Friends, last time I checked the Doge was the head of state in the Venetian Republic, but now, all of a sudden, DOGE is the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, and it's promising to cut government waste in legendary fashion. Can it? Many people, including me, have profound doubts. No one has ever succeeded in slashing the federal bureaucracy and federal regulations before, and that's because there are massive legal and institutional obstacles to doing so. Nonetheless, Musk and Ramaswamy sound like they've thought this conundrum through, and they expect both President Trump and the Supreme Court to uphold their decisions. I wish them well! There are hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, for sure, but more importantly the culling of the bureaucracy will effectively restore democracy itself, as power is returned to the people and their elected representatives. Godspeed, super-nerds!
Ever wonder how our most esteemed and "trustworthy" professional pollsters got three presidential elections in a row wrong, and how, even after that miserable performance, they can look down their noses at the small number of pollsters who consistently got it right, or right-er? This article will blow your mind. The malpractice in the polling business is simply stunning. It mirrors, not surprisingly, the malpractice in "journalism" itself.
https://www.racket.news/p/how-americas-accurate-election-polls
RAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeleteTrump is America's Doge.
Dr. Waddy, Ray et al from Jack: I believe the Doge was elected, though perhaps with a somewhat smaller franchise than that which just redeemed DJT. I think Venice has a humid climate (?) and the Doge's robes might be somewhat cloying, not to mention out of fashion.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: The data on polling you presented:It just goes to show: we should expect ANYTHING of people who embrace the doctrine of "by any means necessary". We are long past the time when such assumption should be qualified or tentative.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Vivek and Elon, please make haste to defund PBS, "public" only in the breach as it is. We should not be forced to pay for an institution which blithely directs tax payer dollars into partisan purposeful misinformation about the progress of electoral campaigns.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I think Reagan was the last President to direct a concerted effort to effect deep cuts in Federal spending. The deputy to whom he delegated it, David Stockman, caught unshirted hell from the left.
ReplyDeletePresident Trump will have some advantages: he can't be reelected ;the disempowerment of the Chevron doctrine will pull some of the deep state's teeth. If I were one of them I'd concentrate on trying to justify my job rather than getting all righteous about presumptuous, politically partisan programs analogous to the infamous NEA and PBS. It all adds up.
I would urge Vivek and Elon to go on TV often to report the progress of their efforts, especially against those fiascos which, when the public finds out that they exist in the first place, it will be outraged. This may build a solid base of public determination to make deep cuts and trust that Vivek and Elon can be trusted to root out waste and unelected bureaucratic contempt for the tax payer and those the effete snobs hold beneath consideration because of their philistine ignorance and their pedestrian tastes (i.e. most of us).
I'd be happy to see Vivek and Elon personally visit some Federally funded " community organizers" and quiz them on their epic campaigns to bring belated justice in this wholly oppressive country.
Sanctuary cities and states? "Ya want your Federal funding, even if it is reduced to common sense proportions, huh!? Then comply with Federal immigration law. Think we're kidding? We know you'll try us and we're ready for it. Oh also, recalcitrant Mayors and Governors, better lawyer up if you keep thumbing your arrogant noses. Federal Marshalls, FBI and maybe the Airborne could be your daily acquaintances unless you wise up. America wants our laws enforced and they will be! Check out what happened to some southern states 60 years ago. "
Also, Vivek and Elon, establish a secure line of communications which whistleblowers can use to reveal the waste that those in the grassroots of government agencies see every day. See that they are protected from charges of insubordination. Publicize their efforts. Put the "fear of God" in some of these complacent and arrogant waste mongers
President Trump shook up the VA in his first term. As a veteran I've seen it first hand. I'm sure he's willing to reprise that
You in antiamerica who have purposed the unlimited expansion of government until it becomes totalitarian: you have invited Nemesis on yourselves! Don't know what that is? What are ya, stupid?Consult some airy tax payer funded "know it all".
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Oh also: now is the time and the opportunity to stop forcing taxpayers to pay for the advocacy and advancement of the abomination of abortion. Perhaps Planned Parenthood does some benefit which may warrant some taxpayer support but let it be financially prevented from ever again effecting that dreadful practice. Widespread broadcast of depictions of abortions and their horrid aftermath would help to build overwhelming public revulsion to it.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Interesting developments today: according to Fox, Rep. Darrel Issa sent a letter to the State Dep't. asking for details of an apparent employment of professional counselors to console State Dep't staffers after the election; apparently they were as devastated as to be severely impaired in the execution of their duties -the poor souls! Issa asked whether tax payer funding was used to compensate these angels of mercy as they ministered to the sorely stricken in their time of travail and whether work hours were devoted to this emotional necessity. Strongly suggested is the question of whether similar consideration would have been extended to the 10 or 12 State Dep't staffers who would have regretted a Harris victory.
ReplyDeleteWell, its Friday, Nov. 22 and I'll never forget what happened 61 years ago on that day and time. It's the first event I lived through where the cliche question of "where were you when you found out?" could be answered by most people. I was in high school junior year history class and all of a sudden the loud speaker cut in with a radio broadcast : "the President was riding in a car without a protective bubble. . . shots were heard and the President slumped. . . ". A dimbulbed classmate exclaimed "aw, now Jackie 'll be President!". Rumors flew for a couple hours and then after a seemingly endless band concert at the routine Friday assembly, the Principal announced: "By now we have all heard of the events in Dallas; it is now my sad duty to inform you that the President of the United States is dead. Arrangements are being made to swear in the Vice President."
The event cast a pall over the then soon to be commenced holiday season and continued into dreary winter. I think reaction to it was a significant factor in the astonishing rise to fame of the jolly Beatles in the US in February of '65. And if one believes as I do that they were, yes, heralds and even in some measure enablers of the unimaginable cultural and even political upheaval in the US and much of the world we all witnessed within the next six or seven years then it may be plausible to consider the assassination to have been a catalyst for the advent of this still incalculably consequential era.
I think in retrospect that the widespread then contemporary and still somewhat cherished perception of the empowerment of JFK as a "breath of fresh air after the stultifying tenure of stodgy old Ike" (which I naively shared then) was silly. Eisenhower was a great American and his was a time of relative peace and redeeming prosperity which was much welcomed by those who had survived the Depression and WWII. We didn't know it at the time but the Kennedy brothers were in their "private" lives reckless social adventurers whose many times confirmed marital infidelities and voluptuary practices had to be known to Soviet intelligence and consequently to the earthy neomedieval peasant Khrushchev. Those casual faults may have helped convince K that JFK was a weakling . (That of course was an almost tragic misapprehension. JFK's heroic WWII record proved him a very courageous man, an hombre! )But that nonetheless may have motivated K to give in to his hardliners who were incensed by the continuing presence of the Allies in a Berlin they went through the very crucible to take in not very distant 1945 and put those missiles in Cuba.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Kennedy showed firm resolution in the event but I think we would not have needed it had Nixon been President. K would not have dared misuse Nixon so. He had sized up Nixon at the face to face "KItchen Debate" and had done the same to Kennedy in Vienna in '61. He was necessarily good at that; he had physically survived as an intimate of mercurial and murderous Stalin. But he was not infallible and he got Kennedy wrong in thinking him a weakling and an aristocratic swell. But Kennedy could not refrain from infidelity to his noble and magnificent wife and K saw this as unforgivable perfidy and voluptuary frivolousness. And it all almost got us vaporized.
ReplyDelete"Camelot" in all its manifestations was a silly reconstruction of a mythical chivalric 5th and early 6th century Britain. 61-63 as such was equally absurd. The frivolously advanced idea that Kennedy's advent and his tenure were a " breath of fresh air" after that of stodgy old Ike was insupportable. Eisenhower was a great American whose administration was graced by a peace and prosperity which was of vast comfort to those who had weathered the Depression and WWII.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: So, in the last couple days we have seen a monumentally electorally discredited antiamerican left rise in self righteous dudgeon at allegations of sexual misconduct on some of DJT's Cabinet nominees. Only trouble is, they did not so when Slick Willy's presumptuous peccadillos in that regard were revealed and he was forced to admit culpability. He was excused and still is. Why, the memories of his unrelenting quest for semiclandestine adventure with compliant White House interns and with those he saw as "no count " distant subordinates in his Tennessee Williamsesque gubernatorial days were and are of no moment to his party. I think he has even risen to the pinnacle of elder statesmanship and his skills in deception and disingenuous , gleeful carnival huckster mischief in yet very consequential issues is today looked upon as exemplary for the redemption of their devastated party. They'd probably renominate him if they could. All this denies to them any moral credibility in the attempt they will surely make to present these cases as of comprehensive condemnation of the incoming administration.
ReplyDeleteLet those who have true grievance of profound sexual offense be honored by plausible, lawful prosecution of their terrible victimization free of cynical misusage by insincere, amoral political creatures for ends inimical to those who richly deserve satisfaction for the wrongs done them.
Ray, he is, at that! He deserves to be festooned with the robes of state.
ReplyDeleteDefunding PBS is a great idea, but, as long as Congress keeps appropriating money for it, can DOGE cut it off? I doubt it, but I'd be thrilled to be proven wrong!
Vivek and Elon should "go on TV" to reach the masses? Pshaw! That medium is obsolete. I'm sure they'll use the fabled internets to great advantage. Good idea to leverage whistleblowers too. They should be coming out of the woodwork these days.
Hmm. Did Kennedy's assassination help to conjure up the immense cultural ferment of the mid and late 60s? I guess it's possible. LBJ has always seemed like an unlikely herald of flower power, though. I don't pretend to understand the cultural changes of the 60s in the least. Anyone who can explain to me why this country went to hell in a handbasket so quickly would earn my undying gratitude!
I wonder how instrumental the allegations against Gaetz were in sinking his nomination? My guess is...not very. He has plenty of other eccentricities that rankle Senatorial RINOs.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I've read some biography of LBJ. He was a coarse man but he had lived and taught in rural Texas and had seen appalling poverty and its always attendant degradation there. Once he had the power to do so he sincerely tried to actually eliminate poverty in the unprecedentedly prosperous US. His measures were often counterproductive but that was not obvious yet in the "60s.
ReplyDeleteBut his efforts in that regard were of no moment to the multitudinous faction of perfectionist boomers . That they might be required to fight to protect the country which had afforded them childhoods prosperous beyond even the reckoning of 20 years previous: well, that was too much to ask. The lessons of WWII which guided our foreign policy makers were dross, dust, to them in their Aquarian metamorphosis ,abetted by cynical commies who welcomed them to the campuses they flocked to in the '60s (contrary to all past custom; college was theretofore for 'swells" only). Unrelentingly expansionist marxism was to them no threat; why, it was much to be desired over our thoroughly condemned way of life.
Solely because of their numbers , not by any Promethean enlightenment, these ingrates had a profound effect on our culture which continues to this day in its perhaps inevitable evolution: the neomarxism which so burdens us today. Its certainly not the only traceable consequence of the '60s but it was a very important and regretable one . Veterans of Tarawa and Omaha Beach might well have wondered why they ever served.