Ruminations – 3apr15 (updated 4apr15)

George Rebane

We’re back from a three week trip that took us and two other couples down to Scottsdale in our RVs to attend the annual Mercatus Center conference.  Connectivity was iffy in the various RV parks we stayed on our travels, so apologies for the less than meticulous attention – ha! - I could pay to RR in the interval.

Military exercises continue to rehearse the invocation of national martial law.  A correspondent in Florida reports on the latest “night operation” being conducted in Ft Lauderdale.  As covered here previously, these operations, today known as Jade Helm, have been a part of our federal government’s decades long preparations to combat massive subversion in America.  The putative enemy is not some minor faction like communists, neo-nazis, or even dissident Muslims, but main core American citizens who are not fans of big government and a centrally planned society.  You can pooh-pooh the recent specifics here and here, but the cited federally printed documents are hard to dismiss.

The outrage at the most recent mass murder of “scores of Christians” by Muslim ragheads in Kenya is again being addressed by the Left’s crickets whose lamestream feels little impetus to connect any dots beyond a sterile report of the massacre.  Meanwhile, here we get all riled up if some Christian baker refuses to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual wedding.  The public's rage is both frangible and fungible, therefore it must be correctly prioritized, marshalled, and directed.  More here.

In geo-strategic politics population demographics rule.  Pew Research announced that around 2050 Muslims and Christians will populate the world in equal numbers.  Muslims are outbreeding and out-colonizing Christians who more and more are prone to abandon their religion.  The nearby figure (double click) was filched from a WSJ report on the matter.

We now see that the ‘Iran framework’ is only a yet-to-be-negotiated, legally unbound “understanding” that is not commonly understood by its US and Iranian authors regarding how it will permit Iran to continue nuclear weapons development at an unobservable pace while enjoying the immediate lifting of economy stifling sanctions that, given the parties involved, cannot readily be ‘snapped back’ when Iran inevitably once more violates whatever is put in place this June to the disbelief of our Mideast allies - Obama foreign policy’s finest hour. More here and here.

[4apr15 update]  Former veteran NYT reporter and author Judith Miller is among those knowledgeable about the ins and outs of how we started the Iraq War.  Some of these people of mostly a liberal persuasion are no longer willing to quietly live the lie that the lamestream has concocted and the government schools faithfully repeated over the last decade.  In the 4apr15 WSJ she writes a major article – ‘The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths’ – in which she makes the case that “officials didn’t lie, and I wasn’t fed a line.”  Her piece begins with –

I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me. … OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me. … None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired. (more here)

However, those narratives are a mainstay of the progressives’ mischaracterization of America’s conservatives as these pages serve to corroborate, and they will be maintained as long as our citizenry remains mired in dumbth.  And that, dear reader, is a timespan which tears at the very fabric of our republic.

Comments

[Don Bessee]

Have a Blessed Easter!

[Russ Steele]

BLUE MODEL MELTDOWN: “Reform for Relief” Coming to Blue Cities.

Chicago is broken — and Democratic ideas can’t fix it, at least at the local level. That’s one takeaway from John Judis’ recent article in the National Journal. Judis, one of America’s most thoughtful leftists, looks at the city’s mayoral runoff between Rahm Emmanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, and finds both candidates lacking in solutions for city’s gargantuan problems. Those problems include deeply underfunded pensions, a decline in low-skilled jobs, and a dramatic gap in wealth, employment, and educational attainment between poorer (and often African American) residents and wealthier residents.

In facing these challenges, Emmanuel may be a better manager, but his policies marginalize the city’s poor and seem incapable of reversing the city’s fiscal slide. For example, on jobs and the economy, Garcia has argued that Emmanuel has favored development in the wealthy downtown area instead of poorer ones. But Garcia himself is short on alternativesChicago is broken — and Democratic ideas can’t fix it, at least at the local level. That’s one takeaway from John Judis’ recent article in the National Journal. Judis, one of America’s most thoughtful leftists, looks at the city’s mayoral runoff between Rahm Emmanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, and finds both candidates lacking in solutions for city’s gargantuan problems. Those problems include deeply underfunded pensions, a decline in low-skilled jobs, and a dramatic gap in wealth, employment, and educational attainment between poorer (and often African American) residents and wealthier residents.

In facing these challenges, Emmanuel may be a better manager, but his policies marginalize the city’s poor and seem incapable of reversing the city’s fiscal slide. For example, on jobs and the economy, Garcia has argued that Emmanuel has favored development in the wealthy downtown area instead of poorer ones. But Garcia himself is short on alternatives. . . .

Add all this up, and it’s likely that a European theme is going to be sounding in American politics in the future: reform for relief. That is, many Democratic, deep blue cities will be approaching state and federal treasuries with cap in hand for some time to come. First, because they don’t have the money to pay their bills, these cities will need help with exploding pension liabilities (and their pension problems are only going to become more urgent). Second, because their system has become unsustainable, they are likely to face gridlock at home. Black and Hispanic voters may be pulled apart rather than pulled together. Hispanics look like more of a conventional immigrant group wanting help from government aimed at promoting upward mobility, while the problems facing black Chicago may be more intractable. Competition over power and resources between these groups could be an important factor in the future of urban politics.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/04/01/reform-for-relief-coming-to-blue-cities/

[fish]

Posted by: Russ Steele | 05 April 2015 at 08:33 AM

Interesting that even with this set of fiscal challenges we have embarked upon yet another season of importing unskilled, public service consuming, undocumented democrats!

No jobs for the unskilled......hell....let's go get some more!

[Bill Tozer]

Chicago, Detroit, and Conneticut.

http://www.cheatsheet.com/personal-finance/the-10-worst-state-pension-funds.html/?ref=YF

Having more unskilled workers will not help reduce the income gap, despite Wal-Mart, Target, and Mikey D's raising wages for employees. The solution is to legalize more 6th grade dropouts. Yeah, right. If we are going to open the floodgates, how about we import Ukranians. They are of very tough stock and have brains to use. Plus, the women folk are pleasant on the eyes and they like Putin about as much as I do.

[Bill Tozer]

Speaking of military exercises, a group of Marines w/ fixed bayonets on M-1s is a beautiful thing. Silence is golden for sure.

http://marine-drills.littlethings.com/marines-silent-drill-team/?utm_source=con&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=conservative