“The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating a rumored Hollywood pedophile ring after Corey Feldman filed a formal police report identifying the men he claims sexually abused him as a child.
‘Corey Feldman filed a report with the Los Angeles Police Department. There is no further information at this time, and his report is being investigated,’ a spokesperson told DaillyMail.com on Tuesday.
Feldman revealed he had filed a report on Monday.
‘IMPORTANT CAMPAIGN UPD8: I JUST COMPLETED A FORMAL SIT DOWN INTERVIEW W @LAPDHQ SPECIAL DIVISION, & GAVE THEM ALL THE INFO I KNOW! THIS WAS OFFICIALLY THE 1ST FORMAL REPORT EVER TAKEN ON ANY OF MY CASES, AS SBPD NEVER FOLLOWED UP BACK IN 1993, & HAS NO RECORD OF MY COMPLAINTS,’ wrote an animated Feldman on Twitter.”
“If you ever took Evan McMullin seriously, you can stop now
Evan McMullin ran for president in 2016. He failed, of course. But in running, he gave Never Trump conservatives who couldn’t stomach pulling the lever (or pushing the button, these days) for Donald Trump an out; someone they could feel good about voting for, without forfeiting their vote entirely.
While most of the Never Trump movement has gone on with their lives (myself included), a few hardcore holdouts remain, one of who is McMullen. So great is their disdain for Trump, that it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish these folks from progressives suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Like their leftist counterparts (if you can call them that) they’re all spewing the same crazy garbage:”
—————————–
“As I’ve blogged several times over, healthy skepticism of electoral power and elected officials is a necessity for any republic. They are, after all, public servants, elected not to wield power, but to represent. But hurling the ridiculous charge of “white nationalist” at anyone and everyone aligned with Trump is not only stupid, but in incredibly poor taste.
This crew, the one that professes principled purity, are the first to slander the opposition with the same, stinky political mud thrown by leftists. The self-awareness fail here is strong. And as Trump would say, Sad!”
——————————–
The liberals are going to blow last night’s election out of proportion. Trumpkin Hannity pretended it didn’t happen. Conservative Ben Shapiro gives a conservative perspective:
First off, cultivating a cult of personality built around one man bodes ill for a national party — ask the Democrats who kept worshipping Obama as they lost 1,000 legislative seats across the country. Second, Trump’s willingness to dump on his own candidates could lead Republicans to stay home for those candidates — and that’s actually in Trump’s interest. If he thinks he’s going to take a serious loss in 2018, he can rip Republicans and then blame them for losing, stating that they failed to properly pay homage to him.
It’s easy to overread a single election night; it’s also possible things will change radically before 2018. But if the 2018 elections were held next week, Republicans would be rightly preparing for disaster.
Easy to just mock Hannity for this, but it's more important than that: A whole universe of people who won't be told about important news. An alternate reality. https://t.co/T3fxR5Mu5h
I think Shapiro presents a pretty good analysis. This is the only one that really interests me because of what it may portend:
8. Trumpism Doesn’t Exist. The person hardest hit by Gillespie’s loss is actually Steve Bannon. Bannon had been trying to take credit for Gillespie’s poll rise, stating that Gillespie had embraced Trumpian politics. After Northam’s blowout, however, Breitbart suddenly flipped and insisted that Gillespie was a “Republican swamp thing.” All of this is nonsense. Trumpism isn’t a movement. Trump isn’t a movement. Trump is Trump, and there are many people who like him. It’s that simple. You can’t imitate Trump’s positions and hope to channel his popularity — even Trump doesn’t know his positions. You can’t even mimic his aggression and hope to channel his popularity — Trump has a certain draw that virtually no one else does. The notion that Gillespie lost because he wasn’t adherent to Trumpism is a Bannon creation — and Bannon has a stake in that creation because Bannon wants to represent Trumpism sans Trump. But Trumpism sans Trump is a figment of the media’s imagination. There is no evidence for its existence whatsoever, which is why Bannon runs around the country picking candidates with no unifying agenda other than that Bannon can call them “anti-establishment.”
If the movement against globalism (and its artificially depressed working wages) can’t be sustained among Republicans, I don’t think the Left will let it drop. Eventually we’ll get much more socialism in an attempt to create living wages. I dread that because the Left will undoubtedly go overboard in the other direction, and and take social issues with it.
Debra, You and Peggy Noonan will have your chance to vote for a “sane Donald Trump”. It will probably be Tom Cotten.
There are only two problems for you:
1. Trump is doing so much damage to the Republican and Conservative brands that Cotten (or other sane Trumpkins) will likely be unelectable.
2. I think Cotten understands enough economics to understand that your desire to turn back the economic clock 60 years is neither desirable nor realistic. If elected he would give some help to Democrats and Trumpkins while trying to help them adjust to living in the 21st century.
Don’t blame a dog for being a dog. Hannity is just being Hannity. He and Rush and a number of Republican blowhards have regularly encouraged the popular vote for Republicans for many many years. If Trump were not such a pain to Never-Trumpers, Hannity would not be getting a second glance. Suddenly the ‘cult of personality’ is overwhelming to everyone’s fine sensibilities. It’s my opinion, that Republicans can raise the bar of conversation any time they want to just by honestly addressing the concerns of the ‘irrelevant’ 47% and the Deplorables. But they won’t. They just keep repeating the same lies and insults. They are not all that different from Hannity; they just have a different object for their cult worship. ;–/
Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, is doing business with Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law through a shipping venture in Russia.
Leaked documents and public filings show Ross holds a stake in a shipping company, Navigator, through a chain of offshore investments. Navigator operates a lucrative partnership with Sibur, a Russian gas company part-owned by Kirill Shamalov, the husband of Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova.
Ross, a billionaire and close friend of Trump, retained holdings in Navigator after taking office this year. The relationship means he stands to benefit from the operations of a Russian company run by Putin’s family and close allies, some of whom are under US sanctions.
Corporate records show Navigator ramped up its relationship with Sibur from 2014, as the US and EU imposed sanctions on Russians. The measures followed Putin’s aggression in eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Navigator has collected $68m in revenue from its Sibur partnership since 2014.
No surprise really, the big business man is sure to have his finger in many dodgy pies – the nature of acquisition by large investments means that one cannot stay clean doing it. I recall a certain Liberal finance minister in the Canadian government in the 90s, who repeatedly balanced the budget and even reduced the national debt, who also had offshore holdings. But it is always important to remember that money talks, and private financial interest may get in the way of national security interests.
Debra, The NeverTrumpers (and Democrat taxpayers for that matter) have been paying for the food, housing, healthcare, etc of the 47% for a long while. We think of them every time we see the deductions from our paychecks. However, like bad parents, Democrat politicians and now Trump continue to spoil the 47% and tell them their problems are someone else’s fault.
The political landscape is in complete and utter disarray, across the board. It’ll eventually “land” somewhere, but it may be a while before we move out of the chaos.
“The missed stories are not merely the result of mistakes or sloppy reporting. Brazile’s book is a revelation in that it shows that many left-leaning journalists didn’t so much cover Clinton as cover up for her.”
Ricky, when one deliberately economically disenfranchises a large population of people, you can probably expect to have to pay for it–and it takes a special kind of arrogance to be surprised when they don’t thank you for the injury. However, there is a better way for everyone. Let’s create policies that encourage small businesses and jobs with a working wage while still leaving our freedoms intact. And let’s discourage predatory enterprises like Amazon that destroy free markets. There could be a little bit of something for everyone in such a policy. :–)
Debra, How did we globalists so cleverly “disenfranchise” all the poor Democrats and Trumpkins while leaving in place a system where millions of legal immigrants (plus people like Ben Carson and JB Vance who chose not to believe they were helpless and disenfranchised) could still succeed? We must be geniuses … or Trump, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton et al are effective con artists.
Roscuro, I was surprised to read that he bought in to the company after he became Commerce Sec’y. That should raise red flags. I would not expect someone to divest, but if a blind trust is not feasible (as it wasn’t with Trump) then I would at least hope he is not in the loop on business transactions done on his behalf. That is the problem with too much concentrated money: it’s very difficult to tell when there is impropriety, because there is just too much to keep up with.
And that supposedly was a defense to what exactly?
I defended no one. I think you’re confused again Ricky. It’s OK, I’m used to it. 🙂
And ya’ know part of the reason frauds like Clinton keep getting away with this stuff is people like you who expect everyone to just forget her crimes because she wasn’t elected. That’s not supposed to be how this works.
Never has a word been so misused as “disenfranchised”. That word means a people have lost their right to vote. The Democrats and Trumpkins not only have the right to vote, but they for decades have been using that right to vote to elect politicians that take money from their diligent neighbors to distribute among the fully franchised Democrats and Trumpkins.
Ricky, Globalists disenfranchised workers by planning this massive shift to a low-wage service economy using treaties that provided incentives for companies to move overseas—and many thousands left. Globalists disenfranchise people every time they dismiss American workers from their jobs and replace them with cheaper H1Bs. People are not helpless. Our political turmoil is evidence of that. But there are not enough solid voices to provide focus and clarity. The better minds of the Republican party should have risen to the occasion, but unfortunately they have been content to be complicit in the problem.
Neither Vance nor Carson are immigrants. And I don’t want to go off topic and appear to be immigrant bashing (because I very much favor sane and humane immigration policies) but immigrants, as a rule, are Democrats. Period. You might find some exceptions especially among the 20%ers or Cubans, but as a demographic, they are reliable Democrats.
But more to the point, what about ordinary American people? When did it become a disgrace to be just a regular person? What is the disgrace in NOT wanting to work 3 jobs or 80 hrs a week to try to be Ben Carson or Vance, but to just be content to be a regular dad or mom or worker who works a job and goes home to a modest home and rake leaves, cleans the gutters, or teaches his son how to change the oil or the brakes on the car or build a birdhouse? Is there no place for the ordinary American in the Republican ideology? Does American exceptionalism mean that there is no room for the unexceptional American? Is Peter Spiliakos at First Things correct that we can talk about American Exceptionalism, but we don’t know what to do with the unexceptional or ordinary American? Shouldn’t we figure that out?
Read Coming Apart. There are two Americas. There are two White Americas.
It is all about culture. Many people I know including many, many immigrants work hard, live as a family, live in modest homes, save, change their oil, and teach their children good values.
Too often, their Democrat and Trumpkin neighbors are loafing at work or not working, getting government benefits, raising kids in a single parent household, letting the kids be disruptive and lazy at school and telling the kids their problems are someone else’s fault.
It is a spiritual issue. No globalist or corporatist or member of the elite could turn folks into what Coming Apart and Hillbilly Elegy accurately describe.
Charles Murray thinks it is a matter of intelligence. He thinks that 47% is simply not smart enough to support themselves in a 21st century economy. This leads to his guaranteed annual income idea.
I disagree. Like many of you I have seen many people who lack brilliance have great success if they have common sense, a good work ethic and self discipline. I have also seen many, many bright people sitting around, living off of someone else’s labor.
Obama failed to motivate his supporters to change their lifestyle and become self-supporting. Trump could simply announce that he has made America great again and he has defeated the “globalists” and his people are now free to support themselves. For once, Trump wouldn’t be running a con and would simply be telling the Trumpkins the truth. If he would take this step and some of the Trumpkins would believe him, it would make up for all of his bizarre and dishonest behavior.
Ah well, if the problem existed only inside the heads of Trumpkins….. But there is objective evidence that leads one to believe that it does not. If Charles Murray is correct, then it emphasizes the urgency of the need for manufacturing. It’s better than guaranteed income, which risks being counterproductive in my opinion, because people need to actually work to fulfill a basic purpose in life. For those who for some reason are unable to physically work, perhaps other arrangements can be made. But even if Murray is not right, some kind of increased manufacturing capacity has the added benefit of being productive and being of value in making the country more self-sufficient. Maybe we could even lower your taxes. :–)
What you said about the spiritual component is very important for individual families as well. And their success or failure to find the way of Christ and build their foundation on Him will ultimately determine their outcomes.
However, the goal in civic effort is not to create heaven on earth, but to govern with justice tempered by mercy. Although it is generally acknowledged that we live in a post-Christian era, I still don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at thinkers like St Thomas Aquinas and ask ourselves if our laws are just and are our wars just. This is a much better context for discussion and thought than the prevalent Left/Right Republican/Democrat dichotomies. I had hoped there would be conservative leaning leaders and thinkers who would step up to the plate and lead the way. And perhaps there are some beginnings of that. We’ll see.
“Does the leadership of this party have actual, diagnosable brain damage? Of all the places in the tax code they could try to find some extra revenue, the supposedly pro-life GOP decides to squeeze … middle-class adoptive families?
While funding Planned Parenthood in their budget?
While our billionaire president is grumbling privately to Democrats that they should repeal the estate tax, which only bites the mega-rich?
We’re past the point of wondering whether the GOP wants to lose. The question now is whether they deserve to lose. Judging from this account by Haley Byrd of the IJR, all signs point to yes:”
The adoption tax credit only costs $300 million per year. It’s not even pocket change for Uncle Sam. For the GOP, allegedly the party of social conservatives, to nuke it over a pittance of savings feels like almost deliberate sabotage of adoptive families. What the hell are they thinking?
But it gets worse. As John McCormack points out, in the long run the adoption tax credit pays for itself, in both tangible and intangible terms:
“What they don’t factor in is the total cost to society with a child in foster care,” Johnson tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The costs to taxpayers of keeping a child in foster care—health care, food, housing, social workers, and administrators—are far greater than the one-time tax credit adoptive families may receive.
“Comparing the per-child cost of subsidized adoption from foster care with the cost of maintaining a child in foster care, one concludes that the child adopted from foster care costs the public only 40 percent as much as the child who remains in foster care,” according to a report from the National Council for Adoption. “The difference in cost per child per year amounts to $15,480.””
————————-
1. A lot of people are trying to figure out how the parties may realign once Trump is out of office and the power of his personality cult is gone.
2. A logical new breakdown would be:
Party A: Democrats and Republicans (around 50%) who pay income taxes and receive few govt. benefits; and
Party B: Democrats and Trumpkins (around 50%) who pay no income taxes and receive govt. benefits.
3. There are two main reasons this hasn’t happened yet:
A. The historic Republican/Democratic foreign policy divide; and
B. The historic Republican/Democratic social issue divide.
4. The foreign policy divide is muddled if not gone. You have isolationists and interventionists in both parties.
5. Social issues are also muddled. On perversion, the battle is over and the perverts have won.
Abortion has been reduced, in part by state action and in part by the great work of private groups.
6. The two most actively religious groups are the black Democrats and upper-middle class Republicans. These are the groups that are natural allies on abortion, but will wind up in opposite parties under the paragraph 2 breakdown even as they are today.
7. I could see Trumpkins and black Democrats uniting to form Party B above in the future once Trump is gone and no longer picking fights (like the NFL battle) with blacks.
8. Abortion and religious liberty issues are likely to prevent Republican taxpayers from ever uniting with Democratic taxpayers to form Party A above.
Wandering Views 
About time the police did their job and took this guy seriously.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5060219/LAPD-confirms-investigating-Corey-Feldman-case.html
“The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating a rumored Hollywood pedophile ring after Corey Feldman filed a formal police report identifying the men he claims sexually abused him as a child.
‘Corey Feldman filed a report with the Los Angeles Police Department. There is no further information at this time, and his report is being investigated,’ a spokesperson told DaillyMail.com on Tuesday.
Feldman revealed he had filed a report on Monday.
‘IMPORTANT CAMPAIGN UPD8: I JUST COMPLETED A FORMAL SIT DOWN INTERVIEW W @LAPDHQ SPECIAL DIVISION, & GAVE THEM ALL THE INFO I KNOW! THIS WAS OFFICIALLY THE 1ST FORMAL REPORT EVER TAKEN ON ANY OF MY CASES, AS SBPD NEVER FOLLOWED UP BACK IN 1993, & HAS NO RECORD OF MY COMPLAINTS,’ wrote an animated Feldman on Twitter.”
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Well I never took him seriously in the first place. 🙂
And calling your opponents racist?
How original….. 🙄
https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/11/evan-mcmullin-takes-never-trump-derangement-syndrome-to-new-low/
“If you ever took Evan McMullin seriously, you can stop now
Evan McMullin ran for president in 2016. He failed, of course. But in running, he gave Never Trump conservatives who couldn’t stomach pulling the lever (or pushing the button, these days) for Donald Trump an out; someone they could feel good about voting for, without forfeiting their vote entirely.
While most of the Never Trump movement has gone on with their lives (myself included), a few hardcore holdouts remain, one of who is McMullen. So great is their disdain for Trump, that it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish these folks from progressives suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Like their leftist counterparts (if you can call them that) they’re all spewing the same crazy garbage:”
—————————–
“As I’ve blogged several times over, healthy skepticism of electoral power and elected officials is a necessity for any republic. They are, after all, public servants, elected not to wield power, but to represent. But hurling the ridiculous charge of “white nationalist” at anyone and everyone aligned with Trump is not only stupid, but in incredibly poor taste.
This crew, the one that professes principled purity, are the first to slander the opposition with the same, stinky political mud thrown by leftists. The self-awareness fail here is strong. And as Trump would say, Sad!”
——————————–
LikeLiked by 1 person
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The liberals are going to blow last night’s election out of proportion. Trumpkin Hannity pretended it didn’t happen. Conservative Ben Shapiro gives a conservative perspective:
LikeLiked by 1 person
From the article:
First off, cultivating a cult of personality built around one man bodes ill for a national party — ask the Democrats who kept worshipping Obama as they lost 1,000 legislative seats across the country. Second, Trump’s willingness to dump on his own candidates could lead Republicans to stay home for those candidates — and that’s actually in Trump’s interest. If he thinks he’s going to take a serious loss in 2018, he can rip Republicans and then blame them for losing, stating that they failed to properly pay homage to him.
It’s easy to overread a single election night; it’s also possible things will change radically before 2018. But if the 2018 elections were held next week, Republicans would be rightly preparing for disaster.
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Y’all thought I was kidding.
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I think Shapiro presents a pretty good analysis. This is the only one that really interests me because of what it may portend:
If the movement against globalism (and its artificially depressed working wages) can’t be sustained among Republicans, I don’t think the Left will let it drop. Eventually we’ll get much more socialism in an attempt to create living wages. I dread that because the Left will undoubtedly go overboard in the other direction, and and take social issues with it.
It remains to be seen how it will pan out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debra, You and Peggy Noonan will have your chance to vote for a “sane Donald Trump”. It will probably be Tom Cotten.
There are only two problems for you:
1. Trump is doing so much damage to the Republican and Conservative brands that Cotten (or other sane Trumpkins) will likely be unelectable.
2. I think Cotten understands enough economics to understand that your desire to turn back the economic clock 60 years is neither desirable nor realistic. If elected he would give some help to Democrats and Trumpkins while trying to help them adjust to living in the 21st century.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t blame a dog for being a dog. Hannity is just being Hannity. He and Rush and a number of Republican blowhards have regularly encouraged the popular vote for Republicans for many many years. If Trump were not such a pain to Never-Trumpers, Hannity would not be getting a second glance. Suddenly the ‘cult of personality’ is overwhelming to everyone’s fine sensibilities. It’s my opinion, that Republicans can raise the bar of conversation any time they want to just by honestly addressing the concerns of the ‘irrelevant’ 47% and the Deplorables. But they won’t. They just keep repeating the same lies and insults. They are not all that different from Hannity; they just have a different object for their cult worship. ;–/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Another batch of offshore investment papers, another pack of financial scandals – speaking of globalism: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/trump-commerce-secretary-wilbur-ross-business-links-putin-family-paradise-papers
No surprise really, the big business man is sure to have his finger in many dodgy pies – the nature of acquisition by large investments means that one cannot stay clean doing it. I recall a certain Liberal finance minister in the Canadian government in the 90s, who repeatedly balanced the budget and even reduced the national debt, who also had offshore holdings. But it is always important to remember that money talks, and private financial interest may get in the way of national security interests.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debra, The NeverTrumpers (and Democrat taxpayers for that matter) have been paying for the food, housing, healthcare, etc of the 47% for a long while. We think of them every time we see the deductions from our paychecks. However, like bad parents, Democrat politicians and now Trump continue to spoil the 47% and tell them their problems are someone else’s fault.
LikeLike
The political landscape is in complete and utter disarray, across the board. It’ll eventually “land” somewhere, but it may be a while before we move out of the chaos.
That’s all.
Back to the State of Denial.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh look. Turns out there is a cult, but it ain’t Trump’s.
https://news.grabien.com/story-brazile-clinton-campaign-it-was-cult-i-felt-it-was-cult
———————————–
Now about that cough…….
http://nypost.com/2017/11/07/how-brazilles-book-exposes-liberal-medias-hillary-health-coverup/
“The missed stories are not merely the result of mistakes or sloppy reporting. Brazile’s book is a revelation in that it shows that many left-leaning journalists didn’t so much cover Clinton as cover up for her.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Right on cue : The “But Hillary” defense!
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Ricky, when one deliberately economically disenfranchises a large population of people, you can probably expect to have to pay for it–and it takes a special kind of arrogance to be surprised when they don’t thank you for the injury. However, there is a better way for everyone. Let’s create policies that encourage small businesses and jobs with a working wage while still leaving our freedoms intact. And let’s discourage predatory enterprises like Amazon that destroy free markets. There could be a little bit of something for everyone in such a policy. :–)
LikeLike
Debra, How did we globalists so cleverly “disenfranchise” all the poor Democrats and Trumpkins while leaving in place a system where millions of legal immigrants (plus people like Ben Carson and JB Vance who chose not to believe they were helpless and disenfranchised) could still succeed? We must be geniuses … or Trump, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton et al are effective con artists.
LikeLike
Roscuro, I was surprised to read that he bought in to the company after he became Commerce Sec’y. That should raise red flags. I would not expect someone to divest, but if a blind trust is not feasible (as it wasn’t with Trump) then I would at least hope he is not in the loop on business transactions done on his behalf. That is the problem with too much concentrated money: it’s very difficult to tell when there is impropriety, because there is just too much to keep up with.
LikeLike
And that supposedly was a defense to what exactly?
I defended no one. I think you’re confused again Ricky. It’s OK, I’m used to it. 🙂
And ya’ know part of the reason frauds like Clinton keep getting away with this stuff is people like you who expect everyone to just forget her crimes because she wasn’t elected. That’s not supposed to be how this works.
LikeLike
Never has a word been so misused as “disenfranchised”. That word means a people have lost their right to vote. The Democrats and Trumpkins not only have the right to vote, but they for decades have been using that right to vote to elect politicians that take money from their diligent neighbors to distribute among the fully franchised Democrats and Trumpkins.
LikeLike
Ricky, Globalists disenfranchised workers by planning this massive shift to a low-wage service economy using treaties that provided incentives for companies to move overseas—and many thousands left. Globalists disenfranchise people every time they dismiss American workers from their jobs and replace them with cheaper H1Bs. People are not helpless. Our political turmoil is evidence of that. But there are not enough solid voices to provide focus and clarity. The better minds of the Republican party should have risen to the occasion, but unfortunately they have been content to be complicit in the problem.
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How did we let those immigrants, Vance and Carson thrive?
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⬆⬆⬆⬆
🙂 at 12:39
Pretty much what she said.
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Neither Vance nor Carson are immigrants. And I don’t want to go off topic and appear to be immigrant bashing (because I very much favor sane and humane immigration policies) but immigrants, as a rule, are Democrats. Period. You might find some exceptions especially among the 20%ers or Cubans, but as a demographic, they are reliable Democrats.
But more to the point, what about ordinary American people? When did it become a disgrace to be just a regular person? What is the disgrace in NOT wanting to work 3 jobs or 80 hrs a week to try to be Ben Carson or Vance, but to just be content to be a regular dad or mom or worker who works a job and goes home to a modest home and rake leaves, cleans the gutters, or teaches his son how to change the oil or the brakes on the car or build a birdhouse? Is there no place for the ordinary American in the Republican ideology? Does American exceptionalism mean that there is no room for the unexceptional American? Is Peter Spiliakos at First Things correct that we can talk about American Exceptionalism, but we don’t know what to do with the unexceptional or ordinary American? Shouldn’t we figure that out?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Read Coming Apart. There are two Americas. There are two White Americas.
It is all about culture. Many people I know including many, many immigrants work hard, live as a family, live in modest homes, save, change their oil, and teach their children good values.
Too often, their Democrat and Trumpkin neighbors are loafing at work or not working, getting government benefits, raising kids in a single parent household, letting the kids be disruptive and lazy at school and telling the kids their problems are someone else’s fault.
It is a spiritual issue. No globalist or corporatist or member of the elite could turn folks into what Coming Apart and Hillbilly Elegy accurately describe.
LikeLike
Charles Murray thinks it is a matter of intelligence. He thinks that 47% is simply not smart enough to support themselves in a 21st century economy. This leads to his guaranteed annual income idea.
I disagree. Like many of you I have seen many people who lack brilliance have great success if they have common sense, a good work ethic and self discipline. I have also seen many, many bright people sitting around, living off of someone else’s labor.
Obama failed to motivate his supporters to change their lifestyle and become self-supporting. Trump could simply announce that he has made America great again and he has defeated the “globalists” and his people are now free to support themselves. For once, Trump wouldn’t be running a con and would simply be telling the Trumpkins the truth. If he would take this step and some of the Trumpkins would believe him, it would make up for all of his bizarre and dishonest behavior.
LikeLike
Ah well, if the problem existed only inside the heads of Trumpkins….. But there is objective evidence that leads one to believe that it does not. If Charles Murray is correct, then it emphasizes the urgency of the need for manufacturing. It’s better than guaranteed income, which risks being counterproductive in my opinion, because people need to actually work to fulfill a basic purpose in life. For those who for some reason are unable to physically work, perhaps other arrangements can be made. But even if Murray is not right, some kind of increased manufacturing capacity has the added benefit of being productive and being of value in making the country more self-sufficient. Maybe we could even lower your taxes. :–)
LikeLike
What you said about the spiritual component is very important for individual families as well. And their success or failure to find the way of Christ and build their foundation on Him will ultimately determine their outcomes.
However, the goal in civic effort is not to create heaven on earth, but to govern with justice tempered by mercy. Although it is generally acknowledged that we live in a post-Christian era, I still don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at thinkers like St Thomas Aquinas and ask ourselves if our laws are just and are our wars just. This is a much better context for discussion and thought than the prevalent Left/Right Republican/Democrat dichotomies. I had hoped there would be conservative leaning leaders and thinkers who would step up to the plate and lead the way. And perhaps there are some beginnings of that. We’ll see.
LikeLiked by 1 person
R’s keep telling us they share our values…..
And yet……
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/11/08/gop-repeals-adoption-tax-credit-party-disband/
“Does the leadership of this party have actual, diagnosable brain damage? Of all the places in the tax code they could try to find some extra revenue, the supposedly pro-life GOP decides to squeeze … middle-class adoptive families?
While funding Planned Parenthood in their budget?
While our billionaire president is grumbling privately to Democrats that they should repeal the estate tax, which only bites the mega-rich?
We’re past the point of wondering whether the GOP wants to lose. The question now is whether they deserve to lose. Judging from this account by Haley Byrd of the IJR, all signs point to yes:”
The adoption tax credit only costs $300 million per year. It’s not even pocket change for Uncle Sam. For the GOP, allegedly the party of social conservatives, to nuke it over a pittance of savings feels like almost deliberate sabotage of adoptive families. What the hell are they thinking?
But it gets worse. As John McCormack points out, in the long run the adoption tax credit pays for itself, in both tangible and intangible terms:
“What they don’t factor in is the total cost to society with a child in foster care,” Johnson tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The costs to taxpayers of keeping a child in foster care—health care, food, housing, social workers, and administrators—are far greater than the one-time tax credit adoptive families may receive.
“Comparing the per-child cost of subsidized adoption from foster care with the cost of maintaining a child in foster care, one concludes that the child adopted from foster care costs the public only 40 percent as much as the child who remains in foster care,” according to a report from the National Council for Adoption. “The difference in cost per child per year amounts to $15,480.””
————————-
They don’t.
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To combine several thoughts:
1. A lot of people are trying to figure out how the parties may realign once Trump is out of office and the power of his personality cult is gone.
2. A logical new breakdown would be:
Party A: Democrats and Republicans (around 50%) who pay income taxes and receive few govt. benefits; and
Party B: Democrats and Trumpkins (around 50%) who pay no income taxes and receive govt. benefits.
3. There are two main reasons this hasn’t happened yet:
A. The historic Republican/Democratic foreign policy divide; and
B. The historic Republican/Democratic social issue divide.
4. The foreign policy divide is muddled if not gone. You have isolationists and interventionists in both parties.
5. Social issues are also muddled. On perversion, the battle is over and the perverts have won.
Abortion has been reduced, in part by state action and in part by the great work of private groups.
6. The two most actively religious groups are the black Democrats and upper-middle class Republicans. These are the groups that are natural allies on abortion, but will wind up in opposite parties under the paragraph 2 breakdown even as they are today.
7. I could see Trumpkins and black Democrats uniting to form Party B above in the future once Trump is gone and no longer picking fights (like the NFL battle) with blacks.
8. Abortion and religious liberty issues are likely to prevent Republican taxpayers from ever uniting with Democratic taxpayers to form Party A above.
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As a follow-up to 6:16, it appears that Republicans are hemmorhaging educated voters.
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I enjoyed AJ’s post at 5:48. It made me want to learn more about Hot Air.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Air
Most of us like Malkin. ‘AllahPundit’ is very bright and active on Twitter and is very anti-Trump. I need to start reading Hot Air.
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Already paying dividends. Ed Morrissey with a good article on who is to blame for Virginia.
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