They promised us a soft landing and by golly they're giving it to us, good and hard

 We're on the glide path of permanent 3.8% year over year core inflation. 

 

 

 

IA stands for Ignorant Actually

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I mean, I get it. Republicans are going to vote for Trump because he's been treated very badly by this country. And I don't blame them. He has been. 

But it is perilous to assume that non-Republicans share this animus in enough numbers for Trump to wrest control of the election in November. North of 40% of Republicans in Iowa don't share it enough to vote for their ex-president. Biden is a horrible alternative, but it still looks to me like we're going to get more of him, good and hard. 

Meanwhile, of Ron DeSantis:

Dilatory fortune plays the jilt

With the brave, noble, honest, gallant man,

To throw herself away on fools and knaves.

-- Thomas Otway (1652-1685)

 

When the government gives it to you good and hard, and you're too dumb to notice

 

Joe Manchin's gift to America: IRS gets a whopping 58% funding increase each and every year for ten years over fiscal 2021

 They're coming for YOU.

 

The IRS spent $13.7 billion last year.

The Manchin bill gives the IRS an additional $79.6 billion over ten years:

. . . it will take time to phase in the added IRS funding . . .

CNBC says you WANTED this:

More than two-thirds of registered voters support boosting the IRS budget . . .

LOL, are YOU ever going to get it, good and hard.

 

Meanwhile my basic thesis is that this C19 epidemic continues to spread because 62% of men and 40% of women don't wash after using the loo

The data come from the largest study ever done on hand-washing years ago. You will find similar results in other smaller studies.

Do YOU always wash your hands after going to the loo? 62% of men and 40% of women admit they don't bother 

So that's roughly 51% of the population walking around NOT doing the most basic thing they should be doing under normal circumstances.

That agrees remarkably well with the Nature study on mask-wearing, which found that there is only 49% compliance.

Modeling COVID-19 scenarios for the United States: 

"the national average for self-reported mask wearing was 49% as of 21 September 2020"

I'm assuming it's much less than 49% however, because this data is from self-reporting, not observation.

Be that as it may, the main point is that with nearly half of a given population failing on basic hygiene, it's ridiculous to assume that those same people during a pandemic are going to comply with the litany of things which need to be done to stop the spread of the disease. 

You can't get them to wash their hands after using the loo, let alone wear a mask, wear a mask properly, social distance, quarantine themselves when exposed, quarantine themselves when sick, and on and on.

Results have indeed varied from state to state.

Michigan is a great example. We locked down hard at the beginning, closed everything, wore masks, yada yada yada, and suppressed the epidemic quite well until we couldn't stand it anymore. It caught up with us anyway.

And now the UK variant is giving it to us good and hard this spring. 

People gonna people. Virus gonna virus.

With the budget deficit topping $1 trillion again, Larry Kudlow promises a middle class tax cut proposal for later in the year

The American people are for two incompatible things, spending and tax cuts, and Trump is giving it to them, good and hard.

Story.

Mencken: No decent man would accept a degree he hadn't earned . . . honorary degrees are for riffraff

Mark "open borders" Zuckerberg

John "served in Vietnam" Kerry

Frank Bruni of The New York Times

The Grauniad complains P. J. O'Rourke's new book is "rural" and "lazy"

One David Runciman, here, who evidently does not know that the old boy has slowed down since he became sick with cancer:

[O'Rourke] operates more in the mould of HL Mencken, one of his heroes, who rarely felt the need to leave his beloved Baltimore in order to lambast the idiocy of his fellow Americans. O’Rourke lives, as it says on the dust jacket, “in rural New England, as far away from the things he writes about as he can get”. This is American politics as viewed from the back room in front of the TV, feet up on the recliner chair. ... O’Rourke forfeits the reader’s patience and simply comes across as lazy.

Krauthammer thinks Trump might go for single payer in the end, in which case Americans should get it, good and hard

Think of it as socialism with Republican characteristics.

Krauthammer, here:

Obamacare may turn out to be unworkable, indeed doomed, but it is having a profound effect on the zeitgeist: It is universalizing the idea of universal coverage.

Acceptance of its major premise — that no one be denied health care — is more widespread than ever. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan avers that “our goal is to give every American access to quality, affordable health care,” making universality an essential premise of his own reform. And look at how sensitive and defensive Republicans have been about the possibility of people losing coverage in any Obamacare repeal. ...

As Obamacare continues to unravel, it won’t take much for Democrats to abandon that Rube Goldberg wreckage and go for the simplicity and the universality of Medicare-for-all.

Simplicity? Draco's laws were simple. The penalty for every crime was death.

I wonder if Krauthammer has a clue what he's talking about.

Total Medicare outlays in 2015 came to $632 billion.

Total Medicaid outlays in 2015 came to $552 billion country wide (read the Notes).

Total Social Security and Disability outlays in 2015 came to $897.1 billion.

That is a total of $2.0811 trillion from 2015 total net compensation of $7.4158 trillion, or 28%, without even talking about "universal coverage" yet.

Yet all your typical American pays now for this is 10.63%:

6.2% in Social Security tax and 1.45% for Medicare, plus whatever taxes are paid at the state and local level toward Medicaid, which federal law mandates must account for at least 40% of program revenues. So $221 billion from 160.8 million wage earners across the country in 2015 represents another 2.98% paid by them at the state level.

The status quo therefore is funded only 38% by its beneficiaries, at best. I say "at best" because many beneficiaries pay NOTHING because they don't work and never have. But I digress.

So bring about Krauthammer's revolution, for that is what he's talking about, and reset the table as follows.

Total healthcare outlays in the United States in 2015 came to $3.2 trillion. Add in $897.1 billion for Social Security and Disability, and you now have a "universal" obligation bloated to $4.097 trillion, which represents 55% of net compensation that year.

That's your tax.

You've become France, Germany, Denmark or some other Western European paradise which depends on the United States for its defense.

And that's before even talking about funding the $1.2 trillion part of the federal budget which is discretionary, like defending ourselves against that little fat kid playing with hydrogen bombs in North Korea.

Of course there's another chunk of money out there being made in the United States apart from net compensation, about $8 trillion in 2015. The recipients of this income typically pay the lower capital gains tax rates, not the payroll and income tax rates which are for the chumps.

It's a nice little system which isn't paying its fair share for socialism in the United States, even though it is rich guys who typically shout the loudest on behalf of it. They do this because they know it will keep the little guy down, from whom they don't want the competition some day. But tax that system equally to net compensation and you cut that 55% tax in half, to say 27.5%. That, however, means a big fat tax increase on the rich, and on everybody else. I doubt they'll stand for that any more than they open their checkbooks now to make patriotic voluntary donations to the US Treasury.

We live in a fantasy land where no one wants to pay what it costs for anything.

We think we can have our cake and eat it too.

We want infrastructure spending, and a tax cut dammit.

. . . good and hard

“I don’t want to spend all that money on infrastructure,” [Stephen] Moore said. “I think it’s mostly a waste of money. But if the voters want it, they should get it.”

Trump still has a big problem on H-1B flipflop, appearance on Savage Nation today did nothing to assuage fears he's just telling people what they want to hear

Sympathetic critics like Laura Ingraham are exactly right that the time has long since passed for Trump to stop winging it, show more discipline, and spend some money on TV ads.

We're voting for him in Michigan tomorrow, but I predict Trump is going to disappoint us going forward even more than he already has.

It's almost as if he's prepared to hand this thing over to Ted Cruz, who doesn't give a fig for anything but himself.

One way or another, we're going to get the government we deserve, good and hard.

From the story here:

"Furious supporters of Donald Trump . . . are now FORMER supporters of Trump".

Ann Coulter skewers my congressman, Justin Amash, the biggest do-nothing in Washington, good and hard

Thanks, Ann!

Ulterior Motives In Writing: Why Does Mark Judge Hate Monica Crowley?

Did you ever get the feeling that an entire column was merely a pretext to slam someone the writer didn't like . . . with a sucker punch saved for the very end?

That's the overwhelming feeling I got from reading Mark Judge's "HL Mencken Against The Journalists" here, which ends with this:

"So let's just put an end to it. Call them analysts. Call them pundits. But to coo over people like Frank Rich and Monica Crowley as brilliant intellectuals is to denude the term of meaning."

After ridiculing liberal after liberal in the column the lazy writer realizes at the end he needs to be an equal opportunity critic and throws poor old Monica under the bus just to make himself look objective.

If Mark Judge hangs around people who coo over anyone, let alone journalists, he's clearly in special company already. They used to call them asylums.

You know, the sort of place which makes you write like this: "but as a man with whom we could speak with about any topic".

'Gridlock is the Most Constructive and Moral Form of Government'

Except "with entitlement programs on autopilot."

So says David Harsanyi here. The only truly sane thing I read today, or most days.

You've got to like a guy who starts off with an HL Mencken line like "every decent man is ashamed of his government." I'm feeling especially decent today.

What we really need to fear most is one party, it doesn't matter which one, in complete control of the government. And that we don't exactly have that today means I can be grateful with a straightface tomorrow, Thanksgiving 2011.

More republicanism, Less democracy

David Harsanyi defends the filibuster, but falls short of calling for a return to the election of U.S. Senators by the state legislatures, which is what we really need if we want more checks on power (the article appeared here):

February 10, 2010

Say No to Democracy

By David Harsanyi

If you've been paying attention to the left-wing punditry these days, you may be under the impression that the nation's institutions are on the verge of collapse. Or that the rule of law is unraveling. Or maybe that this once-great nation is crippled and nearly beyond repair.

You know why? Because the 40 percent (or so) political minority has far too much influence in Washington. Don't you know? This minority, egged on by a howling mob of nitwits, is holding progress hostage using its revolting politics and parliamentary trickery.

Leading the charge to fix this dire problem is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who advocates abolishing the Senate filibuster to make way for direct democracy's magic.

It had better be quick. The populace is fickle. Jacob Weisberg of Slate believes that Americans are crybabies who don't know what's good for 'em, causing "political paralysis." Even President Barack Obama, after his agenda had come to a halt, claimed democracy is a "messy" process -- as if that were a bad thing.

Actually, "democracy" is not only messy but also immoral and unworkable. The Founding Fathers saw that coming, as well. So we don't live under a system of simple majority rule for a reason, as most readers already know.

The minority political party, luckily, has the ability to obstruct, nag and filibuster the majority's agenda. Otherwise, those in absolute power would run wild -- or, in other words, you all would be living that Super Bowl Audi commercial by now.

And if democracy is the mob -- the "worship of jackals by jackasses," as H.L. Mencken once cantankerously put it -- whom does it comprise in our scenario? Depends on how you look at it, I suppose.

Not long ago, even before the Tea Party existed, Obama whipped up crowds angry at Republicans with his rosy brand of left-wing populism. He was able to hypnotize adoring masses with his grand and nebulous promises, though he had few new ideas and little experience to back it up.

Obama's ensuing coronation -- more than 2 million people reportedly showed up for his inauguration -- must have reinforced the perception in Washington that nearly everyone was on board. And in its first year, this administration acted accordingly, attempting to transform energy and health care policy, among other things.

Turns out, if we believe polls, that Americans changed their minds quickly and in large numbers. And history shows us that generally, unhampered one-party rule doesn't work out for anyone.

Then again, today's argument that the ruling party doesn't have enough power is a reflection of a nearly spiritual belief in the wonders of government, not democracy.

Though many Democrats advocate for direct democracy -- whether it be fighting states' rights or supporting the removal of the Electoral College -- it is a curiously selective endeavor.

Take the Tea Partiers, who also have attached themselves to "democracy" rhetoric. What, one wonders, will Democrats have to say about the filibuster when Sarah Palin is jamming through her first-year agenda as president?

We must be more judicious. We must have more debate before moving forward. The Founding Fathers never envisioned radical policy being jammed through by the majority. Oh, my God, it's actually happening.

Those who contend that the ruling party isn't instilled with enough control are worried about politics, not process. And actually, regardless of which ephemeral majority happens to win the day, we should be looking for more checks on power, not less.

Reach columnist David Harsanyi at dharsanyi@denverpost.com.