We now know what happened in those two recent Navy collisions. The good news: It does not look like terrorism. The bad news is that both are very ugly stories.
Dreher is writing about Walker Percy, Southern paternalism and Southern stoicism. This took me various places as I tried to understand these subjects and the similarities between Robert E. Lee and Atticus Finch.
To those who understand this sick cable news game, it is obvious what is really going on here (and why I, as someone who has long been blackballed by Fox News, am one of the few conservatives willing to say it). Fox News is stuck because the vast majority of their audience is made up of Trump cult members who cannot risk being offended with the truth about him.
They also can’t allow their audience to see that the emperor that they created has no clothes, as it would leave them with BOTH no credibility AND no audience. They have clearly chosen, like Trump himself, to hold on to the cult for dear life at the cost of everything else.
The primary reason I have always vehemently opposed Trump is that I knew that the catastrophic long-term damage to conservatism which would inevitably ensue from him would not be worth the meager short-term gains. Fox News, in a business where what happens today is all that really matters, obviously never game-planned out this rather simple equation.
As hard as it is to currently believe, Trump will one day, maybe soon, maybe not, no longer be president. What is to happen to Fox News once Trump is gone? Not only will his cult quickly lose interest and go away, but they will have no credibility remaining on which to build a new audience.
As a conservative, the thing which concerns me most is now about Fox News is, now that they sold all of their integrity to service a cult, what will stop a Democratic version of Trump from taking power next, with no effective media counter measure? Now that Fox News has blindly defended Trump over nearly every conceivable wrongdoing, on what basis will they ever be able to attack a future Democratic president in a way which won’t be instantly provoke wide-spread laughter?
The answer is “none,” and conservatism and Democracy will suffer greatly because of this pathetic shortsighted sellout.
Chas, My son and I have often discussed what the Republicans should have done. In hindsight, once the seriousness of the Trump threat was seen, all except Trump should have united behind Walker. He is wise, has executive experience and governed well in a state where he was opposed by rabid Dems.
Sadly, the conservative movement, if there even is a thoughtful, serious one anymore, will likely be in disarray or even exiled for some time to come. The good news is that the left also is in disarray, I suppose. But overall, it’s an always-angry political landscape these days. None of it holds much appeal for me.
“On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had arranged.
“No! That can’t be true!” I said. “The party cannot take out a loan without the unanimous agreement of all of the officers.”
“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.
Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the thirty-two states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.
“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”
Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.”
———————————-
“Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”
Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.
I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.
When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.”
————————–
“As if this wasn’t going to annoy Trumpers enough on the merits, apparently Evan McMullin is the guy spearheading it. Yeesh.
There are two different things going on here, actually. One is the letter, whose signatories you’ll find listed at the libertarian Niskanen Center. The other is news of meetings that have apparently been taking place every two weeks for most of the year among a group of anti-Trump right-wingers calling themselves … the Meeting of the Concerned. They’re trying to jump-start some sort of new right (alt-alt-right?) to steer the GOP away from Trump and/or to pick up the pieces when he and populism supposedly eventually implode.
“The Meeting of the Concerned.” Good lord. As a matter of pure pretentious virtue-signaling, that’s a thousand times worse than “Salon Conservatives Club.” And I’m not just saying that because I’m in Salon Conservatives Club. The text of the letter:
We are a group of citizens united by our deep concern over threats to the integrity of American democracy and the rule of law. With the indictments announced on Monday, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference with the 2016 election is now entering a new and critical phase. At the same time, a growing chorus of Republican and conservative voices has started calling for Mueller’s resignation on trumped-up grounds, a move that may be calculated to help justify dismissal of the special counsel and pardons for his targets. In view of these events, we want to come forward and express our strong support for allowing the Mueller investigation to proceed without interference or obstruction. We would regard dismissal of the special counsel, or pardons issued preemptively to anyone targeted by his investigation, as a grave abuse of power that justifies initiation of impeachment proceedings.
We hereby call on House Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell to make clear, both publicly and privately, that they support the Mueller investigation and regard any interference with that investigation, including dismissal of the special counsel or preemptive pardons of investigation targets, as completely unacceptable. We further urge all Republican members of Congress to issue public statements on these issues as well. It is morally imperative that the Republican Party and the conservative movement stand as bulwarks of the rule of law, not enablers of its erosion and violation. Now is the time for choosing.
Among the signatories are Dan Drezner and Andrew Sullivan, neither one of whom identifies as right-wing or Republican (anymore) as far as I know. This is why I think the membership of the Meeting of the Concerned is slightly different. Speaking of which, from WaPo’s story:
Evan McMullin, the “Never Trump” presidential candidate, was in the room. So was Bill Kristol, co-founder of the Weekly Standard, who had drafted McMullin to run. The meeting grew to include conservative columnists like Mona Charen, Max Boot and John Ziegler, and former U.S. House members such as South Carolina’s Bob Inglis and Florida’s David Jolly…
The group has debated a statement of principles, which has grown to three pages, but is still unfinished…
“The infotainment side of the conservative media, they’ve been completely Trumpified for some time,” Charen said. “The Wall Street Journal was another story. That was surprising to me. I didn’t regard them as part of the Trump right. When they wrote an editorial suggesting that Mueller resign, I felt that needed a response.”
————————-
All I can think of as I skim these political threads over the last couple weeks is, “I don’t care.”
Keep them occupied on stupid, petty stuff and maybe they’ll leave the rest of us alone.
Of course out here, people are now deciding we can reorganize and make those burned out neighborhoods much, much better–completely ignoring the fact insurance pays for two years of housing and that’s it. The clock is ticking and those who were not burned out seem to want to meddle.
It is very interesting that both The Cult and Trump himself see people like Sasse, Flake, Ryan and McMullin as their primary enemies. Trump, Hannity and the rest of The Cult may blast Hillary or Schumer if they want to distract the masses, but a person who combines honesty, conservatism and intelligence is always viewed as the real threat to The Cult and its naked emperor.
I would characterize Mormonism as a false religion like Islam. It has a false book, a false prophet and the theology and structure of an organized religion. In fact I have heard an expert on Islam describe Islam as Medieval Mormonism.
Scientology is sort of a classic cult, but I don’t think at this point it is a personality cult.
The Trump Cult is a personality cult that causes its followers to deny facts and defend words and actions they never would have defended before. We can think of other politicians who had or have personality cults. Castro is a pretty good example. Maybe Ghandi was another. Hitler clearly was, but I know we can’t make that comparison.
Fortunately, the Trump Cult only requires members to embarrass themselves as opposed to the more rigorous demands of Jim Jones and David Koresh.
I wonder if this is the kind of thing Conservative lawmakers are gathering to discuss. Or is it just another self-serving gathering of Trump-bashers coming together to deplore him and his Deplorables. Time will tell I suppose. But this article, in The Imaginative Conservative , is the conversation I think would be more helpful. It’s certainly more interesting. :–)
….conservative scholars must develop a consensus around a core set of principles. What should form the essential elements of conservatism? Should they include, as recently argued by John Kekes, skepticism, pluralism, traditional¬ism, and pessimism?[12] Or should the list be more detailed and include a communalism that insists on an intrusive morality; the public and private inculcation of virtuous action derived from a common morality; an understanding that human flourishing is a public rather than an essentially private matter; a pessimistic view of human nature and the ability to know and will the moral good; a recognition of the constraints imposed due to social complexity; an embrace of traditional¬ism; an adherence to limited skepticism and an understanding of the omnipresence of the tragic; a high valuation of localism and familism; a preference for religious and cultural exclusivity; and a hostility to long chains of hierarchy?[13] Of course other ways of conceiving conservatism must also be considered, such as that which James McClellan attributes to Bradford in which American conservatism is marked by adherence to “limited constitutional government, local self-government, political and cultural diversity, protection of the rural environment and way of life, encouragement of religion, and promotion of family and community institutions.”[14] And without question, one must also carefully reflect upon Russell Kirk’s suggested list of core elements.[15] My aim here, though, is not to settle this issue, but rather to raise it for extended consideration and discussion.
Although I foresee that this is a debate that should and must take place in numerous venues over many years, let me suggest a few guidelines that may help us avoid something akin to intellectual miscegenation. To begin with, we must recognize that almost all concrete forms of conservatism are hyphenated entities. This means that, in each instance, what is abstract in theory must be filtered through a particular set of practices, historical traditions, and moral and religious commitments that give to conservatism a particular form. This shouldn’t be taken as suggesting that abstract discussions of conservatism as a political philosophy are inappropri¬ate. Rather, it is a frank admission that philosophical conservatism, when considered abstractly, is necessarily and appropriately “underdetermined.” Accordingly, one will almost always end up describing a conservatism that is shaped by a particular body of ideas and practices and that this, in turn, will find fulfillment in a particular people’s history. Conservatism is, therefore, necessarily a family of related but often dissimilar principles and practices…..
Debra, The Republicans have to make a choice: They can either appeal to you and people like you or they can appeal to the young people I taught in Sunday School who are already paying income tax.
Ironically, the two groups agree on two legs of Reagan’s three-legged stool of conservatism:
1. You both are very skeptical of new wars, nation building, or the promotion of democracy abroad;
2. 45 years after Roe v Wade, most people understand that the reduction in abortions has been caused not by legislators, but by the hard work of churches, crisis pregnancy centers, adoption agencies, etc.
However, on economics, you couldn’t be further apart:
1. You favor a protectionist welfare state with very tight borders.
2. The young favor free trade, entitlement reform and an immigration system that continues to bring in the best and brightest from all over the world in order to grow the economy and help them to pay for that part of the welfare state that can not be eliminated.
Ha. Ricky, the protectionist welfare state with tight borders is your favorite trading partner, China.
If I were a Democrat I would be glad to have the borders open wide and unlimited H1B visas. Most of those who don’t quickly move to the top 20% (and many who do) will be voting Democrat for life, and so will most of their children.
But realistically, internal economics will always be a compromise, and there are more American perspectives which should be heard and considered than just yours and mine. People must be employed with livable wages, and companies must not constantly be defending from unfair trade abroad—Reagan knew that. And borders must be reasonably secured or, as Reagan says, we are not really a country at all. (Yes, I started the book.) :–)
Wandering Views 
We now know what happened in those two recent Navy collisions. The good news: It does not look like terrorism. The bad news is that both are very ugly stories.
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Dreher is writing about Walker Percy, Southern paternalism and Southern stoicism. This took me various places as I tried to understand these subjects and the similarities between Robert E. Lee and Atticus Finch.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/walker-percy-weekend-2018-prep/
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Cato published a new study on free speech and tolerance:
https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/state-free-speech-tolerance-america
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John Ziegler wrote this article about Fox News:
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From the article:
To those who understand this sick cable news game, it is obvious what is really going on here (and why I, as someone who has long been blackballed by Fox News, am one of the few conservatives willing to say it). Fox News is stuck because the vast majority of their audience is made up of Trump cult members who cannot risk being offended with the truth about him.
They also can’t allow their audience to see that the emperor that they created has no clothes, as it would leave them with BOTH no credibility AND no audience. They have clearly chosen, like Trump himself, to hold on to the cult for dear life at the cost of everything else.
The primary reason I have always vehemently opposed Trump is that I knew that the catastrophic long-term damage to conservatism which would inevitably ensue from him would not be worth the meager short-term gains. Fox News, in a business where what happens today is all that really matters, obviously never game-planned out this rather simple equation.
As hard as it is to currently believe, Trump will one day, maybe soon, maybe not, no longer be president. What is to happen to Fox News once Trump is gone? Not only will his cult quickly lose interest and go away, but they will have no credibility remaining on which to build a new audience.
As a conservative, the thing which concerns me most is now about Fox News is, now that they sold all of their integrity to service a cult, what will stop a Democratic version of Trump from taking power next, with no effective media counter measure? Now that Fox News has blindly defended Trump over nearly every conceivable wrongdoing, on what basis will they ever be able to attack a future Democratic president in a way which won’t be instantly provoke wide-spread laughter?
The answer is “none,” and conservatism and Democracy will suffer greatly because of this pathetic shortsighted sellout.
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QoD
If we didn’t have Trump, who would we have.
Ben Carson? He was my man after Scott Walker dropped out.
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Chas, My son and I have often discussed what the Republicans should have done. In hindsight, once the seriousness of the Trump threat was seen, all except Trump should have united behind Walker. He is wise, has executive experience and governed well in a state where he was opposed by rabid Dems.
LikeLike
Sadly, the conservative movement, if there even is a thoughtful, serious one anymore, will likely be in disarray or even exiled for some time to come. The good news is that the left also is in disarray, I suppose. But overall, it’s an always-angry political landscape these days. None of it holds much appeal for me.
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I wouldn’t even predict what a 2020 election will look like.
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Donna Brazile is finally talking. And more shady Hillary money moves to get around those pesky campaign finance laws.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
“On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had arranged.
“No! That can’t be true!” I said. “The party cannot take out a loan without the unanimous agreement of all of the officers.”
“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.
Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the thirty-two states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.
“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”
Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.”
———————————-
“Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”
Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.
I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.
When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.”
————————–
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McMuffin (an actual cult member) and the Never-Trumpers are at it again.
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/11/01/concerned-conservatives-send-letter-congressional-gop-calling-protect-mueller-trump/
“As if this wasn’t going to annoy Trumpers enough on the merits, apparently Evan McMullin is the guy spearheading it. Yeesh.
There are two different things going on here, actually. One is the letter, whose signatories you’ll find listed at the libertarian Niskanen Center. The other is news of meetings that have apparently been taking place every two weeks for most of the year among a group of anti-Trump right-wingers calling themselves … the Meeting of the Concerned. They’re trying to jump-start some sort of new right (alt-alt-right?) to steer the GOP away from Trump and/or to pick up the pieces when he and populism supposedly eventually implode.
“The Meeting of the Concerned.” Good lord. As a matter of pure pretentious virtue-signaling, that’s a thousand times worse than “Salon Conservatives Club.” And I’m not just saying that because I’m in Salon Conservatives Club. The text of the letter:
We are a group of citizens united by our deep concern over threats to the integrity of American democracy and the rule of law. With the indictments announced on Monday, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference with the 2016 election is now entering a new and critical phase. At the same time, a growing chorus of Republican and conservative voices has started calling for Mueller’s resignation on trumped-up grounds, a move that may be calculated to help justify dismissal of the special counsel and pardons for his targets. In view of these events, we want to come forward and express our strong support for allowing the Mueller investigation to proceed without interference or obstruction. We would regard dismissal of the special counsel, or pardons issued preemptively to anyone targeted by his investigation, as a grave abuse of power that justifies initiation of impeachment proceedings.
We hereby call on House Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell to make clear, both publicly and privately, that they support the Mueller investigation and regard any interference with that investigation, including dismissal of the special counsel or preemptive pardons of investigation targets, as completely unacceptable. We further urge all Republican members of Congress to issue public statements on these issues as well. It is morally imperative that the Republican Party and the conservative movement stand as bulwarks of the rule of law, not enablers of its erosion and violation. Now is the time for choosing.
Among the signatories are Dan Drezner and Andrew Sullivan, neither one of whom identifies as right-wing or Republican (anymore) as far as I know. This is why I think the membership of the Meeting of the Concerned is slightly different. Speaking of which, from WaPo’s story:
Evan McMullin, the “Never Trump” presidential candidate, was in the room. So was Bill Kristol, co-founder of the Weekly Standard, who had drafted McMullin to run. The meeting grew to include conservative columnists like Mona Charen, Max Boot and John Ziegler, and former U.S. House members such as South Carolina’s Bob Inglis and Florida’s David Jolly…
The group has debated a statement of principles, which has grown to three pages, but is still unfinished…
“The infotainment side of the conservative media, they’ve been completely Trumpified for some time,” Charen said. “The Wall Street Journal was another story. That was surprising to me. I didn’t regard them as part of the Trump right. When they wrote an editorial suggesting that Mueller resign, I felt that needed a response.”
————————-
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That just confirms again what we all know.
Hillary is a crook.
We knew that from the cattle futures, long ago.
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All I can think of as I skim these political threads over the last couple weeks is, “I don’t care.”
Keep them occupied on stupid, petty stuff and maybe they’ll leave the rest of us alone.
Of course out here, people are now deciding we can reorganize and make those burned out neighborhoods much, much better–completely ignoring the fact insurance pays for two years of housing and that’s it. The clock is ticking and those who were not burned out seem to want to meddle.
God help us all. Ministry forever, for sure.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It is very interesting that both The Cult and Trump himself see people like Sasse, Flake, Ryan and McMullin as their primary enemies. Trump, Hannity and the rest of The Cult may blast Hillary or Schumer if they want to distract the masses, but a person who combines honesty, conservatism and intelligence is always viewed as the real threat to The Cult and its naked emperor.
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And he’s an actual cult member, unlike your fellow Christians who you’d much prefer to slander by calling the same.
But your cool with that, because he hates Trump too.
Weird.
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I would characterize Mormonism as a false religion like Islam. It has a false book, a false prophet and the theology and structure of an organized religion. In fact I have heard an expert on Islam describe Islam as Medieval Mormonism.
Scientology is sort of a classic cult, but I don’t think at this point it is a personality cult.
The Trump Cult is a personality cult that causes its followers to deny facts and defend words and actions they never would have defended before. We can think of other politicians who had or have personality cults. Castro is a pretty good example. Maybe Ghandi was another. Hitler clearly was, but I know we can’t make that comparison.
Fortunately, the Trump Cult only requires members to embarrass themselves as opposed to the more rigorous demands of Jim Jones and David Koresh.
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Hmm.
http://www.richmondregister.com/opinion/cross-mcconnell-owes-it-to-americans-to-stand-up-to/article_42f32a7c-bfe3-11e7-95b6-9343f9ea39a7.html
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Even Joe noticed:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rawstory.com/2017/10/morning-joe-rips-fox-news-goons-turning-gop-into-trump-personality-cult/amp/
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Jonah explained it months ago:
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.nationalreview.com/corner/449604/donald-trumps-supporters-republicans-cults-personality
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I wonder if this is the kind of thing Conservative lawmakers are gathering to discuss. Or is it just another self-serving gathering of Trump-bashers coming together to deplore him and his Deplorables. Time will tell I suppose. But this article, in The Imaginative Conservative , is the conversation I think would be more helpful. It’s certainly more interesting. :–)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debra, The Republicans have to make a choice: They can either appeal to you and people like you or they can appeal to the young people I taught in Sunday School who are already paying income tax.
Ironically, the two groups agree on two legs of Reagan’s three-legged stool of conservatism:
1. You both are very skeptical of new wars, nation building, or the promotion of democracy abroad;
2. 45 years after Roe v Wade, most people understand that the reduction in abortions has been caused not by legislators, but by the hard work of churches, crisis pregnancy centers, adoption agencies, etc.
However, on economics, you couldn’t be further apart:
1. You favor a protectionist welfare state with very tight borders.
2. The young favor free trade, entitlement reform and an immigration system that continues to bring in the best and brightest from all over the world in order to grow the economy and help them to pay for that part of the welfare state that can not be eliminated.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just because Trump is bad, that doesn’t mean the press isn’t biased.
https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/926150548272717824
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Ha. Ricky, the protectionist welfare state with tight borders is your favorite trading partner, China.
If I were a Democrat I would be glad to have the borders open wide and unlimited H1B visas. Most of those who don’t quickly move to the top 20% (and many who do) will be voting Democrat for life, and so will most of their children.
But realistically, internal economics will always be a compromise, and there are more American perspectives which should be heard and considered than just yours and mine. People must be employed with livable wages, and companies must not constantly be defending from unfair trade abroad—Reagan knew that. And borders must be reasonably secured or, as Reagan says, we are not really a country at all. (Yes, I started the book.) :–)
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I thought you were a pro-life Democrat.
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The Chinese budget is inscrutable. I can’t tell if their welfare state is bigger than ours.
http://economy.money.cnn.com/2014/01/15/china-budget/
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You’re just worried that if I keep reading the book I’ll discover I’m more of a Reaganite than you are. :–)
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China has a 3.3T slush fund. And I thought we were bad.
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Debra @ 9:46 Let me know when you think you are ready and we can jointly renounce Satan, Trump, etc.
http://nac.today/en/a/317605
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