The Morning Report 12/20/21

Good morning, kids. Start of a new week and the last few days before Christmas. Let me begin with a quote from the great Milton Friedman:

“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”

While elections are now perhaps the least important aspect of how policy is enacted and enforced in topsy-turvy overthrown Amerikaevery now and again they can and do throw a monkey wrench into the machine of State and the plans of those at the controls.

There’s an old Appalachian Christmas tradition in which children throw their wish lists into a fireplace in hopes fairies will bring the embers to Santa Claus. [So-called quote-unquote “president”] Joe Biden may want to consider giving it a try after Senator Joe Manchin’s Sunday morning announcement that he’s gifting the White House a lump of West Virginia coal for Christmas: a “no” vote on the multitrillion-dollar “Build Back Better” plan. Not a year into his [so-called quote-unquote “presidency”], Biden’s domestic agenda is dead.

. . .Biden’s refusal to budge on the price tag of the bill means not only the demise of his domestic agenda, but the central appeal of his candidacy: that he’s a moderate deal-maker who, thanks to his nearly half-century in the Senate, knows how to get things done.

Much of this was predictable. Despite beating former president Donald Trump by only 44,000 votes in three swing states that decided the election[*], Biden handed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) full control over budget legislation in a 50-50 Senate.

When moderate Democrats felt squeamish about rubber stamping the desires of an octogenarian socialist, party leadership countered with a litany of absurdities, such as labeling cash handouts to illegal immigrants “infrastructure” and promising that the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society is actually deflationary. . . 

. . . Rank-and-file Democrats with competitive races this cycle are now untethered from the failing [so-called quote-unquote “president’s”] agenda. They no longer need to explain to voters how printing more money for a leftist wishlist made sense as prices continue to skyrocket in grocery stores across the country. They no longer have to explain why they voted to include massive tax cuts for the wealthy in their “human infrastructure” bill.

Who knows whether the lifeline will be enough to save vulnerable Democrats given Biden’s other failures. Between the [junta’s] utter failure in Afghanistan and Biden’s failure to shut down [Chinese] COVID-19, the past year of Democrat leadership has been a political disaster. But with just under a year until the midterms, Manchin’s bullet to the [junta’s] disastrous spending bill may be just what they need to get back on track.

Yeah, he “beat”(*) Trump by 44,000 votes — mostly by flooding a toilet in Atlanta and flooding 6 states with a few million fraudulent ballots to put him over the top, but I digress. Then again, not really. While the trajectory of this nation has been towards devolution/dissolution into a top down centralized big government bureaucracy starting around 1913, the only variable has been the speed at which that goal was achieved, never its inevitability. The closest we have ever come to slamming on the brakes and throwing it into reverse was with the election – and re-election – of Donald Trump. And by that I don’t necessarily mean because of the man himself, though for sure, his reason for seeking the presidency in the first place was from a businessman’s perspective (and dare I say despite his New York liberal pedigree, a patriot’s perspective), in stopping the madness and destruction of big government bureaucracy.

Donald Trump represents tens of millions of Americans, perhaps at least half the country if not upwards of two thirds of the citizenry who, despite the concerted efforts to brainwash several generations of children to hate themselves, their heritage and the greatest nation that ever came into being, had woken (pun definitely intended) up to find a wolf at their throat. Too late that by hook and by crook, little by little, a distinct minority of individuals control the instrumentalities of power in and outside of government now have almost total control of society. Yet here we are, with Donald Trump ousted in a coup that installed a virtually dead corpse into the Oval Office with the slimmest of majorities in both chambers of Congress (also under the shadiest of circumstances) and ready to deal a death blow to a Constitution on life support and somehow, the wrong man stepped up and did the right thing.

Whenever I see Joe Manchin, I remember back a few years to a State of the Union address from President Trump. After Trump made a pronouncement that got a standing ovation, Manchin rose to his feet to join in the applause but within a nanosecond of being glared at by IIRC Malig-Nancy Pelosi, he sank back in his chair and sat on his hands. Not exactly a profile in courage. And yet, he just put a massive torpedo into the greatest expansion of government power since the Great Society and the New Deal, that would have completed the fundamental transformation of America into the moral equivalent of Rachel Levine with Obama’s brain.

Let’s face it, Joe Manchin understands full well what voting for a bill that would destroy the coal industry means; political suicide. Hence, Milton Friedman’s observation of political profitability. In any case, he did the right thing despite what has to have been offers of massive payoffs by the Klain/Kalorama Klown Kouncil, if not the Yasser Arafat pistol in the hand not holding the olive branch. You know, I’m not going to be all that tough and cynical on Manchin. Recall a certain congressman from Michigan IIRC named Bart Stupak. Obama assured him over and over that he wouldn’t com– er, include abortion in the Obamacare bill and Stupak went along with it and voted for it. We all know how that turned out.

Certainly, like zombie radioactive projectile herpes, the Left will come back again and again, and do anything and everything to ram through this garbage any way they can. They don’t necessarily care about elections anymore thinking or perhaps knowing that they can rig them like they did 2020. We’ll see if this is true. Frankly, I’m kind of shocked Pee-Air Defecto or the Alaskan Snow Blower have not announced their intention to cross the aisle.

For now, a welcome reprieve from the next round of waterboarding.

The End of America: 100 Days That Shook the World available here.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY

  • Roger Kimball: “You still hear people talk about individual liberty and the rule of law, but the slogans are shot through with a brittle cynicism.” The Freedom Facade
  • “The bill gives the Governor of New York, his or her delegates — including but not limited to the commissioner and heads of local health departments — the right to remove and detain any individuals or groups of people through issuing a single order. The orders only have to include the individual’s name(s) or ‘reasonably specific descriptions of the individuals or groups.'” New York Legislation Provides for Indefinite Detention of Unvaccinated at Governor’s Whim
  • Robert Spencer: “Leftists cannot and do not tolerate dissent. . . It is striking how often Democrat officials turn out to be enemies of this most fundamental and important of freedoms, while establishment Republicans stand by indifferent as they work to destroy it.”Biden Junta, Big Tech, Leftist Hate Groups Step Up War on Free Speech
  • “[F]or two years now, a global coup has been carried out all over the world, planned for some time by an elite group of conspirators enslaved to the interests of international high finance.” Archbishop Vigano’s Startling Warning to the American People

$1 TRILLION “INFRASTRUCTURE” SELLOUT, $3.5 TRILLION SOCIALIST TRANSFORMATION, DEBT CEILING/BUDGETARY INSANITY

CIVIL WAR 2.0: LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, CAPITOL HILL BLACK WEDNESDAY PROTEST AFTERMATH, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION 

AMERICA, AND THE WORLD, IMPRISONED: CHINESE CORONAVIRUS FICTIONS AND FACTS

* * * * *

THE ECONOMY, STUPID

  • Benjamin Braddock: “One thing I can say with confidence is that the government will not act. It will do too little, too late.” The Dying Dollar
  • “[So-called quote-unquote “president”] Biden’s unfavorability poll number, according to the Real Clear Politics average, is 52.6%. To be fair, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s ultra-easy monetary policy is directly responsible for part of that high unfavorability rating.” Our Incompetent Federal Reserve
  • “The Federal Reserve has announced a tighter monetary policy, but its stance remains accommodative.” Course Correction?
  • “What good will it do the American people for the government to get into semiconductor manufacturing?” Joe Biden Wants to Regulate Your Computer Chips, Too

CRIME & PUNISHMENT, NON-DOSTOYEVSKY

EDUCATION, AND WHAT PASSES FOR IT 

AMNESTY, IMMIGRATION, BORDER SECURITY

OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY

BIDEN CRIME FAMILY REVELATIONS, AND OTHER CORRUPTION

OTHER DEMOCRAT, LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY 

POLITICS

FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH

ABORTION

BIDEN AFGHANISTAN BUG-OUT DISASTER

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL

WE-ALL-SLAM-FOR-I-SLAM 

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, WASTE/FRAUD/ABUSE, THE COURTS

  • “Potheads who thought government legalization of pot would lead to heaven on earth forgot about one tiny detail: getting the government involved in anything either makes it more expensive or ruins it completely. In the case of legal pot in California, it’s both.” Pot Industry in California on Verge of Collapse
  • “Set in the lush foothills of the Appalachians, the Tennessee city has built a technology infrastructure for the twenty-first century.” How Chattanooga Reinvented Itself

RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, JUNK SCIENCE, LYSENKOISM

ACTUAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY 

  • “If confirmed as ice, this discovery is ground-breaking, because it suggests that the underground layers of ice that have been detected on Mars down to 30 degrees latitude likely also exists at the equator, though much deeper underground. This discovery suggests that ice table is global, meaning that if you dig down almost anywhere on Mars you will uncover ice.’ Scientists Discover Underground Reservoir of Hydrogen, Likely Ice, Near Martian Equator
  • “Capitalism in space: SpaceX has submitted a new proposal for building several launchpads at the Kennedy Space Center for its Starship heavy lift rocket, including rebuilding one old pad (LC-39A) and building another at a new site (the never used LC-49).” SpaceX Proposes New Launchpads for Starship at Kennedy

CULTURE WARS, NATIONAL SUICIDE

NOTE: The opinions expressed in some links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.