratic coalition will demand that its priorities pass with 51 votes too. Think statehood for the District of Columbia. And think Big Labor's PRO Act that would ban right-to-work laws nationwide, among other ideas that would normally require bipartisan majorities to pass the Senate.

This wishlist is not fanciful. Jeff Toobin offered a similar roadmap in 2020.

Once D.C. has statehood, it will become far more difficult for Republicans to obtain a majority in the Senate, and nearly impossible to confirm Republican-nominated judges. And once the lower courts and Supreme Court are packed, there will be no judicial check on whatever a simple majority of Democrats can muster. Within a span of a two years, our country would become nearly unrecognizable. If you think this sort of rapid change is impossible, look at what just happened in Mexico.

This blog is hosted by a non-profit, so I will resist making any sort of political endorsement. Instead, I would urge people who are generally right-of-center to think very carefully about which candidate actually poses the bigger threat to that which they care the most about. I know of several never-Trumpers who today became reluctant-Trumpers. You are not alone.

 

[temptation]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

A Reminder Of What Will Happen When The Filibuster Is Gone: https://reason.com/volokh/2024/09/24/a-reminder-of-what-will-happens-when-the-filibuster-is-gone/

 

"Threat to democracy."

[swordfish]

"I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe [v. Wade], and get us back to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom."

Her mistake is stating that Roe V Wade was a law.  It was a SCOTUS verdict regarding a woman's right to privacy.  If there was a legitimate law passed through Congress, RVW being overturned would have no bearing.  This is a red herring to attempt to get stronger power in the hands of already overtly corrupt lawmakers that would change our system of government from a Democratic Republic to a Majority Rules which is indeed the real threat to democracy.....

Abortion laws need to be brought up to Congress and debated then voted on to settle this issue and install a federal law designed to give that avenue to women with conditions that keep abortion from simply being a form of birth control.

[Muda69]

5 minutes ago, swordfish said:

This is a red herring to attempt to get stronger power in the hands of already overtly corrupt lawmakers that would change our system of government from a Democratic Republic to a Majority Rules which is indeed the real threat to democracy.....

Bingo.

 

[Muda69]

Vance vs. Walz: Should the Government “Do Something”?: https://mises.org/mises-wire/vance-vs-walz-should-government-do-something

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In the final stretch of any presidential campaign, the goal is to attract any remaining undecided voters. This usually means that candidates moderate and soften their messaging, especially in comparison to the proposals and rhetoric used to attain the nomination of their respective parties earlier in the campaign. This was on full display in last night’s vice-presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz.

I also want to discuss a few important things that weren’t said on the debate stage last night, like whether the government should be involved at all in the areas discussed, the true cause of price inflation, the war in Ukraine, and the momentous political realignment signified by Dick Cheney and other neocons endorsing the Harris-Walz ticket.

Bipartisanship and “we gotta do something”

Moderation was the name of the game last night. Walz, for example, emphasized that he is a hunter and gun owner, with no intention to violate the second amendment. On the same issue, Vance said, “we’ve got to have some common-sense bipartisan solutions” regarding gun violence. Walz brought up his bipartisan bona fides in an awkward response to a question about his false statements regarding his whereabouts during the Tiananmen Square massacre. Vance backpedaled his prior positions regarding a national ban on abortion.

It’s difficult to evaluate the credibility and feasibility of presidential campaign promises for a few reasons. Politicians know that they can get away with all sorts of promises during campaigns because any failure to enact what they promised can be chalked up to political roadblocks once they are in office. Also, many voters are extremely shortsighted, meaning that the issues and events that are at the top of their minds in the few weeks leading up to the election are not likely to persist throughout the four years of a presidential administration. To get elected and maintain approval over the long-term, politicians simply need to ride the short-lived waves of opinion and look like they are “doing something” during crises.

It’s unfortunate that these are the political incentives because “moderate” policies, bipartisanship, and “doing something” are anathema to liberty and limited government. Some of the worst things that governments do have broad bipartisan support. “Doing something” in a crisis (real or perceived) is what drives the ratchet effect of government growth. And, as Ron Paul said, “We suffer from too much bipartisanship when it comes to the welfare-warfare state.”

What wasn’t said: The role of government

I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but one thing that struck me during the debate was the complete lack of any utterance regarding the government’s role in managing any given area. On every topic, both candidates seemed to take as given that the government should be involved, should be spending, should be planning, should be “doing something.”

The candidates’ remarks on the topic of paid family leave and childcare affordability is a good example of this. Walz unsurprisingly touted his campaign’s promise to enact a national paid leave program. He said the government should address both the demand side and the supply side of childcare: “we have to make it easier for folks to be able to get into that business and then to make sure that folks are able to pay for that.”

The moderators turned to Vance, who began his allotted time by saying, “I think there is a bipartisan solution here.” Later, he said, “we should have a family care model that makes choice possible,” and that the current federal programs need reforming. Vance said, “we’re going to be able to provide paid family leave [and] childcare options that are viable and workable for a lot of American families.” There was no mention at all of whether the government ought to be involved in employers’ paid family leave offerings or in childcare.

What wasn’t said: The true cause of price inflation

Another thing that was strikingly absent from the debate was the true cause of price inflation. A moderator brought up the topic by saying, “let’s turn now to the top contributor to inflation: the high cost of housing and rent.” Walz’s response was filled with ideas for even more government intervention, including his campaign’s proposal to give $25,000 to some homebuyers. Vance’s response centered around the effect of illegal immigration on the demand for housing and proposed selling off federal lands (a great idea). While Vance’s remarks certainly made more sense than Walz’s, neither side addressed the money supply expanding by trillions of dollars coupled with decades of artificially low interest rates, and the effect that this has had on price inflation and the demand for housing, resulting in a true housing affordability problem.

The United States will continue to suffer boom-bust cycles, civilization-crushing inflation, and fragile financial institutions as long as the Federal Reserve is around. The only time the Federal Reserve was mentioned last night was when a couple Fed studies were referenced regarding the cost of housing and childcare.

What wasn’t said: The war in Ukraine

The moderators did not ask a single question about the proxy war between the U.S. and Russia in Ukraine. Given that the U.S. has squandered at least $175 billion on this dangerous quagmire so far, and that the current administration seems intent on escalation, you would think that something would be said about it.

What wasn’t said: “You can have Dick Cheney”

Amazingly, both Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, in their respective debates, bragged about getting Dick Cheney’s endorsement. It’s true that Dick Cheney, all the other high-profile war-hungry neocons, and two hundred other Republicans from the staffs of George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain have “defected” and endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket. In the recent presidential debate, Harris referred to “the late great” McCain with admiration. Last night, Walz said McCain was courageous for saving Obamacare.

It’s clear that we are in the middle or final stages of a political realignment. This realignment is the result of almost a century of debate and maneuvering between the Old Right, represented by anti-war and anti-New Deal authors like Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garret, Robert Taft, and Frank Chodorov, and the New Right, represented by The National Review and, later, the neoconservatives. Murray Rothbard, who had an insider’s view, wrote a great history of the mid-20th century conservative movement in The Betrayal of the American Right.

The rise of the “America First” conservatives in the Republican Party has been a welcome change from the perspective of those who, like Rothbard, admire the anti-war, pro-liberty Old Right. While the self-identified America First faction is imperfect and a mixed bag, it’s wonderful that they reject the neocon’s decades-long stranglehold on the Republican Party. The expulsion of the neocons should be celebrated by modern Old Rightists, and the Democrats should be ashamed that they are now politically aligned with the likes of Cheney.

Vance, however, didn’t acknowledge it. Vance could have cemented this realignment and triggered the Left into some much-needed introspection by responding to Walz with a simple insult: “You can have Dick Cheney.”

 

[Muda69]

The main reason not to vote for Trump/Vance:

[swordfish]

Quick - There's still time time to indict Trump before the election!  (Entering the final throes of the Harris campaign - throwing the last of the spaghetti on the wall hoping SOMETHING sticks)  

https://nypost.com/2024/10/10/opinion/with-kamala-harris-flailing-the-left-is-resorting-to-russia-hoax-2-0/

“Trump secretly gave Putin Covid test machines,” gasps The Guardian, crediting Woodward.

Axios even parroted Dem charges that Trump’s Putin calls “could be illegal.”

(Quick — there’s still time to indict him yet again before the election!)

Meanwhile, The New York Times spun one of its typical thin-reed, anti-Trump tales (on its front page, natch!) speculating that the ex-prez favors Russia over Ukraine because he believes Kyiv helped Hillary Clinton in 2016 and because he bought Putin’s “shtick” about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Same-old, same-old: For years, the left bloviated about Trump-Russia “collusion” — though endless probes failed to find anything beyond Trump’s habit of over-the-top flattery of people he hopes to influence.

The new charges are equally meritless. Even the Times admits Trump in office took a “relatively hawkish stance on Russia.”

As for violations of the Logan Act, that 1799 law banning private citizens from conducting foreign policy that’s never been used to convict anyone: Countless Democrats (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry) have discussed policy matters with foreign governments after leaving office — often in direct contradiction to the sitting president.

Dumbest of all: the whining that Trump gave Putin COVID testing equipment in 2020. Even if true, what could the Russian strongman do with it?

Remember, there was no treatment or vaccine for the virus at the time; and lots of countries were trading equipment and information in a bid to stem COVID’s spread.

Looks like a cheap way to make Putin feel respected, and so less likely to, say, launch a fresh invasion of Ukraine (which Trump, incidentally, provided with lethal weaponry, breaking from the Obama policy).