George Rebane
Keep hearing about CBO’s assessment of the Trump budget and healthcare reform among other things. The lamestream is reporting the office’s assessments as coming down from the mountain on stone tablets. No one seems to remember that the CBO has an abysmal record in forecasting anything, especially if it has to do with the future. They always underestimate the cost of liberals’ spending programs and overestimate the cost of conservative attempts to scale back government. But such reporting works for the Democrats since the recent generations, especially the millennials, are innocent of any such knowledge – their unionized public schools somehow forgot to teach them about such realities of the Deep State.
Another lamestream hysteria du jour is the whole affair headlined as ‘Kushner’s attempt to set up back door communications with the Russians’, as if that was some kind of high crime or misdemeanor. Again, the average voter has no idea that historically such confidential and clandestine communication channels with foreign governments – especially our potential enemies and close allies – have always been the norm since George Washington was president. It is through such back channels that the real terms of any publicly announced agreements are worked out which never see the light of day until the meetings of the higher ups are announced to publicly seal the deal. If Team Trump did not promote such initiatives to establish contacts, they would have been remiss. And we don’t have to circle that ‘Russia sought to influence America’s election barn’ again. Of course they did, so do we every chance we get to serve our national interests in other countries. The only thing that keeps the current lamestream generated hysteria going is our deep and abiding national dumbth.
Trumponomics will succeed only if the nation regains its ability to once more grow its economy at a 3% or higher rate. The economic poohbahs in their wisdom have pronounced such a reprise totally unfeasible. In their criticisms they seem to forget that tax reform, rolling back regulations, cutting government spending, and sunsetting stifling laws/regs do have a stimulating effect on new investment and productivity. However, those factors have never been taken seriously, let alone implemented, by socialists. Such measures are literally outside the ken of the Left, and their mention instantly evokes cries of ‘catering to the rich’, ‘increasing income inequality’, and again ‘putting it on the backs of the poor’. The only thing that has been a bit disappointing about President Trump’s fiscal and budgetary initiatives is that they ignore the requirement to address the two budget-busting gorillas in the room – SS and Medicare.
[29may17 update] The nefarious Deep State; still don’t believe we are ruled by it? I give you Dr Francesca Grifo, EPA’s Science Integrity Officer. From the record of her efforts and activities, this woman’s sole purpose appears to be the elimination of science and scientific inquiry as the basis for EPA’s policies and regulations. She is the equivalent of the Soviet political commissars who were appointed to shadow every civil office and military command from the days of Stalin to Brezhnev to make sure that all policies and actions were ideologically correct. Our federal government’s bureaucracies are riddled with thousands of Grifos who were installed by hard left elected officials and bureaucrats, and are now indelibly embedded in the bowels of government where the real work of socialist planning, command, and control takes place. These people march to drums foreign to America’s best interests. (more here)
In today’s Union we have two gentlemen of the Left lecturing us on the realities of single-payer healthcare and the generation and consumption of fake news. Mr Robin Wallace, a true believer in the success of Obamacare, cheerleads us to embrace SB562 (‘Californians for a Healthy California) now wending its way through Sacramento (here). He cites the CBO, aka The Gang that Can’t Shoot Straight, as having blessed the travesty that has been visited on our healthcare industry. And he demonstrates his ignorance of Canada’s single-payer system as the paragon we should follow (more here). He also seems to be deficient in the adequacy of Medicare which he claims is a working “single payer health insurance program for those over 65” – wow! Columnist George Boardman likens the Right’s ascription of fake news to pornography – “they know it when they see it” – which is not true (here). Fake news makes itself known only after being consumed, not at the time of its release. But more remarkable is Mr Boardman’s rejection of media bias, countering the recent Harvard study that found overwhelming evidence for it. He bases that on his belief that a news report’s “tone isn’t bias”. Which is somewhat astounding because given two reports that both accurately cite the same facts, their ‘tone’ is the prime, if not only, means of showing their individual bias. Obvious examples abound, and I’d be happy to supply a few for those still tone deaf.
[more update] Everyone is properly worried about the North Korean fat kid going ballistic and exploding an EMP nuclear warhead over the western US. And the sumbich may actually do that. Now that we have a real president and SecDef, it’s time to reveal to them a tenet of Rebane Doctrine that we should immediately put into effect to enforce UN sanctions, resolutions, and provide for our own national security. After we do the little planned exercise of shooting down (presumably with a THAAD) one of our own ballistic missiles as a test, we should announce that thereafter we will be parked in the East China Sea with our THAAD destroyers to shoot down every NK test missile of opportunity that exits their air space. There is no better way to achieve the threefer of demonstrating our commitment to defend ourselves and our allies, enforce the will of the international community, and confirm our ability to do so using their threatening test missiles as targets.
Another measure of Trump’s recent overseas success is that the EU finally got the message about spending enough to defend themselves instead of continuing the 70+ year practice of letting it all fall on the shoulders of the American military. Angela Merkel made a speech in which she described her epiphany –
“I have experienced this in the last few days, and that is why I can only say that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands – of course in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbors wherever that is possible also with other countries, even with Russia. But we have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans."
Thank you Mr President.
[31may17 update] ‘My Coming Out Story’ is another throbbing and sensitive piece in the 29may17 Union by columnist Hilary Hodge. This lady enjoys a prominent weekly sojourn in the newspaper’s op-ed section wherein over the last year she has spent an inordinate amount of space recounting her personal joys, trials, and tribulations of lesbianism. These heartfelt offerings, methinks, need to be ensconced in the paper’s self-help or modern psychology sections. In any case, it’s often hard to tell whether such columns are laments or celebrations of her sexuality, or simply lamentable celebrations. She is a good woman and no doubt deserves her audience, but need they congregate on the op-ed page where one expects to find discussed the more mundane issues of politics and policy?
