Friends, the Speakership of Mike Johnson certainly has not turned out the way that most Republicans expected. He didn't extract major concessions from the Biden Administration on border policy. He didn't keep his promise not to pass any bill that a majority of Republicans opposed. He did, of course, send billions in aid to Ukraine and Israel -- and got nothing in return. Well, not quite nothing, because, as Johnson's popularity has waned with Republicans and conservatives, House Democrats have embraced him! They now say they will prop up his Speakership if he loses support among the GOP caucus, which he will, and which he has. In other words, the House is now led by a coalition of wishy-washy establishment Republicans and Democrats, and hard-line conservatives will be frozen out. One has to wonder what additional concessions Johnson might have made to Democrats to obtain their favors... Has he promised no impeachment of Joe Biden, perhaps? A blanket acceptance of Democrats' spending priorities? We don't know, but the simple fact of the matter is that real Republican control of the House was always tenuous and, as of the Dems' announcement that they would back Johnson, it's now officially defunct. That's a bummer, if you're a Republican, but will it affect the outcome of the presidential election? Thar's by no means certain. In fact, by freezing in place the current --rather ineffectual -- House leadership, it may even make it easier for Trump to win, by removing the potential distraction of yet another nasty fight over who will be the next Speaker. In any case, Mike Johnson, who seemed like such a rock solid conservative a few months ago, turns out to be anything but. D.C. sure is full of surprises, huh?
The Mike Johnson story is just one of the major themes in this week's Newsmaker Show. Brian and I also discuss the Trump trial in New York, the somewhat ambivalent state of the polls, my recent trip to Delaware, whether the Trumps are "new money" or "old money", the fresh set of 2020 election-related prosecutions in Arizona, how much corruption afflicts U.S. politics, Susan Wiles' role in the Trump campaign, the degree to which a second Trump term will resemble the first, and the possibility that a four-day workweek will be become the law of the land.
Boy! Even I am staggered by the sheer number of scintillating topics that Brian and I can cover in such a short period of time. How do we do it? Believe it or not, no performance enhancing drugs are involved! Our acumen and our energy is all natural! Incredible, no?
https://wlea.net/newsmaker-may-1-2024-dr-nick-waddy/
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In other news, the Fed has decided to hold interest rates steady, which means that, in its infinite wisdom, the war on inflation has not yet been won. Will inflation, or stagflation, be acute enough to influence the dynamics of the presidential race, though -- besides confirming Americans in their already-gloomy assumptions about the state of the economy and the nation? We shall see.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4n1v7dxzx0o
Hopefully you've already heard about how the AARP is compromised by wokeness. Did you know that it's also, and perhaps more fundamentally, compromised by its cozy relationship with health insurance companies? This is yet another reason to refuse to have anything to do with the AARP.
Finally, here's an article about the significance of Ron DeSantis's recent meeting with DJT. It's a pretty thin article. The interesting questions are the ones it doesn't raise: might DeSantis now campaign for Trump? Might he be under consideration for the position of Vice-President? Might he serve in Trump's cabinet? Might Trump come to view him as a friend and ally again, as he did with many other former rivals? Probably it is way too early to answer any of these questions, but it's still fun to ask them. I would hope that the acrimony between DJT and the Florida Governor will fade quickly. After all, it no longer serves either man's interests to dwell on it.
https://news.yahoo.com/desantis-kisses-ring-miami-meeting-153229305.html
RAY TO DR. WADDY AND JACK
ReplyDeleteMike is the best RINO for the job. Leave the man alone.
Dr. Waddy from Waddy: Sometimes its best to let something go to pieces and then pick them back up at the right time. 2022 yielded a small majority which at least drove Madame Pelosi off her throne. Impeachment of Mayorkas? Disdainfully expeditious Schumer made short work of that in the Senate as was no doubt fully expected; its benefit, if any, came from the publicity afforded to the border situation. Impeachment of Biden? Only worth pursuing if it can yield electoral benefit; it could backfire. The GOP was able to defang the Jan. 6 Committee but its internecine hurly burly was not helpful. Oh its just a rare old mess now which does not admit of much mitigation before the election. If DJT wins and we retain the House ,that will be the time to clean it up and, if we know what's good for us, get solidly behind him as he goes to work for America. Until Jan. 1 just keep the body and soul of the House GOP together and for the sake of all that is vital, DO NOT deliver a House majority to the Dems just in time for them to work a perhaps finally catastrophic continued executive tenure for the antiamerican antisemitic left, should there be an electoral crisis. Yeah, Johnson is probably not the guy for the long run, but he's GOP and can hold down the post until redemption comes. Senator Kennedy today remarked that the campus chaos fixes an Xray directly on a dem party which countenances and empowers apologists for terrorists. We must relentlessly urge to all the appalling truth that a vote for ANY dem is a vote for Ilhan Omar, for Nancy Pelosi, for Hakeem Jeffries , for staggeringly presumptuous and counterintuitive tax payer payment of the college debts accruing to the neonazi punks savaging their "universities" and the taxpayers who support them through Federal or state TAXPAYER funding, for the reduction of the American Academy to a reeking swamp of bigotry and now even murderous antipathy and intent directed to doctrinally proscribed "classes" like Jews, Israelis and soon, all Americans who dissent from their comprehensive totalitarianism. If enough Americans realize this terrible truth, we can work a return to Americanism similar to that worked on Scotus during DJT's first term.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I would not characterize Gov. DeSantis's tasking of Disney as mere revenge, as the article appeared to do. Disney cynically relied on a once revered status which it had long since renounced in surrendering to obsequious political correctness, for unique exception from regulation and taxes. DeSantis called them on it. Good for him! The dems should know him by now as an implacable and clear eyed opponent of their accelerating shameful submission to their antiAmerican and now plainly anti Israel captors and of the party's endorsement of their incipient totalitarianism..
ReplyDeleteHa! "Best RINO for the job". Quite possibly!
ReplyDeleteJack, you brought up impeachment proceedings against Sleepy Joe. Whatever happened to those??? Dragging Biden through the mud is perhaps the ONLY useful thing that the House GOP can do between now and November...
I agree with DeSantis's line against Disney too, but the timing was more than a little suspicious!
Dr. Waddy from Jack Re your Newsmaker broadcast: Some compromised Arizona prosecutor tasks a heroic beyond the comprehension of the "progressive" imagination Mayor Guiliani for expressing doubt about the 2020 election. Well! Could these ciphers endure the gut ravaging fear Guiliani hazarded by attacking Mafia subhumans as a Federal prosecutor? Could they have taken in hand a gargantuan NYC virtually ruined by anarchically "liberal" conveniently detached and protected dreamers and always cynical criminals, against unrelentling calumny , as he most certainly DID in miraculously redeeming this seemingly irredemably disgraced erstwhile "world class city" ?! They have not even a hint of his nobility! But there is, I would suggest, a grim logic in this travesty. It is fully in keeping with the long since resolved antiamerican leftist credo of "by any means necessary" to attain for them unresistable, arbitrary and incidental comprehensive power to command all situations, public, "private", domestic or international. We must, for our American survival, take this for granted of them! Of course the advanced criminalization of doubt of elections favorable to their purposes , by amoral antiamerican leftists ,fully manifests their determination to work the "law" solely to their law despising ends.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack : Why is Delaware a blue state? Perhaps because of the close proximity of Pennsylvania's counterintuitive leftist hive, Philly, and the nearness of both the DC amoeba which has had such a degrading effect on Northern VA and a Maryland long since surrendered to the left. Where might this counterintuitive antiAmerican tide crest? Where in a southland now, together with Rocky MT strongholds the most demonstrably patriotic of American regions, will it be met and thrown back!?
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: A museum of transport planes! How I wish to see it! I would guess it enshrines the DC 3 (or itsWWII military manifestation, the C47), the greatest airplane of all time. It flew the "Hump" over the world dominating Himalayas; it delivered paratroopers to their fiery trials in Sicily and Normandy; it rendered human contradiction to infernally inhuman Stalin during the Berlin Blockade in 1948. It was the definition of a solid, reliable machine of US industry. A mere liveable 40 years after the Wright Bros' painful achievement it embodied American war winning moxie.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Oh yes, corruption is institutionalized in many countries. An old India hand who advised me before my planned travel there bade me be fully and cooperatively aware of the compellling universality of "baksheesh", the tradition of informal recompense for services, access or favors rendered, refrain from which was unheard of. In Imperial China , the Mandarins who extended Imperial authority were fully expected to glean thereof their full remuneration for their administrative efforts. Apparently other cultures and subcultures, even in the US, embrace the practice of extralegal compensation ,for services and allegiances rendered, manifested in extra governmental institutions which enforce these arrangements, sometimes with mortal sanctions. This conviction fits in quite well with the antiamerican left's devotion to "by any means necessary" imposition of their totalitarian rule.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Your creditable observation that DJT is conducting a campaign better than his previous ones supports the expectation that his second Presidency would would be far better infiormed, tempered and politically viable. One must hope that Wiles will mentor him in restored power. Naturally, I'd say, he has learned hard, hard lessons. Who could not but learn and benefit from the successes and travails he has experienced as the first President from without politics or military command, and then from the savage personal assault on him and his family and his supporters by an unrelentingly amoral antiamerican left which sees in him unendurable contradiction of their now 60 year mortal campaign for vindictive totalitarian power!!??
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Ford was a supporter of American free enterprise, unlike far leftist Sanders . We must, I think, always assume of Sanders that his overall intent in all things is to punish, destroy and replace the US with a totalitarian dictatorship of woke wiseacres like him. Naturally he would, with vindictive contempt, force any change he thinks good on our economy and its engines. Let a loyal American advance the idea of 32 hour workweek, organically and realistically worked without routine far leftist antipathy to free enterprise and the material well being it surely manifests.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: The Dems cannot abide the reality that DJT works well with powerful women. It contradicts people like Hillary, who appears to despise all men for the ill one man has done her and seeks their subjugation. She and the man haters who have captured the dem party know their power is undermined by men who do not live down to their stereotypical expectations and able women who insolently disagree with them.
ReplyDeleteNow, Jack, surely you aren't suggesting that the Arizona prosecutions are SELECTIVE, are you? No no no -- I'm sure that the prosecution of Al Gore (for daring to question the 2000 election results) is imminent! That will right the scales of justice, no?
ReplyDeleteTrue, Delaware is mostly a Philadelphia suburb, and, sadly, the "burbs" have become friendly territory for leftists. That's partly because the educated and affluent have drifted left, and it's also partly because the burbs are a lot less white, less educated, AND less affluent than they used to be. In other words, they're far more diverse.
Oh, for sure -- the Air Mobility Command Museum definitely had a C-47 or two. Impressive planes. They also had handy outlines on the tarmac that illustrated the cargo holds of various military planes. The C-47 was TINY compared to the planes of today...
Yes, corruption is everywhere, Jack, but I'm not sure it's all that consonant with totalitarianism. Corruption grants ordinary citizens extra pathways to the fulfillment of their desires, besides total submission to the governing class. Totalitarianism implies ideological rigor. Corruption implies the absence of effective central authority. I think you'd find that corruption actually can make a despised autocratic regime MORE livable, rather than less.
I agree that Trump's second term will be more disciplined and professional than his first. I would also submit that that's a pretty low standard...
Hmm. I'm not so comfortable dismissing all proposals that come from the left, based on the assumption that every idea that a leftist has, and everything that a leftist says, is presumptively wicked. I would argue that it makes a lot more sense to examine and weigh ideas and proposals on their merits. I personally don't see that right-wingers have any monopoly on virtue OR wisdom. In fact, both sides have severe deficits of both.
Very true, Jack -- Trump's ability to work with powerful women, and more importantly to win the votes of tens of millions of women, is absolutely central to his success to date, and will undergird any success he has in 2024 as well. Not that Trump needs to win the "women's vote". Far from it. He just has to minimize his losses.