Offthemat

This is a very important point. Reduced tax revenues indicate economic decline, regardless the government’s stated performance reports.

You can say that, without refute, and without validation.

So, it’s just nonsense. Nothing new.

The Day the Delusions Died “When Hamas terrorists crossed over the border with Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also shattered long-held delusions in the West. A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7 as a liberal and went to bed that evening as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn’t really a joke and she wasn’t the only one. What changed? The best way to answer that question is with the help of Thomas Sowell, one of the most brilliant public intellectuals alive today. In 1987, Sowell published A Conflict of Visions. In this now-classic, he offers a simple and powerful explanation of why people disagree about politics. We disagree about politics, Sowell argues, because we disagree about human nature. We see the world through one of two competing visions, each of which tells a radically different story about human nature. Those with “unconstrained vision” think that humans are malleable and can be perfected. They believe that social ills and evils can be overcome through collective action that encourages humans to behave better. To subscribers of this view, poverty, crime, inequality, and war are notinevitable. Rather, they are puzzles that can be solved. We need only to say the right things, enact the right policies, and spend enough money, and we will suffer these social ills no more. This worldview is the foundation of the progressive mindset. By contrast, those who see the world through a “constrained vision” lens believe that human nature is a universal constant. No amount of social engineering can change the sober reality of human self-interest, or the fact that human empathy and social resources are necessarily scarce. People who see things this way believe that most political and social problems will never be “solved”; they can only be managed. This approach is the bedrock of the conservative worldview. Hamas’s barbarism—and the explanations and celebrations throughout the West that followed their orgy of violence—have forced an overnight exodus from the “unconstrained” camp into the “constrained” one. ” https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thefp.com%2Fp%2Fthe-day-the-delusions-died-konstantin-kisin

What is your inmate locked up for?

Hint: Pay no attention to what he says, watch what he does. He is largely responsible for Jordan not being elected, while he positions himself as the savior, the only one who can lead the House.

Hern or Johnson at first glance look okay. Emmer is a no-go. (McCarthy’s fellow never-Trumper) Scott challenged Jordan and lost, already.

Victor Davis Hanson “As for business, law, and medical schools–they now transfer much of their finite resources away from honing professional skills to ideological indoctrination in supposed diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a result, universities have lost their century-long credibility as guardians of free and open scientific inquiry. Any contemporary university scientist who followed a renegade devotion to disinterested science–as embodied by Democritus, Galileo, or Copernicus–would encounter the same premodern character assassination, groupthink opposition, and efforts to destroy his career. In sum, if exorbitantly priced higher education can no longer produce either a class of broadly educated citizens, or an empirically-trained and elite scientific, professional, and technological class, then why would Americans any longer put up with universities’ unapologetic indoctrination—a sort of interference with the university’s mission so reminiscent of the disastrous Russian commissar system that had nearly destroyed the Red Army at the outset of World War II? Reform will only come through curtailing the government handouts that fuel multibillion dollar university endowments. Such unprecedented affluence ensures lavish campus budgets that in turn subsidize racist, anti-Semitic, and McCarthyite policies and institutions. Just tax the income from the roughly $1 trillion of America’s tax exempt university endowments and perhaps there would not be quite enough money for courses on cartoons, cross-dressing, and BLM, much less for thousands of DEI commissars and censors. Stop federal funds to any university that refuses to ensure Bill-of-Rights protections for its students. If the SAT and ACT are increasingly dropped for admissions to universities, then an exit version of them should be required to ensure that all BA and BS degrees certify at least a minimum competence in math, science, and general knowledge. Get the government out of the $1.8 trillion student loan business—and perhaps campuses would understand the concept of moral hazard. Only then would they monitor carefully extraneous expenditures and begin graduating students in four years—with the skills that employers so desperately need and the knowledge that a democracy relies upon. If thousands of big donors who give billions of dollars to Ivy League and other tony universities were to “just say no,” then perhaps grasping deans, provosts, and presidents would begin to wonder whether they could fund any more rock climbing walls, latte bars, DEI czars, drag shows—and hate-Israel courses and student organizations. In short, colleges are now a bad deal—far too costly, too political, and too incompetent in fulfilling their mission to the country. They no longer can deliver on what they were created for, and they simply will not stop fueling things that are not just unnecessary, but downright injurious to the country, scary, and destructive. Who wishes to continue with all that?” https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Famgreatness.com%2F2023%2F10%2F23%2Fthe-sickness-of-our-universities-and-the-cure%2F

“The Iranians have little clue that they and their vassals are one stupid missile volley, or one reckless intervention away from a devastating Western response that would not necessarily be “proportionate.”” https://victorhanson.com/does-iran-realize-its-own-growing-danger/

You’re proving it.

You are seriously afflicted. ^ Data for Progress

Your distraction is revealing itself.

You’re getting more erratic all the time.

And saying what I already said.

Yes, I am sure. Nancy Polosi changed it for her term. Intimidation? By their constituents? You have an odd idea of democracy. With the RNC and leaders of both houses directing their funding away from them, they’re doing pretty well. “No to MAGA?”The split in the party is overwhelmingly budget oriented. Guess which group is for responsible budgeting?

What’s the difference between a ‘moderate’ republican and a dimocrat?

I have no idea.

You’re wrong about that. It only takes one to make the motion but you better have enough to vote with you to vacate. There were more who would have voted along with Gaetz if it had been necessary. Jordan had 200 on the floor, where votes are on record. Where their constituents could see how they voted. Do you prefer to know how your representative votes, or do you prefer he keep his vote secret? Do you prefer democracy behind closed doors? This is not childish, it’s serious. We are $33trillion in debt, with interest nearing $1trillion per year. It is affecting our ability to defend ourselves. It is as much a threat to our country as China, Russia, and Iran combined. We’ve had interest rates this high before, but not with this much debt. Someone needs to exercise some responsibility and the public is behind doing so. That’s why the reps vote differently depending on whether there is a record of their vote. In public they tend to vote for the public interest. In private they tend to vote for K Street, Wall Street, and the MIC.

You are ignoring what I said. The motion to vacate rule is historic, and Gaetz didn’t do this alone. You can’t call what the Freedom Caucus did a hissy fit without also calling what Emmer and his band of McCarthyites did the same for having not voted for Jordan. The difference is, Jordan sides with the Budget Responsibility group, and McCarthy sides with the Modern Monetary Theory bunch.

The motion to vacate has been around since Jefferson. McCarthy’s problem was he agreed to do a list of things, then failed to do them. He promised to do budget bills by normal order and didn’t. He sent Congress off on a six week vacation instead of staying to work on the bills, and then was found to have made secret plans with Biden and the democrats to pass CRs and omnibus. I didn’t trust him from before he won the seat.

Now, why would that be? It takes you to data for progress.org, the same site-different page- as uncle bernard’s link.

Who most closely resembles the majority of the Republican Party, the Country Club Republicans or the Populist, MAGA Republicans? I’ll give you a hint: who’s leading by a runaway majority in the polls?

McCarthy endorsed Emmer, who will be unlikely to win in my opinion, showing he was never behind Jordan; the two couldn’t be more different. Judging his moves, he is positioning for a return as the only one who can lead the party and never should have been expelled. Kind of an “If I can’t have it, I’ll burn it down” play.

This isn’t about R vs D, it’s about big government, omnibus bill, no accountability spending vs appropriations bills with representatives votes on record. The swamp snakes prefer to vote behind closed doors.

We’re likely to get the best speaker money can buy.