Political Purge

"So, here's to the men who did what was considered WRONG, in order to do what they knew was right...what they KNEW was right."
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

After Donald Trump and his close circle were hit by DOJ search teams, it appears that this administration is widening its nets. Tucker Carlson reports that subpoenas are in the process of being issued on dozens of Trump allies.

This is what a political purge looks like.

Obviously, this is meant to send a message ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, and to those who are considering involvement in the presidential election two years off.

Climate Gravy Train

Strange voices are saying

What did they say?

Things I can't understand

It's too close for comfort

This heat has got right out of hand
--Bananarama

On the back of yesterday's post, another credentialed 'expert' fades the party line on climate change. He argues that any relationship between man and climate change is a spurious one. It is more likely, he suggests, that cyclical activity on the sun's surface is influencing weather patterns on earth.

Meanwhile, climate alarmists seek to ride a 'gravy train' to make money.

Sanctions Fever

Life goin' nowhere
Somebody help me
Somebody help me, yeah
--Bee Gees

Vladimir Putin attributes Europe's energy crisis and related probs to 'sanctions fever.' It is hard to disagree.

Watching a related special last nite on CNBC and host Brian Sullivan asked a guess whether he thought the West's sanctions on Russia were 'working.'

Perhaps he should have asked the millions around the world who face starvation and hypothermia due to these sanctions.

Sadly, this was predictable from the get go...

Extremism and Liberty

"Tonight, our country, that which we stand for and all we hold dear, faces a grave and terrible threat. This violent and unparalleled assault on our security will not go undefended...or unpunished. Our enemy is an insidious one, seeking to divide us and destroy the very foundation of our great nation. Tonight, we must remain steadfast. We must remain determined. But most of all, we must remain united."
--Adam Sutler (V for Vendetta)

It's difficult to imagine that this administration doesn't lose more political support each time it opens its mouth. Last night Biden spoke like a geriatrically challenged version of Adam Sutler, declaring that supporters of Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again ideology constitute a "threat to our country."

If one infers that those who voted for Trump in 2020 comprise this group, then it numbers at least 70 million.

The president's press secretary added the e-word. The president, she said, sees this group as "an extreme threat to our democracy."

Moreover, "when you are not with where the majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking."

Setting aside questions involving what precisely in MAGA ideology is inconsistent with the views of the majority of Americans, or, for that matter, whether MAGA ideology itself doesn't actually constitute the majority viewpoint, any American with a modicum of grounding in US history understands that our founding ancestors designed a government that protected the rights of those who not aligned with the whims of majority opinion. 

If the press secretary's definition of extremism is employed, then opinions inconsistent with the majority are to be protected from tyrannical treatment. Government is legally barred from acting against 'extremists'--again defined as those who think differently from the 'majority.' 

My sense is that Americans still understand this founding principle well enough they are are turned off by the caustic 'extremist' claims of leftists.

Irreparably Compromised

"The wheels turn slow around here. Real slow. But they do turn."
--Detective Marie Mitchell (Hard Target)

What would it take to show that there was massive fraud and interference in an election--long after a 'winner' was originally declared. What if this fraud and interference cast serious doubt who really won? Or even worse, that a candidate originally deemed to have lost actually won?

How would the damaged candidate(s) seek and obtain relief?

My sense is that those who perpetrate election fraud are prone to do so boldly, under the assumption that if they can get to the point where the results are declared 'official,' then it will be next to impossible for a damaged candidate to obtain relief in a manner that society views as legitimate.

Not long after the 2020 election, these pages mused about this situation. That we're still musing more than two years later suggests a) that compelling evidence of fraud continues to surface, and b) the spectre of widespread recognition of irreparably compromised election has not been extinguished by the perpetrators.

Jackson's Hole

"You're the disease, and I'm the cure."
--Marion Cobretti (Cobra)

The much-awaited Jackson Hole speech from Fed chair Powell is now in the books. Personally, I always chuckle when Fed heads wax about economic problems that always seem to be exogenous, and the Fed's heroic role in taming them.

The topic this time around is, of course, inflation. Powell suggests that the Fed must draw upon 3 lessons learned. One is that the Fed must take on responsibility for delivering low and stable inflation. The obvious question is why should the Fed be responsible for delivering any rate of inflation at all? Moreover, if the Fed is responsible for delivering low inflation, then how did we get to this state of high inflation in the first place?

The second lesson learned related to 'inflation expectations.' Powell asserts that "if the public expects that inflation will remain low and stable over time, then, absent major shocks, it likely will. I found that statement particularly rich. It suggests that a major goal of 'fighting inflation' is persuasion--persuading the public that inflation is low. 

Never mind the decades of easy money compliments of the Fed.

The third lesson is that the Fed must keep at it until the job is done. That is, keep monetary policy restrictive until "inflation is down to the low and stable levels that were the norm until the spring of last year. But monetary policy was extraordinarily 'unrestrictive' for more than a decade before the spring of last year. 

If that prolonged period of easy money didn't unduly elevate the public's inflation expectations, then how will the Fed 'keeping at it' with restrictive monetary policy do the opposite?

Powell once again markets the Fed as the cure rather than the disease it is.

Be Poor and Like It

"Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage and pious action, we do sugar o'er the devil himself."
-V (quoting Shakespeare) (V for Vendetta)

Another version of the 'suck it up' message. Euro leaders tell their people that 'abundance' is a thing of the past. Be poorer and like it.

One has to wonder how long a people is willing to endure hardship in support of a bureaucratic ideology.

Healthy Mistrust

"Sorry, boss, but there's only two men I trust. One of them's me. The other not you."
--Cameron Poe (Con Air)

Recent cries of foul over the FBI's raid of Donald Trump's Florida home have fed apologists coming out of the woodwork. The FBI needs to be given the benefit of the doubt, they say.

In other words, trust the feds.

Truly?

Here's a partial laundry list of FBI corruption.

Mischief by government agents should not be surprising. As Madison observed, men are not angels. And because men are governed by other men rather than by angels, controls are necessary on those who govern.

Among those controls is healthy mistrust of those holding public office.

Quiet Quitting

"Big successful businesses are not built by men like you--9 to 5 and then home to the family. You live on them, but you never build one. Big successful businesses are built by men like me. They give everything they've got to it. Live it body and soul. Lift it up regardless of anybody or anything else. Without men like me there wouldn't be big successful businesses. My mistake was in being one of those men."
--Ralph Hopkins (The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit)

Lower productivity may be driven in part by trends toward 'quiet quitting.' Quiet quitting is doing the bare minimum at work. Put in your time and go home.

While there has always been a fraction of quiet quitters in the workplace (sometimes called 'slackers' in the past), perhaps that fraction is growing.

Of course, this could just be another fleeting meme on the net.

Legitimacy by Association

"Looks like you're running with the cool kids now."
--Meg Harper (Joe Somebody)

Tom DiLorenzo discusses the long train of 'witch doctor' economists that have infiltrated government for generations. What gives these charlatans staying power?

It's primarily about perceived legitimacy that these so-called 'experts' bring to an administration. Fancy degrees and awards bring an air of distinction that wows the masses. By employing the witch doctors, politicians associate themselves with thought leaders. 

Legitimacy by association. And a nice gig for the intellectual class.

Moreover, because those who refuse to think for themselves are prone outsource the brains to others, political partisans can program minds by employing witch doctors ideologically aligned with the partisans' agendas. Blindly following expert advice puts the followers under the thumbs of the politicians.

The antidote to this cronyism? People who think as they seek truth.

Raid on Reason

Now did you read the news today?
They say the danger's gone away
But I can see the fires still alight
They're burning into the night
--Genesis

As these pages have frequently noted, leftists love to manipulate language in their favor. They employ positive substitute symbols and euphemisms to advance their agendas.

Case in point. The recent invasion of Donald Trump's Florida residence is no longer a 'raid.' Instead, it is now being deemed as an execution of a search warrant.

The raid, plainly, is on reason.

Crimson Tide

"He was wearing my Harvard tie. Can you believe it? My Harvard tie. Like, oh sure, he went to Harvard!"
--Louis Winthorpe III (Trading Places)

Harvard Crimson survey indicates 80% of Harvard faculty identify as liberal or very liberal. Check out the conservative sliver at less than 2 percent (with no 'very conservative' respondents).

Would they support hiring more conservatives to increase ideological diversity? 31% of the faculty said no. 56% supported stronger screening for former Trump officials seeking to join the faculty, while 30% were for banning anyone from that group outright.

More evidence that academic diversity has been firmly supplanted by academic perversity.

Hiroshima Myth

"The principle of law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime...is guilty."
--Judge Dan Heywood (Judgment at Nuremburg)

On August 6, 1945, a United States B-29 dropped the world's first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later another A-bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered later that month to end WWII.

An estimated 120,000 perished in the two blasts with hundreds of thousands subsequently maimed or killed from radiation exposure. The lion's share of casualties were civilians--mostly women and children.

The popular myth trotted out to justify this carnage is that, by bombing the Japanese mainland and inflicting death and destruction to a degree that forced a surrender, the US subsequently avoided more than a million additional military casualties that would have resulted from the ongoing conventional war campaign--including an inevitable invasion operation of Japan.

As discussed in this article, this amounts to little more than the rationalization of atrocity.

The fact is that Japanese officials signaled their willingness to conditionally surrender earlier in 1945. Their condition was that Japanese emperor Hirohito would remain in power and not be subjected to criminal investigations after the war. The idea was to preserve as much Japanese culture as possible, and to provide continuity to facilitate economic and social functioning in post-war Japan.

Sadly, President Truman and his lackeys were unwilling to accept anything other than unconditional surrender--quite ironic since after the war Hirohito was indeed permitted to remain as emperor until his death in 1989. 

Why, then, were the bombs dropped?

The answer is that Truman and his staff, particularly his confidante and future secretary of state James Byrnes, had their eyes on Russia. Using atomic weapons would demonstrate US military strength to Russia and keep Stalin & Co at bay as the superpowers entered a 'cold war.' A secondary reason was that Congress could be assured that its secret appropriation for the Manhattan Project was bearing fruit that created near and longer term benefits.

Following the bombings, however, many officials, including Commander of the Third Fleet Admiral Bill Halsey, Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff William Leahy, and atomic theorist Albert Einstein, condemned the action. 

This is when the propaganda machinery got into gear. Editorials and articles began to hit the pages of newspapers and magazines about the military necessity of the bombings. The myth has been continually reinforced, usually around this time of year, by political leaders and a complicit media. 

Perhaps in a brief moment of conscience, Henry Stimson, who was secretary of war at the time and chief propagator of the subsequent Hiroshima myth, wrote in his memoirs, 

"Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to know that history is not what actually happened but what is recorded as such." 

Indeed, Mr Stimson. My sense is that you and many of your contemporaries will face, quite literally, the trial of your lives on Judgment Day.

Blatant Lying

"Richard, it profits a man to give is soul for the whole world...but for Wales?"
--Sir Thomas More (A Man for All Seasons)

An administration bureaucrat looks straight into the camera and claims that it is "factually not true" that gasoline prices were rising prior to the Ukraine conflict.

These people will use any means when attempting to manage narratives. Blatant lying included.

Inflation Reduction Act

I bought a novel, some perfume
A fortune all for you
But it's not my conscience
That hates to be untrue
I asked of my reflection,
"Tell me what is there to do?"
--Squeeze

As we've discussed, leftists are rarely honest with their rhetoric. They label things largely contrary of their actual effects.

Cast in point: the proposed Inflation Reduction Act. 

As Ron Paul discusses, the bill does the opposite. It increases government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. It takes resources out of the hands of private citizens and puts them into the hands of bureaucrats.

Not only does this increase the risk of capital misallocation, but it must be funded. To the extent that citizens are taxed, it reduces economic resources available to people during an era of high price inflation and slowing economic activity.

It is a universal truth that slow economic activity motivates easier central bank monetary policy (read: inflation).

To the extent that taxes won't cover the spending, then those funds must either be a) borrowed, which taxes future incomes, or b) printed (the reason why inflation is called the 'invisible tax').

There is little doubt that the Inflation Reduction Act will ultimately result in more inflation, not less.

Keep Him Out

But you won't get too far
'Cause you got to blame someone
For your own confusion
We're on guard this time
Against your final solution
--Red Rider

Interesting thesis about why leftists, including many on the conservative side, cannot let Trump back in the Oval Office. The primary answer is that it is not Trump, but the tens of millions of 'country class' that he represents. 

The elite cannot afford to have give those rubes, Clinton's 'deplorables,' a voice in the political process. And to keep that from happening, the ruling class will stop at nothing to keep that from happening.

The author suggests that leftists have a string of plans in the queue to keep Trump out of office.

Plan A. Use the Jan 6 show trials to keep Trump from running/winning. By most accounts, however, that isn't working.

Plan B. Indict Trump for 'seditious conspiracy' using the DOJ and other machinery of the deep state. Of course, it will be difficult to convince a large fraction of Americans that any such charges hold a modicum of legitimacy.

Plan C. Declare Trump ineligible to run under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. The legitimacy issue still holds.

Plan D. Simply beat Trump at the ballot box. The trouble is Democrats have no obvious candidate that could compete with Trump head-to-head this time around.

Plan E. Cheat (again) in the election. There is no question that Democrats will do what they can get away with (again) this time around. The issue is, given the heightened public awareness about election process shenanigans, how much they will truly be able to get away with in 2024.

Plan F. Take to the streets and riot. Do this until the 'proper' regime is secured in the White House.

It is easy to see why leftists are husting to grab guns ahead of this cycle.

Recession Now

When the good times never stay
And the cheap thrills always seem to fade away
When will we fall
When will we fall down?
--Toad the Wet Sprocket

The traditional definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. This has now occurred based on Q1 and Q2 GDP prints.

As these pages have discussed, political partisans are trying to manage the narrative away from the traditional definition--claiming that recessions only officially occur once they are declared by the 'experts' at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Conveniently, such a declaration would occur sometime after the midterm elections in November.

What the partisan narrative managers fail to note is that two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth have always coincides with NBER's formal declaration of recession.

Social Networks and Political Correctness

"I'll be subtle. I'm good at subtle."
--John Spartan (Demolition Man)

Political correctness can be defined as behavior intended not to upset a particular group in order to advance an agenda. It often manifests in manipulating language. Political correctness is pretense; it is not genuine.

Political correctness is a product of social learning. Observing others. Watching what gets sanctioned. Fitting in.

As such, it should be no surprise that political correctness has increased alongside capacity for social networking.

Imagine a research experiment studying two groups of people. One group is highly plugged into their phones, tablets, and other social networking devices. 

The other group is rarely, if ever, online. 

Which group is likely to exhibit more politically correct behavior?

Redline Fed Lines

You'll never say hello to you
Until you get it on the redline overload
You'll never know what you can do
Until you get it up as high as you can go
--Kenny Loggins

Yesterday the FOMC raised the Fed funds rate 75 bips as telegraphed. The overnight rate target now stands at 2.25-2.50%.

As is common anymore, the FOMC statement was 'redlined' for wording changes from the previous statement.

The only substantial change was the first sentence, which went from discussing economic strength to signs of economic weakness.

Couple that with the subsequent statement that the Fed is prepared to adjust its policy stance if risks emerge that threaten the attainment of the committee's goals, and you get early signs of a dovish pivot.

Reaching? Perhaps, but markets are partying on the prospects thus far.

Narrative Management

Nancy Oliver: What's the matter with the mistress? She don't look ill to me. Is she?

Elizabeth Tompkins: I don't know. Not as I can see. But the master keeps telling her she is.
--Gaslight

Leftists believe that words matter more than actions. This is why they respond like juveniles on the playground when someone says something they don't like. "He called me a name!"

Indeed, it seems that many leftists view hurtful words as equivalent to acts of physical aggression--acts that justify physical violence, perhaps by government agents, to quell the 'hate speech.'

This is also why leftists obsess with controlling narratives. Narratives are story lines. In reality, these story lines may be true or false. But regardless of whether narratives represent fact or fiction, leftists believe that they can manipulate behavior in their favor by manipulating language.

Controlling the narrative often begins by changing the definition of a word or phrase that is central to the storyline.

Leftists are currently focusing on the meaning of 'recession.' Rather than using the traditional definition of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth (which likely has occurred in Q1 and Q2 of this year), leftists are now arguing that the definition is more nebulous and requires (very conveniently) a panel of experts to determine--perhaps far after the fact of the recession's actual commencement.

The narrative can then manipulated. We're still in an economic expansion, they say, because the experts haven't called a recession yet.

Should recent history be any guide, leftists will also try to recruit their media cabal to label alternative narratives as 'disinformation.'

If they can get the public to buy in, then perhaps leftists can postpone widespread perception of recession until after the November midterm elections. Leftists well know that people experiencing economic hardship are prone to vote out people and parties in positions of political power.

This time around, that would be Democrats.

Use your capacity for reason. Ignore the gaslights of narrative management.