Impossible becomes real in the worst way

Illegal elected officials? It's this bad?

Trump has raised $300 million in 4 days

I pray this is a real number:

The Trump Campaign and its Super PACS raised nearly $300 million in May from small donors and billionaires, and it's just going to grow from there.

Suck on that Merchan.

— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) June 4, 2024

$300 million in 4 days? I hope that's real and not just hype. 

Uh oh (part 1)

Nevada vote tampering is real, and current:

Is this even real anymore?

I mean come on, do they expect us to believe this stuff?  It's getting harder and harder to fathom that this is not some sort of insider joke on the public.  Or have we just reached the outer edge of reality's bell curve?

The American Dream is real, this is cool

Hard work pays off.  This inspiring video led to an incredible series of events as seen in the follow up videos (below). 

Gary Lamb did a video thanking Tim Pool and applauding president Trump:

What happened next?  Take a look:

This is why work effort is better than grievance. The American Dream is real.

Ricky Gervais goes off on celebrities, again.

Ricky Gervais, keeping it real.  I hate that expression too, but he really is keeping it real during the coronavirus pandemic.

Real diversity vs SJW diversity

Diversity. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Today, people who call themselves liberals insist that America (or the West in general) is not diverse enough.  They claim that we are not diverse enough with respect to gender (no really, there are more than two genders. Okay.) or ethnicity or sexual orientation, or religion.   The problem with their claims is actually two distinct problems: (1) that's not really diversity and (2) it goes against actual liberal principles.

Real diversity means diversity of thought.  The way liberals classify diversity by identifiable categories like race and gender is literally, superficial.  Real diversity - the diversity that makes America a great country - is diversity of thought. Making sure that society is a certain percentage gay, a set percentage female, an exact ratio Muslim and an equal proportion of African American, Hispanic, Asian, White or otherwise does absolutely zero.  The ultimate question is what does that offer?  Next to zero benefit will arise from the supposed fairness this offers. I'll save the fairness argument for another time. Instead let's look at viewpoint diversity.

Tackling a problem with viewpoints from the left and right, from a passive or aggressive viewpoint, a scientific and humanitarian perspective concurrently, allows for a greater possibility of a comprehensive and successful solution to a problem than one developed by a visibly diverse but otherwise homogeneously-thinking group.  Without ideas being challenged they do not get tested before being put in place.  That's a recipe for failure.  But that's exactly what social justice warriors want to happen.

This is where the other problem of incongruity with liberal principles comes into play.  As a reminder, here's what classical liberalism actually is:

Classical liberalism is a political philosophy and ideology belonging to liberalism in which primary emphasis is placed on securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of the government.

The philosophy emerged as a response to the Industrial Revolution and urbanization in the 19th century in Europe and the United States.

It advocates civil liberties with a limited government under the rule of law, private property, and belief in laissez-faire economic policy.

"Securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of government".  Social Justice Warriors want the government to impose equality on everyone. And by that they mean equality of outcome, not of opportunity.  They mean equality of visibility based on visual identifiers.  That comes at the expense of ideas.  There will be no diversity of ideas under that model and that means that individual freedom of thought is superseded by these visual markers.  That represents the death of liberty and true classical liberal ideals.

The problem for the country is that leftist leadership are adept at using that social justice warrior thinking to increase the preponderance of that sort of thinking. And while they have had a lot of success at doing that, they have simultaneously tried to tamp down individual thinking within these identity groups; if you are African American you have to be a Democrat.  If you are gay and are a Republican you need to have your head examined.  If you don't use the pronouns people choose to identify themselves by, you are a racist, misogynist homophobic neanderthal. 

The synergy of progressive liberalism with the consolidation of superficial identity groups is a recipe for totalitarianism. Classical liberalism it is not.

Market rebound: real? Obama's?

A lot of people are wondering if the stock market rally or rebound of the last six weeks is real or not.  Not real in the sense of 'did it actually happen?' but rather in the sense that is it sustainable?  Is it a bear bounce (a blip on a downward trajectory)?

Or is it just this?

Or rather, is it really the beginning of a sustained recovery?  There's valid points to be made for both sides.  There are signs that the worst is past, and signs that the worst is yet to come.  If you had a crystal ball right now you could make yourself quite wealthy.  The truth is no one knows for sure.  Economics has been described as trying to drive your car using only your rear view mirror as your visual input.  You can tell what happened, but you don't know for sure if there's a big curve up ahead.  You have to react to clues from the past.

But there's a political point that is critical not to be overlooked.  If the recovery has started already then how did it happen?  All that you can be sure of is this - it wasn't because of the stimulus package (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act).  Most of that money hasn't made it anywhere yet.  So if the recovery kicks into high gear, it won't be because of anything the Democrats and the President have done.  That's important to understand and to remember, because they will surely try to take credit for it.  

The BIG financial corollary to this point is that if the ARRA money is not needed, kill it before that money makes it's way into the system and stimulates massive inflation and tilts the economy into another problem.  There is a huge risk here that the Democrats will be undoing the decades of low stable, inflation rates that managed to be achieved during the Reagan administration and stayed quite stable through the Bush 41 administration, 2 Clinton terms, and 2 Bush 43 terms.

The market is up over 20% in the last month and a half.  If it's a bear bounce, it's a substantial one.  Recovery may be on it's way.  After all the conventional wisdom is that steep recessions are shorter than shallow recession.  This one was certainly steep - at least by the time it became known (arguably the recession started in 2007).  The most important thing to remember however is that if that is the case, the recovery pre-dates Obama's massive spend.  And if that's true he must be denied credit for it or it will just lead to more of the same spend your way to recovery thinking.

Ironically, America does need change.  The problem is that it is still somewhat blind to the type of  change that is really needed.  The President believes his change is the right change but what America needs changing is in it's thinking.  It needs in many quarters to lose it's sense of entitlement.  It needs jobs. It needs manufacturing.  It needs to have a better mix of consumer, investment and research and development spending.  It needs to curb it's current account deficit with real and fair free trade deals and competitive domestic products.  It needs to mitigate it's dependence on foreign energy through use of domestic drilling, nuclear power, natural gas, and clean coal technology.  Sure throw in solar, battery, geothermal, and wind power but don't expect them to pay off by 2012 or 2030 - they won't.  

Most importantly America needs to slash it's government debt at all levels.  This will not get done with trillions more in federal debt. It requires the killing or massive overhaul of discretionary and non-discretionary spending.  In other words Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and possibly defense spending (though preferably not the latter).  All that incremental Obama debt might do effectively is potentially reduce state debts. In case some states decide they want to secede from the mess the union is in a few years down the road, they'll be in a healthier position to do so.  Wonderful.  What a great way to destroy America from the inside.  Maybe that's been the plan of the ultra-left all along?  Nah, couldn't be.