In the immediate aftermath of the Texas flood the Democrats swung into action!
Going to help and raising funds for the victims?
Oh heck no! They got their talking points out and started blaming Trump! You see, because NOAA had some DOGE staff cuts a few months back, THIS WAS ALL TRUMP’S FAULT YOU MAGA MORONS!!!! Of course, if you read the articles about the NOAA cuts from the time they don’t actually list who was fired – sure, they say it was vital people but since they didn’t tell us which, exact, people were let go, you can rely on it was the Deputy Assistant Director for Diversity Affairs – not anyone mission critical. And, anyways, as the storm built up the NWS in the area called in the troops and so they were actually overstaffed at the time of the disaster.
I pointed out on X that after reading the articles about it, I got the distinct impression that nobody had messed up. The warnings were issued in a timely manner and people reacted responsibly to them – but it seems that the storm cell stalled in place for a bit and just dumped water…and in a particular place where the terrain ensured it was going to be bad. In short, it is a natural disaster…like an earthquake or tsunami and while we can all look back and wish this, that or the other thing had been done, there really wasn’t anything that was going to change the result. It is all just a horrible tragedy and Democrats are some sick, twisted people trying to wring political advantage out of it.
Elon has started his new American Party – which is going to be a bit interesting, mostly in who joins it. Most will be sheer lunatics. But what Musk will first find out is how difficult ballot access is. Here in Nevada it is fairly straightforward – but even here we require a new party to get the signatures of 1% of the voters in each House district. Each district: you can’t roll up the numbers in NV-01 and use that to make up for a deficit in NV-04…he’s going to have to hire people to wander around Elko trying to get signatures. Also, Nevada already has an Independent American Party (a last echo of Wallace’s 1968 campaign) and that will cause confusion. And other State’s have positively Byzantine access laws. Bottom line, it will be very difficult for Elon to get on the ballot in all 50 States by election day, 2026. And he’s already said he’s going to be very targeted…which translates into, “I’ll try to torpedo GOPers in tight races”.
Why is he doing this? Can’t say for sure: I can’t read his mind. But I did find out that one of the things OBBB did was terminate the sale of what amounts to carbon credits to meet CAFE standards. The CAFE standards still exist but the fine for noncompliance has been reduced to zero…Musk’s Tesla makes huge money – apparently the difference between profit and loss, by a lot – selling credits to other car makers who don’t meet CAFE standards. They won’t need these credits and so Tesla will lose money…lots and lots of money. If what I read is correct – and it seems to be – Musk is already selling each Tesla at a loss…and more than making up for it via Green New Scam provisions which will now no longer matter. As I said many times before, people who make the kind of money Musk has have a primary loyalty to their money. If Musk had just wanted to be rich then once he got to a couple billion dollars he would have kicked back at the beach…that he keeps going piling up more and more means that money (and the power it brings) fascinates him. You risk his money and he will be upset with you.
Also as I’ve said, Musk is no Conservative – he’s really rather all over the map and mostly seems to favor things which work out best for Musk. Heavily invested in solar, so he boosts solar. Heavily invested in EV’s, so he favor’s EV mandates and subsidies. Heavily invested in space exploration, favors big subsidies for that. Etc, etc, etc. I personally think that he’s simply trying to pressure Trump and the GOP into making concessions…that in the next reconciliation bill promised by Speaker Johnson, he gets back some of what he lost in the OBBB. Perhaps Trump will accommodate him? He is a deal maker, after all – but Trump holds the whip hand here: Trump is actually popular and he doesn’t need Musk for anything. In addition, we have the history of Trump – everyone who crosses him gets wrecked, usually by their own stupidity.
Blogs For Victory 
Elon is an idealist
Politics is a game for realists
I suspect he’s going to find that out.
The problem with being the smartest guy in the room 99% of the time is that it’s hard to realize that that other 1% will trip you up.
I have never quite gotten over Musk’s comment that he used to be a Democrat because he thought of it as “the party of kindness”. I mean, what a braindead comment! But it told me that when it comes to something like this he has a very simplistic and emotion-based foundation. And then he started talking about a party for people “in the middle” and I thought someone really needs to get hold of Elon for a heart-to-heart and make him realize how utterly stupid that goal is. He needs a tutorial on actual politics, which is the best way to govern a nation.
The modern phrase “stay in your lane” applies here. Douglas MacArthur is arguably the most brilliant man to ever wear America’s uniform but when the GOP tried to boost him as a Presidential candidate, he was found to have all the political skills of a lobotomized gnat.
Regardless of how much money Musk has, I suspect he’ll realize soon enough that the cost of getting into politics on a large scale will swallow piles of cash faster than Brewster’s millions.
But what Musk will first find out is how difficult ballot access is.
Before he even gets that far I think his political knowledge and insight will be challenged, and he will start to realize that “the middle” means political illiteracy and emotion-based voting, which will not age well.
It’s been my experience that people “in the middle” generally don’t have any hard core beliefs or principles (other than maybe fairness) that influence the way they think and vote. They tend to be swayed by shiny objects and slogans like “hope and change.” They certainly don’t think about things like the best way to govern the country.
Being in the middle is like trying to compromise with a pirate – he wants me to walk a reasonable distance along the plank but our definition of “reasonable” is different…to me, “reasonable” is a point just before I tip over, for the pirate it is just after. Being centrist is all attitude…and usually a superior, look-down-your-nose attitude. A pretense to being too smart to be all one or all the other.
In our politics, of course, being in the center means de-facto going along with Democrats. You never see a centrist pulling the Left towards the Right…it always works out that the reasonable position is to move the window a bit to the Left. Musk will build his centrist party and he’ll find that the Woke Mind Virus will rapidly take control of it.
The thing is, to be a “centrist” means to pick and choose which Constitutional elements must be followed and which can be expanded, altered or discarded. And to turn away from Constitutional governance might not actually mean fully adopting Leftist ideology, but it does mean dropping into a whirlpool of constantly changing ideas and beliefs which, when you get down to it, are really just emotional reactions to disappointment or confusion.
And I am always reminded of this old Outback commercial about a “vegetarian” who is really just “semi-veg”. Apply his vegetarian beliefs to allegiance to the Constitution and you get “the Middle”.
I was once in a conference with attorneys over the proposed wording of an agreement, written by the opposition. I had to make a very strong statement to explain my rejection of some of what I called the “weasel wording” it contained. That is, word after word that was dependent on interpretation and bias, and offered a back door out of compliance as well as a guarantee of future litigation to resolve the sure-to-arise issue of interpretation.
“reasonable” was one of the words. “material” was another. I don’t remember them all but my grand finale was an explanation of why I would not accept wording that said the opposition had 30 days to “commence” curing a default and just had to continue to show a serious effort. So they could say they “commenced” curing the default by appointing a committee to look into it? And play it out indefinitely just by claiming they were really, truly, sincerely and energetically working on it? “Just look at all our memos!” That was the hardest of a hard NO.
Without intending to, my comments turned into kind of a tutorial on accurate and specific wording in legal documents. The two new guys seemed a little stunned, but my regular lawyer just grinned and offered me a job. And then I redlined the entire offering and wrote a new version with specific and inflexible wording.
(Although over enough time even “specific and inflexible” wording can morph or erode. In the days of the Founders, who knew that commonly accepted words and definitions could change? Who could have predicted arguments over the meaning of words like “woman” or “marriage”? Who could be confused by what was meant by “Natural Born Citizen”?)
I’m going to give B4B and then B4V a lot of credit for my political evolution because when I came to the original blog I was no different than most people in my vague concept of “politics”. I was instinctively conservative, having been nudged in that direction early in the Clinton Era though without a map. I lived a rather isolated life, on a mountain ranch with a husband who had no interest in politics, so when I found B4B I jumped right in. And I found my responses to the Lefty trolls (and there were a lot of them then) instinctively correct but foundationally shaky, so I started a process of doing research on a topic before responding. And that was the beginning of my political evolution and my realization that politics is like any other organization and can (and should) be based on the equivalent of an engineering plan and blueprint.
I did have to work backward to this concept, but I have given it a lot of thought, and basically come up with the idea that if we start with what we think are the basics and then go beyond them to dig down a few more layers we eventually come up with the core question: how do I want my country to function? Not “Who do I want to run my country?” but what would the engineering specs look like if I were to start from scratch to design my ideal system?
That’s what the Founders did. They started with no plan, no system, at all, and just a few concepts, and they laboriously built a blueprint around them. It’s analogous to a thoughtful design of a home–first, the basic concepts of what the home is supposed to provide. So, if you have four kids and two shaggy dogs and a building site with a pond out back, you know you will need a big mud room. You analyze where most laundry is generated and put the laundry room near the bedrooms and not between the garage and kitchen (the stupidest design ever) and you figure out the necessary elevation to avoid problems when the creek and pond flood. Then you take your notebook with all its requirements for your ideal house and you start sketching. And you throw away sketch after sketch because as you get into the details you keep running into things that didn’t show up in the concept phase. You realize you can’t provide for every single possible contingency, so you work on a design that has some built-in room for expansion or alteration if something pops up later demanding such a change.
This is what the Founders did, and ended up with a text version of an engineering plan for a government.
Karl Marx never got that far, never got beyond the concept stage, and neither did any of his political heirs. And that is why the governments that proceeded from those concepts have always been unstable, demanding the sheer force of tyranny to paper over the structural defects.
So what I see is people, nearly all people, caught up in the fallacy that “politics” is really just a collection of concepts, which include those deadly ISSUES (which I wish I could print with the appropriate sneer I use when I have to say the word) and a grab-bag of wishful thinking and emotional reactions. And this disorganized mess of confusion and emotion and reaction forms what we can think of as “the Middle”.
Taking this a step farther, I think that conservatives come closer to understanding the need for the blueprint, and the existence of one, than anyone else, whether on the Left or in “the Middle”. Certainly most if not all who support and enable the Left are aware of, much less supportive of, the actual blueprint for Leftist governance, incomplete and sketchy as it is. They are there for the emotional feedback of responding to the emotional appeal of a system in which its leaders know this is all they can use for bait.
Those in the Middle are more accurately described as those in the Muddle, as they kind-of-maybe-a-little-bit-around-the-edges understand and even agree with conservatives but like the virtue signaling of the Left and dammit just can’t DECIDE so they just drift along on whatever currents are stronger at any given time. And this emotion-based unstable constituency is what Musk is trying to corral and organize. But he is an engineer, and at some time is going to have to realize that he needs an engineering plan for the structure of his party—and by golly, there already IS one!
As Emily Litella would say, “Never mind…..”
There is no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out — GK Chesterton
Marx thought a great deal – and, we must tip our hat, he came up with a scheme which to this day stands just below Christianity and Islam in its ability to secure adherents – but he never thought it out. Someone unearthed an X post by Mandami and he gives the basic Marxist belief: from each according to their ability, too each according to their need. This seems so simple – and, indeed, very intuitive. I explode it by pointing out that this means in our Communist utopia only people who need to live by the beach will get the beach houses…but who needs to live by the beach?
Of course, nobody needs such a thing – and the Communist can try to come up with all manner of work-arounds…nobody gets to live by the beach…but that means the houses a mile from the beach are still closest to the beach and will be desired. Build gigantic high rises on the beach…which kinda wrecks the beach and you still won’t be able to build enough of them to satisfy everyone who wants to live close to the beach. The pragmatic facts of life is that you’ll always have things that aren’t needed but are greatly desired with never enough to go around. Some means of distributing these desired goods must be devised. Currently, its money (though, increasingly, also combined with political connections). This isn’t fair. But its a method. Under Communism, the Party bosses will decide…and that means the bosses and their cronies get it, also not fair…but even less fair than letting money decide because at least everyone has a shot at getting money while being a Party boss is dependent upon servility and cruelty that most people don’t want to develop.
And this is before we get into such things as: everyone needs shoes but how many size 10 wide loafers are going to be needed next month? Nobody knows – but Communism says that whatever need you have will be instantly filled. And maybe the size 10 wide factory will produce enough…maybe they won’t. And if they don’t, then someone who needs size 10 wides is going to go without…which Communism says cannot happen. Also: how to we determine what “ability” is? Fernando Tatis, Jr is able to crank dingers on the regular…but since May he’s been sub .200 at the plate. That’s just baseball…suppose the guy who is capable of cranking out 50 widgets a day isn’t feeling enthused and so only cranks out 37? He’s not performing according to his ability…yet he’s going to get what he needs, right? And the guy who is able to do 26 widgets a day is doing that…but even at max effort he’s still not doing as much as the other guy who’s slacking…but both their needs get met…
On and on it goes, and it all stems from not being thought out – that Marx observed the gross injustices of the early Capitalist system and just grafted on a solution without thinking about it…without considering that some aspects of the Capitalist system were good and yet others just inherent in the human condition.
The belief that anyone, Communist or not, can “fix” everything is at the heart of Leftism, and was well described by Thomas Sowell, though a little indirectly, when he identified the conflict of visions: the Amazon description of his book refers to what it calls “the “constrained” vision, which sees human nature as unchanging and selfish, and the “unconstrained” vision, in which human nature is malleable and perfectible.” (“Selfish” is a judgmental word for self-interest, which is a wholly human inclination, but it will suffice.)
It’s the “human nature is malleable and perfectible” aspect that gets so many people hooked on their limited understanding of Leftism because it offers if not the promise at least the prospect of that Utopia hinted at by Marx. “It can happen if we only do ……” And it is a part of a larger Leftist attitude: If wildly fluctuating temperatures across the globe create some problems, the Left says “We can fix that”. The leaders on the Left know this means “We can get rich by pretending it can be fixed” but the starry-eyed sheeple really do believe in the promise. The leaders know that poverty can never be “fixed” without “fixing” people, but those starry-eyed hopefuls are pretty sure that “poverty” can somehow be “fixed” if they define “poverty” as “not enough money” and then just move OPM around.
Sometimes this attitude is just naivete, but more often it is hubris and narcissism. And it sucks in millions, who then vote, protest, even die to support it.
Basically, your guy can crank out 50 widgets a day if he puts some effort into it—but then he sees that the guy next to him, who is a slacker who takes a lot of breaks, produces 25 widgets a day but gets paid the same. Maybe a saint would continue to put out max effort for no more return, while watching the minimum effort guy get equal pay and benefits, but most people would decide to just dial their efforts back to 25 widgets a day and go home less tired and achy at the end of the day.
And pretty soon the baseline for widget production is what is produced by the worst and laziest worker, as everyone catches onto the scam.
Under a capitalist system management would analyze the most likely and reasonable (there’s that word again!) level of production—say it is 45 WPD (Widgets Per Day)—-and then offer a bonus for every widget above that level. Then overall production would increase (the 50 WPD guy could probably crank out another five or so without too much effort) while the slackers would continue to just phone it in and get paid for their 25 widgets a day while whining about the “1%” making so much more money. The PWC (per-widget cost) might go up a tick, but this would be offset by greater production and more widgets to sell.
Yep – most people tend to do the bare minimum. Just human nature; why expend effort beyond what is strictly required? Marx essentially asserted that this is because of the unjust Capitalist system…but when the workers own the means of production, nobody would ever slack off. The first time someone actually tried this – Lenin right at the start of his government – he found that the workers would produce just enough for them to get enough trade goods to obtain food from the farmers. That they would not create a surplus. Because there was no reason to. What the heck did the guy in the factory care if someone in a distant city had enough? After a very short while of that experiment, out came the guns: work, damn you! And then “special” provisions for those who actually performed…you know, paying someone more if they did a good job. The Soviets created a whole myth, however, about workers who achieved the Marxist dream – they took this miner names Stakhanov and pretended he had mined 14 times his shift quota and he did it because of his zeal for the Socialist system…a massive propaganda effort was set afoot, reaching so far that the guy got his picture on the cover of Time magazine in 1935. It was all, of course, drivel – he had massive help every step of the way and they just awarded him credit for the work done by others. But once this was “fact” the Soviet government then started insisting that everyone could do it…”come on, Comrade, Stakhanov did it! Why can’t you?”…oh, and here’s ten years in a labor camp if you don’t…
The Chesterton quotation is brilliant, and an excellent summary of a major difference between conservatives and Liberals.