Recent Harvard graduate, gun control activist, and president of Leaders We Deserve David Hogg has absolutely nothing to say about hundreds of slaughtered, gunless Israelis on his feed.
He is indeed the Leader We Deserve from America's premier university.
"We have reports that several Americans may be among the dead. We are very actively working to verify those reports," the U.S. secretary of state said on "Meet the Press." ...
Meanwhile, in an interview onCBS' "Face the Nation," the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Herzog, indicated that Americans are among Hamas’ hostages.
The founders set up a country in which aristoi would rule alongside and with the people, first among equals, primus inter pares, but
not over them in the monarchical or oligarchic sense. Nobody would have
a permanent or divine right to rule in the United States. The founders
had had a sense of duty to rule honorably, and a sense of humility that
their governance wasn’t an end in itself — but a means of preserving the
rights of the people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This man is a small sea of confusion, who writes that aristocracy is "rule by the few".
. . . on England, and on Ireland, Germany, Italy, and the rest.
The libertarian impulse to go Galt, to run away, is a feature of America, not a bug, a built-in self-destruct mechanism which went off most spectacularly and destroyed the root in 1861.
The rest of the plant has been withering and dying on the vine ever since, overtaken by tenacious weeds.
Freedom for Christian religion combined with plenty of Lebensraum, home country memory, and time made it seem otherwise in the face of the steadydecline, but here we are with Scylla and Charybdis for choices come November 2024.
The Declaration of Independence was a repudiation of politics. Two thirds of the country was not down for the struggle. Secession was a repudiation of politics. There was resistance to military conscription everywhere, but especially in the Confederacy. We were content to let the world burn for more than two years before the Japs forced our hand on December 7, 1941. We have rightnow the unthinkable European land war in its 20th month and sports is what trends on Twitter day in and day out. Mao killed by the tens of millions during The American Century. Americans quietly go to church every Sunday while tens of millions are aborted. It all began with migration, the most basic form of repudiating politics.
We do not need, in short, to relearn to think politically. Most of us have never thought politically in the first place. Apolitics is our politics, but this horrorvacui is why the left seems to have won and why we hate them. We hate politics. As polarized as we think we are, as rigged as our politics is, 100 million eligible Americans still did not vote in 2020.
You do not get political blood from this turnip.
Ultimately, nothing could be more un-American than to give up on America.
The American idea, alas, is precisely to stay out of it.
A studypublished in the European Journal of Endocrinology showed that all trans people were at a “significantly higher risk” of a host of serious and potentially deadly medical conditions, including heart attacks and strokes.
“A border wall is a 14th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” the Democratic Texas congressmanHenry Cuellarsaid. “It will not bolster border security in Starr county.
The Biden administration says it is using executive power to allow border wall construction in Texas
FILE - A border wall section stands on July 14, 2021, near La Grulla, Texas, in Starr County. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, the Biden administration announced that they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction, marking the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency. The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP, File)
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration announced they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction on Wednesday, marking the administration’s first use of sweeping executive power to pave the way for building more border barriers — a tactic used often during the Trump presidency.
The Department of Homeland Security posted theannouncement on the U.S. Federal Registrywith few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas, which is part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing “high illegal entry.” According to government data, about 245,000 illegal entries have been recorded in this region during the current fiscal year.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, stated in the notice.
The Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act were some of the federal laws waived by DHS to make way for construction that will use funds from a congressional appropriation in 2019 for border wall construction. The waivers avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws.
Related stories
Although no maps were provided in the announcement, aprevious mapshared during the gathering of public comments shows the piecemeal construction will add up to an additional 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the existing border barrier system in the area.
“The other concern that we have is that area is highly erosive. There’s a lot of arroyos,” said Starr County Judge Eloy Vera, the highest-elected official in the county, pointing out the creeks cutting through the ranchland and leading into the river.
Starr County is home to about 65,000 residents spread over about 1,200 square miles (3,108 square kilometers) that includes ranchland and part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmental advocates say structures will run through public lands, habitats of endangered plants and animal species like the ocelot, a spotted wild cat.
“A plan to build a wall through will bulldoze an impermeable barrier straight through the heart of that habitat. It will stop wildlife migrations dead in their tracks. It will destroy a huge amount of wildlife refuge land. And it’s a horrific step backwards for the borderlands,” Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said Wednesday afternoon.
During the Trump administration, about450 miles (724 kilometers) of barrierswere built along the southwest border between 2017 and January 2021. Texas Governor Greg Abbott renewed those efforts as part of hisongoing immigration enforcementfrom the state level after the Biden administration initially halted them at the start of his presidency.
The DHS decision on Wednesday contrasts the Biden administration’s posturing when aproclamationto end the construction on Jan. 20, 2021 stated, “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection had no immediate comment.
The announcement prompted political debate by the Democratic administration facing an increase of migrants entering through the southern border in recent months, including thousands who entered the U.S. throughEagle Passat the end of September.
“A border wall is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem. It will not bolster border security in Starr County,” U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar said in a statement. “I continue to stand against the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on an ineffective border wall.”
Political proponents of the border wall said the waivers should be used as a launching pad for a shift in policy.
“After years of denying that a border wall and other physical barriers are effective, the DHS announcement represents a sea change in the administration’s thinking: A secure wall is an effective tool for maintaining control of our borders,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement. “Having made that concession, the administration needs to immediately begin construction of wall across the border to prevent the illegal traffic from simply moving to other areas of the border.”
The governor signaled that, while he was committed to naming a woman
of color, he didn’t want to give Lee the advantage of appointed
incumbency. This was a new standard, developed by Newsom since his last
appointment of a senator in 2021, when he chose Alex Padilla
to replace newly elected Vice President Kamala Harris. As an appointed
incumbent, Padilla ran for and easily won a full term in 2022. This
time, Newsom said, he wanted to make an “interim appointment”—indicating
an apparent preference for a caretaker senator who would merely finish
out Feinstein’s term and then leave the Senate.
It was an absurd calculus, offering the prospect of a brief rather
than ongoing expansion of representation for Black women in the Senate,
and Lee called him out for it. The representative said
in a statement, “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only
as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black
women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to
victory election after election.”
When he ran for president in 2016, few of Donald Trump’s
promises thrilled his supporters more than his pledge not just to build a
wall on the southern border, but to force Mexico to pick up the tab.
“And who’s going to pay for it?” he’d say at his rallies. The crowd
would shout back joyfully, “Mexico!” It wasn’t about the money; the
point was to conjure a fantasy of America standing tall and dominating
our neighbor; their humiliation would be our glory.
A fantasy is just what it was, as Trump now admits. At a speech
in Iowa on Sunday, he blurted out the truth. “When you hear these
lunatics back there,” he said, pointing at the news media, “say, ‘Trump
didn’t get anything from Mexico,’ well, you know, there was no legal
mechanism. I said they’re going to help fund this wall, but there was no
legal mechanism. How do you go to a country, you say, ‘By the way I’m
building a wall, hand us a lot of money.’”
Of course it was about the money. Everything is about the money.
It wasn't a fantasy to neoliberal Bush 43 pal Vicente Fox, who took it seriously enough at the time when Trump first proposed to make Mexico pay that he wouldn't pay.
This is revisionist history by Trump and by Waldman, which pretends there was no Border Wall Funding Act of 2017, nor serious elite opposition to its provision for a foreign remittances tax.
Trump would simply like to erase the history of his phony immigration promises, and Waldman would simply like no one to entertain seriously the particulars, which show there is a giant pot of money easily taxed to pay for border security.
Foreign remittances to the Latin South reached $142 billion in 2022, and Mexico's share was $60 billion.
The government of the United States farts away billions of dollars every minute of every day. Funding a $25 billion wall is a flea on that elephant's back. The fierce opposition to it is the thing of real size.
At the same time, though, I look at guys like Chip Roy, Tom Massie, Jim
Jordan, and they’re basically saying there’s not a plan to go forward
with whatever Matt Gaetz is doing.
At least she doesn't have degrees in English literature and philosophy like that John B. Chambers bond expert who downgraded the USA from AAA for S&P back in 2011.
I mean, she's a Wall Street Journal Fellow after all, where they still have some standards.
There have been 750 carjackings in D.C. so far this year, according
to police data. That is nearly double the number of carjackings at this
time last year.
The Congressional Black Caucus hadurgedNewsom to appoint Lee, saying she was the "only person with the courage, the vision, and the record to eradicate poverty, face down the fossil fuel industry, defend our democracy, and tirelessly advance the progressive agenda.
An inflation measure closely watched by the Federal Reserve ticked higher in August as steep prices continue to squeeze millions of U.S. households.
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index showed that
consumer prices rose 0.4% from the previous month, according to the
Labor Department. On an annual basis, prices climbed 3.5% — up from 3.3%
recorded the previous month, underscoring the challenge of taming high inflation.
She's referring to PCEPI.
That measure isn't up from 3.3% the previous month. It's up from 3.4%, and 3.2% the month before that.
Jeff Cox at CNBC got it right, same day, as usual:
Including food and energy, headline PCE increased 0.4% on the month
and 3.5% from a year ago. Headline inflation has been creeping higher in
recent months after hitting 3.2% in June.
Forbes also had it right, because it actually checked the most recent data, which Fox evidently did not:
The most recent PCE price index data was released on September 29, 2023, covering the month of August. The
headline August PCE inflation figure was +3.5% year over year, which
was up slightly from the revised annual rate of +3.4% in July.
Nobody wants to talk about the shit-hole progressives have made out of Portland, which first came to light nationally when the place erupted after the death of George Floyd.
The hallmark of progressive rule in Portland is that the justice system in their hands won't prosecute crimes, so the police are demoralized and now have interminable staffing problems. Who wants to arrest the same people over and over again knowing they'll just have to arrest them again over and over?
The House measure would fund government at current 2023 levels for 45 days, through Nov. 17, setting up another potential crisis if they fail to more fully fund government by then. The package was approved by the House 335-91, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats supporting.
Littlejohn, 38, provided the public official’s tax documents to an
unnamed news organization, and the tax information concerning other
wealthy individuals to another unidentified news organization between
2018 and 2020, prosecutors said.
In 2020, The New York Times released a bombshell report saying that it had obtained more than two decades of Trump’s tax information and that he had paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
More than 42 million Americans are infected with types of HPV that cause disease. ... Most HPV infections (9 out of 10) go away by themselves within 2 years. But sometimes, HPV infections will last longer and can cause some cancers.
About 70% of cancers in the oropharynx (which includes the tonsils, soft palate, and base of the tongue) are linked to human papillomavirus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted virus.
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.
But the most glaring gap is between conservatives and liberals, i.e.,
between Republicans and Democrats. On the issue of free expression, at
least, Republicans are not the authoritarian party. That distinction
belongs to the Democrats, the party launched by Thomas Jefferson — the
Founding Father who famously said that if he were forced to choose
between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” ...
If Republicans’ aversion to censorship was transactional, they would
have identified Democratic-friendly misinformation for removal. But they
didn’t. “Regardless of the partisan slant of the content, Democrats are
more likely to support the removal of content, while Republicans are
more likely to oppose removing content,” the study noted.
It was Democrats who more often employed situational ethics, giving a
pass to misinformation that helped their side. Most Republicans didn’t
differentiate based on which way the false headline cut.
If someone hits a home run with language, ideas, and/or attitude, a
substantial number of disheartened and despairing anti-Trump donors may
notice — and decide to write really big checks.
Shocking right? A politician asserting the primacy of politics.
Well, "the most important moment" doesn't exist. There is a long series of important moments, when the voters have their actual say in the polling booths of the individual primaries and the elections, at which point the politicians had better deliver on the words, or else.
Most of them don't, but we fall for them every time, and they know it.
But this is most certainly true:
Given all the press coverage early in Mr. DeSantis’ candidacy — and the
substantial amount of money he raised — his slide has been the biggest
Republican story this year.
Yes, it is the biggest story because Ron DeSantis has consistently delivered on his words in Florida . . .
and the voters nationally don't give a flying fig.
Newt should know better.
He followed up his words as a congressman during the 1980s with a Speakership in the 1990s consisting of a temporarily successful if mixed bag of policies. Which is why he, along with Mitt Romney, subsequently never made the big time. You can't run against ObamaCare by promising RomneyCare or HeritageFoundationCare instead. Donald Trump in his hubris never learned the lesson either, squandering away his political capital on overturning it in 2017.
The majority of Republicans now remain content with the feckless entertainer who mouths "just words". They have no appetite for the humdrum of an executive who actually delivers and executes real, lasting reform.
This remains a not serious country, ridiculously adolescent to the end.
