Let's talk about expected economic numbers....

My response to Beau.

There is no evidence that the low interest rates actually helped the economy. Indeed, from the point of view of savers and stock holders, they hurt. Higher interest rates historically require that higher dividends by paid. The increases under discussion just take us to normal historical levels. Anything beyond them would be excessive. Thee has been too much "everyone knows" economics of late, as well as both-siderism among people who feel they must take a bipartisan position. 

The reality is that higher taxes and more spending are good for the economy. While lower capital gains and high income tax rates give CEOs an incentive to cut labor costs, at this point we are well below rates where that would matter. We are not even at the Laffer Curve optimum (which is about 40%). That is the point where taxes raise the most revenue. The Laffer Maximum is even better. It is the rate at which wage theft by CEOs stops. About 67% That would be may target.

Liz Cheney makes grim prediction on a third Trump presidential bid

Chris Cillizza has a point. Here is my counterpoint.

For whatever reason, the January 6th Committee has not made referrals to the Ethics Committees regarding the events of that day. It may be a busy December if Insurrectionists are re-elected and the 14th Amendment comes up as an issue prior to swearing in the next Congress.

Whether there are enough moderate Republicans out there to take over the GOP or start a new party depends on how many people still call themselves Republican. Republicans turned out in 2020 and enough voted against Trump or did not cast a vote for President for Trump to lose while the House Republicans made gains. This was before the Insurrection.

On November 9th, we will see what the Republican Party looks like. If anti-Insurrection Republicans show up and vote for the other side, which is more likely than not, the question will be whether the GOP will be taken over by moderates or simply left to die.

And that is the real point.

Here's how Maggie Haberman expects Trump to handle Jan. 6 investigation

also

Comments in response to various statements in both pieces.

When you sell books, you give editors what they want to hear.

Trump will snipe at the Committee. His chief worry is EDNY/SDNY Ukraine investigation and whether Rudy will beat him to courthouse door. Trump needs a good shrink, not a good lawyer.

His company is dead if he is in a mental ward and his kids are in jail.

He was offered a chance to speak as a courtesy, although draft report should have come out first. His Congressional toadies will get their say at Ethics Committee. Get real.

It is up to media to debunk the notion that presidency is a get out of jail free card. If you had done this earlier, Jan 6 would not have happened.

In what universe will GOP take House with heavy early voting going on? It is irresponsible to play into both-siderism to please CNN editors.

Trump's future is court ordered mental healthcare. It is disingenuous to keep alive the story that the presidency shields him and he can run for office in spite of this. The 14th Amendment prevents him from serving. Again, get real.

Melania picked Pence because he would not invoke 25th. This means she knew that  the need to do so was real.

Tapper: What Trump said to make Woodward 'break glass in case of emergency'

With Bob Woodward.

Reality is that 25th Amendment makes another term impossible. He will be in a mental ward as part of a conviction or to hold it off. If GOP voters don't get the tapes and believe Trump, they are snowflakes or as crazy as Trump.

What if Trump never lied and says exactly what he believes? What if he is always joking? Perhaps he is both stupid and crazy.

Why did Trump do Insurrection and keep docs? To cover up $ trail from Moscow. Read Parnas and Fruman original complaints and note their current status as cooperators. Do your research!

I don't blame Trump for pandemic because CDC got it wrong. There is no rebound COVID. It is always a 2 stage disease, even after vax. It always starts with cold or allergies or sore throat that goes away and comes back hard.

Types of Atheists | Psychology of Atheism Part 1

From Useful Charts.

Daniel Dennett also talks about people without faith but do believe in the belief in God. 

Also, religion and faith seem like different things, with the prior being tribal. Atheists can also be tribal.

One can be a humanist as a theist or an atheism.

Many atheists are so because of their view of the church as a corrupt institution.

Michael Levin: The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life | TED

The electric processes are essentially a materialistic soul. It starts at gastrulation and ends at death and the onset of entropy. Energy is what keeps entropy away. Cut the power, entropy wins.

Pope Francis calls gender ideology a form of “ ideological colonization”

from Roman Reports

Comment

Sadly, without a knowledge of gender theory, he is incapable if understanding asexuality in himself or his priests. This is the kind of difference he needs to understand to speak with any authority in sexuality or to get behind the tragedy of sexual abuse by priests.

To be asexual is rare, but it is not disordered unless it is unacknowledged by the individual - as is the case with many priests. The belief that Sacred Continence is essential to the Sacrament of the Eucharist is to place priestly asexuality on a prideful pedestal similar to the belief by Lucifer that his song alone was necessary for universal salvation, thus denying the Christ.

Marriages are made by the individuals before God, who does not need a priest to make them true. Again, clericalist pride is tragic for the Church. Indeed, the demand for marriage comes from the uncharitable denial of the spousal role of those whose mate was hospitalized, denying its dignity in preference to a separated family of origin for the prideful purpose of obtaining a death bed conversion from what is not at all sinful.

This is the tragedy of the modern  (as well as the ancient) church. It echoes the sin of Satan. 

Let's talk about Social Security shenanigans....

By Beau of the Fifth Column.

Comments:

Both Scott and Johnson are in the not likely to hold their seat club. This problem may take care of itself. It is more and more unlikely that the public will vote out insurrectionist members (if the Dems do the right ads), so there will be no fiscal cliff this year. The GOP is trying to leverage extension of the Trump-Ryan tax cuts. 

While I would be pleased with comprehensive negotiations on tax policy and funding Social Security (with the employer contribution replaced with a VAT that is equally credited rather than tied to income), I am not holding out hope.

I wrote a book in 2019 about who owns and owes the National Debt. The wealthy owe it and own much of it - but not any of the part that funds Social Security. Curious.  Here is a link to the book: 

Settling (and Squaring) Accounts: Who Really Owns the National Debt? Who Owes It?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0833MWRD1 

Critical Replacement Theory and Zion

I am an ethnic (rather than a religious) Jew. This means my father was ethnically Jewish and Catholic and  my mother was not Jewish.  I was vexed when Unite the Right got their torches out and yelled "The Jews will not replace us!" My original thought was that I had no interest in dating your cousin (sister?). She's all yours.

I have since found out that these marchers believed that there is a Jewish led organized breeding program which has non-Whites come to America and go to public school so that they may date White kids (particularly White girls) and create mixed race children so that the White race ceases to exist. At the same time, to be a Jew, your mom must be Jew - so my ethnicity shrinks even faster than White Gentiles (although the children of non-White gentile fathers married to Jewish mothers would still be Jewish).

Does this sound crazy enough yet? It certainly does not reflect the realities of Jewish politics.

The main issue in the consciously Jewish community is Israel, especially among conservatives. Some conservative White Goyim believe in Zion so that Jews would be Christianized and bring about the end of time (just to ramp up the crazy). Luther was the first to try this in modern times (although some Apostles had a go as well, for the same reason), which is why my father's side is Catholic. We would be Lutheran but for the Treaty of Augsburg. Interestingly, my Father was Zionist. He was part of the Greatest Generation who remember the camps but did not suffer and die there (although I have relatives who did).

I am not a Zionist, but I am a Liberal Democrat (my father was GOP, as are my western Iowa cousins, some of whom do not acknowledge or accept the ethnic tag of the name Bindner - its that second N. As Catholics, they are agnostic about the Rapture, so have no desire to convert Israeli Jews. Interestingly enough, up until the last generation, they married other German Catholics (not knowing that many of them had the same ethnic background as Catholic Jews). My Mom was English-German-Norwegian - decidedly not Jewish.

As a Jew who has dated religious Jews, I have some visibility into their politics. Many are both liberal and Zionist. They don't believe in being converted to bring about the Rapture. They are mostly fine with immigration - but not to replace White male seed. Many have married non-Jews and are essentially secular. They do believe in unionization and the end of right to work laws and government benefits to both minorities and poor Whites.

Then there are the Republican Jews, both Zionist and non. Those that are Zionist have Israel as their primary issue - think Sheldon Adelson. They are likely good bosses, but their politics are agnostic on the issue of workers rights in general. They do not believe in Critical Replacement Theory, but do want politicians (and other Republican voters) to support Israel, funding AIPAC. As Republicans, they look the other way on Immigration politics.

What does this mean for CRT? Rich Jews active in politics (as well as the converted) do not believe in CRT. The Republicans are fine with Capitalist exploitation of working class White people. The Democrats believe or don't believe in Zion but do believe in making life better for Working Class Whites and Immigrants.

So, who should WCWs vote with. Let me give you a hint - if you vote Republican it is for racial identity, but it is very much not in your economic interest to do so. Jews don't care who you sleep with or marry. In both parties, Zionists care about voting for Israel, but for some, this is not an issue - especially those of us who are mixed or younger.

We would rather you not practice Critical Replacement Theory, since it sometimes leads to violence against those of us who go to Synagogue rather than Mass. If you made it this far, or you are Rich and Jewish and support Republicans, please be careful where your money goes. I am talking to you Sheldon - those Republicans who vote with you on Israel don't like you and don't vote for their rational economic interests. Please be careful where your money goes.

The Trump Response and his guilty conscience

After reading Trump's two page letter and twelve pages of attached material, I have a few points.

First, Trump's complaints about the Russia and Ukraine investigations are a form of misdirection. He is inoculating his supporters against believing anything that will be said in coming months about his problematic relationship with Vladimir Putin, including the financial benefits he garnered from this relationship extending from Miss Universe to money laundering through Deutsche Bank to contributions to his political action committee through Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.

He blames the media for keeping attention on these issues. The reality is that they have largely ignored these lingering cases - although the entire motivation for the Insurrection was to retain office to bury all of what is essentially espionage by a sitting president. Election fraud was a cover story, with the majority running with the cover because no one in Washington wishes to make foreign policy a matter of criminal law, even when we have a criminal president.

That Trump keeps mentioning this topic bespeaks a guilty conscience.

Second, Trump's election fraud claims do not alter the final electoral vote count. If the results of the states he contests are thrown out and their votes rejected, President Biden still got more electoral votes that Citizen Trump. John Eastman made a grave error in his calculations. The 12th Amendment is very clear that the winner is the candidate who has a majority of the votes rightfully cast, not a majority of the possible votes. There is no reality in which Trump wins on January 6th.

The fake electors were presented in the wrong way. No replacement electors could ever have been accepted. If the duly nominated Republican electors from the states Trump contested had put forth their own challenge, submitting their votes as protests and echoing Trump's claims, the claims may have been heard. Pretending that the votes of non-official nominees were the actual votes was both sloppy and stupid. Once the original nominees demurred from Trump's scheme, no replacement was possible. Those potential electors who rejected the Trump conspiracy each deserve the Medal of Freedom for supporting truth over partisanship.

Finally, if the Oath Keepers had staged a bloody spectacle on the House and Senate floors, it would have been rejected by the armed services, the Congress, the judiciary (especially the Chief Justice) and the permanent government, aka, the Deep State. There was never any danger to the rule of law on January 6th. The tragedy of the Trump presidency is that he had no concept of what the rule of law means, nor do his authoritarian thugs - most especially Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. 

There were never any magic words that would have made Trump president, nor will there be any that will keep him from being held accountable for his problematic relationship with the Russian tyrant he loves so much. Once it is made clear that to support Trump is to be SOFT ON PUTIN, the MAGA movement will collapse.

Federal Abortion BAN is coming…

By Momma Doctor Jones.

I totally agree that fetal doom must result in end of pregnancy. Incest too, especially when combined with rape. How a child of small size can ever be thought as capable of having a child is beyond me. The medical risk is too great.

Question: At what stage in gestation is a fetus large enough to even be born? When is it physically possible?

People don't like the idea of slice and dice abortion. Even potassium chloride to stop the heart before delivery seems sketchy. Fetal Hospice after 14 weeks, with no right to not be born, seems the best middle. 

States are not competent to grant rights if citizenship, so they cannot regulate abortion before Congress acts to extend it before the ability to be born. Putting it in those terms takes all authority from states to ban abortion, but doing so moves the issue from women's rights to state government power over individuals. A huge difference, given the precidents of the Civil War and Jim Crow.

A $1000 per month child tax credit and wage paid for education after age 16 (with free childcare) will stop vast majority of abortions not medically required.

Down's patients need lifetime SSI at SSDI rates. Also respite care for parents.

Jamie Raskin DESTROYS The Electoral College In 3 Minutes

Jamie is both my lawyer and my congressman. Here are my comments:

If we had 7 regions of equal electoral vote strength, with 3 votes per region (the regional VP, regional house, regional senate) then we could elect the POTUS every 2 years indirectly with no chance of a Donald Trump ever serving, which is the kind of thing the EC was trying to manage.

Short of that, have a 50 state compact using the Nebraska/Maine system and having the additional 2 EVs per state go to popular vote winner. Of course, that would still leave most seats "safe" and further narrow the field, which is the problem with a 50-50 electorate.

What we need most is a new consensus that appeals to our better angels and is a bit more economically radical. Until we kick the neo-liberals to the curb, we will have what is a neo-liberal/social democratic consensus in both parties with the balance between social reaction v. identity politics. We cannot sustain this.