Friends, it's official: DJT is a criminal defendant. The world was riveted Tuesday as Trump was formally charged with 34 counts of...felony falsification of business records. Big whoop! I jest, but the consequences of this development are potentially revolutionary and earth-shattering, although not because of the substance of the charges themselves. It's the political implications that are as disturbing as they are incalculable, in the long term. This, of course, is one of our main topics of discussion on this week's Newsmaker Show, along with a shocking Wall Street Journal poll on the decline of traditional American values, Finland's admission into NATO, and the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party between establishment hacks and leftist firebrands. In addition, Brian and I find time to analyze the retirement of Winston Churchill as British prime minister in 1955, as well as FDR's creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps. In other words, my friends, this week's show is among the most captivating discourses on life, the universe, and everything that you will ever hear, and if, perchance, you were to miss it, chances are the remainder of your mortal existence would be one long exercise in ignorance and futility. I'm just sayin': the stakes are high!!!
https://wlea.net/newsmaker-april-5-2023-dr-nick-waddy/
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In other news, your favorite commentator is sounding off at Sputnik News about the ramifications of the first charges ever laid against a former U.S. president. Read all about it here:
Dr.Waddy from Jack: We need a Constitutional amendment proscribing politics by prosecution. Just for openers, perhaps the wording could be: "No process of prosecution shall be purposed to effect sanctions unspecified by the law under which it is levelled" (?)
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I would commend your comments in the Sputnik article to anyone seeking a plausible abstract of the prospects for President Trump in the next many months. Re: the broadcast: I think the cultural marxists propelled by the 60's have worked a terribly extensive, mostly reflexive , antiintellectual aversion to the traditional values for which you cited a poll indicating a sharp decline in devotion to these principles. I've witnessed it many times: the impatient huffing, the rolling eyes, the glazed over countenance and the mindless dismissal justified by marxist condemnation of anything which contradicts its historically and catastrophically disproven social verities formulated by science much better suited for examination of the natural world.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Ya have to hand it to the left though; they have managed to repackage and revive the worst political and economic system ever arrogated on humanity. "100 million+++ lives ruined? OK, we did it badly but give us another chance (or else!). I do see materialism as a virtue;material well being today is very often the result of positive life and productive enterprise.Perceived and actual poverty is the soil in which crime often but not always,flourishes; it is the fertile soil but not the seed.That is to be found in the soul.
ReplyDeleteJack, I fear no constitutional amendment will ever change the fact that the constitution and the law are only as good as the people interpreting them, and, since at least half those people are airy-fairy leftists, we're in a world of hurt. Most of the other half, I'm afraid, are RINOs, which doesn't bode well either. You're right: the Left celebrates the decline of traditional values, because they assume that whatever replaces them has to be better. How wrong they are! They also assume that the huddled masses will be infinitely more maleable once they've sloughed off God, nation, family, etc. On that score, they are almost certainly correct.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: What a remarkable perception that AOC may have cost the dems the House! She certainly does represent the crusading radical american left. I think Pino Biden may be a "moderate" but he has served as a naively willing factotum for a far left he views from the dazzled perspective of the 1965 kumbayaa campfire.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy fromJack: I don't think Russia could have finished Finland in the 40s. It had its hands full with the boche and the gutsy Finns had given it a right old spanking. They did make some advances by simply rolling in their porcine hordes and yes, the Finns did of necessity make some humiliating concessions to Stalin but I think Finland would have made itself a most unpalateable meal. Their proximity to Russia and the Baltic cannot but exacerbate Russia's perception of encirclement and insecurity.Finland does, I think, much enhance Nato's already massive power. Sweden, another hard fighting nation,would increase it still much more. I hope Russia does not panic.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: How would Churchill have met the Suez Crisis? Perhaps Nasser sensed a weakness in Eden which he might not have risked with the Victorian "last lion". Many Brits had died defending the Canal. I've read that Churchill doubted Eden's fitness for PM but thought he owed his loyal deputy. My guess is that Churchill would have been inclined to intervene but that he would have consulted Ike. Would that have tempered the shocking anger Ike expressed to Eden, even unto threatening an attack on the pound? Would he have been thus restrained? Perhaps so. Sans British absence, would the French have struck? Might Churchill have advised them not to do so after learning of Ike's outrage?And what about Israel? I know nothing about Churchill's general attitude toward the Jewish State or what advantage Israel saw in attacking Egypt in '56. I'm going to read about it.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: The CCC got my Uncle in shape for WWII paratroop service. Might FDR have considered offering free enterprise financial assistance to do the work the CCC did? I do not doubt that such as Wallace would have doctrinally opposed that. FDR seems to have worked well with it during the war. It may be that today we do not fully appreciate the harrowing desperation faced by so much of the country in the '30s. I have read that some historians think that free enterprise itself was at great hazard. I know his family's destitution permanently scarred my father and induced him to look favorably on the blandishments of marxist industrial union weasels postwar. (Soon enough though, the commies were displaced by organized crime in the unions; quite aside from its venality the mob knew that commies in power would squash conventional criminality with undemocratic dispatch.)
ReplyDeleteDr.WaddyfromJack: Correction: I meant above "with British absence" not "sans".
ReplyDeleteHmm. Finland "enhances NATO's already massive power"? What power? The power to get the USA to pay for their security, all while snickering at us and calling us barbarians behind our backs? Yeah, I guess that "power" is virtually infinite...
ReplyDeleteI disagree that the Soviets couldn't have conquered Finland in 1944-45. You underestimate the might of the Red Army in those days! The Soviets prioritized, and Finland wasn't high on their list of targets. They chose to push deep into central Europe -- and Asia! -- instead.
Yes, hard to say how Suez might have turned out differently under Churchill, but I find it difficult to imagine that the U.S. would have undermined Britain so directly and severely with Churchill at the helm. You're right that Churchill might not have cloaked his imperialism so implausibly in a peacekeeping action either.
That is a fair objection to my reasoning, Jack. It's easy for me to say that states and localities could have provided the jobs and economic stimulus that the feds provided in the 30s, but maybe they couldn't, or maybe they weren't. Maybe there are some missions that, based on sheer scope, only the federal government can undertake. Maybe, but I fear we're still paying the price for Uncle Sam's rescue operation under FDR.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Re Nato: Well ok but the Treaty of Brussels was signed in March, 1948 out of fear of Stalin's limitless ravening Eurasiatic Red horde descending like a plague of locusts on a prostrate Western Europe. The Russian nuke did not debut until August , 1949, so unless it was secretly anticipated, the Soviet threat was seen as conventional. Much concern about Russian armored blitzkrIeg has persisted to the present though it is now much tempered by Russia's unexpectedly poor performance in Ukraine. The addition of Finland and Sweden probably more than confirms an unbeatable conventional advantage for Nato and given Russia's once again proven willing ruthlessness, that should be a reassuring thought. But Nato's reckless wooing of Ukraine, despite Russia's astonishing tolerance of Nato's establishment on Russia's very border, has presented Russia a viscerally intolerable affront and a geographic military disadvantage no country, let alone historically much tried, rugged and proud Russia, could countenance. Their savage response in Ukraine has understandably alarmed Sweden and Finland, both of which fought the Soviets in the 20th century ( several
ReplyDeletethousand Swedes fought alongside the Finns and conveniently left behind their superlative arms when they withdrew)and have of necessity always regarded Russia as a fearful threat. Again, shades of 1914 loom as this once avoidable mess continues to fester.
Jack, I still find it hard to see Sweden and Finland's actions as anything but political theater designed to showcase their solidarity with Ukraine. NATO is and always has been a bluff, albeit one of history's most successful bluffs of all time. The substance of Western security arrangements remains the same as ever: the U.S. military, forward deployed to Europe. The key "threat" remains the same as well: Russia, which never had any real intention of taking on the West in Central Europe. And the band plays on...
ReplyDelete