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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
I figured I'd give people a forum to sound off, in case anyone gets bored. Me? I'm ready to go back to work. In this over-crowded state, if you want to do anything on the weekend, you have to fight the traffic and the crowds. Holiday weekends are even worse.
Anyway, here are some topics of discussion:
After the President's 'V for Vendetta' speech, he issued a clarification:
"I don't consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country."
Glad he cleared that up! What's going on?
~~~~~~~~~
The Infotainment Media Complex proudly participated in a conspiracy to 'save' an election for Democrats, cheers on censorship, and has been fanning the flames of civil war for years. Now this:
Red wave crashing? GOP momentum slips as fall sprint begins.
It's always been an iron law that polling before Labor Day is unreliable and predictive of nothing. Reporting 'the news,' or propaganda?
~~~~~~~~~
Vlad has finally pinched off Europe's gas pipe.
What now? Putin knows European 'powers' are weak sisters. This may be his gambit to end his bumbling Ukraine invasion. Europe is stocked up, but they will still have to impose severe restrictions and rationing on homes and businesses.
Our heating bills here in the US will bite hard, and look for worldwide riots and food shortages in poorer countries as Ukraine's war-shrunken harvest cannot export through Russian controlled ports.
What say you?
Sanity Check:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2022/house/elections-map.html
Yeah, Biden's mouth made many MAGAnuts mighty mad but that's not what's going on.
ReplyDeleteLittle Joey from Stratton, was bating Trump, laying a trap. And it worked.
A lot of 2022 Republican candidates don’t want to talk Trump. Their plan was for the upcoming elections to not be about Trump but to be about Biden, gas prices, the boarder, crime, and so on. They wanted and hoped for Trump to be as quiet as possible. Some were even admitting they never say his name, “ever!”. Rep. Charlie Dent(R) explained on CNN how many Republican candidates want nothing to do with Trump at all.
But as we know, Trump feeds on the cameras pointed his way.
And now Trump, the face of the GOP, is on the road ranting and doing Klan rallies, consuming the oxygen and hogging the cameras. He went to PA and bashed PA, something Dent referred to as a "major gift" for Democrats. Trump, being the egomaniac he is, couldn’t resist the bait and swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Thing is, it puts those wanting to distance themselves from him on the hook as well.
As Axios put it: "The bottom line: GOP midterm candidates — who want to talk solely about the prices of gas and groceries — now must contend with background music that once again is Trump, Trump, Trump."
It reminds me of that SNL spoof when Will Ferrell playing GWB told voters when entering the voting booth, think of his face..
Ronald,
DeleteThank you for your honesty and admitting Biden gave a prime time campaign speech.
Your comments, while trite, stale and banal, are eternally true. When politicians are screwing the pooch as badly as Biden and the Democrat party are right now, their only hope is misdirection. With soaring prices and people increasingly upset with government, it ain't gonna work.
RJW may be right. but I think it is far deeper than that.
DeleteThis is not a provocation of Trump, but a provocation of his supporters and an existential threat to them.
To provoke them to rally (with FBI provocateurs) and then to persecute them as he did the Jan 6th protesters.
I am not sure Trump is the best choice for Republicans, but he is the only one actively opposing the impostor.
Thanks also for giving a nod to something I've observed many times over the past few years:
DeleteTrump and the press are locked in a sweaty, pornographic embrace, like a crack whore and a car thief holed up in a sleazy motel blowing through their stolen money.
My interpretation of "screwing the pooch" (a less vulgar way of putting it) is a worker cheating their employer. That's pretty rich considering the screwing the American people took from Trump and his thieving GOP (around $3 trillion in $1,5 increments for 1 comes to mind). But that's another issue.
DeleteI would add that after the unprecedented stunts from Trump and McConnell's SCOTUS blocking and the throat ramming along with thrashing our democratic process, doing a prime time commercial is pretty minute in the anything-goes politics world brought to us from Trump and friends.
As for your only point, I don't have this crystal ball you seem to have that tells if it's going to work or not.
But I will say this. Democrats finally showing a glimmer of a spine ain't gonna hurt em none.
I think the 'V for Vendetta' hypothesis is the most plausible: Biden and the Democrats want to scare the normals into believing Trump and MAGA will usher in a neo-fascist era that steals all your abortion rights and impose a Handmaiden's Tale world right here in the good old US of A!
DeleteHe is also assuring propagandized progressives who believe all this bs that he will exercise cruel power against the existential MAGA threat.
He, the Democrat Party, and their press propagandists are also pushing the line that it is legitimate to violate all principles and abuse the power of the state to snuff out (in biden's words) a “clear and present danger.”
Biden's speech could possibly have been the mother of all dog whistles.
Since retracting his comments, Biden has since (yesterday) double-downed on them (again). His schizophrenia is only understandable when you understand the audience targeted. Twitter is mostly for smug elite "influencers". The 6 o'clock news, working Joes.
DeleteI think Biden's speech went to nobody. There's not a Trump supporting Republican that's going to scratch the drool off their chin and think, much less think "by God Biden is right how could I have been so blind?"
DeleteThe other half of the Republican Party, the half that is tired of losing and wants Trump and his supporters to go away, and stay away, are eyeballing Republican leadership and admiring that Biden can say the quiet part out loud, that anti-Trumpism wins Congressional elections and has for 4 years now. The Republican Party is losing national relevance. You'd think actual "nationalists" would grasp that.
Democrats, including their temporary guests of Republicans just there to help America be rid of Trumpism, probably enjoyed the sermon to the choir. They know 7 out of 10 eligible voters are opposed to Trump, and it won't take much to persuade one or two of the other three. Nothing will spike voter participation and turn out like a chance to defeat Trump and Trumpism.
Ask anyone that's ever gone through a messy divorce and they'll tell you divorces are expensive mainly because they're so damned worth it. Counseling is not going to work. The Republican Party needs to serve the papers, change the locks, and kick Trump to the curb.
If the Republican Party does not rid itself of Trump, the American voter will. The Republic is safe.
@TC - I hold Biden in no regard, so I may not be reading public sentiment right, but he negated any sense of duty, honor country....his speech may have installed in most.....by his groveling retraction.
DeleteAfter the vile rhetoric from the cult over the last several years…..his speech didn’t even move the needle. But it did mark the full transition of tender snowflake status, from the Left to the Right.
^^Yep, Biden's speech has sure found its' target audience^^
Delete....Lynn Cheney Republicans. It's time for the "Nov. general" now and for the "targeted usefulls" to reject the candidates Democrats funded in the (R) primaries and embrace their competition... the ones with the (D)s after their names.
DeleteOr, Republicans could just run viable candidates, like they did before they got tired of winning.
DeleteThe cult is sabotaging its own strategy and scoring own goals. Almost as if it were planned by an outside party…….
Delete- CI
I'm afraid that "viable" today means a bit more than "candidates Mitch McConnell's SRCC or the Chamber will bankroll".
DeleteIt means candidates who'll actually represent their constituents, and not merely the people who employ them.
Delete...but then again, those people aren't likely to spend $50b on arms for Ukrainians to kill scary Russians with.
DeleteSo....that excludes the cult.
Delete-CI
Russians aren't scary.....there's just not enough of them filling body bags yet.
DeleteFunny, how many "individual donors" does Mitch's SRCC or the Chamber have in comparison to "the cults candidates"? Betcha the "cults candidates" numbers are between x10-100 greater.
Deletelolz!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete@CI...
DeleteThe cult is sabotaging its own strategy and scoring own goals. Almost as if it were planned by an outside party…….
Now you're on my conspiracy theory. When the Clintons encouraged Donald Trump to run, they knew he would a) have their loyal Democrat donor use his Justice Department to fully exonerate Hillary Clinton, and b) destroy the Republican Party as a relevant force in national politics.
They were right. Democrats can go as goofy left as they want now. Who's going to stop them? The guy that has his followers quoting the Unabomber?
One veteran Republican digital strategist told Axios the Trump effect, compared with the potency or engagement of other ex-presidents, is "something we've never had in the history of digital fundraising."
Delete22 cents of every dollar in donations processed through GOP payment processor WinRed last year went not to GOP midterm candidates but to two Trump committees: Save America and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, an Axios analysis of campaign finance records shows.
The two groups brought in more WinRed money than the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee — combined.
The guy that has his followers quoting the Unabomber?
DeleteBetter than that...the guy who showcased the (jailed) Hitler fanboi at his rally the other day. Cool.
....but Trump candidates need cash from Mitch McConnell.
DeleteWhy do you keep killing my dream that one day a Trump supporter will accidentally say something intelligent?
Wassa maddah. Mitch doesn't get to whet his beak with Trump donor money? Poor boy...
DeleteFunny, I don't see Mitch McConnell supporters crying about Trump fundraising going to Trump's pockets and legal troubles instead of "his" candidates.
DeleteMcConnell manages the party's "general" (R) funds... yet only hands them out to RINOs. And THAT is why he gets so few of them from working class Republicans.
DeleteSilver, my struggle with the House map is the reality of how few districts in the US are truly competitive. We are down to about 40 districts nationwide that will determine which way the House leans.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone think that is good?
To me it looks like a recipe for pure partisanship, instead of representatives working to build bipartisan coalitions within a more diverse electorate.
I'm not sure what the fix is, but seats that are mostly passed on though party affiliation, can't be the best plan.
First, I want to establish what that map shows:
DeleteIn 2022: 34 tossups out of 435 seats
If Democrats take every tossup, the GOP still wins the House, so the happy talk right now is just blather and propaganda.
I acknowledge your point, Dave, but look at how the House has gone back and forth since the 90's, often in wild swings of 40-60 seats. This demonstrates that enough House elections become competitive each cycle to keep either party from getting too comfy. I don't see this as a crisis.
Speaking of crises, why was uncompetitiveness never an issue back when Democrats had a solid lock on the House and an almost solid lock on the senate?
Why did no one talk about packing an 'illegitimate' supreme court when it was dominated by progressives?
Apologies for playing the game I accuse you of, but you see my point? Like being at a baseball game, where you sit determines what you see.
Throw in 'Leaners' and 'Likelies' and we have 100 competitive seats, a little less that 25%. Maybe not what you're looking for, but as I pointed out already, enough to keep the game competitive.
DeleteRural people are generally conservative, and city people are generally progressive, and their districts reflect that, as they should.
You seem to be leading us to ranked choice voting. I'm still thinking that one over. I'm suspicious because the left is pushing it.
Ranked choice. That's California, right?
DeleteWhat Dominion software is based on?
New York City did ranked choice for mayor, and Alaska just elected a Democrat House member for the first time in forever using ranked choice voting.
DeleteSilver... I don't know enough about ranked choice to have an opinion.
DeleteAs for the House races, I'm just not a fan of gerrymandering districts to get a desired outcome, from either the Dems of the GOP.
As someone who is actually supporting breaking the duopoly with actual choice……I’m all for ranked choice voting. If either of the major parties don’t like it……maybe they can, you know…..appeal to more voters.
DeleteLooks to me like a Democrat ran against two Republicans and still won in Alaska. Not much of a shocker there. Maybe three or four or a hundred Republican candidates will do the trick?
DeleteThe Democrat candidate would have won even if were a true one vote one outcome system. But the ranked voting contrivance is stupid. Both "runoff" candidates got more "votes" than they actually did. That's not democracy, that's a favorite color contest.
...and invest in driving up everyone's "negatives". You don't need your candidate to be ranked No.1 in "For" column so much as to make sure that your prime opponent gets ranked on everyone's voting list as last when you can't make the right strategic voting alliances (ie Dems with Greens, DSA, etc.)
DeleteDave,
DeleteI share your distaste of gerrymandering, but one man's gerrymander is another man's protecting a natural constituency.
Here in Colorado, we voted to turn redistricting over to a supposedly non-partisan commission. Conservatives were skeptical, but had nothing to lose in this blue state where the Democrats just operatically passed an abortion law that makes it legal up to the point of birth.
Anyway, we gained a congressional seat this year, and the commission actually drew a competitive district, without jobbing any of the incumbents in the other districts. I am still shocked, but I continue to be shocked.
I actually kinda like Jared Polis (D) and I think he's been a pretty good governor. He is also a crafty political operator. Democrats in the state and in Denver have taken a lot of scorn, but Uncle Jerry's got teflon. I wouldn't be surprised to see him run for president, and win, sometime in the future. He has a good record to run on.
We got the "Independent" Commission in Michigan, also.
DeleteProvenly Dem sway.
Came with Whitmer and the pot law.
3 strikes in one vote.
I have relatives in Alaska. It's not an exaggeration to say a very large cross-section of Alaskans want Alaska to become its own country if only for the better trade deals it could get out of the United States.
DeleteAlaskans aren't dumb. 12 years ago they came out in droves to write-in Lisa Murkowski in the general election after losing a primary to Tea Party nonsense, the proto-Trump effort to reduce the Republican Party to what it is today (neo-Sorelian left-wing populists) Murkowski won handily.
The same thing happened with the ranked voting nonsense. The Republican Party tried to jam two Trump candidates down Alaska's throat and Alaska said nope.
I thought Nick Begich was running as a Republican against Palin to reclaim his grandfathers Democratic seat...
DeleteHey my bad, you're right.
DeleteBegich hasn't received a single endorsement from a national GOP figure, and experts say courting endorsements from anti-Trump GOP leaders is a clear strategy for Begich's campaign.
I thought he was one of the Trumpenproletariat. Turns out he could win the seat in November if he can avoid getting endorsed by Trump.
Talk about "VLAD,"...Silver, sorry you can't read my blog for the tech reasons you've stated because my German Stepson in Munich gives a pretty good overview of the energy situation there and it's posted today..........
ReplyDeleteI read your excellent but sad post, and was able to comment!
DeleteI see it, others see it, but official mouthpieces, including the Establishment Press, do not want to admit our emperors have no clothes.
Z... and Silver too... This quote is from the post at Geeez...
Delete"We will all get much poorer for a war that is none of our business...
As I've stated before, as it relates to the US, I get the underlying thinking in a comment such as this. But it leads me to some questions...
How does a "non affected" country objectively determine when something like what is happening in Ukraine is its business? If ever?
For example, using Germany... If Hitler had confined his ambitions to his own country, and within his borders, would the US and/or other non approving countries have had a duty, or right, to respond?
Or, at least in our case, would isolation have been the best response?
And if isolation is the answer, which it may be, how do we accomplish that in today's globally connected world?
Dave,
DeleteFair questions. First, we need a better set of "leaders" and "experts."
If Hitler confined himself to just his nation, no, no military action. I disagree (in retrospect, admittedly) with Cheney-Bush's Iraq invasion.
Look at the broad sweep of human history. We are bastards, people do bad things, and the world is forever plagued by bad people, some swinging enough weight to inflict major pain.
I also urge you to see the various ways difficult situations have been handled throughout history.
If Hitler confined himself to just his nation, no, no military action.
DeleteYou don't see any parallels between the pre-invasion rhetoric (Poland & Ukraine)....and the invasions by Hitler and Putin?
Note....I'm not equating the two leaders....just the general operational goals (and telegraphing) of each.
Dave and Farmer
DeleteGive a listen to this podcast if you have 52 minutes. To get through it quicker you can speed up to 1.2 and still follow the conversation quite well.
Thomas Fazi is a leftist, and I'm nodding my head and agreeing with him as I listen. Its about the power elites in Europe, but same applies to the US.
Unherd: It’s time for civil disobedience
(Farmer, I thought of you as I listened to this post)
Here is Fazi's essay on the subject:
https://unherd.com/2022/08/britains-elites-have-lost-control/
Silver... urge me? Believe me, I'm aware of them, across the sweep of milenia. From countries big and small, good and bad and everything in between, including the US.
DeleteBut apart from a "better leaders and experts" I'm wondering where a cross section of the electorate might land themselves on some of my questions.
None of which I don't think, are gotchas. At least not in their intent.
CI: Sure. Every tyrant tries to justify his criminality. And?
DeleteDave,
DeleteThey are good questions. They are not gotchas. I imagine few people spend any time pondering such issues, and from all appearances, our leaders and experts aren't great thinkers, either.
Please see my comment above. Fazi's criticism comes from the left, and I pretty much agree with him.
SF - My poorly conveyed point revolved around the fact that when Hitler invaded Poland......do you think that intervention would have been justified (and not merely due to treaty obligations).....and not even just because we have hindsight.
DeleteDo we have an obligation to intervene every time something bad happens somewhere on the planet?
DeleteThat should be up to the American people. Sounds quaint now, but there was a time when congress debated the question of whether to allow a president to take the country to war.
Exactly. No, course we really have very little obligation to intervene at all….and we’ve done it far too much. History doesn’t exactly repeat…..but certain markers do. We need to be honest and rational about when those do appear - and when they don’t.
DeleteAnd Congress has the power to take us to war……and the duty to deliberate such an act in a rational and transparent manner.
That can’t happen until we neuter the Executive Branch and place it back on equal footing with it’s Constitutional peers.
- CI
The Society of Control has locked in energy and futures prices in a way beneficial not to their individual citizens, but in ways to protect and guarantee corporate profits for regional source-specialized energy providers in such as way as to minimize carbon emissions and prevent nuclear waste accumulations. Unfortunately, they have taken no measures to ensure an over-lapping surplus production capacity as a contingency for supply and supply-chain related interruptions (like the war in Ukraine). Like US "refinery capacity, the system is designed to produce the bare minimum to meet the energy needs of consumers, maximizing corporate profit.
DeleteYet instead of providing a smart, but perhaps not optimally profit-efficient solution, this podcast idiots recommendation is "nationalization"... so that the feds can continue making the same mistakes, but transferring the additional costs onto the national debt. @@
Stupid is as stupid does.
Of course, Freddy asks Tom Fazzi why he thinks people tend to go along with these hyper-normalised conditions (and not immediately go into "protest mode")... he doesn't realize that until it completely breaks. They expect some expert to "fix-it", since they are not permitted to solve the problems themselves (ie - burn coal, firewood, trash, leaded gas, home-made ethanol or grease burning). They can only "deal" with the problem AFTER it collapses.
Delete...and so the "system" of energy supplies becomes bigger, increasing "crutched" and "fragile" instead of becoming smaller, less "profit-efficient", more distributed/ federated, with greater numbers of more "polluting" sources.
DeleteWhy won't federalizing the problem fix it? Remember the Venezuelan oil industry? The electricity industry? The government overlords will only invest the "minimum" it taks to keep the old systems hobbling along. There no innovation, no investment, and no risks taken because every dollar not spent on energy solutions can go to some other wasteful spending program.
...and so the oil/ electricity industry output shrinks year over year until guess what, they sell it back to the private sector and de-nationalize it.
DeleteRemember how we were supposed to have national stockpiles of PPE and respirators when Covid hit... but we needed to initiate the Defense Production Act to rebuild the dwindled supplies remaining after the money for such stockpiles had, over the years, been diverted to meet "other spending priorities"? Government is incompetent.
Delete350 million individual consumers pursuing their own interests do the job 1,000x better. They don't do it as "efficiently" or as "cleanly", but the resulting system is 100% anti-fragile.
Deletebtw - Maybe the EPA should be charged with actually cleaning up environmental problems instead of merely "regulating" them and then levying "fines" on the poluuters
Delete....you know... something actually useful.
DeleteThersites,
DeleteYeah, I don't know how anyone viewing government created destruction and crises could recommend nationalizing anything.
He does have a point about speculation in the energy market and leveraging legitimate market forces to maximize profits of the corps at the expense of consumers. Somebody smart could come up with something.
Governments must be the biggest buyers of energy. Some kind of transparency-based agreement of x% of profit to companies selling to utilities is an inchoate thought in my brain...
I like Freddie Sayer, btw. It's a good podcast.
His analysis of the problem was on point. Like Freddie said though, solutions are where the disagreement lies.
DeletePlease see Tuesday's post on the growing energy crisis, brought to you by Vladimir Putin and dunces who 'lead' the west.
ReplyDelete