The importance of D.O.G.E.

Donald Trump has asked Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead what is basically an audit of the entire US Federal Government.  There is much consternation about this in the expected circles - no doubt due in part of the proclivity of Musk and Ramaswamy to stir the pot and troll their opponents.

I mean, the Department of Government Efficiency?  D.O.G.E.?  Srlsy?

 Fun and games aside, this is a really important project.  It's not just that Elon says you can reduce the Federal budget by $2T/year - nice though that would be.  Instead, it circles back to something that Trump has been talking about for years.  Remember him asking why we can't get a growth rate of 4%?

I wrote this a long time ago, and updated it 6 years ago for the age of Donald Trump.  I think that it's even more important today, with D.O.G.E. explicitly intended to address the issues I called out.

(last ported 2 January 2018)

Why Donald Trump will transform America

Donald Trump understands something that nobody else knows, and he is doing something about it.  If he accomplishes what he is setting out to do, it will completely change America.  To understand what this is, we need to look at what's changed in the past few decades, and before.

Something unprecedented happened during the eighteenth century, something that is a sharp dividing line between the modern world and what came before. The Industrial Revolution transformed first Britain, then Europe and the United States, and then the world.

It started with cloth making, where initially water power drove a set of rapidly evolving machine types that made cloth literally thousands of times easier to make. Prices plummeted, and consumption rose by a factor of 12 between 1770 and 1800. People's lives began to change, as now underwear was affordable to more than just the wealthy.

Then came steam and iron. James Watt invented the first really successful steam engine, but it was only unleashed when Henry Cort approached him with a "grand secret". Up until then, Iron was frightfully expensive, because manufacturing basically had to heat the molten ore until the slag floated off. Cort had figured out how to use Watt's engines to drive huge hammers to beat the slag out of the metal. He could make fifteen tons of wrought iron in twelve hours. Iron production soared by a factor of 150 between 1740 and 1852. The price of iron plummeted, to the point where it entirely changed architecture.

Something was in the air - creativity had been unleashed, and continued in the nineteenth century, infecting industry after industry: Bessemer and Steel, Tennant and industrial chemicals (chemicals manufactured in ton weights, like chlorine bleach), railroads, electricity, internal combustion, aviation, the communications revolution of telegraphy-radio-television-Internet.

 

What was striking about this was that each industry would exhibit precisely the same growth characteristics. The "S" curve described a slowish initial takeoff, an exponentially rising growth period, and then a slow tailing off. All of these industries followed it in turn: cotton, iron, steel, railroads. What was key to the miracle that occurred between 1720 and 1990 was that as one reached the top of the curve and began to falter, a new industry emerged to drive things forward. Income per capita went from around $450 in what would become the United States (in 1700) to $18,300 in 1989.

In many ways, this seems to be spinning down. More and more industries seem to be in the top flat part of the curve. Fewer new industries are emerging with robust growth to pick up the slack. People look towards the future and do not see a doubling of real per capita national income.

We are told that the people are ignorant, and aren't smart enough to know what they're talking about. We're told this by an Educated Class with complex computer models of the financial system. We're asked, what do the hoi poloi know of the grand sweep of the world economic system?

I think that the feeling of dread is well justified, by a good view of the forest rather than the trees. And after all, the financial models didn't predict the 2008 collapse or the stagnation that followed, so a little more humility might be called for. But in general, the critique is correct - people don't know what's causing this, just that they're unhappy. They see a change, which makes them unhappy. They don't know the cause.

Immodestly, I would like to say that I think that I do. It's related to the size of government, but the usual arguments over which side of the Laffer Curve we're on, or what the optimal rate of marginal taxes are pretty much beside the point. Something is slowing the system down, and it's not the 35% that the Fed.Gov takes off the top (OK, a little, but that's a second order effect).

Let's think about fast and slow. The Empire State Building was built in a little over 15 months. The World Trade Center (Tower 1) took 52 months, and that was in 1970. Most recently, One World Trade Center took 7 years to complete.  We're slowing down; we're not as good at what we used to do.

The reason for this is regulation (and its bastard child, litigation). That's the problem. We have buildings full of people that make us stop what we're doing, fill out forms in triplicate, and then wait months or years before we are allowed to pick up where we stopped. Think for a minute what this does. It pushes some of the middle of the S-Curve into the flat part, reducing the overall value of the industry, as resources get sidelined instead of being engaged in production. More damagingly, it pushes the next S-Curve to the right, increasing the time that it takes to bring a new industry online. Most damagingly of all, it possibly completely eliminates some S-Curves from appearing at all, because the risk is too high to attract investors.

It's not the tax rate, it's the regulation rate that's making the economy run down. Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in great haste after Enron's collapse, has all but destroyed the high tech IPO market. Think of that as S-Curves that never came into existence.  The Silicon Graybeard posted about this 7 years ago:

Although the legislators and regulators never consider this, every regulation consumes some amount of time and money to comply with.  The new Finance Reform bill has been estimated to required the development of 250-300 new regulations.  Every regulation slows down, hinders and costs every honest business real money.  Despite the widespread talk of corrupt CEOs and general lack of corporate ethics, I've been working in the manufacturing industry since the mid 1970s, and every company has had an active, if not aggressive, ethics compliance program with requirements for training and seminars every year.  There are exceptions but most companies do their best to be honest and law-abiding.  Government seems to think it's mere coincidence that countries with lower tax rates and lower regulation attract business, and they demonize companies for moving to countries where the environment is better.  

As SiGraybeard points out, Big Business excels at managing the top end of the S-Curve, and they have big offices capable of dealing with the paperwork. Big Business doesn't mind regulation - in fact, if you believe (as I do) that Regulatory Capture is the equilibrium state of any government agency, Big Business uses regulation to hobble small but dangerous competitors. They get the Fed.Gov to do their dirty work, while they extract maximum value from the end phase of their old products. We pay for that in higher prices and lack of better alternatives.

Scale this up to cover the entire economy, as the government has tripled in the post war period, and it becomes obvious why we can't build skyscrapers any more. They don't seem to have trouble with this in Dubai - it's us that keeps us from doing it.

Regulation stifles innovation - quick, name the last revolutionary program that came out of the Department of Education. That effectively transfers wealth from future generations (our children and grandchildren, who will have lower standards of living). The recipients of that transfer are government employees - those folks that read and file your application (in triplicate) and the Big Business that captures the regulatory agency.

We have made so many layers of cruft - allowed so many barnacles to grow on the bottom of the ship - that we're noticeably slowing down. People feel it. People are nervous, because they think it's going to get worse. And while the recent Congresses and the Obama Administration poured gasoline on that flame with Health Care "Reform" (written by Big Pharma, the Insurance Companies, and the AMA), I'd like to point out that the Republicans ran Congress and the White House when Sarbanes-Oxley passed.

One way to look at things is that it's been a good long 300 year run. Too bad it's over, nothing lasts forever. Get used to stasis, with fewer and smaller S-Curves, and get used to declining living standards as Big Business and a bloated government take ever more from National Income, immizerating the masses.

A different way to look at things is government regulation didn't give people affordable underwear, or bleach to keep them clean. Get out of our way, and we'll do it again. The tax rates are annoying, but the buildings full of fussy balls-and-chains telling us that we'll hear back from them in 3 to 6 months are infuriating.

This is what Donald Trump knows.  He knows that there are winners in this game - the Ivy League, the Non-Governmental Organizations, "Big Green" (The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace).  Trump knows that they all hate him, and are engaged in a scorched earth campaign to destroy him. He also knows that the losers in this game are the working classes, who vote for him.  

So what do you think is his motivation?  Is it to change governance to unleash economic growth, rewarding his supporters and humiliating his opponents?  Or is it to fade quietly into the background, sitting in the corner and thinking about his many failings?  To ask the question is to answer it.

This is the big thing that Trump knows that nobody else does.  It's a big idea, which seems to be how he likes to think.  It's transformative.  So far, he has quashed nearly 2000 regulations in his first year, and seems only to be getting started.  And all the geniuses who hate him are so focused on his tweets that they have no idea what's hitting them.

Note: This post is based on one I did 7 years ago.  It's taken this long for a politician to come on the scene who looks like he wants to do something about it.

UPDATE 2 January 2018 22:17: Even the New York Times recognizes this in an (inadvertently) hilarious story.  It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at their attempts to spin soaring business confidence due to reduced regulation under Trump.  Almost every person quoted is a former Democratic administration aparachick, and there are precisely no quotes from business leaders who think that reduced regulation helps business expansion, hiring, and wage increases.  And there's this, of course:

There is little historical evidence tying regulation levels to growth. Regulatory proponents say, in fact, that those rules can have positive economic effects in the long run, saving companies from violations that could cost them both financially and reputationally. Cost-benefit analyses generally do not look just at the impact of a regulation on a particular business’s bottom line in the coming months, but at the broader impact on consumers, the environment, public health and other factors that can show up over years or decades.

Oooooooh kaaaaaaay.  [rolls eyes]

A Modest Proposal on how the Trump Administration can solve the Global Warming problem

All they have to do is forbid the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from publishing temperature data that has been changed from the original value recorded on the date of recording.

That's it.  Overnight, five sixths of the reported warming in the US over the twentieth century will simply disappear.

Of course, the Usual Suspects will scream and holler about this, but that will simply focus more attention on the subject.  Quite frankly, the public will very likely be shocked when they find out that scientists simply change the data after it was recorded.  There will be a collapse of trust in the climate scientists.  Quite frankly, that collapse of trust will have been earned many times over.

What's Donald Trump's carry piece?

Lawrence has the details.

The Democrats spent the last 4 years chasing the Great Orange Whale

I've been a bit startled by the unhinged reaction by so many Democrats to Trump's rather resounding victory.  Probably I shouldn't be - after all the lesson of Facebook (and most social media) proves the old adage that it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than it is to open it and remove all doubt.

Sure, I've been wrong all the time in the past (click on the tag for polls - often wrong but at least I showed my work).  But when things didn't go my way it was a shrug and get on to what's next.  That's not what we see at all.

Sure, the Democrats never really talked much about issues that most people care about - are you better off than you were four years ago, that sort of thing.  Instead, for the last four years it's been OrangeManBad, and nothing but OrangeManBad.  Now they are standing amidst the destruction of their hopes as the Great Orange Whale swims off to the White House.

And it clicked about why they are losing their minds.  Herman Melville wrote about this 175 years ago, and Ricardo Montalban immortalized the greatest lines from the book.

Maybe it's time to reread that novel, and an exercise in understanding the broken political philosophy of the Democrats.  But then again, I don't think that *I* need to reread it.

They do.

Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.

It is absurd that a man should rule over others, who cannot rule himself.

- Latin proverb

Quote of the Day

It's been oddly quiet after the election - no cities burning, that sort of thing.  And this is interesting:

Only anecdotal but my girlfriend says her lefty keyboard warrior friends have been oddly silent on Facebook since Tuesday. This is the way.

Very oddly quiet for a bunch of folks who wouldn't shut up about how Trump was a fascist and democracy would be dead if he won.   Very oddly quiet.

22/24 and 45/47

Only two Presidents have been elected to non-consecutive terms.  The first was Grover Cleveland who served as 22nd (in 1884) and 24th (in 1892) Presidential terms (his two terms interrupted by Benjamin Harrison in 1888 even though Cleveland won the popular vote).  Long time readers will know that Cleveland is very much a Friend of the Blog, being listed as one of the top US Presidents since forever.

The second, of course, is Donald Trump - Presidential terms 45 and (now) 47.  We will see how history rates his two terms; 45 was pretty successful but with a lot of important stuff left undone.  His great Presidential flaw was the people he appointed do implement his policies where they often submarined him.

We will see how much he learned from that.  Glen Reynolds posts some interesting ideas (you should absolutely read the whole thing; it's certain that Trump's people have):

Last time around, Trump squandered his momentum.  He passed the tax bill that the establishment GOP wanted, after which they didn’t need anything from him and turned to obstructing him.  Here’s something I wrote in 2017:

Like airplanes on a runway.  Trump’s approach this time around should be what he should have done last time:  Shock and awe.  Shut down departments, fire bureaucrats, exercise emergency powers, all so fast that the establishment’s responses are saturated.  Javier Millei’s whirlwind assault in Argentina should be the model, sometimes in specifics but also in general approach.  Bureaucrats move slowly; Trump should move fast.

 

Elon Musk says he can cut $2 trillion easily; do it.  Also, set bureaucrats competing with each other for what funds remain.  Divide and conquer.

Bold added by me, because it's right in line with something I posted in the last week or so:

The interesting question here is how you scale this throughout all the Federal Agencies.  I think the answer is to use business-as-usual: different offices play office politics against each other to get budget and headcount.  That's how the game is played.  So set up an incentive structure for Office A to rat our Office B's inefficiencies and duplications to save their own skins.  I expect that this would pay big dividends.

So we shall see what we shall see.  The results from last night were not the landslide I was sort of expecting (although it was a solid win).  I expect there was some cheating but nothing like what we saw in 2020 - because as I've been saying, party apparatchiks saw the same Preference Cascade forming and a lot fewer were willing to risk jail to cheat for a loser.

But like Donald Trump, the USA dodged a bullet last night.

The Climate Change election

No, it's not because Harris is mad as a hatter on the Green New Deal or because Trump will kill all of this off - although both are entirely correct.  No, this is thinking about the polling which shows the race to be neck and neck even though it is anything but.

Long time readers know how I bang on and on about the hideous data problems in today's Climate Science.  I've been doing this for fifteen years - this post may not be the earliest where I delved into the problems in the climate databases, but it's one of the earliest.  How To Create A Consensus On Global Warming:

We keep hearing people tell us that there is a "consensus" that the planet is warming, because the "science is settled". Longtime readers know my feelings on the latter, so there's no need to rehash old arguments. Instead, I'd like to look at how one might go about manufacturing a consensus. It's actually not hard.

Step 1: Change the data

[lots of details on data manipulation and shenanigans removed]

We see this in high fidelity in the polls for this election.  There are a million ways to manipulate the polls to give you the results you want, such as estimates of Republican vs. Democrat turnout.  In essence, I'm not objecting so much to the results of the polls, but rather to the assumptions that go into the sausage-making machine.  Change the assumptions, change the output.

But my old post also highlights a key issue in play on today's polls:

Step 2. Fund only scientific research that confirms warming.

Who is paying for these polls, and what are their agendas?  Quite frankly, we don't know either of these but the polls are acting in very close agreement.  You could look at that as a measure of accuracy, or you could look at that as an outcome of the agendas - such as shaping public opinion and expectations.

Now I may just be nasty and suspicious but there is a way that we can test whether my suspicions hold water.  It's the same thing we can do with Climate Science, to validate what we hear from the establishment scientists.  All we have to do is ask a simple question: if the data are so settled, do we see lots of corroborating evidence or do we see a lot of evidence contradicting the establishment view?

In both cases, we see a lot of evidence contradicting the official narrative.

For example, for Global Warming, we see all sots of non-warming things:

• "Global Warming" seems to be causing a whole lot of blizzards.
• Record temperatures show the hottest year in US history was almost 90 years ago.
• We're told it's the HOTTEST YEAR EVER!!!11!!eleventy!!! but we still see record snow and cold.

You would think that if the science really were so settled that evidence for Global Warming would be falling off the trees.  It's not.

And so with evidence for a "neck and neck election".  If it were so settled - after all, essentially all polls say exactly that - then why all the evidence that says it's not?

• Donald Trump campaigns for Arab-American vote in Detroit
• LA Times, Washington Post, Gannet refuse to endorse Harris
• All the betting sites have Trump not just ahead, but way ahead.
• Even the crooked polls have Harris neck-and-neck, where both Hillary and Biden were up by 5 or 6
• She is the incumbent but only 28% of Americans think the country is on the right track
• Barack Obama is trying to shame Black men to vote for Harris.  And it's not working.

If it were a neck and neck race, you'd see a bunch of these on Harris' side, too.  You don't.

Remember, we're in the middle of a preference cascade.  Don't pay any attention to the polls which are trying to gaslight you.  Pay attention to what you see with your own eyes.  And as to the "margin of cheat" you can believe that a bunch of Democrat operatives are doing exactly that right now, and wondering if they want to risk 10 years in Club Fed to try to push a loser across the finish line.  A bunch of them will take a hard pass on that.

Is there an Extinction Level Event coming for the Deep State?

An Extinction Level Event is when something - we typically don't really understand what - causes a mass die-off, with 60% or more of species disappearing. The most famous of these was the asteroid that finished off the dinosaurs (if you believe that; I'm skeptical that the answer to their demise is so neat and tidy).

Well Donald Trump said he's going to appoint Elon Musk to lead a "Government Efficiency Commission":

Former President Donald Trump says that if reelected, he’ll create a government efficiency task force — and that Elon Musk has already agreed to lead it. During a speech in New York on Thursday, Trump said the new efficiency commission would conduct a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make recommendations for “drastic reforms.”

There's no need to look at Tesla's 50% Electric Vehicle market share, or compare SpaceX's launch rate to, well, the rest of the world combined.  Most relevant to this discussion is how Elon cut 80% of Twitter's headcount, turning the company around.

Even though reports have Government employees cutting back expenditures in anticipation of potential cuts, lots of folks are skeptical that this can be done at all.

I'm not one of the skeptics, because I've seen this my very own self, in my career at Three Letter Intelligence Agency.  It was the mid-1980s and I was a wet-behind-the-ears Electronics Engineer in the COMSEC R&D organization.  Their recent triumph was the introduction of the STU-III secure telephone.

The STU-III was a technological marvel, providing high level (Type 1) encryption in a telephony device that, well, worked like a telephone.  And it was delivered 2 years early because of a manager who might be described as the 1980s COMSEC version of Elon Musk.

Walt Deeley was a very senior Intelligence Manager.  He is listed on the NSA's web site:

As Deputy Director of Communications Security in the early 1980s, Mr. Deeley pushed the development and deployment of the STU-III secure telephone, which has been called the most significant improvement to the security of government voice communications in fifty years. He perceived the need for a new approach, and deployed an affordable and effective telephone security system within two years.

...


Walter Deeley was known as a strong-willed manager who pushed his subordinates hard to get results. While a tough taskmaster, the technical advances and mission achievements he led made the United States more secure.

Bold added by me.  Let me give some additional color around that.  He was a legend in the COMSEC R&D organization.  His reputation was equal parts admiration and fear - it was almost like he who must not be named.  People remembered the careers he derailed in his quest for an encrypting telephone.

One story told to me by an old hand was how Deeley had come into the office one Saturday to see how the program was working.  He called down to the program office, and the phone rang and rang and rang.  Finally one guy who happened to be in the office on the weekend answered.  Deeley asked for the Program Manager.  When told that the PM wasn't in because it was a Saturday, Deeley told the guy who was there that he was the new PM and to see him first thing on Monday.  It was very Elon-Must-at-Twitter.

True story - at least I believed it was.  And I for sure wasn't the only one there who did.

So to those who say you can't change how the Government works, color me skeptical.  I'm skeptical because I've actually seen it change (well, heard from people who did).

The interesting question here is how you scale this throughout all the Federal Agencies.  I think the answer is to use business-as-usual: different offices play office politics against each other to get budget and headcount.  That's how the game is played.  So set up an incentive structure for Office A to rat our Office B's inefficiencies and duplications to save their own skins.  I expect that this would pay big dividends.

It's sort of like setting one type of dinosaur against another, in a battle to the death.

UPDATE 28 OCTOBER 2024 14:51: Elon says they can reduce the Federal budget by $2 Trillion.

This is what a Preference Cascade looks like

Three months ago I wrote about how Joe Biden was on the receiving end of a Preference Cascade:

A Preference Cascade is when a large portion of the population begins to realize - despite relentless government and/or media propaganda - that a lot of other folks think like they do and that the propaganda is, well propaganda. This is almost always catastrophic for The Powers That Be, because Preference Cascades tend to accelerate. As this progresses, formerly reliable underlings begin to think that TPTB are going to lose, and start to refuse to stick their necks out to protect the current order.

It's one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win - and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner. It's quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.

At the extreme, the security services join the preference cascade. They smell an emerging winner and want to be on side when that happens. At this point, things get pretty grim for TPTB.

And so it turned out to be, with a Palace Coup that forced Slow Joe from the race and handed the nomination to Kamala Harris.  She rode a carefully orchestrated media campaign to some level of acceptance for a while, but the last couple of weeks have been a disaster for her, and the next two look to be worse.

It's a Preference Cascade in action, with each day adding new evidence to the fact that the country is in the process of rejecting her.  Consider:

Via Lawrence, Trump is on track to take every battleground state.  Lawrence also discusses Harris' disastrous Fox News interview and how 60 Minutes had to (deceptively) edit her interview with them.  It's hard to come to a conclusion other than that she's a dope, and the country seems to be coming to that conclusion.  The average of the polls show Trump winning each of these:

All she knows is to play the race and gender card.  It isn't working at all.  Obama even came out lecturing Black men on how they were all misogynistic or something - and he got scorched for his trouble.  Even The View disagreed with Obama on this.

Blogger Ann Althouse looks at the cries of misogyny from the New York Times and doesn't buy it:

If Kamala Harris were a man, she would not have been chosen for Joe Biden's Vice President, and if she were not Vice President, she would not have been the one that the nomination that was stolen from him got handed to. She wouldn't be anywhere near the presidency.

Harris knows this and her people know this. The finger pointing in the campaign has begun.  Democratic Senators are campaigning on their support for Trump.

Everything is breaking Trump's way as the majority of the undecided voters decide that she's a Dimwit.  This is a Preference Cascade in action - despite the media gaslighting, despite Google and Facebook pushing Harris and shadow banning Trump, despite deceptively edited TV interviews, people are deciding that their gut feeling is the same as millions of other people's.  They're realizing that they're not alone - and in fact are in the obvious majority - and are now no longer afraid to say this.

And potential political allies are slowly moving away from her.  If we can see high profile ones like Senators, there are a whole lot more in the party doing it too.  The number of Democrats who will put their necks on the chopping blocks is dropping like a rock.

My sense is that the whole thing is over, and this will be a landslide as the country shows that you can't beat something with nothing.  Sure there will be a cheat, but it won't be as big or as blatant as in 2020 because the people you need to pull that off are already second guessing their support for her.  How many will be willing to go to jail to cheat for someone that literally nobody has ever voted for?  Each day, that list gets shorter.

So what I'd like to know is ...

How did the would-be assassin know where and when to find Donald Trump?  Was he just lucky like Gavrilo Princip?  Or was he "lucky" like Thomas Matthew Crooks?

Why the Democrats can't put Humpty-Dumpty back together

Well, they can't in time for the election, anyway.  There's an old saying in politics that "personnel is policy" which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job.  It's a reflection that politics is about coalitions - building them and maintaining them.  The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top.  If they're not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.

This was actually Trump's biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition.  In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.

That's exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can't put Humpty-Dumpty back together.  Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won't know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren't his coalitions.  They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.

It takes time to forge a governing coalition - just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid.  Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members.  When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results.  Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.

Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his.  This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such - featherbedding is the name of this game.  But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they're better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.

Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions.  Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.

Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party.  It won't happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.

The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to "fortify" the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans.  Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them?  Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) - leading to various party elders behind bars.  That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they've taken out some of the competition.

Like I said, these people would have to be fools to trust very many people, and an election cheating scheme requires a lot of people to pull off.  When everyone is on-side you get the 2020 election.  When lots of people are very much not on-side you get, well, the Italian government which has had something like 60 Prime Ministers in 80 years.

The best analogy I can think of is the scene from The Godfather where all the families get together to divide things up.  Nobody trusts anybody.  That's where the Democrats are right now.

I repeat: you can't put a coalition together overnight - heck, it's taken almost a decade for Donald Trump to put together a serious coalition and a lot of his party still hates him.  I think that the Democrats will come more apart before they start to come together as the various factions start putting out mob hit style rumor whispers about their Democratic competitors.  We will hear a lot about this in the next few weeks.

And this is why the only choice at all for them to to fall in behind Kamala and hope for the best in the down ticket races.  But remember, while Kamala might have inherited Slow Joe's campaign cash, she was never really part of this coalition.  It's not loyal to her at all.  It may be that she's been so ineffective in office because Joe's coalition kept sabotaging her.  She has to build a coalition, and right quick.  The cash will help her there but coalition building takes time.

She doesn't have that.  What she does have is a whole boatload of enemies in the Democratic party.  Some of these think that their best bet to get to the top of the greasy pole is for her not to get there.  They'd rather have Trump in the Oval Office because they will have 4 years to build a coalition.  If Kamala is there, things are a lot trickier for them.

I almost feel sorry for the Democrats in general and Kamala in particular.  Almost.  It's ironic that all their short term tactical maneuvering has led them to this very spot.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of Mob Bosses.

The preference cascade has begun

A Preference Cascade is when a large portion of the population begins to realize - despite relentless government and/or media propaganda - that a lot of other folks think like they do and that the propaganda is, well propaganda.  This is almost always catastrophic for The Powers That Be, because Preference Cascades tend to accelerate.  As this progresses, formerly reliable underlings begin to think that TPTB are going to lose, and start to refuse to stick their necks out to protect the current order.

It's one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win - and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner.  It's quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.

At the extreme, the security services join the preference cascade.  They smell an emerging winner and want to be on side when that happens.  At this point, things get pretty grim for TPTB.

I think we're at that stage now - well, not the up against the wall shooting stage - but a cascading loss of confidence and loyalty in the Democratic Party itself for Joe Biden.  This will shrink the Margin of Cheat except in the most blue of blue states, and given that it looks like New York and New Jersey may be in play, there may not really be a lot of blue left.

In other words, everyone is starting to realize that the propaganda was just that - propaganda.

Add in the drop in contributions to the Democratic Party (the preference cascade is hitting the donor class, who are realizing that this "investment" may not have a return, and hedge their bets by contributing to Trump).

Now add in the media, who start to see that they are better off trying to help the Democratic Party, rather than mean old Joe Biden.

The question is not whether Trump will win, but whether the Preference Cascade will give him coattails, and how long they will be.

My guess is that the Preference Cascade is in full swing in the Secret Service, as competent and dedicated agents there start to wonder when (not if) to throw their corrupt bosses under the bus.  There's a lot coming out about this Charlie Foxtrot in the SS, so that suggests that the lack of loyalty to Joe Biden is advancing nicely there.

Once the Preference Cascade begins, TPTB have precious few tools to counter it.  For example, cracking down on leaking from within the Secret Service will do nothing but convince the undecided there that TPTB are untrustworthy and have to go.

Which will make Donald Trump only the second President to serve non-consecutive terms.

Endorsed

BREAKING: Donald Trump calls for Robert F. Kennedy Jr to receive Secret Service pic.twitter.com/vRvxTzghvX

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) July 15, 2024

 

Well, duh. Kind of makes you wonder why they haven't so far.

Richard Strauss - Elektra

So they tried to assassinate Donald Trump.  The question is whether they will try again.  The next question will be what will be the reaction if they succeed.

It's that second question that made me think of Strauss and his ferocious opera Elektra.  That girl had family issues: Her father was Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks against Troy.  He sacrificed her sister to the Gods to gain favorable winds for the invasion fleet.  Her mother Klytemnestra murdered her father in revenge.  Her brother Orest kills their mother in revenge.  Mad with fury, Elektra dances in the blood of the guilty.

Quite a story.  The Nazis quite admired it, the necessity of bloodletting to purify the family.  Yesterday's events made me think on what might befall should they succeed in their manic desires to stop Trump by any means necessary.

May God save this Honorable Republic.

Even Hitler knows that Joe Biden is done

This is pretty well done, with Hitler watching the debate.

I like the cut of her (possibly Vice-Presidential) jib

Tucker Carlson interviews Tulsi Gabbard.  She is seemingly under consideration by Donald Trump for potential Vice President.  Clearly he hates women.  Or something.

In particular, if you are worried that she is a typical Hawaiian liberal Democrat, you should skip t0 45:00 or so.  Or 55:00.  but you should really listen to the whole darn thing.

No. this is not (yet) a Borebatch ensorsement for Tulsi Gabbard for Donald Trump's Vice President.  But her journey is a lot like mine, and she is very, very impressive (and very, very not a Mike Pence or Kamalal Harris way).

Keep an eye on Tulsi Gabbard.  Just sayin'.

In which I (kind of) disagree with Divemedic

Divemedic posts a complaint about squishy RINOs.  I actually don't have any disagreement on this.

Where my opinion diverges from his is that the old "left" vs. "right" paradigm is kind of ending.  I haven't seen a good name for hte new emerging paradigm, so let's just call it "populists" vs. "business as usual".  Lousy name, but this is where the political action is, both here and all over the place (Argentina, El Salvador, France, Germany, the UK).

The Press is hyperventilating about the emergence of the "far right" in Europe, which entirely misses what's happening.  I've posted endlessly about this, but this is maybe what comes the closest to a (non-Borepatchian length) summary.

Populism is regularly trashed by the Great and the Good, but the inroads that Trump is making with the Black community doesn't seem to be typical pandering, but rather tapping into a real sense of dissatisfaction with Business As Usual.  Kind of like what the rest of us feel.

It also seems that RFK's support comes from the same well spring of dissatisfaction.  If that's true, it implies that RFK's candidacy will hurt Trump more than Biden.  And I still have the feeling that there's a non-trivial chance that the Deep State will try to assassinate Trump, and maybe succeed.  The Great and the Good keep complaining that Trump has "overturned norms" but it sure looks to me that they're the ones that are doing that.

Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law. 

Rubicon

The Democratic Party has crossed the Rubicon.  What's strange is that they're in a fairly weak position, which implies that we will see a ratcheting up of more of their actions to protect "our Democracy".  I don't see any possibility that they will ratchet any of this down; on the contrary, Trump's chances of being Epsteined in jail are getting a lot of discussion these days.

But Rubicon isn't quite the proper analogy.  I posted what I thought was the right analogy back on January 6, 2020.  It's sad to see that it reads every bit as true today as it did then, including an ancient Roman Epsteining.

Dura lex, sed lex.

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

- Enoch Powell MP, quoting Virgil in "The Rivers of Blood" speech

Enoch Powell was one of the first politicians to be de-platformed.  As with most of these sorts of innovations, this happened in the Old World in the 1960s.  I posted about this seven years ago, although Google can no longer find this; DuckDuckGo can, though (and that tells you everything you need to know about search engines):

45 years ago last month, British MP Enoch Powell gave a stunning speech.  In it, he looked on the immigration of foreign peoples into the Kingdom and the way that this was changing the UK's culture.  It was widely criticized by all Right Thinking People® but at the same time was wildly popular with working class Britons.  Indeed, a thousand dockworkers marched on Parliament in protest when Powell was sacked from his positions of leadership.

Dockworkers marching in support of a Tory politician.

The most famous line in his speech is where he quoted Virgil:

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.

He was roundly damned for his "inflammatory" and "racist" remarks.  And so the British Political Class went back to sleep - indeed, the last Labour government intentionally accelerated immigration to make the UK "less British".

Today we saw the occupation of the Capitol building by people "annoyed" by what they (and many others) see as the theft of a Presidential election.  The protesters chased off first the Capitol Hill police and then the Congress itself.  It looks like one women lost her life, shot by a cop.  We'll have to see - early news is notoriously unreliable.

But looking at this, I thought of Virgil.  He of course, did not make up the Aeneid out of whole cloth; Virgil wrote propaganda for the first Roman Emperor, Augustus.  The Aeneid was propaganda, but what propaganda.  It made Caesar Augustus' family history into legend.  Because it was propaganda, it was exaggeration, but it was useful exaggeration to Augustus who while not related to the Great Leaders of the previous century was able to deftly exploit those leaders' exploits to his own advantage.

The most important leader at the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic was Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus,  He was the guy who noticed that while the Roman Republic had swept all foreign enemies before it, the working class had suffered despite the great riches of empire.  Tiberius Gracchus decided to run for public office despite his great family wealth, and to put forth his formidable political skills to benefit the Roman Working Joe.  He failed, because the Roman political establishment buried their traditional political differences in the face of Gracchus' challenge, and in fact had him killed.    

In short, the Roman Deep State closed ranks to block needed reform.  It was the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic as long cherished political norms (Mos Maiorum) were cast aside.  And so two generations of the Roman political elite were exterminated in a civil war so profound that what was left of the exhausted Republican Elite welcomed the first Imperator with open arms because he ended the civil wars.

Throughout this whole period in Roman History, the Law was supreme.  Of course, the Law bent to the prevailing political winds.  As the Roman said, "The Law is harsh, but it is the Law".  Dura Lex, sed Lex.

Donald Trump is the Tiberius Gracchus of our day.  He is the guy who noticed that while the American Republic had swept all foreign enemies before it, the working class had suffered despite the great riches of empire.  Donald Trump decided to run for public office despite his great family wealth, and to put forth his formidable political skills to benefit the American Working Joe.  He failed, because the American political establishment buried their traditional political differences in the face of Trump's challenge, and in fact had him [well, we'll have to see if they let him live free, or jail him, or kill him].

But Tiberius Gracchus had many supporters, who didn't let the Roman political elite rest easy.  Likewise with Donald Trump, as we saw today:

Some of Gracchus' supporters were killed, as we saw today.  Looking forward, I am filled with foreboding.  Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Potomac foaming with much blood.  We're already started, it seems.  The only questions really remaining is who is to play the part of Augustus Caesar, and how many of the elite families (and, it must be said, other families) must die before a grateful Republic reaches for their savior Emperor?

But the Founding Fathers knew about the failings of the Roman Republic.  They strived to avoid them in their Republic.  As a student of history I must say that they avoided the Roman pitfalls for 200 years.  Not bad at all.

Never mind that the Romans avoided these for almost 500 years.  God Save this Honorable Republic.

This seems like a wedge issue for Donald Trump to use

Via The Queen Of The World we see this:

Illegal immigrants in the Big Apple will soon start receiving pre-paid debit cards that they must pledge to use only to buy food, according to New York City records and media reports.

Records indicate that New York City has awarded a $53 million contract to a company called Mobility Capital Finance (MoCaFi), which will create and distribute the pre-paid cards, called immediate response cards.

The question is whether the traditional members of the Democratic Party's coalition will resent that illegal aliens get government largess that they think should go to them.

In which I de-Endorse Donald Trump for President

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

I have been at least a luke-warm supporter of Donald Trump for years.  Heck, there are over 200 posts there, mostly talking up  his virtues.  Go, read, if you don't believe me.

But I am no longer comfortable posting about how Donald Trump would make a good President, because I do not any longer think that he would.

The Donald has come out against Ron DeSantis, not that this is surprising - after all, they are opponents for the Republican nomination.  I don't have a problem with that.  What I do have a problem with is the dishonest way that this opposition has come out:

Donald Trump's people attacked Ron DeSantis for (a) not slavishly following The Donald's massively damaging lockdown recommendations and then for (b) being entirely correct in doing so.

Let me be clear: Ron DeSantis saved Florida's economy by ignoring advice from Donald Trump's administration.  I was here.  I saw this.  I had just moved here from The Democratic People's Socialist Republic of Maryland and know people whose lives were destroyed by the Covid lockdowns imposed by a Republican Governor there.  So where are the "Trump War Room" objections to the Covid-19 lockdowns from (Republican) Governor Larry Hogan?

[crickets]

Go ahead.  Amaze me.

[I'm waiting]

Yeah, that's what I thought.  Someone who was all up The Donald's butt is a-OK, but someone who did something positive for his State (even though it went against your flunky's advice) is the Worst Thing Ever.  Quite frankly, I'd have more respect for this if (a) their advice was worth a plug nickel and (b) if your flunkies weren't trying to undermine you at ever step and if (c) you had had a damn clue about (b).

You didn't, and still don't seem to.  Quite frankly, this is the biggest knock against you - you brought your enemies into your inner circle, and you won't recognize allies if they don't kiss your butt.

To The Donald (as if he'd pay attention); We thought you were on our side.  We trusted you.  Like Bluto in Annimal House, wef**ked up.  And now we see that someone who actually earned that trust is in your cross-hairs.  

And so while I think you accomplished a lot in your first term, I don't think you are earning a second one.  Your ego is too big to allow someone actually accomplished to join you in the Oval Office.  And so, adieu.  Good luck, because you're going to need it. 

You are in an election.  You are facing adversity.  Remember that Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.  You are revealing more than you should like.  Stop doing that, or keep losing supporters.

Sorry, you've lost a supporter here.  Don't come calling after the nomination.  You're not Presidential material.

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations