economy

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

The MSM is increasing the “Democrats are surging to victory” Narrative. Still, though, with the whispered “but not really” articles here and there. They know the Democrats are getting wiped out. Among other reasons, here’s why:

The Dow is down 18.5% so far in 2022. I haven’t even checked my 401K because I don’t need that negative energy in my life (plus I’m wedded to “dollar cost averaging” in my investment strategy).

Oh, and gas prices have started to rise in some areas. And I paid more than $8 for a 12 pack of Coke. And they were nearly out of avocados. And totally out of the Diet Pepsi the Mrs prefers.

Basically, things are bad and getting worse – and the only thing the Democrats have is abortion and they are running hard on it. Now, could there be a solid majority for abortion in America? People so committed to it that they’ll turn the election for the Democrats? I doubt it. We’ll find out November 8th.

Some people have pointed out that it would be strange for Democrats/MSM to lie about how things are going – in other words, if they spend the next 6 weeks lying about how it will be, they’ll look terribly bad when the results are 180 from their assertions. This is a lack of understanding about how lies work – first and foremost, they work. They always work. No lie has even been spoken that didn’t work.

What do I mean? Surely there have been failed lies.

Well, sure. In fact, all lies fail. They can’t do other than fail. But for the liar, that isn’t the point. No liar is good at long-term thinking. Liars lie because they want to wring whatever advantage they can out of the moment. The cheating husband isn’t thinking about how his lies to his wife will work a year from now – he just wants to get away with his adultery right now. For the liar, all lies work because at least for a second, at the bare minimum, you are spending time refuting the lie – you are not advancing your own cause. You are on defense…while the liar already has his next lie lined up…and is advancing his cause while you’re refuting his last lie.

We can never know counter-factuals but it is my assertion that if the mere truth had been told in 2020, Trump would have won better than 60% of the vote and the GOP would have secured very large Congressional majorities. I’m not talking switching the MSM from anti- to pro-Trump: I’m saying that if the mere truth had been spoken, it would have been like that. That Biden was already in massive cognitive decline; that Hunter’s laptop and all the vileness on it was real; that the FBI has spent years lying about Trump/Russia; that Covid escaped from a Chinese lab and that lockdowns weren’t necessary; that VBM was obviously and only a method of voter fraud. On and on and on like that – the incumbent riding that wave of Truth would have crushed the hapless Democrats.

Lies work – even very stupid lies, such as Trump-Russia or the “very fine people” lie which Pudding Brain asserts was his reason for running. They have a corrosive effect – even the most wise are prey to them. Maybe there’s something to it? comes very much into play…but even with all those lies, Trump won more than 11 million more votes than in 2016: and so my assertion about how it would have gone if the truth had been told. So, the lies they’re using here in 2022 will also work…what should be a 50 seat House gain will probably be 30 or so. It’ll work – it’ll keep the Democrats in the game, and for the liars, that is all that matters.

Now, on to the really scary thing: the murder of Cayler Ellingson: this is a watershed moment in the life of our Republic. A kid was hunted down and murdered for his political beliefs. The last time this sort of thing happened the Freedom Riders were trying to end Jim Crow. But there’s a difference – back then, the Establishment was on the side of the hunted. Here in 2022, it is on the side of the hunters. Even the allegedly GOP AG is downplaying it – and the murderer was charged basically with leaving the scene of an accident and given bail…while J6 detainees are sitting in solitary for trespassing. Make no mistake about it – this is very bad. Joe Biden in his Hitlerian speech the other day gave permission for this…and if our Republican leaders don’t start punishing the Democrats for this sort of thing then people will start to defend themselves against perceived threats.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Well, I’m officially work from home, now. Got all the stuff I need; so, one less thing to worry about.

The Democrats, in my view, really messed up on the stimulus…not that the GOP plan is all that great, but trying to lard up the program with abortion and green new deal stuff was an act of political idiocy I don’t think we’ve ever seen in human history. But, they did it – and I think it is because they are in a closed-loop: they simply don’t get much information which isn’t a mere variation on Orange Man Bad.

A recent poll showed Trump’s overall support rising and especially giving him high marks on handling the virus and the economy – it was the sort of poll number that would make him invincible if it holds to November. But the odd thing I saw in it was that Trump’s support among GOPers and Independents on the virus was about the same (around 60%) while his support among Democrats was sub 30%. Theoretically, everyone is getting the same sort of news, right? Well, I guess not: Democrats are clearly getting a set of information which is widely at odds with what GOPers and Independents are getting…and I think this is largely a function of GOPers and Independents tuning out the MSM while Democrats still follow every word of it. If you only watched CNN and MSNBC, you would believe that we’re days away from bodies piled up in the streets and 30% unemployment for a decade.

Now, it’ll be interesting to see what happens if, in the event, we don’t have bodies piled up in the streets and the economy makes a brisk recovery through the Summer. How will our Democrats square that with what they watch on the news? If it finally does penetrate, then Trump may win in an epic landslide.

Be that as it may, no one can really predict what is going to happen in November – though that hasn’t stopped our Experts from proclaiming that Trump is doomed. The situation is entirely fluid and while Trump is getting good poll numbers, now, a major change for the worse in a week or two would likely knock him down. Until it all happens, we won’t know what will happen. But I’m suspecting as bad as the virus might get, it won’t be a catastrophe and, also, as bad a hit as the economy is taking, it won’t take us long to get back out of it. And with Biden – who looks like he’s aged ten years the past month – leading the Democrat charge, I’m liking our chances in November.

Parishoners bought their ill priest a respirator. Priest found out someone else needed it and gave it up. The priest has now died. No greater love…

The Dow rose 2,112 points and so we’re back in Obama’s economy again – we’ll be in Trump’s if it drops tomorrow, for those keeping score at home.

The virus is not a flu – and you should familiarize yourself with the symptoms. Still, after all we’ve learned, the prime markers seem to be fever and a very bad cough. But it can also start with other symptoms and you can actually start to feel better before getting very much worse. Stout hearts, though: most people who get it survive and most who die have underlying conditions. If you have underlying health conditions, I really do suggest you barricade yourself at home and ride this out.

Trump wants to re-open the economy as fast as possible and in general I agree: we can’t stay locked down for a very long time. I think it should be a phased re-opening. As we get better numbers on how many are infected and what the real mortality rate is, we’ll be able to assess the actual danger and start letting up on the restrictions. Overall, oldsters should probably be the last to come out – and everyone who is work from home had probably better stay there for at least a couple months.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Never forget:

Impeach this, Democrats:

The jobs market turned in a stellar performance in November, with nonfarm payrolls surging by 266,000 and the unemployment rate falling to 3.5%, according to Labor Department numbers released Friday.

Those totals easily beat the Wall Street consensus. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for solid job growth of 187,000 and saw the unemployment rate holding steady from October’s 3.6%.

I’ve read stories that the Trump Administration has been turning the screws on those who hire illegal immigrants – in other words, taking away the incentive for the illegals to come across. But the follow-on of that would be that these companies have to hire someone…and if an American is all you got, I guess you gotta take him. And pay him an American wage; wage growth has also been red hot.

I had mentioned a little while back that President McKinley’s trade policy was “trade reciprocity”; boiled down, we’re only going to buy from countries which buy from us, unless a country really has something we absolutely can’t procure in the United States. Trump’s trade policies are in line with this concept; it is unfair for a country to get easy access to our markets when we have no real access or highly limited access to theirs. And for all the Tru-Cons out there, it seems to me that adhering to the tried and true practices of the Republican Party – rather than the so-called “free trade” nostrums of Progressives – is the more Conservative thing to do. The more we force people to play fair and the more we protect ourselves from foreign predators, the better we’re going to do. In my view, if we keep it up long enough, we won’t even have to worry about the supposed cheapness of foreign imports…American ingenuity will simply figure out ways to make it just as cheap at home, because there’s one thing that business wants to do: sell product. And if selling product requires making it faster and cheaper, they’ll eventually figure out how to do it.

The latest shooting in Florida was, without a doubt, and act of Islamist terrorism…so, everyone is doing what they can to pretend it wasn’t. Mark Steyn is trenchant as usual:

We know it’s a Saudi national gunning down Americans, but it’s “too early to know” if it’s terrorism. Could be just “mental health issues” or “workplace violence” or “pre-traumatic stress disorder” or “involuntary self-radicalization” or whatever. Nothing to worry about and always remember (to reprise another old line of mine) that “Allahu Akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here”.

On “the day that everything changed” nothing changed – except the rate of Muslim immigration to the west, which doubled. A US immigration bureaucracy both cruel and stupid enough to ban a World War Two RAF pilot for life for staying with his wife until her death when she was stricken ill in the US and taken to a New Jersey hospital cannot stop itself admitting Saudi trainee pilots to kill Americans.

The only thing wrong with President Trump’s Muslim ban is that it was nothing of the kind. What we needed was strict controls on foreign nationals who hail from places where terrorists commonly come from. If you are coming to the USA from, say Saudi Arabia, then lets to a pretty intense background check on you and get you bonded and insured and so forth before you come in. Who in hell thought it would be a good idea to give Saudis flight training? Someone, somewhere…who probably got a pay raise and promotion for encouraging diversity…because we have a shortage of lunatic murderers in the United States. The real problem is money, as usual: the Saudis and other Muslim money bags have been flashing the cash at our Ruling Class for decades and really poured it on after 9/11…so many people are bought that we aren’t even allowed to have a real discussion of the issue…a discussion which would help the Muslim world as much as it would help us.

In a sign that Trump is changing the courts, the 9th Circuit – yes, that 9th circuit – just gave Trump a win on whether an immigrant can be a public charge (that means be on welfare, for you liberals out there).

How is impeachment going? Well, CNN which is mostly about impeachment (and complaining about how Fox is covering impeachment) has seen its ratings tank…very, very badly. The jig is really up for it, folks: I’m still not convinced they’ll actually hold a vote on articles of impeachment, but we’ll see. Main thing is, it is dead as a door nail. Only real question if they impeach is, does McConnell move to have it summarily dismissed, or does he drag out a trial through the early Democrat primaries?

The Unraveling

Cluster8 Comments

It’s unfortunate that our country had to get to this point, but the end of our current “progressive” nightmare is near. The free fall of the Dow has exposed the fragility of the economy; the Planned Parenthood debacle has exposed the ugly truth about abortion; the self inspections and recent SAM purchases by Iran have exposed the sheer stupidity of our foreign policy; the Black Lives Matters movement has exposed the failure of liberal social justice policies; and the Hillary email and IRS scandals have exposed the dishonesty of progressive Democrats. It’s all unraveling on every front, right in front of our eyes, let’s hope conservatives can seize the day.

“……..raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people”.  – Ronaldo Magnus