Let's Not Get Too Happy

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