In famous 2003 eulogy Senator Joe Biden, having no trouble delivering oratory, said Reagan was 85 when he and Strom Thurmond met with the then 71-year old president

"The president [Reagan] then was about 85 years old".

"And I swear to the Lord in the Lord’s house this is a true story. ...  And the President -- true story -- President looked very sternly at Strom ..."

Ronald Reagan turned 85 in 1996 during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Biden in 2003 was off by nearly fifteen years.

The Thurmond-strong-arming-the-president anecdote, if it actually happened at all, must date to late 1982 because Reagan vetoed the Biden-Thurmond crime bill on January 15, 1983, which was what the meeting Biden recounts was about.

At about the 7 minute mark (the crowd is already skeptical of the previous anecdote's truthfulness at the 3:30 mark):

 

Peter Thiel is so mistaken about homeownership in his interview with John Gray

 Peter Thiel says "To unshackle ourselves economically, one should start by attacking the extraordinarily distorted real estate market", but never once mentions how the prime culprits of the distortion were and are all Federal.

These were the commoditization of housing by the so-called Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 under Clinton and Gingrich, followed by Federal Reserve interest rate suppression under Obama after the collapse of the ensuing housing bubble it caused, re-inflating that bubble.

To Thiel "interest rates went steadily down", as if by the influence of some mysterious force. What could it be? He is not i n t e r e s t e d.

Nor does he mention a third Federal culprit, how the demand side for housing was and is distorted by 15% of the population swelling with foreign born in the UK and the US as a direct result of legally admitting millions of immigrants since 1990 in the US and since 1994 in the UK.

These are the legacies of the Bushes, Bill Clinton, John Major, and Tony Blair, now augmented by deliberate non-enforcement of the border in America by the likes of Obama and Biden, turbo-charging the demand side for housing, and prices with it, by flooding the country with illegal aliens.

Thiel observes that culturally "We became too risk-averse, too bureaucratic, too reliant on peer review in the sciences" somehow, but doesn't connect this to the aging demographics, even though he is aware of it. Not re-inflating the prices of homes of Baby Boomers would have been political suicide. He fancies this is now "over", but misses that the heirs of all this property are voters too.

This is not over.

Thiel is essentially a radical, as was Ronald Reagan and also Margaret Thatcher. He completely misses how the libertarian impulse to deregulate under Reagan and Thatcher led in a straight line to the housing catastrophe we all live with these many years later. His libertarianism is myopic.

John Gray: "The difference is that this Truss wing of the Conservative Party wants to go back to Thatcher because they see that as a radical moment and they want to repeat the radical moments. But radical moments are very hard to keep repeating."

Peter Thiel: "They’re hard to repeat by doing the same thing. It was a one-time move to deregulate and lower taxes and then it’s not clear that doing it the second time does much good. ... The Reagan and Thatcher administrations ... allowed more companies to be acquired, more M&A activity to happen. It was a somewhat brutal but very powerful reorganization of society that was possible and in fact the right thing to do in the 1980s."

Incessant headlines about deep American discontent tell us we don't particularly like this now reorganized society. The new world order means your kid is saddled with horrible college debt, can't find a decent job, has to live at home with you, can't buy a house, can't get married, can't have children. 

But Thiel is still dreaming the pipe dream of "exponential growth" to solve these problems. He hopes technology will come to the rescue in the form of remote work:

"Is there some way to reopen a frontier in real estate? The possibility where I think the jury is very out, though it doesn’t look that promising in 2023, would be remote work. Could the internet be a way that people are not stuck in these cities? And that would reset all these real estate values tremendously because even in a rather densely populated country like England, there is plenty of space if you’re not forced to be within the green belt of London itself. And in the United States even more so."

The interview is here.  

The three year and five month embarrassment of core inflation higher than the 10-year Treasury yield finally ended in August

 Yield for the 10-year US Treasury rose to an average 4.17% in August 2023 while core inflation year over year fell to 3.87% in August 2023.

This ends the 3-year 5-month run where core inflation exceeded the 10-year yield, something which has never happened in the data.

The only time core inflation outran the 10-year previously for a comparable period was in 1974 and 1975 when core inflation averaged 7.91% and 8.35% vs. the 10-year yield which averaged 7.56% and 7.99% respectively.

That lackadaisical response to inflation by the Federal Reserve under Arthur F. Burns (1970-1978) prefigured the 1980 resurgence of core inflation to 9.19%. Under his successor Paul Volcker, interest rates were hiked to unprecedented levels to curb inflation. The 10-year yield rose to an average of 13.92% in 1981 as a result.

The current fear is that the Powell Fed has set up the economy for a repeat of this awful period of inflation.

Whatever is said about it, there is no question that inflation is a benefit to the Federal government because it depends on borrowing to finance deficit spending and consequently the debt, now at an unprecedented $33 trillion. Inflation simply reduces that cost to the government over time by making the dollars previously borrowed worth less.

It is true that new borrowing costs much more, but the debt mountain mammoth in the living room is the more pressing problem. This is why the cognoscenti teach that inflation is a good thing.

Extending the duration of inflation at the currently relatively low level has been in the government's interest. The costs born by the public in the form of higher prices for goods, services, and borrowing are becoming routinized so that the voters are becoming inured to the deleterious effects for them while clueless of the benefits for the debt mongers. 

This is particularly the case for voters who have no memory of that horrible inflation which gave rise to the backlash represented by Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, and who now vastly outnumber those who still remember.

It should not be forgotten that Jimmy Carter got elected in 1976 anyway, after the Burns' inflation. The voters then took it all in stride, too, until they didn't.

Same as it ever was.

 

The money men have the best Fed and the best Fed chair that money can buy

 The 10-year US Treasury note has averaged BELOW average inflation for three consecutive years, and is set to make it four.

This is unprecedented, and shows that the authorities have not been serious about fighting inflation. Inflation is actually what they want when the country is $32 trillion in debt, aka a devaluation of the liability.

Notice that they actually tried this for a couple of years in the mid-1970s, after which all hell broke loose with the highest inflation on record and the people revolted. We got Ronald Reagan as a result.

Inflation is the same thing in the world of money as immigration is in the world of labor. Inflation devalues what you owe, and immigration devalues what you make.

You are just collateral damage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Powell, a Republican, was elevated to the Fed by Obama, appointed to the Fed chair by Trump, and reappointed by Biden.

The Uniparty.

Supremes slap down EPA meddling in property owners' wetlands under Clean Water Act, reversing yet another pestilent view of former justice Anthony Kennedy

A majority in Rapanos (2006) couldn’t agree on how to limit EPA’s authority over wetlands. Four Justices said the Clean Water Act’s scope extended to “only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water” such as oceans, rivers and lakes, and wetlands that were directly adjacent and “indistinguishable” from those waters.

However, the agencies and lower courts have adopted Justice Anthony Kennedy’s lone opinion that federal jurisdiction extends to land that has a “significant nexus” to a waterway. This test is as clear as a swamp.

While all nine Justices ruled for the Sacketts, they disagreed on the scope of federal power. The majority strips away the “significant nexus” ambiguity from Justice Kennedy’s Rapanos opinion, but reaffirms the conservative plurality’s view that a “wetland” must “be indistinguishably part of a body of water that itself constitutes ‘waters’ under the CWA.”

Ronald Reagan's worst appointment.

More.

Piers Morgan interviews Ron DeSantis

I asked him if he was familiar with the story of Frankenstein, and he said he’d seen the movie.

“And you’re alluding to what?” he smirked, knowing full well what I was alluding to.

“Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster, then loses control of the monster, and then the monster ends up killing him,” I reminded him. “You know the parallel I’m making …”

 He chuckled. “Let’s put the country first rather than worry about any personalities or any type of individual … at the end of the day, I’m a vessel for the aspirations of the people I represent. It’s not about me — as Ronald Reagan said, ‘There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.’ ”

“That’s true,” I replied, “but you’re up against somebody who definitely cares who gets the credit, and who’s desperate to want to win back the White House.”    

More.

LOL, Democrat Larry Summers is EXTREMELY ALARMED by the reappearance of Reagan-like TAX CUTS in the UK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Larry knows danger when he sees it.

Larry is all Trussed up and ready for action!

The FBI illegally deprived Trump access to his papers, and the hullabaloo about classified materials is total crap: Merrick Garland is a renegade who should be impeached

The Trump Warrant Had No Legal Basis 

The Presidential Records Act became effective in 1981, at the start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It established a unique statutory scheme, balancing the needs of the government, former presidents and history. The law declares presidential records to be public property and provides that “the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records.” 

The PRA lays out detailed requirements for how the archivist is to administer the records, handle privilege claims, make the records public, and impose restrictions on access. Notably, it doesn’t address the process by which a former president’s records are physically to be turned over to the archivist, or set any deadline, leaving this matter to be negotiated between the archivist and the former president. The PRA explicitly guarantees a former president continuing access to his papers. Those papers must ultimately be made public, but in the meantime ... the PRA establishes restrictions on access to a former president’s records, including a five-year restriction on access applicable to everyone (including the sitting president, absent a showing of need), which can be extended until the records have been properly reviewed and processed. Before leaving office, a president can restrict access to certain materials for up to 12 years. ...

In making a former president’s records available to him, the PRA doesn’t distinguish between materials that are and aren’t classified. That was a deliberate choice by Congress, as the existence of highly classified materials at the White House was a given long before 1978, and the statute specifically contemplates that classified materials will be present—making this a basis on which a president can impose a 12-year moratorium on public access.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

The dumbest political take of the week comes from Stephen L. Miller aka @redsteeze

DeSantis is the only name mentioned as a future replacement for Trump. He tacks close or higher than Trump in casual polling, his name is the first that comes up, even among the Trumpist base, as a preferred candidate. This is a burden no politician should be saddled with. The country and the GOP is one Ron DeSantis scandal away from returning to Trump’s awkward embrace in 2024.

More.

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine Ronald Reagan in 1975 reading this about himself as he's coming off the governorship of California and preparing to run for the Republican nomination against sitting President Gerald Ford.

"Oh my God. The burden! And I signed that damn abortion legislation in California and if anyone finds out, I'm toast! What oh what should I do?"

If Ronald Reagan were alive today he would laugh out loud at redsteeze. Like any skeleton lurking in DeSantis' closet could possibly hold a candle to the smoldering wreckage left in the wake of the SS Trumptanic. 

Ron DeSantis should definitely run against Trump, the biggest LOSER and biggest PHONY to ever make the big time.

Just win reelection in 2022 in Florida first, Ron. And then do run run.

This is Ronald Reagan's baneful legacy: The appointment of libertarian Anthony Kennedy, his third choice after Bork and Ginsburg

If you could poll the American soldiers who died in World War II whether they died to make men and women free to commit sodomy, you would not like their answer.

But hey, fuck you, and enjoy your long weekend.

Coming Supreme Court decision in major LGBT rights case seen as bellwether of conservative court:

Since the mid-1990s, the nation’s top court has gradually expanded protections for gays and lesbians, largely under the leadership of former Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired in 2018.

 

In 1980 and 1984 ignorant young conservatives voted for Ronald Reagan never expecting his 1986 immigration amnesty nor Bush 41's opening of the legal immigration floodgates

Peak Boomer 1957 turned 30 in 1987 and didn't have a clue about anything anymore than Gen X does now. @GodCloseMyEyes is blind. Racial anxiety today was caused by libertarian immigration policies put into place by Reagan and Bush, flooding the country with foreigners. We were ignorant as ignorant could be when we voted for these fools. The '60s riots were already ancient history.

The overall economic growth rate since the year 2000 has contracted by over 47% from the previous eighteen year period under Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton

Grow up already, Mueller was a piker compared to Lawrence Walsh, who harassed Ronald Reagan and Bush 41 for 6 years

In sharp contrast to Donald Trump Boris Johnson fired everybody upon taking office, a sign he actually might succeed

A "brutal cull" not seen in 60 years.

Bush 41 did the same and ultimately failed because he betrayed Ronald Reagan, so we'll see, now won't we?

Ann Coulter is finally starting to put 2 & 2 together: Does Trump WANT to stop the invasion?

As everyone knows by now, Trump pulled the campaign trigger in 2015 about one month after reading ADIOS AMERICA. He had found his issue. It was not his issue. It became his issue. He had found his angle, his tool.

Immigration restriction marked Trump out from all the other candidates. It got him elected, narrowly. The tilt to the libertarian open borders Mercers with Conway and Bannon in August 2016 nearly did him in. He prematurely tracked to the middle (DACA waffling in Arizona townhall, showing he was never sincere), and once in office, did nothing of substance about the issue. There was no liason to Congress on the issue in the White House, coordinating policy. All the appointments in the White House were opposed to immigration restriction save one here or there, confounding his supporters to this day. It was not a priority, until after the House was lost. None of the cabinet appointments were restrictionists, but for Sessions, whom he neutered early over what really matters, muh MAGA presidency.

Now he returns to immigration, putting it front and center as a matter of what, policy? No, as a matter of the reelection campaign, as it was in the beginning. It's an election tool, a campaign issue like abortion has been for decades. He never really intended to do anything about it, and doesn't now, except in a half-hearted kind of way where if he gets lucky with it here and there as a matter of policy, so much the better. That keeps the believers believing, as does the dumpster fire he's created at the border. He keeps signaling over and over again since losing the House how he wants more immigrants to come here than ever before. Well they're coming over like never before! Trump created the National Emergency. Trump created the surge at the border. He wanted it. He needs it. We are in a political campaign.

Donald Trump will go down in history as the man who forever put the stink on running as an immigration restrictionist, which is why you never trust a "former" Democrat with the leadership of your party. It ain't called stupid for nothin'. It was Ronald Reagan, after all, who started us down the road to exporting all those jobs Trump now says he wants to bring back.

How's that working out for you on this winter day reporting a mere 20,000 new payrolls in February?

We are screwed. "Conservatives" and "Republicans" have failed us, utterly. And that much Coulter already knows.

Donald Trump is a self-hating fool and a wimp, and so is Mr. Missing in Action, Rush Limbaugh

Only a self-hating fool and a wimp would have signed this bill, and only a self-hating fool and wimp would defend the self-hating fool and wimp who signed it. It's like Steve King voting to censure himself.

Donald Trump has proven himself over and over again to be unworthy of being our leader (repeal and replace Obamacare fizzled, tax cuts for corporations not for working stiffs, outrageous federal spending increases, and now a complete cave on immigration, all in two years!), and Rush Limbaugh has proven himself over and over again to be unworthy of being our spokesman for still defending the guy responsible for it, same as ever.

We need people in charge of our movement who have a killer instinct, instead of the lay down and die instinct on display in this disgusting episode of betrayal and talk radio sycophancy.

Terrible Budget Bill Will Be Used Against Trump in 2020:

I read enough of this [border bill] to know that the things in this bill are a giant middle finger to Donald Trump [By signing it Trump gave HIMSELF the finger]. ... This is an Obama-era policy that has been re-implemented in this budget bill [Obviously Trump was just kidding about promising to reverse the two DACA executive orders immediately ... tick tock tick tock 2+years says the clock]. ... And don’t forget, folks, there are a lot of Republicans in on this [Like Donald Trump!]. ... I went back and forth, too, on signing this or not and shutting down [says the lazy ass without principles who could have read everything being said on Twitter on the Thursday before by reliable people on our side calling for a veto of this pig of a bill but didn't and sat silent when he should have called for a veto like Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter]. ... You can say goodbye to anything we or Trump wants coming out of Congress from the moment the Democrats win the House, over [Funny how Ronald Reagan got tax cuts passed without control of Congress]. ... But, you know, elections have consequences, and there are a lot of Republicans that retired [Still blaming less than 10 retirements which flipped for what was a 40+ seat catastrophe because Trump and Republicans failed to deliver on the campaign agenda]. ... Fifty-five Republicans quit! They resigned [total lie].

Disgraceful Judge Emmet Sullivan, elevated to the federal bench by Bill Clinton, trumpeted by disgraceful media

All the news plays at the top of the hour is Judge Sullivan saying that General Michael Flynn sold out his country, not mentioning Sullivan immediately backtracked on his insinuations that Flynn committed treason.

Damage done.

Sullivan got his first affirmative action appointment from Ronald Reagan.

This reaction to the sentencing hearing yesterday suggests Flynn is going to jail, eventually.

This isn't about a crime; it's about criminalizing a foreign policy opinion different from the establishment's opinion, elections be damned.

Despicable libertarian judge Bernard Friedman appointed by Ronald Reagan dismisses cases against Muslim clit cutters in Detroit

This is the same libertarian, anti-conservative, judge who overturned Michigan's 2004 Marriage Act in 2014. He threw out the cases on the grounds the law passed under the Commerce Clause had nothing to do with commerce because Muslim clit cutting isn't a large market with a measurable impact on commerce. It will have when the country is full of Muslims. What a damn fool.

Why must we still live under the thumb of judges, let alone under those appointed in the 1980s?

 Judge dismisses female genital mutilation charges in historic case:

In a major blow to the federal government, a judge in Detroit has declared America's female genital mutilation law unconstitutional, thereby dismissing the key charges against two Michigan doctors and six others accused of subjecting at least nine minor girls to the cutting procedure in the nation's first FGM case.

The historic case involves minor girls from Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, including some who cried, screamed and bled during the procedure and one who was given Valium ground in liquid Tylenol to keep her calm, court records show.

The judge's ruling also dismissed charges against three mothers, including two Minnesota women whom prosecutors said tricked their 7 -year-old daughters into thinking they were coming to metro Detroit for a girls' weekend, but instead had their genitals cut at a Livonia clinic as part of a religious procedure.

U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman concluded that "as despicable as this practice may be," Congress did not have the authority to pass the 22-year-old federal law that criminalizes female genital mutilation, and that FGM is for the states to regulate. FGM is banned worldwide and has been outlawed in more than 30 countries, though the U.S. statute had never been tested before this case. 

"As laudable as the prohibition of a particular type of abuse of girls may be ... federalism concerns deprive Congress of the power to enact this statute," Friedman wrote in his 28-page opinion, noting: "Congress overstepped its bounds by legislating to prohibit FGM ... FGM is a 'local criminal activity' which, in keeping with long-standing tradition and our federal system of government, is for the states to regulate, not Congress." 

Currently, 27 states have laws that criminalize female genital mutilation, including Michigan, whose FGM law is stiffer than the federal statute, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, compared with five under federal law. Michigan's FGM law was passed last year in the wake of the historic case and applies to both doctors who conduct the procedure, and parents who transport a child to have it done. The defendants in this case can't be retroactively charged under the new law. ...

"There is nothing commercial or economic about FGM," Friedman writes. "As despicable as this practice may be, it is essentially a criminal assault. ... FGM is not part of a larger market and it has no demonstrated effect on interstate commerce. The commerce clause does not permit Congress to regulate a crime of this nature."