Althouse: "It's all psychological, to a large extent, and that's what creates greatness," said Trump.

December 9, 2017

"It's all psychological, to a large extent, and that's what creates greatness," said Trump.

In Pensacola last night (talking about economic growth, low unemployment, and high consumer confidence).

Here's the video of the speech at C-Span, where you won't find that quote in the transcript under the video, which seems to be the hit-or-miss that is closed captioning. Go to 22:00:

I thought that was kind of profound. Reminded me of The Beatles:

"It's all in the mind, you know."

If "it's all psychological... and that's what creates greatness," then Trump can Make America Great Again if we simply believe again that it is great.

"You won't get it unless you want it/And we want it now..."

105 comments:

tcrosse said...: Fake it 'til you make it.; 12/9/17, 1:51 PM
Inga...Allie Oop said...: America never stopped being great.; 12/9/17, 1:56 PM
Hari said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/9/17, 1:57 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Attitude IS important. If you think you "can do" and are willing to try, put yourself outside of your comfort zone, take a chance, keep your eyes on the prize.....and sorts of other sayings....your chance of success or achieving your goal is much greater.

Not listening to nay sayers and those who only want to tear you down is the key. Keeping yourself motivated, being with people who are supportive, instead of toxic will help you towards success.

Is it any guarantee of success and will attitude magically make things happen for you. Not necessarily. HOWEVER, the opposite, negativity, unwillingness to try, fear, people who drag you down... will guarantee failure.

It isn't ALL in the mind but it (MAGA) starts there.; 12/9/17, 1:57 PM
Hari said...: Keynes called it 'animal spirits.'; 12/9/17, 1:59 PM
Tina848 said...: You may not know, but Trump is a big devotee of Norman Vincent Peale. In fact, NVP married Trump to Ivana. NVP is the proponent of the "Power of Positive Thinking" This quote and attitude doesn't surprise me.

From Scott Adams:

You notice how President Trump is so often talking about the future? 'Make America Great Again,' is the future. 'Build the Wall,' is the future. Bring back the jobs in the future. Everything is about what he is going to do. But at the same time, he is telling you everything is great... working well...

You are watching him turn the economy into an optimism engine. You are watching him use the same reality-shaping optimism with North Korea and ISIS. Think about what those ISIS people are thinking when they look at him? He is so positive they are going to be wiped out. Just recently you saw thousands of ISIS fighters surrender instead of fight to the death... That means he is in their head. That means that they don't see their plan as being the winning plan. They already see him as the eventual winner; 12/9/17, 1:59 PM
Inga...Allie Oop said...: Much easier on the ears than The American Carnage theme.; 12/9/17, 2:02 PM
Jim at said...: America never stopped being great.

Might want to share that with this ungrateful scold:

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country … not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change,” she said. “I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.”; 12/9/17, 2:02 PM
Sebastian said...: The speech was a remarkable piece of performance art.; 12/9/17, 2:02 PM
RBE said...: He is a child of the 60's...even if he wasn't a hippie. The Beatles influence was pervasive throughout our culture not just the drug addled counter-culture of that era.; 12/9/17, 2:05 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "America never stopped being great."

Whatever you believe. You can have it if you want it.

There's nothing to disagree about.

The America you want is in your head. It's already yours.

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see...; 12/9/17, 2:06 PM
buwaya said...: This is true.
I've been saying that Trump seems to be a sort of good luck charm. A totem. A Ganesh, god of prosperity.
This is very Asian.

It can turn though. Or his enemies will remove him. The consequences are going to be the precise opposite of business confidence.

As for MAGA, your serpent in the bosom is your education system, which is dedicated to the precise opposite. There is no instrumentation for negativism, but if there were the needle would have been pegged and bent decades ago.; 12/9/17, 2:06 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "You may not know, but Trump is a big devotee of Norman Vincent Peale..."

Yes, I did know that (mostly from Scott Adams). It's good to connect that to this.; 12/9/17, 2:08 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: The left like to embrace lies and turn them into wishfacts.; 12/9/17, 2:09 PM
buwaya said...: Its not a 60's thing.
The zeitgeist is real, and it is an ancient idea.; 12/9/17, 2:10 PM
Rob said...: When asked his opinion about Norman Vincent Peale, Adlai Stevenson said, "I find Paul appealing and Peale appalling."; 12/9/17, 2:24 PM
Quayle said...: The alternative philosophy being heavily sold these days is, “if we could just get rid of those guys everything would be fixed.”

For my part, I'm going to go with and follow the positive leader.

We can have a perfectly just and merciful society where there are no poor, as soon as we each decide to do it, and we’re closer to doing it than we’ve ever been.; 12/9/17, 2:26 PM
mockturtle said...: He was specifically addressing consumer confidence.; 12/9/17, 2:32 PM
Rabel said...: Imagine how much it good would do for the people, the country and the world if the left and the media and the never-Trump fools would get off his back and let him do the job he was elected to do.

It's easy if you try.; 12/9/17, 2:33 PM
traditionalguy said...: The theme song of all Trump Rallies is " You Can't Always Get a What You Want" played on a loop.

The money thing is Trump's special skill. And he is doing that for the American middle class. Poor people in debt and despair need one thing. The need money. But the DC system selling America out for cash under Bush and Clinton and Obama had destroyed the American middle class by following world money flow banks and investing every penny in China's capitalism to gain super wealth from Chinese industrial labor.

In essence Trump has blended Calvinist Christianity's certainty of winning with its work ethic and a great education. But that is Norman Vincent Peale in a nutshell. Trump has added a Jacksonian toughness and courage to that Presbyterian culture from which all those men came.; 12/9/17, 2:35 PM
Ken B said...: The left agree. They just hate the idea of American greatness. This is because they hate the idea of America at all, the idea that a plumber counts as much as a professor.; 12/9/17, 2:36 PM
Gahrie said...: We can have a perfectly just and merciful society where there are no poor

There will always be poor. Poverty is a relative term, and in fact the U.S. government changes it's meaning pretty much every year.

If Donald Trump gave everyone in the United States a million dollars tomorrow, the new definition of poverty would be set at a million dollars.

The correct measure is standard of living.....and if you follow three simple rules, you're pretty much guaranteed a high standard of living in the United States today.

1) Finish high school.
2) Don't have a child before you get married.
3) Don't get involved in gangs or crime.; 12/9/17, 2:37 PM
320Busdriver said...: I'm glad Trump is breaking DC, the lamestream media, the swamp, twitter, twits, and everything else he touches.

I watched some of his speech last night and I don't really enjoy his schtick. Maybe I'm deplorable.; 12/9/17, 2:41 PM
Drago said...: Inga: "America never stopped being great"

Since history began anew just this morning for Inga she has already forgotten that the left actually believes America was never great.

Sorry Inga. You cant spend 50 years shouting something and then expect everyone to forget just because you want to.; 12/9/17, 2:41 PM
Larry J said...: The contrast is stark. Obama ran an 8 year apology tour while Trump says to aim for greatness. Obama wanted to fundamentally transform America and Trump is getting government off the necks of both businesses and individuals. Obama sucked like a quantum singularity. May his ilk never gain power again.; 12/9/17, 2:42 PM
Matt said...: Inga: "America never stopped being great"

Inga just said America was great during slavery.; 12/9/17, 3:01 PM
n.n said...: There is a physical analog. Your thoughts act as inertia. Negative thoughts increase inertia, and positive thoughts reduce it. With a conservation of principles, progress can be positive.; 12/9/17, 3:05 PM
Original Mike said...: This is what attitude can do: trump-mattis-turn-military-loose-on-isis-leaving-terror-caliphate-in-tatters

Trump has done in one year what Obama couldn't do at all.; 12/9/17, 3:06 PM
Bill, Republic of Texas said...: Inga: "America never stopped being great"

Inga just said America was great during slavery.
12/9/17, 3:01 PM

And Jim Crow time. Why she so racist and anti-freedom. Does she wear her pussy hat on top or inside her Klan hood.; 12/9/17, 3:07 PM
Original Mike said...: “I was not optimistic when Trump first came to the office,” Rasool said. “But after a while I started to see a new approach, the way the U.S. was dealing with arming and training. I saw how the coalition forces were all moving faster to help the Iraq side more than before. There seemed to be a lot of support, under Obama we did not get this.”; 12/9/17, 3:09 PM
Michael said...: Inga ignores, or has been unaware of these last decades, the constant denigration of our country by her fellow travelers. Constant. Our wars, our slavery, our whiteness, our greed, our hatred of the poor, our institutionalizing homelessness, our hatred of blacks, our reverence for dead white men, our insistence (until recently) of teaching and even celebrating Western Culture, our hatred of gays, our crushing of the black spirit, our unwillingness to shell out reparations, and, lest we forget, our Christianity, our values, our stupid morality, our belief in the sanctity of life.; 12/9/17, 3:10 PM
Paul From Minneapolis said...: This reminds me of something that occurred to me some years ago, when I was transitioning* yet still at times compelled to attend events like "Day On The Hill," an annual social justice**-oriented gathering of activists*** during Minnesota's legislative session:

The left always talks about "the economy" like it's something that's just handed to them, take it or leave it. And there's some truth to that. But it doesn't occur to them to instead perceive it as something we all help create.; 12/9/17, 3:11 PM
madAsHell said...: I've said before.....but Obama spent 8 years scolding us. The entire "...but that's not who we are" trope. While the MSM kept telling us that Obama was pissing rainbows, and farting unicorns.

Trump tells us "Here's what we have to look forward to....". While the MSM tells us that Trump is going to push Gramma off the cliff.; 12/9/17, 3:18 PM
Wince said...: I'm in that narrow category of upper middle class north easterners who might be hit with higher taxes, especially if there is a limit on the special treatment of pass through income and/or the SALT deduction is repealed

Fuck, it's worth it to me to pay a few thousand dollars more a year to a government led by this great man!; 12/9/17, 3:19 PM
MSG said...: I hope Trump's "it's all psychological" wasn't meant to imply that we can make America great by believing it is great or, even crazier, that reality itself is a social construct. I would hope that he was saying that economic activity is the product of the actions of conscious beings, rather than something that is reasonably analogized to the growth patterns of bacteria in a Petri dish. Thus, we regularly try to measure consumer confidence and we analyze investment decisions in terms of reasonable expectations. Economic policy is not a matter of telling people to feel confident -- it is a matter of giving them reasons to feel confident.; 12/9/17, 3:20 PM
Chuck said...: When your favorables a as president are hovering around 35%-45%, without having had a major international crisis thrown at you, and yet you think everything is going great...

Yeah; it's "psychological."; 12/9/17, 3:21 PM
Kevin said...: Not only is it true, but it’s why people like Nancy Pelosi say things like “this tax bill is the worst bill ever written”. The opposition is not just to the policy but to the idea that Trump could or would do anything to make things better for anyone but the uber-rich.

Here is an actual comment without a hint of sarcasm from another site:

“One of my husband's students is incredibly gifted. She graduated high school at 16 and is rocketing through college. She is going into science and is taking an internship this summer to NASA.

She just let us all know that, thanks to the new tax laws, she can no longer afford grad school. That “glorious Christmas present” has cut this girl's future right out from under her.

Another friend has diabetes, the fun kind with the needles. Has had since he was a kid. He loses his insurance if he moves home to take care of his mother, who is hospitalized right now. He will die in a week without his insulin and he no longer qualifies for our state health programs. Without his casino job’s health insurance, he can't afford his life saving medication.

Another friend has skin cancer on his chin. He had to pay for insurance under the ACA that he could never afford to use so it had to go unchecked and untreated. When he moved to Tennessee, he got a job that covered him so the cancer, which now takes up enough of his face that it will change the shape when he gets the surgery. He goes under the knife in January and now fears his treatment won't be available with the new health insurance and tax changes.

Another friend has dialysis twice a week. Because she's transgender (since the 1990's), her coverage is now in danger. She had to use crowdfunding to cover a $500 car repair in order to get to her treatments because she can't walk to the clinic and the GOP has cut the funding to the bus she uses, ending the program.

I have DOZENS of these stories, of people hurt by this President and his Congress. I haven't talked about the fact that INFANTS (less than 1 year old) have gun licenses now, or how my quadriplegic friend risks having his handicapped status and assitance removed (who the f*ck qualifies then?!) I have friends with 12 year old daughters who are rape victims but the child molester is still roaming free and the state has destroyed any chance of one of his victims getting an abortion.

Every day, another friend or family member becomes a surviving relative of a mass shooting perpetuated by a white Christian male shooter, but the President has brought back Merry Christmas!

Now this tax bill, which will raise my single income family tax burden beyond paying it, has passed. Thank god it protects the rich because in 2020, those will be the only ones alive.”; 12/9/17, 3:22 PM
Yancey Ward said...: So, Inga, what is your take on the CNN story you were flapping about endlessly until CNN basically had to retract it? I noted you vanished the instant CNN corrected the key point of the entire story. What say you?; 12/9/17, 3:26 PM
buwaya said...: Trump makes the point about the markets liking him, given it fell upon fake news. I've noticed its done this several times actually, on apparent bad news for Trump.

It is indeed psychological. The MSM and all official culture is on a 100% barrage of hate, against both Trump and his backers. This is a terrible thing, and will have grave consequences.; 12/9/17, 3:29 PM
Drago said...: The good news for Inga is she'll always have the operational and rhetorical support she needs frim LLR Chuck.

So she has that going for her...which is nice.

Chuck is no doubt very upset at how well we are doing economically. Chuck hates it when the prognostications of Krugman et al are exposed as incorrect as LLR Chucks MSM driven failed electoral predictions.; 12/9/17, 3:29 PM
Drago said...: As if #CNNStrongDefender Chuck didnt have enough problems, his pals at CNN stepped on a big rake this week.

Chuck may have to return to therapy to get over that one.; 12/9/17, 3:31 PM
Hari said...: Kevin,

What precisely is it in the tax proposal that is the difference between the young woman going or not going to graduate school?; 12/9/17, 3:33 PM
buwaya said...: Kevin,

Yes, that is indeed the hysteria. You will find this sort of hunting for the evils that they do in California even, with not a Republican in sight and citing actions (or alleged ones) dating to the Obama administration. Sometimes even to the 1970s Jerry Brown administration.

"We have no high school swimming pools because of Trump" - they were gone as a consequence of the Serrano school funding equalization case in 1971, and after that the subsequent consumption of school budgets by special ed.

It is a medieval madness. A witch has poisoned the wells and hexed the cattle.; 12/9/17, 3:39 PM
cubanbob said...: Trump is a phenomenon that is rather difficult to quantify.
Is he really a genius masquerading as a Babbitt? Or one of the most amazingly lucky man in history? Or are his opponents arguably the dumbest and most arrogant group ever?
Or some combination of the above? The Orange Cheeto seemingly mocks, humiliates and defeats his detractors and opponents with hardly any effort. If nothing else, it is most entertaining.; 12/9/17, 3:39 PM
Michael said...: Short of the impeachment of Trump the Left hopes for a collapse of the economy. Only Trump in prison would make them happier than the DOW collapsing to Obama era levels. But, no. The economy is roaring. Unemployment is at ten year lows and slowly but surely the people out of the work force will be drawn back in by attractive wages, more jobs. This is not trumpeted in the news for the obvious reasons. Aside from writers (or most) of the Financial Times and the WSJ the "journalists" on the job are economic illiterates,

The theme of MAGA has been to lift the dispiriting negative view of business and to cheer lead, yes cheer lead, the economy. The bullshit artist Obama would never have considered doing such a bourgeois thing.; 12/9/17, 3:40 PM
Paul From Minneapolis said...: I think Kevin was quoting a long comment from another site. Quoting it without agreeing with it.; 12/9/17, 3:40 PM
Wince said...: "It's all psychological, to a large extent, and that's what creates greatness," said Trump."

vs.

"This is Armageddon."

I'm a gettin' sick of Pelosi.; 12/9/17, 3:42 PM
Anne in Rockwall, TX said...: It's all in the encryption key!; 12/9/17, 3:43 PM
Drago said...: The bottom line is there are any number of economic indicators that clearly and undeniably demonstrate a renewed vigor and confidence in the economy with companies making employment and capital investment decisions with a positive outlook.

Naturally LLR Chuck retreats to where he feels most comforted: the MSM polls.

Naturally.

Reasonable conclusions may be drawn.; 12/9/17, 3:46 PM
Michael said...: The quote by Kevin is obviously a fiction and there are a lot of similar made up sob stories on social media. Made to order for the Inga's of this world, the women (mainly but not only) who watch The View and believe those vacuous women to be sophisticated and double smart. The tell on the made up sob stories is that the authors cannot stop themselves with a single anecdote and have to go on to a series of horrors that are descending on people they know.; 12/9/17, 3:46 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Uh oh, here looks to be Inga's next multi-comment post. It appears that Donald Trump Jr. just got caught trying to hide stuff from Mueller!; 12/9/17, 3:47 PM
Michael said...: Yancey Ward
Another bombshell!!!!; 12/9/17, 3:48 PM
Kevin said...: “What precisely is it in the tax proposal that is the difference between the young woman going or not going to graduate school?”

He do you assume that person exists? Why do you assume these statements are grounded in any truth at all?

When Biden feels free to say the Republicans want to put black people “back in chains”, why would a random anti-Trump commenter feel the need to stick to the facts?

The point is to sow fear and anger in the electorate. Stories like this have been the way to do that since the first cave person drew a picture of everyone getting run over by a herd of animals due to the poor leadership of the recently-promoted tribal chief.; 12/9/17, 3:50 PM
Michael said...: What is particularly entertaining is to find that the residents of NY and the readers of the NYT are not really in favor of tax increases after all. LOL; 12/9/17, 3:50 PM
buwaya said...: Student loan interest deduction removed in tax bill.
You would have to be quite a high earner to feel it though, given the increase in personal exemptions. We are talking of the range 150-200K. Someones parents may feel it if they are rich enough.; 12/9/17, 3:51 PM
Comanche Voter said...: I don't want to go all George Patton and talk about "real Americans".

But I do have a lot of English friends--and have had them for a long time now with frequent visits to the UK. The typical American (at least as they see it) exudes confidence and has a can do attitude. If you were an Aussie (I've got Australian friends as well) you'd say that the basic American attitude is "We'll give her a go." [The redneck variant of that is prefaced by the words, "Hold my beer and watch this"--followed by a funeral.]

But the traditional essence of America has been a willingness to try--and the ability to shrug off failure and take another shot.

Pelosi and her ilk just do not understand that attitude. So when the President With The Orange Hair says that it's largely psychological he has a point.; 12/9/17, 3:52 PM
cubanbob said...: Chuck said...
When your favorables a as president are hovering around 35%-45%, without having had a major international crisis thrown at you, and yet you think everything is going great...

Yeah; it's "psychological."

Chuck a dog with fleas has a lot of fleas but still is one dog. Half the country effectively pays no income tax. Of the other half, a fair chunk of it lives off government directly or through policies that favor them. Yeah, I can see why the fleas aren't happy.; 12/9/17, 3:52 PM
rhhardin said...: There needs to be a redo of Winnie the Pooh with a female Eeyore in the workplace to complain about stuff.; 12/9/17, 3:54 PM
tcrosse said...: Optimism works better than Shame.; 12/9/17, 3:57 PM
buwaya said...: Many are also blaming the current (likely) California drought and wildfires on Trump, and some threatening personal lawsuits.; 12/9/17, 4:00 PM
Wince said...: buwaya said...
Student loan interest deduction removed in tax bill. You would have to be quite a high earner to feel it though, given the increase in personal exemptions. We are talking of the range 150-200K. Someones parents may feel it if they are rich enough.

I think you miss the point.

It's not enough that everyone situated horizontally on the income scale pays lower taxes than before.

The important thing is the one who saddles him or herself with student debt gets the break and other people don't.; 12/9/17, 4:03 PM
Robt C said...: @Hari:
The issue with grad school attendance is that currently grad student (Masters and PhD) who teach and/assist teaching often get their tuition waived in lieu or in addition to a small salary. That savings, which can be thousands, is currently not taxed as imputed income. The new law will change that, making the students liable for tax on money they never saw. I'm fine with it, but it's pretty easy to see how they would think it's a crock.; 12/9/17, 4:09 PM
Michael K said...: "Its not a 60's thing. "

NO, the 60s were "tune in turn on and drop out."

In the 60s, I was a medical student, an intern and a surgery resident. No time to do any of that.

I did like 60s music better than the 50s music.

A friend's mother divorced her husband and took her four daughters to a commune.

My friend ended up a devout Catholic and raised three great boys, no thanks to her mother.

Marrying a Marine fighter pilot helped.; 12/9/17, 4:10 PM
buwaya said...: EDH,

I get the cynical point (I like cynical points), but I doubt most who are taking on such debt understand it that way. Many just arent very good at financial analysis.

It does raise the question whether such a person should be going to graduate school, but whatever.

Someone who saddles himself with the debt will find it no more burdensome than before, unless he earns enough for it to matter, and at that level of income the loss of the tax benefit would be trivial.; 12/9/17, 4:11 PM
Paddy O said...: "Pelosi and her ilk just do not understand that attitude."

Pelosi and her ilk do understand that attitude. They've made millions in their chosen field of politics. What they also understand is that their millions are built on keeping other people from seeing this attitude, so they preach doom and limitation to others, while pursuing excess and power for themselves.; 12/9/17, 4:12 PM
tcrosse said...: The 60's were also Assassination, War, and Burning Cities.; 12/9/17, 4:14 PM
Gahrie said...: When your favorables a as president are hovering around 35%-45%, without having had a major international crisis thrown at you, and yet you think everything is going great...

What are the favorables for Congress and the MSM?; 12/9/17, 4:23 PM
Jim at said...: So, Inga, what is your take on the CNN story you were flapping about endlessly until CNN basically had to retract it? I noted you vanished the instant CNN corrected the key point of the entire story. What say you?

Shame on you for even asking.
Shame.; 12/9/17, 4:38 PM
Big Mike said...: America never stopped being great.

Yeah, it did. From January 2009 to January 2017. As an exercise for the reader, calculate the unemployment rate and the inflation rate from for the first ten months of 2016 (i.e., prior to Trump's election) using the same parameters used to calculate these during the Carter administration. Might be eye-opening.; 12/9/17, 4:52 PM
tcrosse said...: When your favorables a as president are hovering around 35%-45%, without having had a major international crisis thrown at you, and yet you think everything is going great...

Well, the market is up, unemployment is down, ISIS is on the run. Eppure si muove.; 12/9/17, 5:04 PM
Browndog said...: Attitude is everything.; 12/9/17, 5:07 PM
Drago said...: "Well, the market is up, unemployment is down, ISIS is on the run. Eppure si muove"

Careful. Those are the kind of reality descriptors that is likely to send our LLR friend over the edge into rumor-mongering about children.; 12/9/17, 5:09 PM
FullMoon said...: Kevin posted uplifting comment from an idiot:

“One of my husband's students is incredibly gifted. She graduated high school at 16 and is rocketing through college. She is going into science and is taking an internship this summer to NASA.

She just let us all know that, thanks to the new tax laws, she can no longer afford grad school. That “glorious Christmas present” has cut this girl's future right out from under her.

Another friend has diabetes, the fun kind with the needles. Has had since he was a kid. He loses his insurance if he moves home to take care of his mother, who is hospitalized right now. He will die in a week without his insulin and he no longer qualifies for our state health programs. Without his casino job’s health insurance, he can't afford his life saving medication.

Another friend has skin cancer on his chin. He had to pay for insurance under the ACA that he could never afford to use so it had to go unchecked and untreated. When he moved to Tennessee, he got a job that covered him so the cancer, which now takes up enough of his face that it will change the shape when he gets the surgery. He goes under the knife in January and now fears his treatment won't be available with the new health insurance and tax changes.

Another friend has dialysis twice a week. Because she's transgender (since the 1990's), her coverage is now in danger. She had to use crowdfunding to cover a $500 car repair in order to get to her treatments because she can't walk to the clinic and the GOP has cut the funding to the bus she uses, ending the program.

I have DOZENS of these stories, of people hurt by this President and his Congress. I haven't talked about the fact that INFANTS (less than 1 year old) have gun licenses now, or how my quadriplegic friend risks having his handicapped status and assitance removed (who the f*ck qualifies then?!) I have friends with 12 year old daughters who are rape victims but the child molester is still roaming free and the state has destroyed any chance of one of his victims getting an abortion.

Every day, another friend or family member becomes a surviving relative of a mass shooting perpetuated by a white Christian male shooter, but the President has brought back Merry Christmas!

Now this tax bill, which will raise my single income family tax burden beyond paying it, has passed. Thank god it protects the rich because in 2020, those will be the only ones alive.”
12/9/17, 3:22 PM

Don't know about you guys, but this ladies circle of friends and all their problems sure makes my life seem cheerful by comparison. What a joy to read.; 12/9/17, 5:09 PM
tcrosse said...: Don't know about you guys, but this ladies circle of friends and all their problems sure makes my life seem cheerful by comparison.

This woman (if she exists) sounds like big trouble to know, a regular Calamity Jane.; 12/9/17, 5:14 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/9/17, 5:20 PM
Krumhorn said...: Great speech!

-DeplorableKrumhorn; 12/9/17, 5:20 PM
Narayanan said...: Greek root of word is en-theos for enthusiasm.

Socialists use the term animal spirits; 12/9/17, 5:22 PM
n.n said...: We have diversity rackets to discriminate by "color of skin".

We have feminist witch hunts to lynch men and women, too.

We have redistributive change because the product of your labor is a central concern.

We have Obamacare because markets don't function with rackets and under regulatory excess.

We have political congruence ("=") to selective exclude politically or socially unfavorable classes.

We have selective-child because one-child was a moral failure, or something.

We have Planned Parenthood following closely in the Mengele's footsteps.

All in all, it's been progressive, or monotonic change. Only the semantics and euphemisms have changed.

Oh, and we have PRAVDA... a product of collusion between American leftists and Soviets of that era.; 12/9/17, 5:23 PM
Rabel said...: "The issue with grad school attendance is that currently grad student (Masters and PhD) who teach and/assist teaching often get their tuition waived in lieu or in addition to a small salary. That savings, which can be thousands, is currently not taxed as imputed income. The new law will change that, making the students liable for tax on money they never saw. I'm fine with it, but it's pretty easy to see how they would think it's a crock."

It's currently in the House version but not the Senate version. But it's much ado about almost nothing. The schools would simply have to restructure the tuition waivers as scholarships and reclassify the grad students as students rather than employees.

For example:

"Some universities would avoid the negative consequences of the plan. In an email to its graduate students on Monday, Cornell affirmed that the proposed repeal would not affect graduate students because the university counts tuition reduction as “qualified scholarships,” which are outlined in parts 117(a), (b) and (c) of the 2014 tax bill, sections untouched by the new plan.

“Cornell University does not rely on 117(d) for favorable tuition-related tax treatment of funded graduate students — who are considered students, not employees — at Cornell,” the email states. “While the stipend for graduate students may be taxable under the current tax code, the tuition scholarship is not, and would not be, affected by repeal of 117(d).”

Go Big Red.; 12/9/17, 5:26 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: A guy at Berkeley conducted a rather predictable experiment and the results were shown on Tucker Carlsons show earlier this week. He stood on campus waving an American flag and saying "America is great!" he was reviled and told that America sucks. then he stood around a while with an Isis flag and shouted "America sucks!" He got lots of praise from passers by.

"America sucks!" So say the students privileged enough to attend one of America's top universities. I'm sure he would get the same reaction at Harvard, at UW Madison, at UCLA,at Duke....; 12/9/17, 5:56 PM
Mark O said...: FDR is famous for "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."

As remarkable as the Beatles were, and I love them, one cannot underestimate the value of having a classical arranger imporve every song.; 12/9/17, 6:01 PM
readering said...: For years Trump was on the paid motivational speaker circuit. Trump U was the same idea. Althouse is easily seduced.; 12/9/17, 6:18 PM
Unknown said...: One is reminded of the Sylvia Plath - Ted Hughes relationship ( Sylvia was, I just found out this week, a remarkable poet whose obscure works are better than her famous ones - she describes so many details of this world in an unexpected way, and her more surprising insights would easily fit into almost any good novel I have read that was written in the last 100 years - you can find your own examples easily, but, if you would like to hear an example, today I read her comments on some poor swan swimming in a pond too small for it, at the wrong time of the year: the way she described that swan on that water was sheer f**king genius!!! ----- I read that particular poem in a bookstore, looking for a present....it is Christmas time soon, after all). And one is also reminded, in these youthful days of the contentious internet, of the critics in the gallery (by the way, how is it that the Muppets never pulled off a lastingly beloved Christmas special - those two scrooges in the Balcony could have played a role to break one's heart - imagine them young and hopeful, instead of always grousing, aged late-night-host like, (Letterman-like or Keillor-like, for those who remember) about the performance) ( --- perhaps, in the Christmas special I envision them starring in, they are no longer the old crabby and comically vengeful-hearted critics that we know them as, but they are more like the young Donald, who must have dreamed, back in the day, of one day having, some far-off day when he would be 60 or more, someone like Melania in his life (cue the White House Christmas music) .....): well, the critics in the gallery can, if they want, try to help out in a kind-hearted way too.; 12/9/17, 6:26 PM
Michael K said...: "For years Trump was on the paid motivational speaker circuit. Trump U was the same idea. Althouse is easily seduced."

So, motivational speakers are all wrong about what they say ?

I think you just don't like anybody who is happy and satisfied with life.

The left has that attitude pretty well to itself.; 12/9/17, 6:35 PM
Unknown said...: Except, of course, that Hughes, extrapolating from the Plath world to this world, would be more of a Keillor or a Letterman, or a more critical version of those unpleasant old muppets in that unkind cold balcony. Going the other direction, and extrapolating to a better world, nobody would ever have an unkind spouse. Philippians, chapter one, is a good place to go for the explanation.; 12/9/17, 6:36 PM
Unknown said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/9/17, 6:39 PM
Unknown said...: There is an older gentleman at the bar; small, frail, but his eyes still have light.

Over the last several years life has thrown him a lot of brushback pitches. His retirement savings were ruined in identity theft; a death in the family brought him money. He has had a heart attack, and two rounds of cancer: small, frail, but still going strong, considering.

He attributes it to keeping a positive attitude. Which seems a pretty good reason to keep a positive attitude. He is easy with a laugh. A kind word. And loves his Seattle Mariners.

A few people at the bar who do not naturally come by a positive attitude have said it is easy to have a positive attitude after you survive those things. Because: you survived.

I will not argue against the idea that surviving adversity might indeed cause a positive attitude. But I will also not argue against the idea that a positive attitude might help someone surmount adversity. I think I got the syntax there lined up right; if not, I think you know what I am trying to say.

It is, of course, the water glass that is half-empty or half-full. But perhaps more apt is the chicken or the egg: the chicken has reason to be pessimistic, but it still lays eggs. Yeah: I'm not sure if that sentence actually captures what I am trying to say with it, either: again, I hopefully think you know what I am trying to say.

I will say with more clarity that his being a Mariners fan is a sure sign of keeping a positive attitude, despite all sporting evidence to the contrary. But it is context, of course: you can be a bad baseball team, or you can be the baseball team on the plane that crashes into the mountain. In the Andes. And you have to resort to cannibalism to survive.

I know: those were soccer players. But I think soccer players are more instinctively prone to cannibalism than the athletes of other sports. I know, I know: it is only a theory. But the facts that exist do not disprove it.

- james james; 12/9/17, 6:45 PM
Jersey Fled said...: Maybe the mythical genius in Kevin's post should go to one of those elite universities with billion dollar endowments that don't really need to charge tuition for the next 100 years. I'm sure they could find a way to slip her a few bucks.

Incidentally, I paid my own way through graduate school while working a full time job and serving in the Army Reserve. With no student loans. And paying income tax on every dollar I made.

I guess I'm just not as smart as her.; 12/9/17, 6:45 PM
buwaya said...: Julius Caesar would have killed on the motivational speaker circuit. According to Cicero, who would know.

Caesars pals had Cicero killed, however.; 12/9/17, 7:04 PM
Kevin said...: Don't know about you guys, but this ladies circle of friends and all their problems sure makes my life seem cheerful by comparison.

"I have a friend who...", is the personal equivalent of the media's "unnamed sources".

No one can claim to credibly know the bad effects of every law that's passed, so one only need have a diverse group of friends (students, parents, the disabled, etc.) who can relate to them in first-hand terms what's so terrible about what's happening around us. In their minds, it may be a fake friend, but it accurately describes what they have been told is happening to people like that.

Even better, if asked the specifics one can then speculate but not really know the exact circumstances of their "friends". They can claim, it's not so much their friend per se, but a friend of a close friend who relayed the offending information.

As a bonus, this is how they know without a shadow of a doubt that Trump colluded with the Russians and is going to be impeached. They don't know it-know it, but those around them claim credible friends who are certain this is true.

That these same "friends" said Trump could never be elected has long since been forgotten.; 12/9/17, 7:31 PM
chuck said...: @Kevin Stories are stories. I wonder how many of those story tellers actually researched the results for themselves, and how many are just the victims of Democrat political propaganda. Given that actual events have yet to pass and research is hard, my bet is on propaganda. At the rate Democrats are going, they are all going to die due to self induced stress.; 12/9/17, 7:55 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: At the rate Democrats are going, they are all going to die due to self induced stress.

Like a rodent in a glue trap.; 12/9/17, 8:31 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: All this psychobabble, er, I mean psychology is well and good, but on a concrete level Trump needs to protect the GOP majority in the House. If the Dems win the House, they'll impeach his ass on whatever bogus grounds they can muster just to hamstring him in 2020.

Get that tax bill passed before Xmas!; 12/9/17, 8:46 PM
wild chicken said...: Student loan interest is not an itemized deduction! It's an adjustment like the tIRA deduction. The standard deduction doesn't affect that.

Exemptions are going away. THAT will leave a mark, if you have kids or a brother in law sleeping on your couch.

People don't know jack about the taxes they pay. I don't care. It works for me.; 12/9/17, 8:53 PM
buwaya said...: Regardless of which form you report it on, student loan interest is deducted off taxable income, reducing the tax due, and it is proposed to remove it in the current versions of the tax bills.

The increase in the standard deduction compensates for the removal of various deductions (whether the itemized sort or not). The net effect is the net effect, regardless of what each bit is called.

The quibble above is just that.; 12/9/17, 9:38 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Paddy O said..

Pelosi and her ilk do understand that attitude. They've made millions in their chosen field of politics. What they also understand is that their millions are built on keeping other people from seeing this attitude, so they preach doom and limitation to others, while pursuing excess and power for themselves.

worth a repeat; 12/9/17, 9:50 PM
Sebastian said...: "reclassify the grad students as students rather than employees." Ha! No grad student unions then. If they want to be treated as employees, they'll have to pay higher taxes.; 12/9/17, 10:31 PM
Mountain Maven said...: Trump is right. It's One of the true things I learned as an economics major 40+ years ago.; 12/9/17, 11:36 PM
Scott said...: "And all you have to do is think beautiful, wonderful thoughts...and you can fly!"
--Peter Pan; 12/10/17, 12:16 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Crickets, as expected, from Inga.; 12/10/17, 12:29 AM
rcommal said...: Althouse: I thank you for affixing the "emotional politics" tag to this post.; 12/10/17, 12:44 AM
Kevin said...: "And all you have to do is think beautiful, wonderful thoughts...and you can fly!"
--Peter Pan

How else is the airplane or invented without first having wonderful, beautiful thoughts?

Because without them, you're forever stuck on the ground.; 12/10/17, 3:36 AM
Darrell said...: When your favorables a as president are hovering around 35%-45%

Liars--with fake polls--can go fuck themselves. With that glorious backhoe of truth.

Great speech. Great President.; 12/10/17, 4:34 AM
Scott Gustafson said...: Both the Consumer Confidence and Consumer Sentiment surveys spiked up right after the election. They remain at high levels. Economists and Business folks follow them because they are a good indicator of where the economy is headed.

By those measures, Trump is doing extremely well.; 12/10/17, 5:55 AM
todd galle said...: Mark O
I get irritated every time I see FDR credited with the 'fear' quote. He was just paraphrasing Francis Bacon, who to be fair, probably stole it from a Greek or Roman source I am not familiar with.; 12/10/17, 12:32 PM