Friends, Elon Musk is making his divorce from DJT semi-official by announcing that he's forming a new political party: the "America Party", meant to challenge the monopoly of the Republicans AND the Democrats. My guess is it will be hard going, because, given recent developments, Musk isn't beloved by progressives or conservatives. Of course, there are plenty of centrists who are sick and tired of the GOP and the Demon-crats, so forming a third party may not be a complete waste of time, but it's likely to play the role of "spoiler", if indeed it has any impact at all. If you ask me, such a party is more likely to help the Republicans than it is to help the Democrats, because it will effectively split the anti-Trump vote. Anyway, what will the party stand for? If the answer is fiscal sanity, then I might at least tip my hat to those Elonicans myself.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I think there won't be many who will want to abandon DJT now. Why fix what ain't broke? We obviously have a remarkably competent Administration now; its a conservatives dream and I think the majority of Americans are conservative even though they might not identify as such.
ReplyDeleteI think the dems' message has been made loud and clear and its been heard by America.No communication problem for them. They are way out in left field and going further every day. Perhaps dems who can't live with it anymore but still have a touch of TDS will find in Musk's party a haven. But Americans love a winner, especially when its America. Even some CNN types have been constrained to admit DJT is a formidable President.
Actually, I'd rather see Musk be the one concentrating on Mars. Let NASA concentrate on the developing the Moon. I'm not at all sure that Mars is worth the effort and expense it would take to get there. And I think eventual settlement on Mars is not yet justified. Even Antarctica is far less forbidding and its right here. Should humanity need to expand: Greenland, Siberia , Antarctica, the American Great Plains, northern Canada , Alaska and the oceans would all be much easier to develop than Mars. Let Musk send people there largely on his own dime while NASA concentrates on the moon, the unmanned exploration of "near" deep space which has already yielded such astonishing science and the control of earth killer asteroids. Use of space captured solar energy on Earth is also a worthy project , perhaps best pursued by private enterprise due to its profitability.
Musk is brilliant, close to monumentally and historically so. I hope he won't expend much energy on another party. America finally has what its needed for the last 50 years. Perhaps Musk wants to put a "brake" on MAGA for perceived excesses and mistakes. But MAGA already has one: common sense.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Its by far best that Musk - this extraordinary man - devote his perhaps not even yet fully realized skills to the intensely demanding task of exploring Mars. He's certainly one of the very few capable of doing it , despite the setbacks his rocket program has had . Let him show us whether or not its worth a national effort to make repeated trips or limited research settlement on Mars. Humanity may at some time be a regular interplanetary or even interstellar traveler but we may not be ready for it yet.(Imagine Roman galleys trying the Atlantic). Human exploration of Mars, enabled by Musk's prodigious organizational and motivational abilities, may show us just where we stand now. Then we can make a better informed decision on how to proceed. Meanwhile, NASA, with the productive domestic and foreign competition it now faces, can incorporate the enormous amount we have learned from near Earth space travel with ever more intensive experience in the harsh lunar setting, without the staggering burden of even the shortest of interplanetary voyages.
ReplyDeleteDoes Musk know something about "human generated global warming" that we don't know" ? He's the last person I'd compare to the ideologically compelled far left pseudo scientists who would gladly use government to force"environmental" measures requiring conveniently (for them) incipiently totalitarian control on most aspects of our public and private lives. Is it possible he believes in a salubrious mix of many energy sources, including fossil fuels and thinks the Trump administration's attack on the "Green New Deal" (the product of a demagogue bar tender) means it rejects this view? But President Trump appears to support nuclear power and if so, is in the forefront of the effort to defeat the far left's tiresome Luddite emotionally "justified" animus against it. I don't think that a man with a mind as expansive and a will as generous as Musk's means only to restore the popularity of Teslas in his recent actions. No, I hope his third party, which is a waste of his genius, is shortly abandoned .
Dr. Waddy from Jack: An article today in RealClearPolitics, authored by a member of NYU law school's counterintuitively named "Classic Liberal " group considers NYC's Mayoral prospects. It expresses strong doubt that Mamdani can be beaten and suggests that the best prospect for stopping him is Mayor Adams.
ReplyDeleteThe recent past has manifested a degradation of NYC which has brought it close to the shameful anarchy it suffered just before Guiliani used common sense (a conviction much lacking in the "powers that be" in that tormented burg. And pathetically erratic and incompetent Mayor Adams has furthered this precipitous decline. His predecessor , a limousine Marxist, motivated the NY police to physically turn their backs on him in public, while NYC's criminal culture exalted and prospered. They know how to game chumps and suckers.
NY state , a down to earth place once you escape the "tractor beam" of lala land NYC, is a scenic and pretty down to earth place to be and we are beyond sick and tired of the imperious amoeba on the Hudson. We don't like them and they don't like us, so why don't they just use their numerically unbeatable power in our state legislature to rid themselves of our disdainful connection to them. Why you never know, we might just elect a Governor who counters their airy beliefs sometime and cause them all sorts of hob.
NYC is on the brink of the precipice ;it will jump if it elects Mamdani and it will continue to fester if it reelects incapable Adams. Cuomo? Really? Sliwa would work Trumpian reform on NYC. It once dared to vote in Guiliani to save it from the pit. Can it do it again with Sliwa? If not, its redemption is a distant prospect and that's unjust for the millions of common sense people in that maelstrom of a city and the state which chafes under its dominance.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: A liberal friend expressed an intriguing opinion to me yesterday; he said instead of arresting illegal immigrants the Feds should press criminal charges against their employers. He maintained that would stop the widespread practice of hiring illegals, even for jobs for which it is hard to find willing Americans.
ReplyDeleteHe has a good point; just as ICE's enforcement efforts, together with the possibility of return, have motivated some illegals to self deport, perhaps some highly publicized indictments of employers would put a damper on the practice. I would also favor giving illegal immigrants thereby thrown out of work the ok to participate in the self deportation program . I know from my experience as a state prison law librarian in NY state that many of them may have had only vaguest notion of the illegality ( or even of illegality itself, from their experiences of corrupt law in their homelands) of their employment. Many of them may have built favorable work records.
But I do see some disadvantages to this idea: the flow of illegals across the border has been stopped. For those already here unemployment might not drive them back across the border , especially in sanctuary cities or states. They might, if so influenced by already accomplished criminals, turn to crime. Far left professionals , for whom massive illegal immigration is valued as a source of compliant support, might convince them that crime committed contrary to the laws of an oppressive regime is completely justified. Of course cynical leftist cadre would, in the Maoist tradition , have to convince many of the illegal immigrants that they ARE oppressed , even in the U.S.
Of course, illegal immigrants having committed crime in addition to illegal entry , either within or without the U.S. , must be permanently deported.
In his play Measure for Measure , Shakespeare presented a perceptive view of the difficulties which arise when long ignored laws are suddenly reenforced. "The law is not dead, though it hath slept. Now it is awake. . . ." and from an "entrepreneur" who counted on its slumber "Now, here's a change i' the commonwealth . . . what' s to become of me?"In our legality and democracy, employers might well argue in their defense that the practice of not ascertaining legal immigrant status or knowingly employing illegals is as widespread and obvious as to constitute (maybe under Common Law) a discreditation of the statutes outlawing it.
Perhaps prosecution, with all of its onerous inconveniences and embarrassment , of a few egregious cases, with confiscation of their businesses as a possibility, might put the skeer into most employers.
I would recommend the continuance of ICE's arrests of individual illegal immigrants, especially those with criminal records from anywhere, together with taking to law of some employers and morally supported by all necessary measures (including legal or even military force) against those executives responsible for now illegal "sanctuary" practices.
Jack, I would agree that Musk's Martian fantasies aren't commercially viable, and I think he sees it that way too, which is why he's trying so hard to amass the resources to fund it out of his own coffers. He believes our species will be more resilient if we have multiple planetary homes, and I can see his point. Of course, solving the problem of low birth rates might be far more significant to our survival as a species...but building cities on Mars might be much easier than convincing feminists to breed!
ReplyDeleteI share your enthusiasm for nuclear energy, and I hope that Trump can breathe new life into the nuclear sector.
Jack, if Sliwa is truly unable to win in NYC, then I would hope some other centrist/sane savior will emerge to do it instead. It would be beyond tragic to see the city become a socialist hellhole...or any more of a socialist hellhole than it already is.
You're preaching to the choir: I've believed for years that prosecuting employers who hire illegals is the ONLY way to end the problem of illegal immigration once and for all. Jobs are the great magnet that draws these people into our country. No serious effort has ever been made to put the fear of God (or Trump) into those who profit from this abomination. Yes, Trump is raiding employers in a more vigorous fashion, but I haven't heard of any of them facing the music in court. I'd love to see it happen.