Newt on BETO. Newt's insights have merit. (See 1 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My sentiments:
President 0. Dead Man 1.
President Trump should have had a successful day touting the military, the economy, job creation, American weapons superiority, and his commitment to a robust military. Instead, when he visited the General Dynamics plant for an official presidential visit, he went on a five minute tirade against John McCain, a dead man.
That became the story.
President Trump’s $2 billion spending bill saved that plant and added hundreds of jobs in Lima, OH. He had a story to tell, but he stepped all over himself and, in the process, both he and his core supporters decided to fight yesterday’s battle against a dead man...
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Trump versus Obama when it comes to Bibi. Trump opens the front door to Bibi whereas Obama chose to insult him.
Each day's passage reconfirms my personal view that Obama was a disaster and will remain a thorn in our nation's side as long as he remains on this earth. He may have been an empty suit but his animus for this nation more than filled it. (See 2 below.)
Meanwhile: I disagree with much that Rand Paul says and does but he is pressing for a debate in The Senate on a Bill that challenges Union power. Naturally, Democrats oppose such a debate because unions are beholden to them, raise dues which are then laundered into campaign financing and supports cushy life styles for union big wigs. There was a time when unions were critical to balance the power of corporations but that time has passed.
Trump's approach towards leveraging workers is a strong economy and training so they are qualified to meet the demands of technology . ( See edited comment 3 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Intellectual fraud abounds not only in climate science but also in economics. (See 4 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Interesting op eds:
Steve Cortes, RealClearPolitics
Dick+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
4) The Corruption of Science and Economics and the Green New Deal
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
Bye Bye Beto
Dick:
Robert Francis O’Rourke’s first few days as a presidential candidate reminded me how much we miss the great talent of Tom Wolfe.
Wolfe had an amazing, profound capacity for looking beneath the glitter, the fakery, and the hypocrisy that defines much of our culture. Wolfe’s 1970 publication of Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catcherschallenged the political correctness and hypocritical posturing of the liberal elites.
Wolfe would have loved Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. He would have understood from the opening moments of the “Beto Bandwagon,” that there is a “me-centered” nature of O’Rourke’s existence.
I must confess the evolution of O’Rourke since losing the Senate race to Ted Cruz has surprised me. It was clear he was a champion of the Left. Like the narrowly defeated Democrats in Georgia and Florida, he seemed to have gained more stature from defeat than the vast number of Democrats who actually won in 2018.
However, I thought he would take his $80 million donor base, his charm, and his remarkable nationwide name-ID (especially for a defeated candidate) and develop a thoughtful moral cause larger than himself.
For the first few days after O’Rourke’s loss to Cruz, I compared his position to that of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. O’Rourke had served three terms. Lincoln lost narrowly to an incumbent senator. In those days, voters elected members of the state legislature, who then elected senators. Republicans got a small majority of the popular vote to the legislature, the makeup of the legislature saved Senator Stephen Douglas from defeat.
However, this parallel seemed to collapse after Election Day.
Lincoln shrewdly understood that his candidacy had to be about a cause much larger than himself. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were published and widely read among Republican activists. Lincoln emerged as a very thoughtful critic of slavery and a leader of moral stature. His speech at Cooper Union on February 27, 1860 was widely reprinted verbatim in northern newspapers and solidified his position as a moral and thought leader (Harold Holzer’s book Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President is one of the best books on leadership and strategy I have ever read).
I assumed O’Rourke would recognize that his donor base and name identification were only a springboard – that he would have to define a moral cause large enough to justify an outsider nomination and election to be president. I was wrong.
First, we had “Beto the Traveler.” As one reporter commented, it was like watching Jack Kerouac creating On the Road as a 21st century venture in finding yourself. As Beto wandered from town to town, it almost looked as though the great leader from Texas was seeking meaning in other people and other moments. It was the opposite of Lincoln’s composed, disciplined, mature approach to leadership.
Then we got the maximum liberal establishment buildup. Vanity Fair gave him the full cover magazine launch with photos by Annie Leibovitz (nothing says “establishment approval as an icon” better than a Leibovitz photo shoot). In the glowing, fawning Vanity Fair article, we learned that O’Rourke had a “near-mystical experience” during a major rally in his Senate race.
This all out media launch set the stage for O’Rourke’s modest announcement to Vanity Fair that “Man, I’m just born to be in it.” He later clarified that it was the presidential race and not the presidency, but it was still a telling comment.
Unlike Lincoln, for whom the cause was freedom and the union, the O’Rourke candidacy is about O’Rourke.
This vacuous lack of moral and historical meaning may explain the windmill effect of O’Rourke’s arms waving non-stop. Apparently, he believes if he waves at you enough, you won’t notice what he is saying (which is vacuous and without definition in any serious way).
O’Rourke may be the most charismatically empty candidate since Robert Redford played “The Candidate” in the 1972 movie of that name. Like Redford, O’Rourke has lanky good looks, is pleasing to watch for a lot of people, and has a “Kennedy-esque” feel.
In the age of the Kardashians, O’Rourke may be the perfect candidate. He is in because he is in. He should lead because he likes to lead. We should applaud and watch in awe because that is our role.
Somehow, I doubt if this will work.
It is true O’Rourke will raise a lot of money (he apparently beat Sanders’s first-day donations by a small amount). However, as Governors John Connally and Jeb Bush can report: Winning the money sweepstakes and the nomination are two very different challenges.
In a field of nearly 20, arm-waving and immense self-confidence may not be enough.
My hunch is we will look back on the announcement week as the high-water mark of the O’Rourke campaign, and then it will be “bye bye Beto.”
Your Friend, Newt
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) NineYears After Obama Snub, Trump Rolls Out Red Carpet for Netanyahu
By LORI LOWENNTHAL MARCUS
President Donald J. Trump will host Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House next week, displaying a significant shift in policy from President Obama.
Netanyahu will join Trump for a working meeting on March 25 during which they will “discuss their countries’ shared interests and actions in the Middle East,” according to the White House press release Wednesday. The U.S. President will then host Netanyahu at a dinner on March 26. This will be Netanyahu’s third visit to the Trump White House.
What a difference nine years makes.
OBAMA HAD A DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT APPROACH TO ISRAEL AND NETANYAHU
It was on March 23, 2010, that Netanyahu came to the White House. He was met there with a very different reception by then-President Barack Obama.
When Obama came into office his views of the Middle East and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs had been formed by relationships with those who viewed Israel as the primary stumbling block to peace in the region.
Obama famously told a group of prominent American Jews that he intended to insert “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel. The reason given for the intentional distancing was that Obama believed no forward progress had been made during the time when the U.S. and Israel were close allies. Obama decided it was time to wield the stick instead of the carrot. But he would wield the stick only on the Jewish State, not its neighbors.
OBAMA TREATED NETANYAHU LIKE AN ‘UNSAVORY THIRD WORLD DICTATOR’
And so when Netanyahu came to the White House on March 23, 2010, Obama treated him “like an unsavory Third World dictator.”
There was no official press conference, as is de rigueur when world leaders come to the White House. No photographs were permitted of even a handshake between the two leaders.
Upon Netanyahu’s appearance in the White House, Obama handed Netanyahu a list of 13 demands. When little progress was made, Obama abruptly stood up and informed Netanyahu that he was “going to have dinner with Michelle and the girls,” and left the Prime Minister to cool his heels for over an hour.
When Obama finally returned to meet with Netanyahu, relations had not improved. A request was made by Israel for the issuance of a joint statement. The White House refused.
Ed Koch, former Mayor of New York City, was appalled by Obama’s treatment of the Israeli Prime Minister. Koch said at the time that it was “unimaginable that the President would treat any of our NATO allies, large or small, in such a degrading fashion.” Even though there were clearly policy differences between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government, according to Koch, a Democrat, that was “no excuse. Allies often disagree, but remain respectful.”
NETANYAHU VISIT ANNOUNCED WHILE POMPEO IN JERUSALEM
The announcement of Netanyahu’s visit to the Trump White House has come while U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Jerusalem, during a several days-long swing through the Middle East.
Tongues were already wagging when Pompeo’s visit to Israel was announced. Israelis head to the voting booths next month, and some were suggesting Pompeo’s visit would provide an unfair boost to Netanyahu’s standing.
The political party of the Prime Minister, Likud, has once again been climbing in the polls, after several hard blows including indictments threatened against Netanyahu, and the formation of a new purportedly-centrist political party.
Netanyahu’s surprise visit to the White House this close to the election will likely be seen as yet another finger on the scale to assist the Prime Minister. But what a far cry from the relations between the Israeli Prime Minister – and Israel – and the last U.S. administration.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) "...
| Dear Concerned American, Below, I've included a petition to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, your Senators and your Congressman... Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and the Big Labor bosses are going ballistic. You see, the National Right to Work Act (S.525) was just introduced to repeal forever Big Labor's power to force workers to pay union dues just to get or keep a job. So Big Labor lobbyists and their allies on Capitol Hill are going to use every trick in the book to bury the National Right to Work bill. And they want to do it as quietly as possible. The fact is, union kingpins (and their water-carriers in Congress) can't afford the consequences of having their coercive privileges publicly debated and voted on in Congress! They don't want the American people to know: | ||||||||
|
Congressman Garret Graves of Louisiana said at a press conference about the Green New Deal, "I've heard Democrats over and over again accuse Republicans of denying science[.] ... There is another type of science that is being denied here, and that is economic science."
Ideological corruption of economics has a long history. John Maynard Keynes was one of the most influential economists of the early 20th century. He wrote that giving people money to dig holes and fill them would increase employment and be good for the economy. He had a point. As long as the government can print or borrow enough money to pay people to dig holes, they will create jobs; however, those jobs will not produce the food needed to feed the hole-fillers, nor will it build them a home to go to after they finish filling their last holes of the day. Basic economics teaches us that printing or borrowing the money to pay for unproductive work will result in inflation. The result will be that the money of those who do productive work will lose value, so farmers who would normally produce the food that would feed these hole-fillers will find it more and more difficult to pay for the resources they need to do so, including workers whom they will have to lay off.
Left-wing Keynesian thinking (if you can call it that) is not far removed from the Democrats' conception of how they will pay for the Green New Deal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the Green New Deal will create many jobs. Certainly, building energy-efficient high-speed trains and retrofitting buildings to require less energy and building giant solar farms will require a lot of labor. There is no doubt that the Green New Deal would create many jobs in the short term, just as the government paying for people to dig and fill holes would create many jobs in the short term.
Perhaps the major selling point Trump has for re-election is the number of jobs he has created. The Green New Deal gives the Democrats an answer to that. They can claim they will create jobs and save the Earth from climate catastrophe in the process. In fact, the text of the Green New Deal guarantees a job for everyone.
The problem is that the contribution to the economy of the Green New Deal would actually be less than that of digging and filling up holes, since even though it might reduce energy use of buildings and transportation, it would replace cheap energy with expensive energy. Replacing fossil fuels with solar cells and windmills will cause the cost of energy to go up. As the cost of energy goes up, the cost of production of useful goods will go up as well, with the result that Americans will buy cheaper goods from countries that do use fossil fuels. The result will be that fossil fuels will still be burned, the only difference being that they will be burned overseas. Just as with paying people to dig and fill holes, such a policy will result in inflation.
Supporters of the Green New Deal argue that according to science, it must be implemented, or climate disaster will ensue. This argument is based on ideologically corrupted science. In the '70s, alarmists predicted global cooling. When that didn't pan out, they raised the alarm about "global warming." When those predictions didn't pan out, they raised the alarm about "climate change." If changing alarmism didn't make it clear that the science was corrupted, the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit that exposed the corruption of climate alarmists should have made it clear to everyone.
Instead of being embarrassed by the shifting, changed predictions, the Green New Dealers use the predictions as justification for why the multi-trillion-dollar Green New Deal is necessary. It doesn't occur to them that instead of preventing an apocalypse, the cost of the deal could bring about an economic apocalypse. Ocasio-Cortez said the Green New Deal could be partly funded by cuts in military spending. This after Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will deploy hypersonic nuclear missiles, which the United States has no defense against. Where is the concern about the effects on global warming when one of those goes off?
Ironically, it is unlikely that reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by the United States would significantly affect the climate. In 2014, the Cato Institute published an article with an estimate of how much a 30% drop in U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide would reduce global temperature by the year 2100. The estimate was 0.018 degrees centigrade. The only change in climate will be in the homes of people who can't afford to pay their soaring heating bills. Soaring energy prices due to efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions have led to the highest winter death rate in Britain in 42 years. In 2018, 48,000 Britons essentially froze to death.
The absurdity of the Green New Deal becomes even more apparent when one considers the evidence reported by NASA that the Earth is heading for a period of global cooling.
Might Americans be so foolish as to elect politicians who would enact such a disastrous deal? Don't be too confident they would not. Ocasio-Cortez, although wrong about almost everything, is right when she says the Green New Deal "is a winning issue." She pointed out that "about 67% of Iowa voters in the caucus support" it. Dr. Rael Jean Isaac showed in her book, Roosters of the Apocalypse, that masses of people have endorsed self-destructive policies multiple times in the past with disastrous consequences.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment