George Rebane

DOGE is the new leftwing hysteria du jour.  It has displaced climate change as the issue that gets most folks’ undies in a bundle.  The whole ‘Resist!’ movement of the Left is based on Democrat politicians’ lies and gratuitous fake news reports by the lamestream media.  DOGE is a new government agency charged with discovering fraud, waste, and abuse in the vast federal government bureaucracy.  Such abundant discoveries are documented, archived, and reported online (here) and to executive branch agents, from the president on down, who are lawfully empowered to take actions they deem appropriate – DOGE has no power to implement its recommendations.  But that is not what EVERY Democrat scumbag and their media minions tell the American people – and the lightly-read swallow the whole pack of lies hook, line, and sinker.

Idiots on Parade.  Today many of the above gently described ‘lightly-read’ are taking to the streets and concentrating on Elon Musk’s Tesla EV enterprises.  These are targets the rock apes have recently fire bombed, shot up, and vandalized, and by their silence condoned by the Democrat leadership.  These people are ALL abysmally ignorant and have no cognitive skills for critical thinking.  Unfortunately, they comprise about half of our citizens and at this stage are completely uneducable – hence why Rebane Doctrine has held that we are two divided countries within a single border.  (A wag from the past has more generously concluded that leftwingers are not necessarily ignorant, only that when they try to think they just have bad luck.)

Fox News and its conservative media cohorts (e.g. NewsMax) continue to be fearful mealy-mouthed journalists.  In their attempt to be ‘fair, balanced, and unafraid’ they are a fearful lot.  Examples of such reportage abound by the hour.  When they report on an issue, say, DOGE activities, they properly also broadcast some Democrat lying his ass off on camera, for example about DOGE gratuitously firing thousands of federal workers who have provided critical services to the public (without ever citing a single such readily available action).  Then for their fearless balance Bret Baier et al go on to state that “Elon Musk CLAIMS” that no such firings have occurred.  The properly balanced response would be to report that DOGE cannot fire anybody, and that no such firings have occurred – that is not a politically biased statement, just a readily verifiable fact that is necessary to accurately complete the news item.  And when they report on the socialists’ ongoing lie that DOGE is cutting Social Security and Medicare, they never balance that with the correction that no such cuts have occurred nor are they planned by the Trump administration.  And the double dummies just lap it up.

[30mar25 update] The New York Times has long been the nation’s leftwing canon.  It is then noteworthy that it has finally taken the Democrats and their message to account.  The newspaper’s criticism is what conservatives have been saying for years about how Democrats portray themselves and their political opponents.  Now it has become so bad that their beloved scripture has started admonishing their sins.  (more here)

[4apr25 update] Milton Friedman on tariffs from a 27apr78 speech at Kansas State University (here)

“We call a tariff a protective measure. It does protect; it protects the consumer very well against one thing. It protects the consumer against low prices. . . . 

[W]hen people talk about a favorable balance of trade, what is that term taken to mean? It’s taken to mean that we export more than we import. But from the point of view of our well-being that’s an unfavorable balance. That means we are sending out more goods and getting fewer in. Each of you in your private household would know better than that. You don’t regard it as a favorable balance when you have to send out more goods to get less coming in. . . .

[I]f you eliminate government from these matters you enable individuals to deal with one another. If you introduce protection, tariffs, restrictions on trade, they become matters for government-to-government wrangling and they are an enormous source of division. So in the name of both prosperity and world peace there are few steps that we could take which would contribute more than a complete move toward free trade.”