So, Trump won, now what?
By Rich Kozlovich
No
political party can withstand adversity when there's no common unified
social paradigm or shared perception of who they
are. They are in effect like conflicting primitive tribes within a
social boundary
presented as a party. They're all feeling oppressed, and yet they're
not even sure who their real enemy is, the opposition, or their own
party, and this is only
going to get worse. The real issue that will trigger a national
political explosion will be cutting spending, and/or reforming the
entitlement mandates like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
There's
a lot of joy for conservatives over Trump's victory right now, but we
need to see things clearly. Trump has not been good at cutting spending,
and he wanted the debt limit raised. Why? While Libertarians rail
against his tariffs, I applaud them. He wants to gut government
massively, which in my view will cut spending massively, but both the
Democrats and the Republicans are in resistance.
He's created
DOGE being headed up by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to cut costs,
massively. The trouble is both them are elitists and support H-1B
visas, which I addressed here.
I don't support expanding it, and this is creating conflict with the
America First base, and that's a base that's been abused by both parties
for decades, and they're on a short fuse. As for me, I support banning
all immigration to America until the illegals are gone, and the border
is secure.
I've said this before, and I'm gonna keep saying it
again. I've little respect for Elon Musk who I consider to be a
massively self serving con artist, feeding at the government's subsidy trough on electric cars, and even promoting global warming,
and he now wants to send a ship to land on Mars, and I ask why?
There's nothing there, and life couldn't be sustained on Mars except by
artificial means, and that's not sustainable. There's gotta be a
government finance scheme somewhere in that mix wherein he benefits in
some way.
Personally, I think he's nuts and I think he's a strange man. Not exactly my cup of tea when it comes to
confidence and trust. However, even a blind monkey can find a coconut
on occasion, and it appears he's stumbled onto a big coconut with DOGE. I just
can't figure out what his angle is, but time and truth are on the same
side.
Having said that, Trump hired him to cut costs, and he's good at that. When he took over Twitter he eliminated 6,500 of the 8,500 hundred employees, that's 70%, and he fired the moderators who of their own initiative, and values, decided what was acceptable or not on Twitter, and while he took an economic hit for a while, advertisers are coming back.
As for Vivek, I think he was chosen to partner with Musk
as an insurance policy, as I think Musk will get out of control, and
he'll be gone in the first year, and Vivek will follow some time
later, but he may still have a place in the Trump administration. We'll see.
The battle over Speaker Johnson is just one more example
of how the Republican party is Balkanized, and one more example of how
confused they are. The Democrats stand for big government tyranny, big
spending, big taxes, "corrupting
that legal system to block and subvert the will of the American people
and their chosen government", and destruction of the Constitution. What
do the Republicans stand for? It can't be for cutting costs, cutting
spending, cutting government, and stop raising taxes, as they buckle
every time on all that, and Speaker Johnson has been a consistent party to that. So, as a party what do they stand for? No one knows, including the Republicans.
As John Mauldin notes:
Politicians and think-tank wonks of all stripes
love to condemn government “waste, fraud, and abuse.” But saying it
isn’t hard. Who is the opposition? No one says we need more waste, fraud, and abuse. We’re all 100% agreed all three are bad. It’s when you get specific—saying this agency
or that program isn’t accomplishing what it should—that disagreement
arises. Sometimes it’s pure self-interest. As I said last week, one
man’s waste is another man’s revenue. But more often, people just have
different objectives.
Then he goes on to define why waste, which is "when the government spends money but receives
no corresponding benefit. Fraud is "the use of deception to get something you aren’t
authorized to receive." And abuse, which is always with us is, "when people apply a legitimate privilege selfishly."
Most are small
potatoes in dollar terms, but over hundreds of agencies, they add up. To
name just one, a recent inspector general audit
of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s travel expenses found a slew of
waste and potential fraud, including nearly $50,000 in unallowed
first-class flights between 2020 and 2023. They spent a total of $27
million on travel in the last four years, most of it in the last year.
This is a small agency.
He then goes on to show the history of
major efforts to reform government and cut spending, waste, fraud, and
.... yes.... abuse, and how they always have failed. The reason they
fail is because they fail to understand "everything is the basics", and
the basic truth is nothing will be fixed until you eliminate government
agencies.... massively, at least 80% of them, and that won't just be a
floor fight, it will be a dog fight.
Now we have all this
controversy surrounding Speaker Johnson and I keep wondering why he
doesn't just say these floor fights are detrimental to the party and the
administration and graciously withdraw from the vote for speaker. Then
get all the leaders of the conflicting parties together, along with the
President and Vice President and ask who they think should be speaker,
and keep hashing it out until they can come together and agree.
We'll
see, but no matter who the Speaker is, the make up of the Congress will
still leave the Democrats in control since in both the Senate and the
House the Democrats will for the most part vote in lockstep, and there
is always a percentage of Republicans who will follow, which means the
Democrats will determine what's voted on and what passes. I don't envy
any legitimate conservative who would get that job, so let's not get too
happy, because the next two years are going to be ugly.
There is a potential upside. The Democrats are as delusional as Biden, and as dumb as Jimmy Carter, and they have no leader.
Schumer isn't, Pelosi isn't, her hand puppet Hakeem Jeffries isn't, and most certainly Kamala Harris is not.
AOC thinks she should be, and even thinks she can get the nomination to be the 2028 Democrat nominee for President, which is really telling about the Democrat party bench.
Nitwits, misfits, halfwits, and dipsticks, even Carville thinks they're clueless. C'mon man, how bad is that? They're even blaming George Clooney for their loss for forcing Biden out of the race, and we know Biden is now claiming he could have beaten Trump. So, according to Wendell Husebo they're fractured, and they're scared.
Scared is good.
We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.
We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. - C.S. Lewis