Merry Christmas!

I wish all of my six readers a very Merry Christmas from the wonderful state of North Carolina.

I working on a piece of Trump, Year One and hope to have it out soon, but now is the time to be happy to be free of the Caliban!

Disconnect

I am not an economist, and don't play one on the internet. I, however, do keep an eye on my finances, and have protected my little nest egg relatively successfully -- I, after all, am Jewish.

I have been following the twists and turns of the latest tax bill, and listening to the hyperbolic talking points unleashed against it by our old friends, the so-called progressives. It seems that we are all going to die! Well, I mean, of course, those of us will die who have not already been killed by Brexit, the election of Trump, the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, the end of "net neutrality," and the declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The craziness of the progressives is, once again, on display.

I wrote a long time ago (May 31, 2011) that modern democracy has turned into a battle between the voters and the taxpayers. The two groups increasingly do not overlap,

[T]he real source of the crises facing the major currencies, and, in fact, our core economic well-being . . . all comes down to a very simple and basic fact. The western nations have developed societies where those who pay for government services, in general, are not the ones benefitting from the services. In the United States, for example, we have the top one percent of earners paying 38-41% of all Federal income tax. We have nearly half of Americans who pay no income tax, and another large percentage 15-20% who pay minimal income tax (and lets not even get into "Earned Income Tax Credits".) We essentially have a society where some 25% of the income earners pay close to 90% of all Federal income taxes. That 25% does not consume anywhere near 90% of the services provided by the Feds.

We have a major political party, the world's oldest, the Democrat Party, that has decided to throw its lot in with the voters and ignore the taxpayers. It's not a totally stupid short-to-medium-term policy, although ultimately it leads to Venezuela, Greece, and Detroit. The Democrat base is increasingly composed of people who do not pay income taxes or who directly benefit from those and other taxes. The Dem voters are those on the public dole (including in Virginia, felons), those who work for a variety of public or semi-public organizations (including NGOs who rely on favorable tax laws), and in fields such as academia, the law, media, entertainment, and other occupations removed from the nitty-gritty of the real and productive economy. In other words, most of them don't have to meet payrolls. They do not have to engage in make-or-break investment decisions; they live in a fantasy bubble. The Dem Party also has a curious assortment of billionaires who have made it themselves, love virtue signaling, and really don't care if others can't make it because of the policies advocated by the Dems; those who can't make it are put on the dole controlled by the Democrat Party machine. Win-win.

The GOP tax plan is hardly, despite what its most ardent supporters proclaim, a revolutionary break with the past. It does make a very useful reduction in the absurdly high corporate tax, and should encourage investment in the US and job creation. Jobs! Good! It probably put another (fatal?) bullet into Obamacare by eliminating the penalty for failure to sign up. All good. It, however, doesn't do much with the taxes paid by the wealthy, with most of them probably paying about the same as they do now, and some paying more as they find that the break they get for paying taxes to high-tax states is capped, as is interest on "super" mortgages. It did not eliminate the idiotic death tax. Full disclosure: My preliminary calculations show that I end up about the same as before, so . . ..

The GOP tax plan is most certainly not the death sentence its strident opponents pretend to believe it. That does not and will not stop the Dems from their crazy talk. That's all they have left on the left, well, that and a hope that the blight of economic ignorance will continue to spread across the Western world.

Disconnect.

Traitor

Once, again, I apologize to the six people who care at all for the long break between posts. You all know my excuses, so I won't repeat them.

I just finished reading a piece in Politico--not normally one of my go-to journals--which if even remotely accurate is an outrage that makes all the other Obama Misadministration outrages pale by comparison. The article by Josh Meyer, "The Secret Story of How Obama let Hezbollah Off the Hook," is, in my view, well-written and appears/appears well-sourced, and quite believable. Read it for yourselves; you don't need me to tell you if something is good or bad, real or fake.

It seems like something out of some heated tin-foil hat Hollywood conspiracy movie in which good cops are closing in on the evil ones only to be told to "Stand down!" by a cabal of White House and State Department flunkies responding to orders from political superiors.

The article, as you will see, details how the White House and the State Department in their rush to get a deal with Iran on nukes, shut down a DEA/intel operation, "Project Cassandra," which had mapped out Iran-based Hezbollah's enormous international terrorist and criminal organization and its  engagement in terror, of course, murder for hire, money laundering, and drug and gun trafficking among other nefarious deeds. It, for example, helped finance its operations by shipping cocaine into the US and Europe. The DEA knew this and was working to shut it down, when the White House and State told them, you guessed it, "Stand down!"

Obama and Kerry, it seems, wanted absolutely nothing to get in the way of their "historic" deal, which I long ago labeled as fake. Not even I, an absolute opponent and detestor of the Obama Misadministration, could have thought that those scoundrels would go so far in their bid to undermine America and the West.

I am beyond outraged; this might be even worse than "Fast and Furious."

If DOJ doesn't get on this, there is no hope for any of us in defeating the Deep State.

Lock'im up!

Alabama

As I write this it appears that Judge Moore will lose the special election in Alabama to replace Jeff Sessions. It seems, unless there is some challenge, that Doug Jones, Democrat, will take that "safe" Republican seat. This is not good for many reasons and for many people.

The Trump agenda is already having trouble in the Senate with the thin and fickle Republican majority. The President, and those of us who voted for him, cannot count on the likes of McCain and several others to help pull the plug on the DC swamp. Now, of course, again, Jones will serve the two years remaining on Sessions' term, and then stand for re-election. It seems highly likely that a Republican will replace him. I think. I hope. Who knows?

This is not good for the nation's politics. The Democrats are likely going to think they have a winning formula here which they can use at will throughout the political world, to wit, make the election, with the help of the media, about the character and personal life of a Republican opponent, and downplay the positions of the Democrat, in effect, making the Democrat invisible. During the Alabama special election, for example, one hardly saw mention of Moore's opponent: what did he advocate? It turns out he's pretty much a typical progressive, and the Dems found it convenient not to exhibit his beliefs and prescriptions in conservative Alabama. Instead, they focused on the politics of personal destruction, a repeat of what they tried with Trump. Moore, however, was no Trump, and just could not fend off the barrage of accusations hurled at him on a daily basis from a variety of accusers and their media enablers. It became impossible to separate fact from fiction, the credible from the incredible. I, for one, do not believe the accusations against Moore: it doesn't make sense that he was a rapid perv some forty years ago, and then suddenly stopped. No evidence, except a forged yearbook entry, was presented, instead the media gleefully went along with the unproven "pedo" label for Moore. We' re going to see that again and again.

This is not good for Al Franken and others of his ilk. That imbecile, for one, will now have no excuse not to resign. It will also not be good news for a number of politicians who will face accusations of a similar nature and will find that there is no longer due process: a lot of those are going to be Democrats as the gates are now open to these sort of accusations, be they authentic or not. Bill Clinton could not have survived in today's atmosphere. The coarsening of the debate will be immense.

The North Koreans work on their weapons of mass destruction in cooperation, it seems, with Iran. The jihadis continue to overrun Europe. The EU lectures us on not making a competitive tax regime. We will be debating whether somebody did something "inappropriate" forty years ago.

The Prog Weirdness Goes On

What passes for journalism in America took some major hits this week, or better said, inflicted some serious wounds on its already tattered reputation.

CNN, the most busted name in news!

Among other self-inflicted injuries we had the nonsense about candidate Trump directing his team to meet, i.e., "collude," with the Russians. It turned out, of course, that it was President-elect Trump, with the tacit OK of the Obama State Department, that asked this team to meet members of the UNSC to discuss the MidEast. This little bit of "gotcha" misreporting cost the stock market several hundred points, and led ABC to suspend for four weeks a well-known fabricator who appears daily on their broadcasts.

We also saw, of course, that CNN reported--"Gotcha!"--that Donald Trump, and his son Don, had received an email on September 4, 2016 alerting them to a Wikileaks cache of hacked DNC emails, and "encryption" code. It turned out to be nonsense with the hapless maliciously-intended CNN journalist apparently not seeing the email and misreporting its date. It turned out it was September 14, well after Wikileaks already had released the DNC info to the public, and it had appeared in several publications and websites.

The bizarre by-election in Alabama took another drive into the Twilight Zone when one of Moore's principal accusers admitted that she had forged at least part of the entry in her high school yearbook allegedly put there by Roy Moore. The lefties did not know what to do with that so they tried to ignore it and deflect by claiming that there were still "lots" of credible accusations of sexual misconduct against Moore . . . yeah, sure. And the coverage of the abominable Al Franken? The less said about that lying creep, the better, except to not that despite the press reporting to the contrary he has not resigned from the Senate, and I would give it 50/50 that if/when Moore wins, Franken will try to stay on. The media, of course, has virtually ignored the trial of Senator Menendez, one in which he faced credible, there's that word, accusations of corruption and cavorting with underage prostitutes.

And, of course, we have increasing evidence--as if it were needed--that the Mueller Russia probe is an expensive bunch of partisan nonsense. One of the chief investigators, it turns out, played a major role in helping Hillary avoid prosecution, and made no secret in texts to his fellow DOJ lover of his hatred for Donald Trump. Other information is coming out, despite media efforts to downplay or ignore it, that Mueller's staff is rife with anti-Trumpsters out to get the President, and that FBI has been heavily politicized, as commented here last year.

It's all too, too weird. But, but, but, just imagine if Trump had not won the election . . . .

The President Does the Right Thing

I am sure that the majority of my former colleagues at the State Department are besides themselves. Cries of "He did what?" "Jerusalem? He gave it to Israel!" "It's the end of the world!" or something more radical than that are echoing the long increasing desolate and irrelevant halls of State in the wake of President Trump's announcement that the US would now recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Israel, after all, is the only country in the world "not allowed" to designate its own capital.

Change is not something State does or deals with well. I remember being in a meeting back in the early 1980s at State when a senior official of the Reagan Administration told a group of us that the Reagan Administration fully intended to "roll back" the Soviet empire and put an end to the Soviet threat. The President, he said, was adamant that we would not be prisoners to past policies. Soviet Communism could and would be defeated, not merely managed. I remember thinking "Wow!" or something equally as profound; some of my colleagues afterwards, however, were scoffing, and making comments about how the Reagan people were "really, really dumb." The USSR, they said, was not going anywhere; we would have to deal with them, in essence, forever. Ah, yes . . .

We are now seeing another moment of apoplexy by the bien pensants who tell us that the world is going to end because the President has recognized the capital of Israel as the capital of Israel. Facts are hard things for certain types. Trump's acknowledgment of reality, they tell us, is going to get us all killed; it is going to put an end to the "peace process," and give the Muslim world YET another reason to murder us in our own cities. OK.

So, if the President merely had gone along with the past 70 years of fantasy, and with the giving in to the Islamic crazies, peace would have broken out? We've had so much peace in the MidEast over these past seven decades, I guess, that it would be irresponsible to put that at risk. Is that the argument? Not too convincing.

I also guess it was anticipation of Trump's 2017 decision that led to 9/11, 7/7, Nice, Paris, San Bernardino . . . yeah, sure. I am sure that the European countries now loudly opposed to Trump's decision have nothing to fear from radical Islamic terror, no way would the Islamists hurt their "friends."

President Trump did the right thing.

Free, At Last

Made it to my home in North Carolina. The sale on my house in California closed; I got my money. I am free of California!

The trek across the USA was quite delightful. I had never been on the I-40 and must consider it a major piece of engineering. Superb highway. I found the countryside exceptionally beautiful, especially in Oklahoma and Tennessee, not to mention the Appalachians in North Carolina. Everywhere I went the people were great: kind, polite, humorous. We have got ourselves a magnificent country, no doubt about it.

We can't, we just can't let the progs ruin it.

And God knows they're trying.

As soon as I get myself straightened out, I want to write about the unbelievable assault now underway by the progs on our nation, its history, culture, and institutions.

Give me a couple of days to build up the steam.

Flagstaff at Half

Tired. Doing a passable impression of "low energy Jeb." Sitting in a dog friendly motel off of I-40 in Flagstaff, Arizona.

My two dogs are eying me suspiciously and wondering when I am going to upset their life pattern, yet again. We just spent much of the day in the Chevy Silverado driving from Southern California on our way to North Carolina, seeing some genuinely beautiful countryside, by the way. The poor canines had no idea their tranquil and predictable world of walks and frolics in the mild California sun would come to an end when they jumped into the cabin this morning. They are uneasy in the motel room, and keep wanting to get back into the truck. They don't know that tomorrow we are doing an even longer leg of our ongoing exodus from Blue Cali to Red NC.

Have followed some of the news. Not much makes too much sense, well, not in a world of logic and disinterested reason.

It seems that every liberal icon is some sort of seething pervert who can't wait to stop mouthing his virtuous feminist platitudes and start the bacchanal with whatever female is handy. There is something seriously wrong in private prog world. Hollywood burns and it warms my cold conservative heart.

The verdict in the Kate Steinle case also makes no sense. A despicable illegal alien piece of human filth who repeatedly violated our laws, and defied deportation, openly murdered a young woman in San Francisco in broad daylight and in the presence of multiple witnesses. A SF jury, of course, found him not guilty of murder, and convicted him only on a relatively minor gun charge. The Feds better jump in on this and charge him with everything under the Federal sun, including civil rights violations.

The Flynn story also makes little rational sense. He has pled guilty to lying to the FBI by not accurately stating that he had a meeting with Russian officials (and others). The prog media is having a field day concluding, apparently, that Flynn's guilty plea is an admission that there was "collusion" between the Trump campaign and Putin. Nonsense. Flynn's meeting with the Russians took place AFTER the election and nothing discussed, it seems, was illegal. Guilty of an infraction of the Logan Act? I don't know since nobody has ever been convicted in the nearly 220 year history of the Logan Act. Not clear it is even Constitutional. I would note, by the way, that Obama, private citizen Obama, has been traveling overseas and meeting with foreign officials--a much more direct "violation" of the Logan Act than what Flynn did. And let's not even discuss young John Kerry's past Logan Act violations . . . Paris Peace Conference anyone?

I still see no sign that anybody is going to investigate blatant Mexican interference in our election.

To bed.