Back when illegal immigration was a club for Paul Krugman to use against George W. Bush he made arguments he's now trying to hide

Many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration, especially from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans. ...

It’s intellectually dishonest to say, as Bush does, that immigrants do ‘jobs that Americans will not do.’ The willingness to do a job depends on how much that job pays, and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants.

More in Krugman vs. Krugman: New York Times columnist tries to memory-hole his prior views on immigration by Michael Lind

Trump's greatest economy ever is simply part of the worst economy ever, now in its sixteenth year and third year of Biden

Something about some guy abandoning free market principles in order to save the free market system.

I swear Joe Biden is going to get us all killed

 So far on this trip to Poland to rally NATO to the defense of Europe, Joe Biden has

1) threatened to respond "in kind" if Russia uses chemical or biological weapons;

2) told members of the 82nd Airborne they're about to deploy to Ukraine ("when you’re there, you’re going to see women, young people standing in the middle, in the front of a damn tank saying 'I’m not leaving.'");

3) specifically called for regime change in Russia (“For god’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”).

 

 

 

 

We're not supposed even to possess chemical and biological weapons.

Russia has stated NATO intervention in Ukraine is a cause for war with NATO.

Making removal of Putin the NATO objective is the existential threat Putin also says is a cause for war.

At least in 1984 when Ronald Reagan quipped in a sound check, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.", he was only joking.

The Reagan joke was deliberately leaked to embarrass him, which it did. But today's White House scrambles to correct all these Biden statements because none of them are jokes.

Joe Biden is the loose cannon on the ship of state. 

And they used to call this guy a dunce.

 

 

Besides Alexander Solzhenitsyn, lots of people in America and elsewhere have been very friendly with Vladimir Putin over the years

 

Once again, WaPo story critical of Trump's border wall never mentions Republicans forced Trump to accept Bush-era bollard fencing instead of his promised "impenetrable barrier"

The whole point of forcing Trump to accept bollard fencing was to make him a failure on his signature issue. Everyone already knew it was inadequate from the time of Bush, who agreed to it BECAUSE he knew it wouldn't work. Bush WANTED a porous border. Bollard fencing to Bush was like running on a pro-life plank and never having to do anything about it once in office. Good politics, that's all. Good optics.

Trump was set up to fail, and like a fool, he accepted it. That's the real story.

It was Republican payback for all the mean things Trump said about Republicans in 2015-2016. "We'll fix you, buster. Here's your fucking wall."

These facts are why WaPo has to write an article about the failure of bollard fencing periodically, in order to keep the lie alive that a border wall doesn't work. Their agenda is the same as the Republican Democrat agenda of a porous border, to keep the cheap labor flowing in, and the drugs. It's also Drudge's agenda.

Those two things are the most important to a sick, dying society, otherwise we'd have fixed this long ago.

And obviously, Trump is part of the problem, not the solution.

Now the stink on the border wall is so bad no one will come near it for a generation.

Mission accomplished.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-border-wall-has-been-breached-more-than-3000-times-by-smugglers-cbp-records-show/ar-AAUwpuh

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of wading into politics Moochelle should just wade out to sea

 I mean, it's right there in her own backyard.

And take George Bush with you, please!

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/09/politics/michelle-obama-2022-elections-fight-for-vote/index.html

Another woke general crawls out from under his retirement rock, wants FOX News banned from all US military bases

 Paul D. Eaton, here.

Hillary supporter, critic of Bush 43's Iraq War.

Tucker Carlson is another one who thinks America will be to blame for a Russian invasion of Ukraine, omitting certain uncomfortable truths

 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/12/08/tucker_carlson_ukrainian_lobbyists_have_all_of_washington_heading_for_war.html

Tucker omits that Russia lost the Sevastopol naval base to Ukraine from 1991-2014 after the fall of the USSR, after which Putin took it back by force in the annexation of Crimea, an act of aggression unanswered by Obama. But Russia had paid rent to Ukraine for use of the base during that intervening period. It's not like they were or are entitled to it, Tucker.

George W. Bush set the precedent for all that in the first place by not answering Russia's aggression in South Ossetia in 2008.

Tucker also omits that Germany is hostage to Russian natural gas by choice, having embraced the madness of green ideology and abandoning their own sources of energy.

This spirit and habit of appeasement shouldn't be continued or encouraged, especially one in the service of a banal, libertarian, materialistic understanding of "American interests".

The absolute number of nuclear warheads matters but their hard-target kill capability matters more, and we don't have it against the Chicoms

All presidents since Reagan/Bush have failed to prioritize US hard-target kill capability, including Trump, so our enemies both in Russia and China have been compensating for that.

Eroding the certainty of destruction erodes deterrence.

The Chicoms haven't been emphasizing concrete manufacturing just to build vacant buildings and roads to nowhere.

Mark B. Schneider:

In 1985, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Vessey briefed President Ronald Reagan about the need for improved hard-target kill capability, including the need for 100 MX (Peacekeeper) ICBMs. We actually got 50. Of the three U.S. hard target capable systems created by the Reagan administration, two (the Peacekeeper ICBM and the Advanced Cruise Missile) were eliminated by the George W. Bush administration. This left only the high-yield WW-88 Trident warheads. Reportedly, the U.S. produced only 400 of the high-yield WW-88 warheads for the Trident II missile. Obviously, they can’t all be used against Chinese silos even if one makes a number of best-case assumptions. Moreover, it is not clear that the 1990 accuracy of the Trident II will be adequate if the Chinese are building silos based upon the new 30,000 psi super concrete now commercially available. The 1970 accuracy of a Minuteman III, while a great achievement in 1970, is hardly the same today against really hard targets. Unfortunately, the Minuteman III life extension program did not aim to upgrade the accuracy of the Minuteman.[8] It is not comparable to the Peacekeeper. There are plenty of important targets, including hard targets, the Minuteman III can cover, but super hard targets are not among them.

Even before the discovery of the new Chinese silos, a case could be made from a targeting standpoint for a strategic nuclear force of 2,700-3,000 nuclear warheads. There is a great difference between target coverage (assigning a warhead to a target) and damage expectancy (the probability of target destruction). Claims by Minimum Deterrence advocates, such as the Global Zero "Commission" report that a small nuclear force can do effective counterforce targeting are bogus. Regarding China, the report’s targeting plan involved “(85 warheads including 2-on-1 strikes against every missile silo), leadership command posts (33 warheads), war-supporting industry (136 warheads).” With the new Chinese silos, this targeting approach would require almost 1,000 warheads. Moreover, the approach itself is flawed because it ignores the Underground Great Wall, which protects the Chinese mobile ICBM force, the Chinese Navy and Air Force, and the large Chinese force of nuclear-capable theater-range missiles. The Global Zero report also assigned two warheads against every Russian silo. The report talked about target coverage, not damage expectancy, because its recommended force structure would likely have performed very badly against the facilities it targeted.

Against the very deep hard, and deeply targets (HDBTs) [sic; should read "very hard deeply-buried targets] there is essentially zero chance that they can be destroyed with a single U.S. nuclear warhead. The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review only partially reversed the Obama administration’s decision to eliminate the two most effective U.S. bombs against HDBTs, the B61 Mod 11 and B-83. These bombs will be retained longer than planned but not be life extended. Once again, numbers matter, and we no longer have the numbers. Conventional weapons have little and declining capability against HDBTs.[9] As one report stated, “One GBUJ-57A/B [Massive Ordnance Penetrator] can only penetrate 8 meters of 10,000 psi rock or concrete. This could drop to 2 meters of 30,000 psi material.” 

More.

North Carolina forests are being clear cut to provide wood pellets for the European green energy sector

That doesn't make any sense!

From the story:

North Carolina has been “ground zero” for the wood pellet industry, said Danna Smith, co-founder and executive director of the environmental advocacy group Dogwood Alliance. One hundred and sixty-four acres of the state’s forests are cut down by the biomass industry every day, according to an analysis by Key-Log Economics.

Well, I found one guy with the temerity to point out what a phony baloney plastic banana good time rock n rolla Rush Limbaugh was on immigration

From a good thread discussing possible replacements for Rush Limbaugh.

Commenters get it that playing reruns hosted by loyalists ain't gonna cut it.

Cumulus Media's Westwood One is challenging the time slot of Rush Limbaugh with Dan Bongino.

That should force EIB's hand to up their game.

Meanwhile under George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh licked his finger, checked the wind, and said what he said. Which was Rush's typical behavior. As Rush told 60 Minutes, he was there to see how much money he could make advertisers pay to be on his show. That meant keeping and growing a Republican audience. Rush was never about principle. He was just about convincing you that he was in order to keep you listening.

 

American Shit Show and Antifa

The right wing wants everything opened up right now, yesterday even, no masks, no restrictions.

They are fools.

The left wing wants gradual opening with social distancing, masks, etc., except in protests. By all means go ahead and protest, they say, because it is more important! Many in the medical community have made the mistake of taking this position.

They are hypocrites.

George W. Bush used to maintain, probably still does, that the Muslim fundamentalists who attacked us on 9/11 attacked us because of our freedoms. They never succeeded for the most part. They managed to make us a surveillance society, it is true, and increasingly a security state, but life has been pretty much normal because we took the battle over there, at enormous expense to ourselves and everyone involved. 

Islamic fundamentalism has been no match for freedom. It doesn't really know how to exploit freedom to destroy it, being at its root itself unfree. It has had to resort to a kind of Fabianism instead, exploiting Western openess to emigrate to Western countries and reproduce there in the hope of eventually outnumbering us. They risk assimilating in the process, however.

But really to destroy freedom outright you need freedom to the max . . . you need anarchy!

In other words, you need a virus! The virus is totally free! It spreads just like that, and you can hardly stop it. Just look at how we have tried.

The virus has been everything Antifa only wished it could be. And Antifa has nothing on it. One look at Antifa and people recoil. Hell, Antifa recoils at itself. It disguises itself and skulks around in packs, and runs home to mommy after its violent stunts.

But the virus is totally free. It's everywhere, it's invisible and it's everything Antifa only wishes it could be. For the virus there are already no borders, no walls, no USA at all. It goes wherever it likes, whenever it likes, and doesn't need a disguise, because it looks just like you, just like me.

The only thing more powerful than an anarchic virus is a self-ordered host, a person who chooses not to be a victim or a spreader, a person fully in control of himself, who can say no to himself.

Such a person is truly the most free person there is. The virus stops there, and only there.

Just as Trump said in 2016, George W. Bush didn't keep us safe on 9/11, but now the tables are turned with 14,809 dead and counting because Trump let a deadly virus in on aircraft

Remember George Bush in 2008?

Yeah, George Bush: We have abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market system.

Good times 2008 are here again in 2020. Not.

Joe Scarborough's not wrong about the economy just because he's Joe Scarborough

Joe Scarborough: Trump’s So-Called Great Economy is WORSE than Jimmy Carter’s ‘Year of Malaise’

Trump real GDP is averaging 2.5% after three years, Obama averaged 1.6% over eight, and Bush 43 1.9% over eight.

Things are better under Trump, but compared to the post-war up to the year 2000, we're still in big doo doo.

The compound annual growth rate in the post-war up until Bush 43 clocked in at 3.46% per annum on average.

Since 2007 we're struggling to put up 1.7%.

Sumting wong.

NeverTrump Tom Nichols has to vote socialist in order to save the free market system

US Naval War College professor upset about the exercise of raw political power at the same time upset candidate Trump didn't do more to stop Russkies from interfering in his election.  Like the US Navy takes orders from unelected politicians.

Russia stole George W. Bush's balls when they invaded South Osetia and used those to invade Crimea

Average hourly earnings increases under Trump remain sub-standard compared to Bush 43, Clinton and late Reagan eras

Yeah right Rush, Obama's such a radical leftist he made the Bush tax cuts permanent and made the Heritage Foundation's individual mandate the centerpiece of Obamacare

You are a ding dong.

Percent of population working full time under Bush 43 averaged 51.8% vs. 49.9% under Trump: Millions of full time jobs remain missing