Student Loan Hail Mary

So Biden decided to forgive $10,000 in student loans for most people, and up to $20,000 for some others. This forgiveness cuts off at income levels of $125,000. All told, it will cover about 45 million people to one degree or another. The media is trying to sell it as something amazing, but it's not. In fact, it really shows the combination of cowardice and stupidity which afflicts Team Biden. Here are my thoughts.

1. First, let's be clear, this is an attempt to bribe young people to vote. That is all this is. It is not an attempt to improve the "system" in any way.

2. Let's also be clear, it won't work. Why?

(a) This does not apply to college students. You need to be paying it back already, so it entirely misses the "young people" they are trying to attract. Stupid.

(b) Check out this quote from the Miami Herald, a Democratic operative, meant to tell you how the "Biden-Harris" (Harris??) forgiveness will bring Heaven on earth:

"With billions of dollars of student debt cleared from the books, millions woke up today to a different financial world. One where they have a higher net worth, more purchasing power and better access to financial products, like mortgages."

That's the sales pitch. The thing is, that's utter crap. Most people have far more loans than $10,000. The average for people with loans is $57,000 and when you owe $60k, having $10k forgiven doesn't mean squat. It doesn't change your financial position in the least. You still owe years of payments. Your payment may go down, but we're talking $20 a month or so. Big whoop. In fact, forgiving $10k feels more like an insult to these people after being told there would be some genuine forgiveness. As for having better access to mortgages and more purchasing power, student loans never really stopped you from getting a mortgage before, so that's nonsense. And the rise in mortgage rates easily offset whatever benefit this gives. So, nice try. As for net worth, net worth is an illusory concept no one thinks about except near-retirees. Don't believe me? What are you worth? And purchasing power, as we said, is like a $20 a month raise. Short answer: this is a big yawn. Just like all the other bills they passed which the Democrats couldn't understand why they didn't win people over either. Way too little... way too late.

3. Now let's talk the politics.

(a) If Biden really thinks this will help, why announce it in the summer when no one is paying attention? Announce it before the election when people care.

(b) By ending the moratorium in January, he's ruining Christmas.

(c) The left is irate because this is regressive: it's working men and women paying off the debt of lawyers and doctors and elitists. That is kind of sh*tty if you think about it... but then, all socialism is.

(d) I think it probably isn't inflationary like some are saying because it won't actually work to give people more money to spend.

(e) People who paid off their loans are pissed because they aren't getting this.

(f) People who didn't go to college are pissed because they get to pay for it.

(g) How is it that once again, big rich institutions seem to get off scot-free? Big Banks, Dodd Franks. Big Health, Obamacare. Big Pharma. Big Auto. Big Tech. Big Billionaire. Now Big College, they all seem to do extraordinarily well when the Democrats claim they are helping the people. In this case, we're talking about colleges who have grown huge and fat and rich on pushing these loans on students with no choice, and yet they don't even get a slap on the wrist out of this? Why didn't Biden pay for this with a tax on college endowments? They have trillions. They could pay for it. They caused it. That makes sense. It makes no sense a McDonald's worker should pay for this so Harvard doesn't have to. Terrible policy, terrible optics.

This is one of those moments that shows that Biden's a fool. If he was going to do this, he needed to go big: forgive it all, not just a piece of it. Failing that, makes this meaningless. And if he was going to do this, he needed to take the money from the people who wrongly took it in the first place: colleges. Fix the system. Doing that would have been popular even with people who never had loans or paid them off. Instead, he put the cost on the least deserving people. He has no balls and no brains, so he tried to split the difference between bold action and doing nothing and he got virtually nothing but a lot of anger for his trouble, and he protected his Big friends once again.

This is utter crap. Oh, I will take his money, but this only makes me like him even less.

As an aside, Biden's approval is "up" to 44%. Keep four things in mind when you see the next flood of articles claiming momentum. First, if you were told a President's approval was 44%, would you see anything good in that number? It only appears "good" because it's been down to 42%. Secondly, 44% and 42% are in each other's statistical margin of error, which means it hasn't actually moved. Third, it's summer. As I told you last time, things drift up in the summer because people lose their intensity while they are sitting at the beach. The real number that matters is when people come back -- just like the stock market, which always rallies in low volume trading over the summer and then tells you reality in September. Fourth, if Biden's "string of victories" (as the media is calling it) or "momentum" can only produce a 2% increase well below the natural level of support for a candidate of either party then his victories are Pyrrhic at best. A real victory usually comes with some benefit.

Student loan forgiveness won't help this.

Thoughts?

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What About Liberal Hate?

I don't condone Trump, but let me point something out: the left is far more guilty of the things they claim he's doing now.

Consider this quote from Politico:

"But perhaps the raid’s most sobering result is the increased yet unavoidable risk it ultimately poses of widespread civil breakdown. Watching agents search Mar-a-Lago could turn a large enough portion of Trump’s far-right base decisively against federal authority that its defiance could shift from episodic to systemic, eventually leading to regular armed resistance to federal law enforcement on the order of Ruby Ridge and potentially even Waco."

This is such hypocritical crap.

For months, the left condoned and endorsed whatever violence black people wanted to commit all in the name of racial justice. In fact, they continue to go out of their way to tell those same black people that they are oppressed, they are victims of white hatred and oppression, and any actions they choose to take are entirely justified.

What is more likely to cause violence? Trump being a douchebag calling out to a handful of drunken white trash to be angry at the FBI or thousands and thousands of politicians and black "leaders" nationwide telling black people their lives are hopeless and they should lash out. Yet, not a single liberal condemned the violence that ensued. There were no articles at Yahoo or Politico telling blacks to stop burning down cities, warning each other they were encouraging violence, or worrying about civil breakdown. They wanted it.  In fact, they attacked the police for trying to stop it.

Or how about Portland and Seattle and other cities where Antifa went about turning city blocks into war zones, burning down Federal buildings and police stations, and killing people who happened into their wave of unrest. Again, not a single worry about civil unrest was mentioned. To the contrary, when liberals offered a criticism, it was aimed at "right wing agitators" who came to protest the violence.

So don't give me any crocodile tears now about civil unrest.

And let me add this: as much as leftists like to pretend the "paranoia" on the right is somehow unfathomable, it's pretty damn obvious where it comes from: you. Trump takes some documents with him and liberals scream that this is the end of the world. They send in the FBI. They write articles saying 'who cares what documents they were, we've got him!' At the same time, Hunter Biden genuinely endangers national security with documents he never should have had and could only have gotten from his dad and the same left dismisses it and covers it up. They ignore Hillary's illegal emails or her campaign hacking into the White House computers. Trump "endangers" democracy by questioning the election... yet Gore doing far worse against Bush was just him pointing out something suspicious. Do you remember when Trump got elected, how the left create a "resistance" to Trump and encouraged people (including state governments and federal workers) to sabotage him?  That was totally cool.  Yet, questioning the election was a crime?  Oh hey, Trump tried to convince electors to vote for him no matter how their state did.  Terrible... only, the left did this under Bush Jr. and Trump already.  That was totally cool.

And then there's the obsession. Show me a review of a movie or book by a known conservative that isn't a smear. Liberals write childish, terrible crap and these same reviewers praise it like it was sent from Heaven. Leftist first ladies are fashion icons, conservative first ladies are dragon ladies or dirty immigrants. They loved Trump's daughter until Trump ran. Then they tried to destroy her company with bad reviews and cancelled deals. Restaurants where political conservatives eat get death threats and so many false reservations they are completely disrupted, even if the conservative has no connection to the restaurant except choosing to eat there. Yet, somehow, this shouldn't be seen as hateful and biased... dare I say, Naziesque?

Make no mistake, America is polarized, but the blame lies with the leftist collective that seeks to destroy those with whom it disagrees, that seeks to control through fear an intimidation lies and cancel culture, which defines its own conduct no matter how heinous as justified and finds pretend threats in any action by its opponents.

Now Biden's going to host a summit on hate? Well, Joe, you've been pushing hate since you ran for election and your allies are all about hate. Are you going to start with that or are you going to pretend your hate is cool and anyone who opposed you is the "real" hater? 

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A Couple Quick News Items

Good evening, America. This... is the evening news. I am not Walter Cronkite. But I will comment quickly on a couple things.

• First, as I kind of suspected, Trump is pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. As DOJ struggled to explain why it acted against him other than pure liberal lap-dog-ism, and liberals exposed themselves by writing articles that basically said "Who cares if what Trump did is wrong or not, we have him on a technicality! Let's burn him at the stake," Trump just couldn't shut his idiot mouth and he started spewing idiocy and contradiction and shifting his defenses. That makes him sound like a liar. He also couldn't help but dabble in insurrection speech, which makes him dangerous. Idiot.

• Liz Cheney is up for re-election today. I am hoping she loses. As much as I despise Trump and think he's a terrible creature, nothing he did justified voting to impeach him. That was a partisan smear and she fell for it.  Cheney's decision to support the Democrats in that gave them aid and comfort in their obsessive anti-democratic hate and is unforgivable. I hope she gets blown out.

• Henry Kissinger thinks we're on the verge of war with Russia and China. He's completely wrong. I'll write about China in a couple days, but the truth is Russia and China now realize neither is a match for us. Neither wants to risk a war with us, which was not the case a year ago. Interesting story there... Either way, this exposed Kissinger's one-dimensional thinking which cost us the Vietnam War.  Genius, my *ss.

• The teacher's union in Minnesota has reached an agreement whereby white teachers will be fired first and rehired last despite their seniority. I should be outraged, but seeing as how teachers are the last big block of leftist behavior, I like that they will now be forced to pay for their views. It's like when a vicious dog owner gets mauled by his own creation: well deserved. So might I suggest reverse slavery or "involuntary" transsexual conversion for Minnesota teachers? And while we're at it, how many half-black, half-Asian handicapped left-handed Jews are employed by the Minnesota school systems? Not enough, my friends, not enough. It's time we had the courage to admit this.

• The Democrats' "environmental" bill included a $7,500 tax credit for buying an electric car, with the idea being to make it cheaper to buy one of those. Right after it passed, GM raised the price of its electric cars by $7,500. Surprise. Not only does this utterly wipe out the purpose of the bill, it shows what for a corrupt joke GM and the environmental lobby are. With friends like these, the environmental movement really doesn't need enemies.

• Amnesty International is in trouble. They've issued a report accusing the Ukrainians of war crimes for defending themselves, and thereby endangering the lives of their civilians. Almost every leftist peace group calls this utter crap, and yet Amnesty International is getting pissy defending itself. Credibility meet toilet.

• Biden will extend the student loan freeze until after November this month. The left is making a big deal of it, but he wants to use this as election fodder, so he will extend it beyond November as a form of "vote for me or you will need to start paying your loans!" Then he'll forgive $10,000 sometime around the next election. The problem is (1) he's pissing people off by leaving them hanging, so he won't get the grateful response he expects, (2) he's pissing people off and prolonging the piss-off-period for those who already paid off their loans, and (3) $10,000 is worthless. Think about it. If I promised to forgive 10% of your mortgage, would you really truly care or would it not affect your life at all? Biden's a fool to think this will help. This is like handing a burger to those guys on the street corner with the "will work for food" signs... just try it and see if they're grateful.

Thoughts on China coming soon and some stuff on how liberalism is failing pretty seriously.

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More Thoughts On The Raid

Now that we know a good deal more, much by inference, I have more thoughts on the FBI raid.

(1) This warrant is crap. It does not identify what justified the search. It is far too generic. I would not have granted it. It's possible the required affidavit says more, but why release a pointless warrant without it? That suggests DOJ wanted to fool the public, not enlighten the public.

(2) The fact they led with the copy of Roger Stone's clemency suggests a political motive. As I noted in my comment, you don't lead off with irrelevancies in a warrant, you lead off with the punch. This suggests they were angry or politically motivated. In fact, the utter lack of description of content regarding the secret documents suggest they don't even know what's in them... which is not a basis to go barrelling in.

(3) If the documents were a national security threat, why didn't they come get them already? That's terrible negligence by the government to leave genuinely dangerous documents out there. On the other hand, if they aren't genuinely dangerous, why get them this way, especially when the issue was being negotiated already and the documents have been stored the way the government requested? This reeks of thugism.

(4) Someone leaked the idea that these documents involved nuclear information. The Washington Post ran with it. That now seems utterly false, and the Post NEEDS to expose who told them that. It is unacceptable that someone in government would make that claim falsely. (And if it is true, I ask again why they waited to seize them?). This leak had the potential to destabilize a lot of countries and alliances and possibly lead to war, yet someone in the Biden administration happily made this apparently false leak just to get Trump. That's unacceptable. And the Post will be part of the cover-up if they don't dig into this and expose it.

(5) Trump's defense that he declassified these documents in BS, but it won't matter. Whether or not he gets charged, this will catapult him back to the top of the opposition. Getting elected is another matter, but if the intent was to kill him off, this tossed him an amazing lifeline. In fact, this will prove to a lot of people that the Government monolith is in conspiracy against him for being an outsider. I can't say that's wrong either.

(6) The next Republican President needs to go after Hunter and Joe Biden after this. Hunter had top secret documents he wasn't authorized to have (and could only have gotten from Joe) on a laptop overseas. That's far, far, far worse than anything Trump did. Father and son need to be in jail.

(7) I get the feeling there is a particularly dirty trick in all of this. We have been told some of the documents Trump took involved information about the President of France. The suggestion is this was information generated by espionage agencies and needed to be kept secret. Yet, the warrant does not identify this information as classified, suggesting it is something personal like a gift or letter or something that should go to the archives, but isn't sensitive. Once again, whoever leaked this information potentially wounded our relationship with France all to get Trump. That is unacceptable and needs to be answered.

(8) When I listen to DOJ's pronouncements, they are very much splitting legal hairs to such a degree that I can only conclude their conduct is designed to deceive. Unacceptable.

(9) There is no way Biden wasn't told. If his Attorney General knew, then Biden knew.

(10) This reeks of bubble thinking to me. You get a bunch of smug Washington insiders in a room and they start to spew their hate at Trump and their love of their turf and they work themselves in a lather over the idea that Trump broke some insider rule they see as sacrilege.  The problem is, the public sees those rules as petty. I doubt very much at this point there will be anything in these documents the public will accept as sufficiently sensitive to justify this.

(11) There is no benefit of the doubt here. At this point, DOJ will need to provide detailed proof before I will believe anything in these documents is truly is sensitive. General descriptions are unacceptable.

(12) This was a huge mistake. A huge number of people no longer trust the government and doing this intensifies that and adds to those ranks. If DOJ wanted to be seen as credible this was the last thing they should have done. This is the sort of thing which undermines faith in government to such a degree that government starts to break down.

Thoughts?

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Historical Ignorance

Biden apparently met with two "expert" historians who warned him that the US was "facing a crisis similar to the tensions before the Civil War and the fascist movement." Let me share my thoughts on that steaming pile of bullship.

First, let's assume it is true. How do you respond if you are told the country is tearing itself apart and civil war is likely?

(a) You try to calm things down with a pleasant speech telling people we are finding a new center ground.

(b) You call in the opposition to find common ground and you pledge to work together to unite. You might even work on some bills that help both sides calm their people.

(c) You falsely and recklessly accuse whites of murdering Muslims, you appoint a black Supreme Court justice because she's black and radical, you swear to fight for the chemical castration of kids as young as possible to make sure gays have allies, you force through a series of laws with zero bipartisan support, you use rhetoric to destabilize the independent Supreme Court that keeps you in check, and you send the FBI to harass the leader of the opposition.

If you're Biden, you seem to think (c) is your best bet to calm things down. Said differently, Biden has chosen to stoke hatred at the very time he's being told we are in a dangerous period where hate is so out of control it may lead to the country fracturing. That's a Hitlerian choice. And if we had a competent news establishment, they would ask him why he's acting that way... but alas.

Secondly, as someone versed in both logic and history, I can tell you that the comparisons are unmistakable wrong. The Civil War happened at a time when two things came together: (1) a moral outrage (slavery) that divided the country by region and (2) a demographic power switch which meant the divide was no longer an unwinnable battle of two equals; the South had peaked and would soon become powerless vis-a-vis the North if it didn't act. That meant it needed to strike or lose on demographics. Add in that the moral outrage was enough to incite violence on both sides AND that it left like-minded people all gathered in separate parts of the country, making it easy to split off, and you had a war of desperation between two firmly established empires. There is no such moral issue today and no divide. Maybe masks, but that issue has defused with pro-mask people losing, and even then, it was never a regional thing with people grouped in a way to lead to war. It also wasn't enough to bring normal people to violence... just the nuts. The analogy stinks. Not even Trump's army of morons can make this analogy work. They are tiny in number. January 6 tells us they number under a thousand... and they turn to total p*ssies when facing a judge.  Hardly the stuff of Civil Warriors.

As for fascism, let's not forget that we are talking about Germany, not the US -- our fascists turned fast once the war began. Germany had just had its government destroyed, it's might neutered and was working under crushing foreign debt and humiliating occupation. Nothing like that exists today. The economy was in super-hyperinflation, unlike today. The fascists and communists (funny how leftist historians forget them) were running battles in the street with the Army and a nationalized police force supporting the fascists. They won 43.9% of the vote on their way to taking power and they did so under a very different system than ours -- they would have been shut out here. Again, where is the analogy? Oh, it sounds great to liberal ears to think that the modern right is the same as Southern slave owners and Nazis, but the reality is those are the intellectual ancestors of the left, not the right, and nothing in either scenario is analogous to today. If anything, cancel culture is as analogous as we get to the Nazis in this culture and cancel culture is a "progressive" thing.

So the analogies are crap.

That said, there is an analogy to the past today: the 1960s. The 1960s were a time when leftist agitators became terrorist cells and started blowing things up to promote their causes. They staged protests against America's institutions, aided and abetted by the ACLU, and they invaded and ultimately destroyed the Democratic Party. The Trumpees are the modern version of that, but too stupid to be as effective as the Weather Underground or Red Brigades, who actually were not at all effective either. But then... so is Antifa, on the left. Moreover, modern Progressives are re-enacting the Great Leap Forward in China, where you denounced those you didn't like for lack of purity and their lives were destroyed without trial. This is cancel culture and SWATing and the censorship being imposed by leftist corporations, especially tech corporations. If you want an analogy, that's it. But Biden can't admit that because liberals don't like to be blamed for their rotten behavior.  Only the other guy's evil matters.

So Biden's experts are wrong.

The thing is, I'm not surprised a liberal "expert" would be ignorant of their field... or intentionally dishonest. Think of the number of reports from liberal environmental scientists which turned out to be utterly false or used flat out made up data, or the way liberals need to silence debate to make their point. How about those who ridiculously accept the idea that 8.5% inflation equals 0%  or that we aren't in recession or can't imagine what's wrong with a man in a dress in a girl's locker room. There was a college professor the other day who said he studied inflation and found it was all tied to the war in Ukraine, not progressive labor demands of $15 an hour or Biden's policies. The thing is, inflation began the day Biden took over (right when a lot of those $15 an hour rules kicked in) and took off during his reign. The Ukraine war didn't start until February 24 of 2022. By that point, inflation had already risen from 1% under Trump to 7% by the end of 2021. So THE MOST the Ukrainian invasion could have added was the extra 1.5%. Yet, this "expert" somehow missed that... because he's a propagandist, not an expert. Just like those claiming the rise in crime in progressive cities isn't really a rise in crime if you squint right at the data.  In fact, that seems to be the problem with modern liberalism, it's propaganda based, not fact based.

Thoughts

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Trump v. FBI

Here are my current thoughts on the FBI thing.

(1) Obviously, Trump is a piece of sh*t.

(2) Obviously, the left is OBSESSED with Trump to a shocking degree, even for them.

(3) Politically, this raid by the FBI is a cluster of epic proportions. Why? This makes the FBI look terrible. This reeks of a politicized hit. It is the sort of thing the FBI needs to be above to have any credibility. Add the fact that (1) it was exposed that their last investigation of Trump (Russian election interference) was conducted by two lovers who were anti-Trump and wanted to bring him down and the FBI did little to stop them. (2) The former FBI director harassed Trump and then went on an anti-Trump talk show and book writing bender after being removed from office. (3) It's funny how they never seem to be able to find any crimes committed by Democrats even when it is beyond clear those Democrats committed crimes. Hillary's emails are just one example. So was Hillary's campaign hacking into White House computers -- far far worse than this. Yet, the FBI turned a blind eye. And look at Hunter Biden. It is clear/certain that he was taking bribes from foreign powers for favors done by his father who was getting part of the bribes. It is clear he was doing drugs with hookers as he carried around a laptop with top secret documents he could only have gotten from his father... and then lost the laptop. Yet, again, the FBI does nothing. In fact, it tried to cover it up. It is clear the FBI will pursue those who are politically out of favor but will protect those who are not. They have no credibility anymore.

(4) The left is falling all over themselves to explain how this wasn't biased, but they are lying. Look at the following quotes from an article rushed out by "legal experts" and my comments below that. My comments come from reality as an attorney who has dealt with these things:

"Former FBI agents, including one who’s already investigated Trump, and ex-federal prosecutors told Yahoo News that obtaining a search warrant is a lengthy, difficult process, designed to be immune to political pressures."

Not true. You can get one in minutes and it takes almost nothing. I've seen them gotten over the phone with the agent talking about vague conclusions based on years of experience.

"The bureaucratic, box-ticking process by which the FBI obtains a warrant under ordinary circumstances is complicated enough, they maintain, without factoring in the enormity of sniffing around an ex-president’s digs."

Ha.

"'To obtain a search warrant, you need two things,' according to Barbara L. McQuade, the former U.S attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. 'You have to have conducted a sufficient investigation beforehand to demonstrate probable cause that a specific crime has been committed, and you need to show convincingly that evidence of that crime will be found at the location. These are not blind fishing expeditions.'"

True, but false. Probable cause is all an officer needs to get one and it can be manufactured with any statement by a witness including the agents themselves swearing that in their experience this search will likely yield results. Once the National Archives said Trump turned over documents but not all of them, that gave the FBI enough to find probable cause anywhere they want to search. All the words this woman uses are meant to distract. A specific crime means you can point to the code book to name the crime, e.g. Speeding. "Convincingly" is double speak, it just means your probable cause makes sense to the judge. A "sufficient investigation beforehand" means nothing at all, just that you looked and saw or heard something to give you probable cause. "I saw him unload boxes on television" is "sufficient investigation." Probable cause here is no different than what it takes a cop to pull you over and search your car. He crossed the white line. He was driving erratically. I smelled a substance I believed was drugs. He was driving in the part of town where drugs are sold (I've seen that one work). Probable cause simply means rational reason to believe there is evidence of a crime here. Only the dumbest of cops can't find probable cause, especially when you can judge shop to find a friendly one like the FBI does.

"Political affiliation, as a matter of Department of Justice policy, cannot have any influence on that process."

And yet, it does routinely. This is also contradicted by the very next statement in the article:

"Given the sensitivity of this case, McQuade said, Wray will have almost certainly been briefed in detail and had to have approved the move to obtain a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. Even then, there was never any guarantee it would be granted."

So, you can't worry about political affiliation, but this would need to go through the head of the FBI's office because it involves someone important, i.e. political sensitivity. So, uh, it does matter?

"The warrant was issued by a federal magistrate judge in Florida. 'Even if you don’t believe politics isn’t involved in criminal investigations,' McQuade said, 'magistrate judges tend to be especially neutral and detached, because they’re selected by U.S. district court judges – entire benches – and so you end up with people who are really quite moderate.'"

Good grief. I have yet to deal with a magistrate who isn't political or biased in some direction. That idea that these people are moderate is laughable. Has this woman never been to court? Or is she lying?

I have been involved in the process from the law enforcement side. I have friends on each side. I've dealt with dozens of judges and magistrates. I've worked with FBI people. None of the claims of difficulty and lack of bias above are true. This is pretending that the existence of procedure prevents substantive bias. It does not. And the left will tell you this when it involves black guys going to jail or wiretaps against Muslims. Yet somehow, now that we are talking Trump, these same failed procedures are sacrosanct?

(5) The real disaster here is that this will save Trump. Trump was done. Outside of CPAC, not a lot of conservatives or Republicans wanted him back. This makes him a victim of the system and people will rally around him... at least until the election.

(6) Talk of this sparking a civil war is nonsense. That's theater for commentators and people trying to garner ratings.

Ug.

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Told You So...

One of the things I've run into in life, which I find most annoying, is how over the top people get when they are wrong. That's what the media is doing with Biden right now.

To set this up by example, I used to visit a number of sports blogs until I realized they were just awash in toxic people. I was there to talk about sports, others were there because they had a lot of anger and intense inferiority complexes. These people, not coincidentally, tended to be morons. What's relevant to my point today is something that would happen whenever I made some comment that required a bit of insight. For example, reading the tea leaves, it would become clear that the team intended to trade a particular player, but they hadn't said that yet. Instead, they said the opposite. I would mention the trade was coming and these morons would descend and scream what for a moron I was. "The cooch sed he got big plans for him, they ain't traden him you dumbsh*t!" Presumably, that made them feel good. //shrugs

Now to be clear, this isn't personal, in case you're wondering. My skin is much too think to care what people like that say and I wasn't the only one attacked by these morons. In fact, it has to be to be a lawyer, because bad lawyers do the same thing -- you should see them gloat as they fall right into your trap. They will positively gloat as they put the figurative gun to their head and pull the trigger over and over with a huge smile on their face thinking they've got you, and your job is to let them think they're right... until it's time to spring the trap.

Back to my point, once these morons thought they were right about something and I was wrong, they were relentless for the next couple months gloating about how smart they was and how dumb I be. And you couldn't prove you were right because what you predicted hadn't happened yet, so you couldn't stop them. In fact, even as it became more and more clear I was right, they still didn't stop. If anything, they got nastier. And the more the rumors started to hit that a trade really was coming, the bigger the gloating got... right up to the point the trade happened. Then they switched gears and complained that the coach was an idiot and lied and blah blah blah. Whatever.

The same is happening now.

Biden is finished. He's the worst president ever. People view him as a joke. The left wants him gone before he destroys them. People see the economy as the worst in their lives. And nothing the Democrats just did changes any of it. Their bills are far too little, far too late, and aimed at the wrong people. Not a thing they've done will resonate positively with anyone outside of a few big companies and some leftist technocrats. Good for Big Pharma, bad for big Public. Good for GM, irrelevant for drivers.

Yet, the media is in gloat mode. Every morning, I am greeted now with increasingly euphoric articles and headlines. It began with cautious talk of momentum. It moved on to them being on a roll. It shifted to "have they turned the tide" and "why wouldn't they win in November with these 'accomplishments'?!" Today some gloater claimed "Biden is on a streak any president would envy." Really? Dual disaster pandemics, worst economy ever, possible war with China, a Supreme Court unraveling 60 years of his policies, hyperinflation, rumored housing collapse, an out of control crime problem, out of control homelessness, a surge of illegal migrants, race hate as high as the 1960s, a stripped down budget that eliminated all the key things Democrats wanted from healthcare to drug costs to taxes, an environmental bill the enviro-left derisively calls a "love affair with the car" (and which no electric car marker actually qualifies for) or a gun bill the left whines "doesn't ban a single gun" and which really only pays to add cops to schools. That's an enviable streak? God good, what are your standards? Yet, the articles get more and more euphoric. The cheerleader left has even turned Biden in a comic book superhero.

These are the annoying moments. The cause has occurred but the effect has not yet arrived. In the meantime, those who don't understand cause and effect celebrate the cause and rub it in everyone's face. They will sing a different tune (most likely betrayal and conspiracy) once effect arrives, but for now they are obnoxious f*cks and there's not a thing you can say to make them see the effect coming down the tracks. Hang in there folks. Reality always arrives.

Thoughts?

As an aside, I once named five wide receivers I figured would be available for trade if Tampa wanted them. My comment was mocked by the moron-atti because "everyone knows" those guys were too good for their teams to trade them. Wat ar you stupid?! All five were traded within two months of my comment. Surprise. I didn't even bother saying "I told you so"... what would have been the point?

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No-mentum

The media is engaged in wishful liberal thinking again. They are writing articles about the Democrats having "momentum" and Biden recovering and maybe even pulling things out. Good luck. We got these articles too as Biden was cratering. Yay, the Democrats turned the corner... they "reset" things... Smoosh. Wishful thinking. Same thing now.

The first thing the media is trumpeting is the "passage" of various Democratic bills. Wrong.   First, none have actually passed yet, so let's wait and see if they actually do. Secondly, why would any of this help the Democrats when nothing else they passed did? Remember the infrastructure bill? No one else does. People don't even know it passed and don't give any credit for it doing so. Remember gun control? Did nothing, and Biden kept falling even after that. Black chick on the Supreme Court? Yawn. What was her name again? Nothing they have done has resonated because none of it helps people or alleviates their concerns. It's games for elites. So now they pass some change to the tax code which will affect only a few thousand companies (assuming they don't plan around it) and we're supposed to care? Fat chance.

The show votes don't help either. In fact, when the Dems tried and failed to protect abortion, they didn't get cheers, they got jeers = "why didn't you do this before?" Uh.

Secondly, the economy. Biden's claim we're not in recession was endlessly mocked and undercut all those who tried to back it. Now they are trumpeting a job growth number as miraculous. July produced 528,000 jobs! OMG! See! No recession! People will drop to their knees and worship Biden now. Only, (1) summer job numbers are always high because of a vast number of seasonal jobs, so those aren't real jobs... they vanish before the election, (2) they are missing the fact a huge number of people are getting second jobs to cover Bidenflation, (3) February saw 700,000 new jobs and yet Biden was getting blasted for a bad economy; why would now be different? Bidenflation is worse. And (4) for as much as Biden claims this is some sort of economic miracle, we aren't even back to pre-Pandemic numbers. NPR proudly claimed that with July we have recovered exactly the amount of jobs we lost during the recession. Huh. First, doesn't that contradict the idea that we are in a strong growth period if all we've achieved is getting back to normal... net zero from 2019? Secondly, don't forget there are three million more people here now, so even getting to zero is not really getting to zero. We're still around 1.5 million short for that. Third, NPR is lying. At the end of 2019, there were 158 million jobs in the US. After Biden's July miracle, there are 151 million. That's 7 million below zero. People know this too. They see their job situation and they don't feel like the future is boundless.

Third, inflation is getting worse. We just saw another spurt this month. Eggs are $1.27 a dozen right? Nope. They were $2.70 in June and were $4.27 a dozen this week. Lots of other things are jumping too. I get these dark chocolate bars for health reasons (they taste terrible). They are $1.50 a piece on sale.... or, were. This week they went on sale for $3.00. On sale. Thanks Joe. Coke, McDonalds, Unilever and others all announced price hikes at the end of July. Basically, everything you buy just took a jump up. People feel that pain and, as long as they do, no claim about more jobs being around will matter.

But gas is down, right? Sure to about an 80% increase from where it was before Joe got his policies started. So "down" is still nearly double of normal. And the only reason it's down is (1) we are in a recession and demand is down, (2) tax chicanery and release of the strategic reserve oil, and (3) nothing moves in straight lines. This last is the most important. Things go up or down for a while and then turn around and do a 20% retreat before taking off again. It's the human cycle. The stock market calls it a false recovery or a "dead cat bounce." It's a retrenchment before the next surge is all. 20% is about 80 cents, so look for it to start up again after hitting around $3.20... right before the election.

Fourth, Biden killed an Arab. Yay. Except, that would be an Arab no one could name, few remembered, who had been declared dead before, and who was killed in Kabul (assuming it's him) where he wasn't supposed to be according to Biden. So Biden's Kabul disaster is worse than believed. And how does this help people who can't afford eggs anyways? Oh, and right after Biden did this, Pelosi went to Taiwan and set off a Chinese Tantrum that is dominating foreign policy news and made everyone forget whatshisname.

Biden will get a small bump in the polls because it's summer and people care less and won't be as vocal and because he hit bottom already and he is due his dead cat bounce. But none of it's real. None.

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Abortion Vote

For those who somehow missed it, Kansas voted to keep abortion legal last night by a 59%-41% margin, or 2-1. Drudge is calling this a "Red State Shocker" as are others, but it shouldn't shock anyone. Some thoughts.

First, this is not a shock. If you want to believe the public is split on abortion, you can look at polls comparing the pro-life and pro-choice label. Then you will find it's basically 50/50. A nation torn apart, right? Only... when you look beneath the label, you'll find that most pro-lifers want abortion to be legal and most pro-choicers want it to be regulated and everybody is sick of talking about it. The end result is somewhere around 80% of the public, regardless of label, want legal, safe and rare... and off the news cycle.

Kansas voters are probably the most fringe-right in the nation and Kansas has a long history of anti-abortion efforts (including violence). If any state was going to represent the best-case-scenario for pro-lifers, it was Kansas. Yet, they lost 2-1. This will probably prove to be the high water mark too for the public's support to ban abortion. In places like Colorado, I would expect around 31%. In California, lower than that. Soooo that raises some questions:

1. What does this mean? It means, as I predicted, abortion will become the law of the land in state after state. It will probably happen quicker than I expected because of the overwhelming percentages. That kind of margin can stiffen a lot of backbones. It will also be more convincing because it will come from voters in most states before the Feds finish it off to get states that won't let their voters decide.

2. This will not end the political pro-life movement. That won't stop. But it will end public tolerance for the debate. What is their next strategy? Probably court-imposed policy: like the left did with abortion, get the courts to impose a ban.

3. Will it change the minds of GOP legislators? That's the most interesting question. It has to give them pause. The problem is the primaries are still largely dominated by the Religious Right. But the public will be increasingly hostile to people who raise this issue. So how do you placate both groups? Or do you even try? Will there instead be a shift away to a neutral position? On the gay issue, most GOP candidates simply stopped talking about it or even embraced it once they knew that 60% of their own voters favored it. Will the same thing happen with abortion? I suspect the answer is most will try to never to talk about it. But we'll see. The guy to watch here is Desantis. He's savvy and he's on the front line on this. He needs to solve this issue before he can become the GOP front runner. Trip up, and his voters run back to Trump. I would bet he shifts to talking about needing to change the hearts and minds of voters but also shifting this to voters to decide.

4. The Democrats think this will give them momentum in the midterms. I don't see that. It will only give momentum where there is a referendum, and that can't really be done before November (four states will have such referendums - California, Montana, Kentucky, and Vermont). So abortion remains a nonissue this cycle. After that, all bets are off. That said, I think the referendum in Montana may hurt the GOP. I doubt Kentucky will hurt because I suspect the GOP there will switch sides. There is no GOP in California. And the one in Vermont is pro-choice.

Ultimately, I'm not sure what the Supremes thought was going to happen when they issued this decision, but I doubt this was it. This is called an unintended consequence. What worries me is not abortion itself, what worries me are the other unintended consequences of their decision. When you mess with 50 years of settled law, you upend a lot of things. And when the politicians start taking advantage of that, you get some really ugly results. I worry very much if the court thinks that we have no right to privacy. I worry because there are masses of tech companies and insurance companies and law enforcement groups all waiting to break down those barriers in ways that will shock and surprise. I worry that laws like the one created in Texas's zeal to stop abortion will now be used to reach out of states like California and impose their insanity on the rest of us. I worry that the world is full of book burners and Karens and Nazis and others looking to control everyone else, and this decision opens doors and windows in our society to them... I worry that no one really knows what the limits are on government anymore. The Supremes could have done this very differently without unsettling so much, but they weren't bright enough... or clear-headed enough to find a better way. Now we need to worry. And this vote in Kansas shows it was all for naught anyways.

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Media Bias

The media never fails to amaze me how blatantly biased they are. They will bend over backward to the point of blatant propaganda lies to support the Democrats. There's a shocking example out right now: the Biden recession. This is almost surreal. It's truly Orwellian.

We are in a recession. By definition. This cannot be denied. The universally accepted definition of recession is two quarters of negative growth. No one has ever disputed this before... until now. To avoid adding the word "recession" to Biden's pathetic record of "worst president ever", Biden has tried to pretend that the forever-accepted definition of recession isn't actually the definition of recession.

It's ridiculous, but I get it. He's hardly an honorable or intelligent man... child sniffing, credit-card-company-tool, dead wife/son exploiting, piece of ship. So for him to lie, and lie poorly, is in his DNA. And so many liberals will believe what they are told no matter how obviously wrong that it make sense he would lie to them. But for the media to follow him down into this sewer? That's what's really troubling here.

Rather than shake their heads and admit that this is the definition of recession, the media has scowered the landscape of liars and nutjobs to find "experts" who are willing to split hairs to agree with Biden. Yahoo and MSNBC are pimping articles with headlines like, "Can it really be a recession with strong job growth?" It's insane. It's so dishonest that even these propagandists should be ashamed... if they were capable of such a feeling.

It gets worse. Team Biden's ass lickers raced to Wikipedia and changed the definition of recession there. Wikipedia then promptly froze it so no one could fix it. So now, when the drones go double check something they've always known to be true, the will find comforting proof that Biden was "right" and yet another fact they knew to be true five minutes ago will no longer be true to them... until it becomes time for it to be true again. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Worse yet, Facebook censored and blocked posts by actual economists who said this was all false and that we are in recession. Then they let those posts be posted but only with a warning that they contained falsehoods. I am not making this up. Contradicting Biden's blatant lie got labelled as a falsehood. This reeks of Soviet newspapers like Pravda who told the biggest fantasies to support the lie that was the Soviet machine. Welcome to the machine, Facebook. Maybe it's time to shut them down after all? Indeed, if you are going to openly promote lies and slander those telling the truth in the name of supporting a lying President, then you are basically an enemy of truth. Maybe it's time you answered for all the things that have come out about Facebook profiting from misinfornation, targeting children, addicting people, causing suicides. Maybe it's time to look into your monopoly on advertising, your predatory practices? That might be doubleplus good.

I suppose I'm numb to it by now, but seriously, how can you people live with yourselves when you think that you need to lie to support your own ideas? Isn't there a point where you realize that your ideas are just sh*t? I guess not. Must be a terrible way to live though.

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