I've been thinking about that line. It comes from the press conference with Ben Carson. Trump had just done a debate the previous night, within which it seemed that he was mellowing his persona, reshaping into something more Americans would recognize as presidential. Toward that end, Carson worked on our brain:
"There are two different Donald Trumps. There’s the one you see on the stage and there’s the one who’s very cerebral, sits there and considers things very carefully. You can have a very good conversation with him, and that’s the Donald Trump that you’re going to see more and more of right now."Trump said:
"I don't think there are two Donald Trumps. I think there's one Donald Trump. But certainly you have all of this, and you have somebody else that sits, and reads and thinks. And I'm a thinker. And I have been a thinker. And perhaps people don't think of me that way because you don't see me in that forum, but I am a thinker. And I thought it was very nice what Ben said of me. I'm a very deep thinker. I know what's happening. Okay?"When I heard that I thought: Why can't we see our candidates sitting and reading and thinking? All these debates and rallies — they're so loud and contentious. How about a nice video feed of the candidate reading for a few hours? Show me Donald Trump, in his usual reading environment, reading in the usual way that we haven't seen. He sits and reads and thinks. I'd watch that show. Does he read on an iPad? Does he have leather-bound tomes? Is he reading print-outs — reports of this and that? Does he fall asleep halfway through? Does he pause and stare into the middle distance, absorbed in thought?
I'd like to see them all reading, really reading...
... not just posing reading....
Posts
78 comments:
"I'd like to see them all reading, really reading... "
Trump, in his reading room, reading "Mein Kampf" and thinking. Staring into the middle distance.
Because it is a Trump post, we might as well just get to Hitler.
I am Laslo.
"When I heard that I thought: Why can't we see our candidates sitting and reading and thinking?"
Reading and thinking does not always mean what you think it means. Some people read S. E. Hinton for tips on how to win a gang fight.
Also, a man must either smoke a cigarette or stroke his beard to assume the proper state of relaxed attention necessary to truly appreciate an intelligent bit of writing. Non-smoking, clean shaven men can pretend to stroke an imaginary beard while they read, but reading and smoking an imaginary cigarette just looks dumb.
I'd like to see them read Kevin Williamson's thoughts about white people:
“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin."
The Trump candidacy "is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. Nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.”
Poor white people are made-up of “economically and socially frustrated white men who wish to be economically supported by the federal government without enduring the stigma of welfare dependency." [Their interests have no place in the] “mainstream of American conservatism”
@ARM: I read his disgraceful article yesterday. How about this crap:
"The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die."
They're on a race to the bottom over at that formerly-distinguished magazine.
I do see Trump as a thinker. He has just responded too well, too quickly, this campaign not to, and not to understand the political environment right now. Hillary seems the opposite, probably too drunk and too greedy to do much in terms of deep thought. She did nothing in the Senate, and the only things that she seems to have done as Sec of State was to fly a million miles and turn the Middle East into an inferno. For being allegedly so smart, she seemed to consistently screw things up royally. As for Sanders, Useful Idiots socialists never think things through very well or thoroughly, or they would understand that they are the Useful Idiots being used to grab power for their betters. Don't really know with the others. Rubio listens too much to others, but beyond that? Maybe Kasich. And, I think Ben Carson.
Last time around, it was maybe easier. Romney seemed to think a lot, but maybe too much. Obama may think a lot (he is famously cerebral) but doesn't obviously think deeply, or his Administration wouldn't have been such an unmitigated disaster. If you look at his actions, instead of his words, you have a very unserious and lazy person.
Just my take on things.
Sorry, but "sits, and reads and thinks" just conjures up "Eats, shoots, and leaves"(for me, at least).
"that sits, and reads and thinks."
We don't get to see Trump on the toilet.
In the pic, Obama is holding the book upside down. Jeez, fella, illiteracy is nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn't make you a bad person. You can get help from an adult education center.
Professor Althouse; in the 1990 Vanity Fair article I have linked twice in your comments pages, it was said (in connection with Trump's ownership of a copy of the collection of Hitler speeches, "My New Order") that The Donald wasn't truly a reader or a history buff.
I am going to be generous to Trump, and presume that indeed Trump isn't a reader, and isn't the sort of guy who pores over a copy of Hitler's speeches.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner
@Bruce Hayden/
^^^THIS!!! You've pretty well covered the waterfront, my man..
Obama just reading up on college basketball for his bracket picks. Hint: Don't pick the Badgers. They lost to Nebraska. Nebraska!
That's the Rodin Trump.
Oh, I think one would have to think and read quite a bit to survive in Trump's world, though perhaps mostly about things not taught at Harvard.
Obama, on the other hand, has been carried and never had to worry about survival, so he has had lots of time to read and think (in that order) about how things ought to be in some people's opinion.
Neither one of the Obama pics show him seriously reading. One does looked posed, or at most at the level of reading a waiting room magazine. The other is glacing at the paper during the commercials while watching the basketball game.
Show me a pic of him at a desk, pen in hand to highlight passages and write notes in the margin.
Meanwhile, if Romney thought too much, it was thinking about himself too much. And he is still doing it.
Le poseur.
@David Begley/
They CAN"T POSSIBLY have looked any worse than my LSU Tigers. Despite having arguably the best player in the nation (and having split the regular season series) they folded like a cheap suitcase against Texas A&M, GAAAK!!!!
Fabi said...
They're on a race to the bottom over at that formerly-distinguished magazine.
They hate white people and blame the victim for a heckler's veto. Are they George Soros funded?
Mark & rhhardin/
Right on tgt! "POSEUR is exactly the working descriptive term (although "Charlatan" is right there in a dead heat.)
AReasonableMan said...
I'd like to see them read Kevin Williamson's thoughts about white people:
Not white people, poor whites, or PWT. And the same is true of the poor Blacks that Clinton and Sanders are pandering to.
Terry said...
PWT
Come on, be brave, spell it out. There are no boundaries here.
The truth is that candidates for president did threading and thinking years before. There is no time during a campaign and everyone who knows anything about these things knows it. Reagan was thinking about policy for years as he gave speeches for GE. He was also meeting many ordinary people, which gave a him a feel for who they were.. Rubio and Cruz have had much shorter careers but Cruz probably did a lot more thinking and reading in his law career.
Trump has been doing business for all his career and I don't know how much reading and study of government and philosophy he has done. I think he is more instinctual but he has realized what the others seem to ignore. The people who make up this country are enraged at the ruling class and are ready to tear the place down if things do not improve.
Immigration is most of it but the Muslim thing that keeps creating these "workplace violence" events is another.
He has also picked up the truth about "Political Correctness" and is running with it.
Poor White Trash? You are a real shrinking violet, ARM. I also will write WTF to save the time of writing What the Fuck?
My first post, regarding the inevitability of Trump and Hitler comments, at 8:58.
Eight comments later, a post regarding Trump and Hitler, at 9;27.
I'm not sure what the over/under was.
I am Laslo.
Couldn't read the whole Williamson article but wow, it looks like he "went full anti-Trump, never go full anti-Trump"
And I'm as anti-Trump as you can get!
(OK, maybe not Chuck-level anti-Trump, but still up there)
Terry said...
You are a real shrinking violet
You were the one who held back from spewing out your prejudice. I am only a facilitator here, you dumb cocksucker.
I have been a big fan of Kevin Williamson but he's jumped the shark with this article. I am not totally surprised though. I follow him on Twitter and for the last few months he has been regularly raging against Trump and Trump supporters.
Williamson has been writing anti-Trump screeds for a long time, since at least last June when he wrote an article on Trump for NR titled "Witless Ape Rides Escalator":http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419853/witless-ape-rides-escalator-kevin-d-williamson
Mild mannered DrCarson is also a warrior at heart. A surgeon that spent a life at war with death understands and appreciates other warriors and the enemies they face. Studying opponents tactics wins. Ergo: Read everything you can get your hands on, especially books written by your enemies. Study them over and over, and you wrestle their tactics faster than they come at you.
"ARM wrote:
I am only a facilitator here, you dumb cocksucker."
Oh Yeah? Oh yeah? Well, you are an even dumberer cocksuckerer! And your sister hangs out at the pier asking sailors if they got any money left!
Laslo: You worthless, babbling freak. I didn't compare Trump and Hitler. I relayed the reporting of Vanity Fair, never questioned as far as I know. This is that reporting:
Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)
Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
Is Ivana trying to convince her friends and lawyer that Trump is a crypto-Nazi? Trump is no reader or history buff. Perhaps his possession of Hitler’s speeches merely indicates an interest in Hitler’s genius at propaganda. The Führer often described his defeats at Stalingrad and in North Africa as great victories. Trump continues to endow his diminishing world with significance as well. “There’s nobody that has the cash flow that I have,” he told The Wall Street Journal long after he knew better. “I want to be king of cash.”
What part of that reporting has been refuted, Laslo? Which part is untrue? Was Ivana Trump lying? Is Marty Davis lying? Vanity Fair, I presume, has Trump's part on tape.
AJ Lynch said...
I have been a big fan of Kevin Williamson but he's jumped the shark with this article.
There has to be something going on over at NRO beyond just a disagreement with Trump over policy and/or tactics. Their response has been completely unhinged and they now routinely attack the motives of anyone who hasn't signed onto their Jihad against Trump. I will not pretend to understand the underlying motives.
It would be creepy-weird if, like Hitler, Trump had only one testicle. You can only imagine how much more creepy it would be if the one testicle Trump had was the one that Hitler was missing.
Trump has been doing business for all his career and I don't know how much reading and study of government and philosophy he has done. I think he is more instinctual but he has realized what the others seem to ignore. The people who make up this country are enraged at the ruling class and are ready to tear the place down if things do not improve.
I think that it may have started this time as anti-illegal-immigration. And, partly, that is because of the jobs lost. But, the Black and legal-Hispanic communities are being hurt worse as a result of that. By now, I think that it is more, much more. Much of it is the crony-capitalism and establishment thinking that goes on in DC, and in the other power centers around the country. Despite this country sitting on massive hydro-carbon reserves, and gas prices dropping significantly, the cost of heating and air conditioning in much of this country is going up a lot. Why? Because of the Administration's War on Hydrocarbons (notably coal and oil). And, the elites who financially benefited from this, and who pushed the Dems into this, run around blathering and virtue signaling about anthropogenic global warming/climate change (when AGW was essentially debunked). The rich get richer, much richer, often by bribing or otherwise working closely with the govt., and the lower middle class gets desperate, as their costs go up, incomes go down, turning comfortable lives into desperate ones. This has been building, at least since 2010. Hillary and, I think, Rubio, just don't get it (or, in actuality, she and her husband are in big time on the action). ARM above looks down on the people doing the suffering here, who until recently could work hard and expect their lives to get better, not worse. But, that is likely because he agrees with the elites that these people are expendable. They aren't, and I don't think that they are going to sit around this election and let themselves be marginalized.
"ARM wrote:
I will not pretend to understand the underlying motives."
Trump is not a conservative. That should be reason enough for a conservative magazine.
Chuck - Laslo was likely commenting on Godwin's Law.
Bruce Hayden said...
ARM above looks down on the people doing the suffering here,
Lying piece of shit.
"Lying piece of shit."
Says the man who represents himself with classical statuary.
Terry said...
Says the man
Classist coward.
Bruce Hayden said...
Chuck - Laslo was likely commenting on Godwin's Law.
Correct. Every Trump Post now inevitably leads to Hitler. Was being droll.
Chuck said...
Laslo: You worthless, babbling freak.
Dude, you have become unhinged. You may indeed be correct about "worthless" and "babbling" but you should try some Lorazepam. It's good stuff.
I am Laslo.
I am worth approximately 9 billion dollars (Trump accounting method), yet I consider myself a regular fella. It's not like I can afford to quit my job or anything.
"I'm a very deep thinker."
Who says that about themselves? Many likely *believe* this about themselves. Is it refreshing for a candidate to come out and speak this way about themselves? Because he does it all the time.
"Nobody reads the Bible more than me."
"I have one of the great all-time memories."
"I'm very good looking."
"I know more about this subject than anyone who has ever lived."
"I can be more Presidential than anyone, I can be more Presidential than anyone."
These are just a few. Is this part of his appeal?
I am gonna just go with Laslo being "worthless and babbling" and leave it there. We agree. Have a nice day.
harrogate said...
Is this part of his appeal?
Possibly. The other guys all attempt to do the same thing with imagery, using highly paid image consultants. Trump cuts out the middle man. He is nothing if not practical. Jeb Bush was the tallest guy in the race so he took him out first. I'm sure in Trump's mind the fact the tallest guy usually wins was more important than any other factor in deciding who to eliminate first.
ARM
Williamson is right, of course. To his credit he affords the underclass whites with agency, something not offered to underclass blacks without risking strict retribution. They have indeed brought much of their misery upon themselves with a huge assist from Govt. Anyone with curiosity can travel western NY along the old canal system and see town after town in decay, the old mansions now rooming houses. Half a day's drive from the upper West side where curiosity is in very short supply.
On the outskirts of these dying towns there are often crisp farms, trued up with lasers, owned by the industrious Amish and their offshoots. Agency.
Bruce Haydon has a pretty good summary of it.
Angelo Codevilla did a pretty good summery a couple of years ago.
Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public's understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the "ruling class."
The 2008 collapse and TARP is a pretty good start date.
Trump's greatest appeal is that he has such a wonderful set of enemies.
Michael said...
Williamson is right, of course.
You make Williamson's argument in a more reasonable tone that Williamson. But, it is the tone that is interesting. The complete disgust he evinces in his description of another group of people would remarkable if he was referring to his enemies, but these are some of his most reliable political allies. There is something else going on at NRO beyond simple partisan politics.
"I am gonna just go with Laslo being "worthless and babbling" and leave it there. We agree. Have a nice day."
Chuck regales us with his healthy sense of humor.
I believe the whites Willamson talks about have been the ones hurt most by unlimited illegal immigration and trade deals like NAFTA. Perhaps there is some cause and effect there that pushed them even further into their non-productive behaviors. Hell, Williamson is very smart - he wrote a briliant piece on the drug problems ravaging Appalachia- I cant believe he didn't connect some of that to the loss of blue collar jobs to Nafta, illegals etc. Of course, he fancies himself a libertarian so open borders etc are what he wants.
Updated List:
traditionalguy
Chuck
The Crack Emcee
rhhardin
Shouting Thomas
Cedarford
"AReasonableMan" can at least play a good ball of string every now and then, which every cat can appreciate. Points for that, at least.
"There are two different Donald Trumps. There’s the one you see on the stage and there’s the one who’s very cerebral, sits there and considers things very carefully. You can have a very good conversation with him, and that’s the Donald Trump that you’re going to see more and more of right now."
When I watched Carson speak these words, what I thought was this. There are two Donald Trumps that Carson encountered, but not the two he mentioned. The two Donalds are the insulter and the flatterer. Carson chose to believe the flatterer was the real Trump, and who can blame him? Trump mocked Carson's belt story repeatedly. "How stupid are the people of Iowa — how stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?" said Trump. Now Carson told his story of attempting to knife his relative as the low point in his life that through a twist of fate led him to Christ and to turn his life around. Trump declared it was complete BS. Carson's story of religious conversion was transparent, made up nonsense if you believe Donald. You can see why it would be psychologically important for Carson to believe the idea of two Trumps - and not have it simply be two modes of manipulation.
ARM
I don't think the people he is writing about are voters, consumers of political news or otherwise engaged. He is making the point that would have him fired and forever in the employment wilderness if he had made it about the black underclass. His white trash is stoned, on the dole, a generation or more away from work. They don't miss what they and their parents never had. They do not know the America that the Trump voter remembers or romanticizes. This is a whole different group of people.
Jump off the Interstate. They are easy to find. They are legion.
ARM: "You make Williamson's argument in a more reasonable tone that Williamson. But, it is the tone that is interesting. The complete disgust he evinces in his description of another group of people would remarkable if he was referring to his enemies, but these are some of his most reliable political allies. There is something else going on at NRO beyond simple partisan politics"
I for one have enjoyed ARM dispassionate commentary on this subject and hope it continues.
That something else going on is nothing less than the class-signalling of our elites that transcends party lines. The fact that the non-elites of the republican base are finally revolting (at long last some would argue) has led the repub leadership to tip their hands re: open alignment with the dems.
Thats how you end up with a lineup of notables for that Georgia confab just a couple weeks back.
Not surprising as the US is finally catching up with western europe in the consolidation of power at the federal level coinciding with the expanding capture of the higher order institutions by the left.
The only real stumbling block for this consolidation of power is the free flow of non-filtered information. For example, the truth emerging re: mass islamic sexual assaults of women in germany leading to pressure on Merkel et al.
Not to worry though, the tech crony capitalists are working hand in glove with both parties to "solve" that problem.
It has always been thus so is it truly surprising it is happening here?
Human nature is what it is.
Williamson's is an amazing article. Amazing in its brutal tone as well as its obtuseness and moral blindness. There is a "Bell Curve" in any population. The suffering of the left three-quarters (and in modern America it is the left three-quarters who are losing, not just those 1SD below average) is a legitimate problem and their interests are legitimate interests.
As for New York, I know very well what's going on. I used to do work for a high tech industrial company in Buffalo. Upstate New York used to be full of high tech industries in its small and medium sized towns.
Business and talent has fled largely through the totalitarian oppression of NYC. The weight of bureaucracy makes it absurd to persist in any enterprise that is not otherwise disconnected from the money economy (your Amish). A glaring example - New York electric rates are double the US average, with absolutely no excuse for this state of affairs. No wonder the talent has fled. The place and people have been sucked into a husk of its former condition.
"Jump off the Interstate. They are easy to find. They are legion."
I know them well and we are visiting some this weekend. Williamson may be one of those libertarians who cannot understand why anyone would not want open borders and would be afraid of the pure libertarian world he loves.
I'm done with NRO, though. I went on a cruise in 2008 with them but this last two years, beginning with the firing of Derb and then the drift away from Mark Steyn, has loosened the ties of 35 years.
AJ Lynch: "I believe the whites Willamson talks about have been the ones hurt most by unlimited illegal immigration and trade deals like NAFTA."
Their jobs were the first to go and they live in places that constitute the front lines of our changing culture where the gang bangers come rolling down the streets and the schools have become warehouses of dysfunction with the children stacked like wood for the failure furnace.
They cant escape and, as a society we have pushef them to the point where the question "what have I got to lose" yields but one answer: nothing.
Peggy Noonan wrote eloquently of this situation where the elites are shielded from the realities they create for others.
Again, I dont want to be misunderstood. This is not "recent". It has beem going n for decades but beginning to reach critical mass now.
Chuck, I feel your Pain: I have a List of those that Shit in the Caviar.
I am Laslo.
buwaya puti said...
There is a "Bell Curve" in any population.
Exactly. A functional society finds ways to make the most of its human capital rather than rely upon a constant flux of new warm bodies to prop up a decaying system. It has been clear for a while that the 'elites' have simply given up on the much of the rest of the population. It is hard to understand how we got to this position, but it is bipartisan.
"AReasonableMan:
If by bipartisan you mean caused by the consolidation of federal powers started by early Progressives, greatly expanded by FDR, put on steroids by both LBJ and Nixon and finally become internally destructive under Bush and Obama…
Well sure, then.
I'm happy to count 90% of that destruction by statist Liberal Progressives and assign any residual to two of the worst - and most liberal - Republican presidents in history.
To be clear, I am using liberal in the recent incarnation of the word to describe statist, anti-liberty jagoffs.
buwaya puti said...
Upstate New York used to be full of high tech industries in its small and medium sized towns.
Business and talent has fled - New York electric rates are double the US average
Upstate New York was once roughly equivalent to Germany's Mittelstand. Germany currently has some of the highest electricity rates on the planet, yet the Mittelstand survives. If you look at the key properties of the Mittelstand the ones that stand out to me are:
Family ownership or family-like corporate culture
Generational continuity
Long-term focus
It is the short-term thinking of the finance industry that has decimated manufacturing, not electricity rates.
I use electric rates as a proxy for state driven costs of doing business. Germany has high electric rates but it has other compensating advantages, such as talent which stays in Germany as they prefer to be German and speak German, and costs of technical labor that are actually quite low for the level of talent - you can see a very good proxy in median household income, where Germany is 15-25% lower than the US in various comparisons. This is a long standing German advantage, a lot of these businesses would be impossible to move because foreign talent simply cant be found for the price. A historical example is optics. Schneider ( a Mittelstand company) could make similar lenses to those of US Wollensak (a defunct Rochester NY company), though Wollensak was several times as large, but Schneider was considerably cheaper because skilled labor in Kreutznach was cheaper than in Rochester. When the US massively reduced tarriffs after WW2, Wollensak was doomed.
Besides this Germany has much better operated (efficient) regulatory systems than the US. The churn, confusion, intricacy and complication, conflicts, politics, and uncertainty of the US adds greatly to costs.
"Besides this Germany has much better operated (efficient) regulatory systems than the US. The churn, confusion, intricacy and complication, conflicts, politics, and uncertainty of the US adds greatly to costs."
--buwaya puti
This is undoubtedly true. The regulatory environment in the United States is unchecked and is reducing the effective wealth and income of Americans. The only way to reduce these costs is to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
The other cost of the financial industry in the US is that talented people are drawn to the rewards of the casino instead of learning to make things. Finance employment in the US is bloated beyond reason, it does not bear any relation to the goods and services economy.
Sort of like the bloated legal profession. That part of the problem seems to have improved though, as market signals have gone through.
Hopefully the other bubble - internet/software - will pop also.
Carson spent a long career as a warrior surgeon fighting Death for others under its attack. So he instinctively sees Trump as a warrior too.
Of course Trump reads all of the time like George S. Patton did. Warriors read and re-read the books written by their opponents looking for predictable strengths and weaknesses. That is how Patton and Trump instinctively counter opponents moves even before the opponents start them. War is won by quick aggression.
Carson was a winner over death. Trump is a winner over American castastrophe planned out and installed by Obama, Clinto, Bush. Cruz and and their Globalist friends.
"Why can't we see our candidates sitting and reading and thinking? "
The way we "see" candidate thinking is to imagine them thinking. The only way we can imagine that they have a thinking life is if they say things that imply a great deal of thought went into them.
Drumpf (sorry, but he said democrat party, so...) definitely has his fingers on the pulse of the nation in many many respects. As someone wrote above: "I think he is more instinctual but he has realized what the others seem to ignore." What I am less sure of, is the solution. He has naively stirred up a lot of emotion against Muslims and people of certain nationalities. Maybe a great deal of thought went into that, maybe not.
"You can see why it would be psychologically important for Carson to believe the idea of two Trumps - and not have it simply be two modes of manipulation."
Interesting observation!
"Because it is a Trump post, we might as well just get to Hitler."
No need to grab your pearls just yet, his daughter is Jewish.
This is undoubtedly true. The regulatory environment in the United States is unchecked and is reducing the effective wealth and income of Americans. The only way to reduce these costs is to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
This has been getting worse for quite awhile, but it accelerated under Obama, esp. after losing the House in 2010, when they found that they could do much of what they wanted to do without the voters through regulations, and, even beyond regulations (in the case of illegal aliens, as well as removing due process in college sexual assault cases).
Some of the problem with regulations is that they are often written in concert with the largest regulated industries involved. The other though is that the best and the brightest have never worked for the government. Rather, it has mostly been the average who want to trade the potential for upside gain for security - except that government salaries have grown enough that they often exceed those in the private sector (esp. in places that don't demand college degrees, but those aren't the people writing the regulations). It is, frankly, getting scary, with unelected bureaucrats, often with IQs around or below the mean, writing complex regulations that destroy lives, often with little input from the political sector (but I am not convinced that would help that much, with the billions of dollars now being spent on the political class buying influence).
buwaya puti said...
The other cost of the financial industry in the US is that talented people are drawn to the rewards of the casino instead of learning to make things. Finance employment in the US is bloated beyond reason, it does not bear any relation to the goods and services economy.
Yes, the opportunity cost imposed by the finance industry is enormous. We would be all much better off if banking went back to being an occupation of conscientious but uninspired and definitely not creative individuals. To some degree I think we have reached 'peak banking', the recent struggles of the hedge fund industry being my index for this. All the virgins have now been raped. There is not much more 'shareholder value' that can be extracted by selling off our hard won expertise to the lowest bidder. The pharmaceutical industry has been something of a holdout, thanks in part to protectionism, but those virgins are starting to fall. Once they are gone there will be nothing left.
I don't agree on the internet/computing comment. Software is a form of engineering. Although claims for AI are endlessly overstated it is clear that steady progress is being made in engineering smarter systems. And again, although often overstated, these advances are not entirely due to better hardware. Computer programming has also become much simpler, thanks in large part to the development of open source tools that are very responsive to the needs of other programmers.
Bruce Hayden:
Your analysis falls short in one important aspect! The The 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act authorized baseline budgeting. A weakened and statist Nixon got rolled by Congress and that is hugely important.
After the 2006 election -- won by Democrats after the statist President Bush tried to sell out his base on immigration -- Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi exploited this poison pill Budget Act to simply spend money off the books and allow baseline budgeting to increase the spending of government beyond what was politically possible. That is why they simply stopped writing new budgets and used Omnibus Spending Authorizations.
You can see the effects played out in our 1.3 to 1.5 trillion dollar per year increase in debt as opposed to the reported budget gap of 500 billion. Almost a trillion dollars of spending is OFF THE BOOKS!! Or, to put it another way, we are well and truly fucked after the largest theft of wealth in all of human history.
@AJ Lynch/
Yes, e.g., most of the tobacco around Shelbyville, Ky (45 min south of Louisville) is harvested and "put up" to dry in Barns (a dangerous--the knives are razor sharp--and dirty business--the leaf tobacco-juice is toxic) is almost all done by illegals from Central America now. Has been since approx circa 1994..
virgil xenophon:
Priming tobacco is hard work that used to be done by middle and high school kids for a decent summer job. And those were jobs that Americans would certainly do.
But then Ronald Reagan capitulated to Tip O'Neill. And here we are.
Obozo doesn't really read. He already knows it all. And if you doubt it, just ask him.
I note that Kevin Williamson is "raving correspondent for National Review." (It says "roving," but that's obviously a typo.)
Laslo wins the thread for preemptive Godwinning. Well done. Now Ritmo has nothing to play with.
No, Alex, Ritmo still has one thing to play with, if you get my drift.
As much as I don't enjoy photos of Obama due to my visceral dislike of him, the top photo is just a gorgeous picture.
As for the post topic, I thought of Winnie the Pooh with a combover:
"Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits."
Just chiming in to say that, to my surprise, ARM actually seems reasonable on this topic.
Althouse: Why can't we see our candidates sitting and reading and thinking? All these debates and rallies —
In 1992, there was a televisionn commercial that showed candidate Bill Clinton sitting at a desk...
...and, we were to think, working on his economic plan that had bene endorsed by Goldman and Sachs. The Clintons and Goldman And sachs go back a long way.
Of course this was all fake. Clinton had no intention of carrying out his economic plan. His intention, insitead, was to pass a bill that all Republicans voted against and that passed by 1 vote in both the House and the Senate. It raised taxes in order to make sure all Republicans voted against it, but it did little damage because Bill Clinton knew that monetary policy was what mattered - something he kept to himself.
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