Econ 101

I’m convinced that one of the things that virtually every Progressive has in common is their complete and utter lack of the understanding of Economics.  I have never had a discussion with one or read the viewpoint of one who understood the discipline.  If a person understood economics, that person was not a Progressive.  It has become theorem to me. 

I just found an article by Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning Progressive economist.  He is the go-to guy for all Progressives when we question their fantasy land attempts at the topic.  One year ago.  Trump was just elected.  Krugman was commenting to the world in a New York Times opinion piece about what is to come:  “It really does look now like it is President Donald J Trump, and markets are plunging.  When might we expect them to recover?  Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty.  The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.  Still I guess people want an answer.  If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.” 

Krugman was apparently looking at the Dow at that point and saw a big sell-off.  What he didn’t realize is that investors were simply adjusting.  The savvy thing to do was to sell the stock of companies that profit from big government contracts and to buy the stock of companies that would do better in a pro-business environment.  Not rocket science.  Simple economics.  A few days after his big prognostication of doom and gloom, the market took off and has been rising for a year now.  

Royalty gives its gold to a commoner.

I love it when opposite sides of a culture not only come together, but they find love for each other.  I know that God always loves that.  It is a recurring theme in the bible.  Jew and gentile, man and woman, freeman and slave, royalty and common man. 

I have been very interested in a rare thing that happened this year.  In October the Nobel Prize Committee announced their decisions for 2016.  For literature they selected Bob Dylan.  On December 10 they awarded the prizes.  As was expected, Dylan did not attend.  It wasn’t because he was snubbing the NPC, he just doesn’t do events like this.  If you pay attention to his music, you know.  He points out irony, injustice, and pain. He lifts the curtain on the reality of life of struggling people.  He doesn’t try to make it beautiful with beautiful music.  His music has never been described as beautiful.  It is as rugged as those about whom he sings.  

And that is what made this choice so controversial.  Certainly his music, his voice, his performance acumen were not up to Nobel Prize standards.  But his prize was for his “poetry”.  Is that what it is?  Much criticism ensued about that, too.  Even poetry has rules and he obviously knows none of them. So over the past 2 months as the controversy swirled, people of dignity actually introduced themselves to Bob Dylan’s poetry.  By the time the awards event happened, more knew it was a long overdue choice. 

Dylan had folk singer Patti Smith accept the award for him.  The following video is absolutely amazing.   Nobel Prize award ceremonies are not like our Hollywood award ceremonies.  It is ROYALTY.  The diamonds are real.  It is European upper-crust, which means it is western civilization upper-crust.   In a very humble performance, Patti Smith sang Dylan’s ballad “Hard Rain”.  I was mesmerized by the video.  You have to understand, “Hard Rain” unveils humanity at a raw level.  That is something many of these people have never encountered.  What happened?  They were mesmerized.  Some openly wept.  They all got to view humanity from the opposite side.  It is worth watching the whole video.   

Finally

We just passed through a portal.  Things are different now.  It is hard to explain, but we are finishing up an epoch in our existence.  The dam has broken.  Here is what I am talking about.

For the past 5 years I have maintained that we don't really have a problem in government and its leaders, we have a problem with the press or media.  Government self corrects if the media operates in truth and reality.  When the media uses its resources to steer our beliefs in spite of the truth, we get a government that plays to that defect.  If the media has no political leaning and only shares unvarnished truth then an equilibrium occurs and a balance happens in our country.

The media is in the process of waking up.  It has a new standard.  What is truth?  President Obama, who is used to defining truth for us, is slowly waking up to the reality that his press corp does not believe every word he speaks anymore.

Reasons I believe it is turning.  Today I saw

1. AMC played the Woodward and Bernstein movie.  Only a few weeks ago, they were playing Run Away Jury (about banning assault weapons).  There were some really good lines in the W&B movie about the President's abuse of power and the hushed silence when they finally had proof that "they all are invovled."  That coincides with the next one.
2. The headlines in the Boston Herald read "OBAMAGATE".  The lead story was about how Dems are angry about the IRS abuse of power.  Pretty soon they will be asking Obama "What didn't you know and when didn't you know it?'
3. Jay Carney is being compared to Ron Zeigler, Nixon's Press Secretary.  Carney's last presser had a completely different atmosphere as the Press Corp finally found its independent voice.  This is a huge turn and cannot be underestimated.  The focal point of Obama's phenomenal success has been the lock-step of the Press Corp.  They dictated truth from Carney's podium and especially from Obama's teleprompter.  If that audience disbelieves them, then the magic is gone. 
4. And this just in from the AP. Gov't obtains wide AP phone records in probe.  Uh-oh!  The AP has learned just how intrusive and arrogant our government can be.  I mean, who knew?  That's a shocker!  But wait a minute.  This might mean that the AP will figure it is no longer BFF with BHO. 

President Obama is fighting on two fronts, Benghazi and the IRS.  About to break is Pigford.  Pile on the increasing unpopularity of Obamacare, his losing position on gun control, the conviction of the abortion doctor in Philadelphia, his no-win no position on Syria and you have a recipe for a miserable 2nd term.   

Triangulating

I have been aware lately about a way of communicating and operating that is now coming to an end.  To this point it was successful.  It was effective; so effective that it has proven to be the preferred way of communicating and operating for the top leadership in our country.  There are other terms for it, but I am going to call it “triangulating.” 

Communicating and operating by triangulating is the art of talking politics.  Veteran politicians can enter a room, sense its atmosphere and talk successfully about a myriad of topics in a way that pleases a crowd.  They then can enter another room and talk about those topics to a different crowd with different views, pleasing them as well.  How does he do it?  Triangulation.  Many topics are so complex that they are made up of several subtopics.  Where supporters of gun control might have vastly different view than 2^nd Amendment Rights advocates, a skilled triangulator can easily know to talk about the sub-parts of those issues that both agree on.  Both sides are against crime.  Both sides want their family members safe.  So the skilled politician learns to speak around a topic, only talking about the areas of agreement.  He triangulates the issue. 

I believe that people are now exhausted from the triangulation of politicians.  Take a look at what is happening at this moment.  There is a divide between politicians and voters and I think it is because of this exhaustion that voters feel.  When you identify the politicians’ and the pundits’ top choices for leading challengers for the Presidency, you come up with Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, maybe Mike Huckabee. .  When you look at the people’s choices you get Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, and now Herman Cain.  What is the difference?  The first group triangulates.  The second group speaks boldly and shoots straight to the issues.  The first group attempts strategies to find positions that claims the least negatives.  The second group tells you what they think and then invites you to like it or not. 

Right now I think this phenomenon is not limited to politics.  I can sense that people are generally tired of the triangulation approach to all of life.  There is a new openness for truth about God and truth about life’s issues.  Triangulation is really the avoidance of the main issues.  Society is tired of avoiding them.  In our personal lives and in our culture, I believe we know that we cannot avoid the central issues anymore.  The truth is not complicated.  It doesn’t take triangulation for us to understand it.

Speaking Truth to Power

Truth Seeker combs the airwaves and blogasphere for you.  Lauri B Regan has nailed the truth in a way that resonates with me.  Her article is a must read.  The phenomenon of this administration is not Obama as much as it is the tidal wave of support that he rode to the Presidency.  Who are the people who got us here?  Regan discusses who they were in 2008.  More importantly she discusses how they could surface again in sufficient numbers to re elect Obama.
I wish I had discovered her before.  She expresses the truth.

Read her article here:  

For an added bonus click on her comments and find the one by Jonathan Cohen. Iron sharpens iron. 

Thinking Out Loud

Thank goodness you don’t hear it as much as you used to.  You heard it virtually every day during the election process.  And you mostly heard it from the Democrats as they pursued a blitzkrieg of shrieking at the Republican candidates and anyone who supported them.  “Nazis!!  Fascists!!”  You would hear it.  You would see their signs (nice, neat union made signs).  “Fascists!!  Nazis!!” 

Actually, when you are all steamed up and angry they are fun words to say.  You can yell the words out easily with a lot of volume.  The problem that I had with the constant barrage from the Democrats was that it was evident that they did not have the slightest clue about what constitutes fascist beliefs.  They just knew that it sounded bad.  And they knew that if they could brand their enemies (fellow Americans) with it with enough regularity, that it would somehow stick.  The fact that the media would report it as if the label had merit in describing the conservative movement is the biggest crime.  No one in the media would ask those throwing out the words to clarify themselves.  No one would challenge them.  After all they were all on the same side. 

With the end of the first quarter coming, corporations are now reporting their end of year income.  They are also reporting how much income tax they will have to pay this year.  General Electric, with income coming in multiple billions is paying nothing.  Nada,  Zilch.  Zero.  Would you like to guess about General Motors?  Chrysler? 

Here is a new term to learn.  It has been used in Washington for years.  Now we as the citizens of this country need to know what it means.  It sounds good.  It sounds so  . . . well, so fair, so collaborative, so let’s work together.  Public – Private Partnership.  What is it?  It is a connection between the government and a corporation that benefits both.  What benefit can a corporation give a government?   Immense benefits.  More than that, it can give immense support to government’s elected officials.  And what benefits can the government give corporations?  Tax benefits, of course.  In the one country on the planet where corporations are taxed at a higher rate than any corporation in any other country, General Electric paid no taxes this year.  Public – Private Partnership is exactly what National Socialism is.  Public – Private Partnership is the very definition of Fascism.  The cozy and strong relationship between a country and a corporation like GE is exactly what national socialism is.  If a corporation and its employees supports the government then good things happen.  If it doesn’t  . . .  well, the tax man, the regulator, the czar of your industry, the EPA, they all cometh.   

How can General Electric’s competitors compete with GE when they are taxed at 25% and GE is not.  Which corporations will survive in this environment?  The corporation that pays taxes at the highest rate on the planet or the corporation that supports PACS that donate over $6 million to elected officials and gets no tax bill even though it got huge government contracts and over $5 billion in profit? 

You see, the people who do the voting in this country have a tremendous responsibility to fight through the slogans and sound bites.  Those who were pointing their fingers and shouting “Nazis!! Fascists!!”  are indeed the ones who are supporting just that.  It’s a tough assignment to educate the public.  How do you shout “Public-Private Partnership!!”  in a way that makes people recoil in disgust? 

The dream of capitalism is the dream of a level playing field.  It is the dream of equality.  It is the dream of being given an equal chance to be successful whether you are a 3 man company or you are General Electric.    

Movies and the Present Times

There is movie called Runaway Jury.  It is about how 2 young people foil the attempts of an unscrupulous law firm to steal a jury for its client.  The young couple played by John Cusack and Rachel Weisz show they were prepared for all the dirty tricks thrown at them.  After all, they had carefully studied and prepared for the subversive tactics of the attorney in previous trials.  They successfully countered his every diabolical move.  In the end, they prevented the jury from being stolen and allowed them to vote their consciences. 

Is that fiction?  Do people really steal juries?  I don’t know, but there is a new movie coming out about a similar topic.  It is about a runaway election.  The movie is actually a documentary.  It uncovers a systematic scheme by one candidate’s team to thwart the efforts and turn the caucuses and primary elections from one particular candidate to theirs. Oh I know, the easy thing to say is that in the world of rough and tumble politics there will always be these charges.  Sore losers point to nefarious schemes of the winner instead of their own inadequacies.  That is probably true, but we need to at least see what the people in the documentary are saying.  After all, the path to a free and fair election is knowing all the tactics politicians have used to throw an election and to confront them and thwart their efforts in the next ones.  

The documentary is named We Will Not Be Silenced.  It will soon be released and it will be interesting if the media talks about it or if they put it under their cloak of darkness.  It will be hard to hide this one.  After all, it is written by the Clinton people about the Obama people.  They tell some amazing tales about how among other things, neighborhood caucuses were literally stolen by aggressive Obama supporters who steered or scared away Clinton supporters in location after location.  This is coupled with the now well-documented stories of wholesale voter registration charges.  The film has the potential of breaking open some deep fissures in the Democratic Party.   

There is another movie that comes to mind here.  It starred Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson and was called Next of Kin.  It was about a situation where the Chicago mob killed a young man only to find that their victim was related to a tight knit and vindictive clan from the back woods.  Something to think about?

Even though the documentary is obviously not sponsored by Hillary or Bill Clinton, I am very sure they are aware of it and would not allow it to be released if it did not contain anything but pristine truth.  Turning the film loose is literally lighting a fuse that no one using civilized means will be able to blow out.  I have stated several times that Hillary Clinton will resign as Secretary of State by early next year.  This film supports that theory. 

Someone once wrote that President Obama should be enjoying these first two years in office.  He should do exactly what he is doing.  He should invite more rock stars to the White House, take more elaborate vacations, and play as much golf as possible.  For his administration, these will be known as the good old days.

In previous decades an average citizen could enjoy life without needing to identify with a particular political party or movement.  What will happen in the next few years will be polarizing to all of us.  It will matter.  The most powerful ability of each political movement seems to be its ease in casting dispersions on the others.  Christians need to be above this fray, but we are not called to be neutral.  We will be called to take a stand.  We will be called to discern truth from lies.  It will be our time to declare God’s righteousness.  It will not matter what government we voted for or supported before.  It will only matter Who we support now. 

Have you read the wonderful prophesies in Isaiah 60 and Isaiah 61?  You know Isaiah 60.  It starts out with those beautiful words,  “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.”  The words of Isaiah 61 are what Jesus used to announce to the world His presence.  “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

Now read Isaiah 59.  It is why the good news of Isaiah 60 and 61 needed to come.  They need to come in us now, because we are living in Isaiah 59.  Verse 8 is about this nation: “The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.”  

It is time for the Christian light to become real.  We cannot avoid the conflict.  We need to be the ones who lead our country through it. It is our time