Category Archives: culture

More of the Same

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…from the best damn change-maker [Bill Clinton has] met in my entire life.  Indeed,

Mrs Clinton has been clear. She wants to serve as Mr. Obama’s political and policy heir, as she and he now admit. This won’t mean “change” unless the Clintons have an unusual personal definition of that word, as they do for “classified material.” A de facto third Obama term will mean the status quo, only more of it.

Here’s what Obama has accomplished with his policies, and Clinton has made no bones about wanting to do even more of it.

The slowest recovery from a recession since WWII—a period that encompasses a dozen recessions, culminating in the Panic of 2008.

  • labor force participation rate is at a 40 year low
  • median real household income remains lower than it was before the Panic
  • unemployment rate, even accounting for that greatly depressed labor force participation rate, didn’t recover even nominally until 5-6 years after the official end of the Panic against a normal interval of 2-3 years after the end of a recession
  • the national debt has been doubled and is growing because
  • the budget deficit, exploded in the years immediately following the Panic and dropping for a time after that has begun growing again

Rapid retreat from the world

  • Russia now occupies a partitioned Georgia and Ukraine (yes, Russia had invaded Georgia prior to this administration’s accession, but Obama has accepted the resulting partition)
  • Russia has attacked with impunity the Baltic States and Poland with cyber war
  • Russia threatens nuclear war against any European nation that builds is military defenses beyond what Russia would permit with this administration’s silence on the matter
  • abrogation of commitments to Poland and Czech Republic to deploy missile defense systems on the demand of Russia. We have yet to see whether this administration will follow through on a new commitment to Romania
  • People’s Republic of China occupation of the South China Sea
  • PRC repudiation of the International Court’s ruling against the PRC regarding the South China Sea, answered with US…silence
  • conclusion of an agreement with Iran that not only permits it to develop nuclear weapons, codifies that “right”
  • weakening of our ties with Israel
  • weakening of our ties with Great Britain, including Obama’s economic threat that if Great Britain leaves the EU, they will be pushed to the back of the bus queue on any trade deals with us

Here’s how Clinton wants to extend the domestic same old-same old, acceding to the demands of Independent Socialist Senator Sanders (I—he walked away from the D as soon as that no longer was convenient—VT).  We can’t afford four more years of no change, especially from a change-maker who’s promising unchanged-making.

  • subsidies ages 0 to 5
  • spending allegedly earmarked for public works (read, her crony capitalists)
  • wage controls for higher federal minimum
  • a right to child care
  • free college; a Medicare-like public health insurance option and administrative prices for new drugs;

With all of this paid for by even higher taxes, including a nearly doubling of the top tax rate on long-term capital gains to 43.4% from 23.8%, which is about as anti-investment and job-killing as it’s possible to get.

The Democrats’ Confession

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John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, told reporters this week that the way to win is to demonstrate Mr Trump is “unfit, that he’s unprepared and that we can’t put him in the Oval Office.” He added: “That’s the core of our strategy.”

President Barack Obama (D) says the Republicans aren’t “conservative” anymore (his definition of conservative, of course).

Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says Trump has taken the Republican Party a long way from Reagan (her definition of Reaganism, naturally).

Yep.  The Democrats know that all they have is a continuation of the character assassination they’ve inflicted for all of these last 7+ years.  Podesta, with these remarks, is admitting that the Democrats can’t run on this administration’s record of foreign and domestic failure or on Hillary Clinton’s record in that administration’s sustained failure or her integrity.

It doesn’t get any clearer than this.

Another Out of Control Agency

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…that’s overcome with its own self-importance.  I’ve written before about how the Securities and Exchange System abuses its own system of in-house judges for SEC purposes rather than for the public’s interest.

The Federal Trade Commission is another such agency that’s showing it’s outlived its usefulness and for the same reason.  In 2008, LabMD was “found” to have inadvertently exposed a file containing personally identifiable patient information.  I write “found” because the company that “found” the exposure then tried to use their discovery to peddle its data security services to LabMD.  The FTC brought a case against LabMD over the exposure, but last year an FTC in-house judge ruled against the FTC and tossed the case.

That judge, D Michael Chapell, tossed the FTC’s case last year because the commission could not identify any consumers who’d been harmed by LabMD’s allegedly weak security practices. Because no one had been harmed in the seven years since the patient file was exposed, it was unlikely that anyone would be harmed in the future, Judge Chappell concluded.

Wrong answer, Judge.

The FTC, which has the authority to review the rulings issued by its administrative court, said Friday the judge used an incorrect legal standard that was too stringent.

The ruling, being inconvenient to the FTC’s narrative, was rejected out of hand.

Here is the usefulness of an in-house system of judges.

Because We Just Don’t Understand

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But our Betters do.  No less a light than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) says so, so it must be so.

I think that, so many times, white—non-college-educated white males have voted Republican. They voted against their own economic interests because of guns, because of gays, and because of God, the three G’s, God being the woman’s right to choose[.]

Because it’s not in our interest—not in the interest of any American, but hey: this Democrat is playing the race card—to insist on our right to keep and bear even as Democrats confirm the need with their constant attempts to disarm us.

Because it isn’t possible to disagree with gays on marriage while respecting—actively moving to protect—the freedoms of all individual Americans, including whatever group Democrats want to carve out and divide from other Americans with their identity politics.

Because God doesn’t want us to protect babies as well as women, but only those groups of human beings whom Democrats single out as appropriate for God’s protection.

Elections have consequences, and here’s one from the last election in California.

The DNC “Apologizes”

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[T]he DNC finally apologized for “inexcusable remarks made over email,” saying it “does not—and will not—tolerate disrespectful language exhibited toward our candidates.”

Sure.  But—carefully—there’s not a syllable of apology for the Party’s actual bias toward a disfavored candidate, nor is there a minim of an apologetic word about the Party’s overt behavior toward a disfavored candidate in acting on that bias.  There’s only this expression of regret for some words.