My buddy Joe and I were the geekiest of geeky kids who ever grew up in the Head of the Holler. (That's a real place, as real as any place in my mind.) In grade school, at recess we would stand behind the White Building and talk instead of running and playing ball, and Joe usually brought the best ideas to the conversation.
One day, out of the blue, he turned to me and said, "You know, they are always making more laws but they never take any off the books. That means that in America, personal freedom becomes less and less every year." This was a GRADE SCHOOL kid.
I keep trying to get them to make me the king - not president, king - so if I say it, it happens. My first edict would be term limits for all elected officials in the land - and all civil servants, who would have to resign after four years and reapply for their jobs. My second would be a Constitutional amendment requiring all laws to sunset after ten years. Since the Federal Register (of federal laws) occupies 80 feet of shelf space, it would be impossible to keep up with those going out of effect until they dwindled to a manageable number. The third would be that the unconstitutional 3-letter bureaus could not pass their own rules which are, in effect, laws. All laws, like the Constitution says, would be passed by Congress. Do those three things and those bastards who get their mail in Washington, DC would be so busy keeping all the plates spinning that they could do very little mischief - forever.
How about legislators serving much like jurors? Their districts, and/or states pay them a minimal per diem, ans when the session wraps up, they come back home and work their regular job.
No pension, no standing committees, no staying on as a lobbyist, et al.
…and they only come together in DC twice a year, say Jan/ Feb and Aug/Sept. The rest of the time must all be spent in their districts. It would give them Less time together to plot mischief, dislocate the K Street lobby influence, plus force them to actually be in closer contact with their actual constituents (novel concept!).
Unfortunately the climate change rules don’t apply to them, so they’ll be all too happy to stick around the air conditioned /warm as toast offices/meetings/parties doing the devils’s work all day everyday, long weekends on holiday excepted, laughing all the way Ho Ho Ho.
Check out my post where I suggest they all work in glass enclosed offices in their home state where the voters can watch and control their every move. Close DC. Shutter it.
He's a retired doctor, living outside of Charleston. We're both seventy, have known each other since second grade and we still talk at least twice a week. We refer to each other as, "my oldest and best friend."
My best friend is still back in Minnesota. They say you only have one best friend but lots of acquaintances. Your best friend would come running to bail you out of jail. No questions asked. However, later you’d get the “What the hell were you thinking?”
The BIG ONE I would change is all government budgets would go to "zero-based budgeting" each fiscal year, rather than the cheaters method used today.
When was the last time that a small business or your own household budget just added percentage increases in wages and expenditures without actually realizing it?
My own thought on the law was that the more of it they make, the more ignorant of it we become. And since ignorance is no excuse for disobedience, it becomes a snare.
God kept it simple, and still it is a curse to all except the blameless – for by it we are condemned.
I'll make a suggestion here; Instead of repealing Section 702, make it mandatory that the Director of the FBI be hung from a lamppost on Pennsylvania ave when Section 702 is misused.
The only thing that made my life more pleasant than the adjournement of the last House of Representatives' session was the writer's strike in Hollywood. Good times, good times.
And the morning we woke up to President elect Donald Trump! That was as good as it gets. Maybe only thing better was Hillary's drunken hissy-fit. Would have loved being a fly on the wall to witness that!!
I'm slowly waking up. The second time. Started later in my new routine as a hybrid fusion ninja night owl, going to sleep around 2ish and getting up at 6 ish.
Dec 19, 2023·edited Dec 19, 2023Liked by Don Surber
"Pearlstein wrote, “a small band of right-wing zealots forced Republican leader Kevin McCarthy through 15 rounds of voting"
Opinions like this one show how absolutely ignorant journalists (and most Americans) are about the political process. That process is DESIGNED to be confrontational, opinionated, argued, and fought hard for. It is a legal process as we might see in the court room, including the tension and surprise when hearing the jury's decision. Don't stop this important process because one's temperament can't handle it. Congressional processes are NOT tea parties in polite society. And don't get me started on the new concept of Emotional Intelligence used to negate the appropriateness for direct, truthful, and sometimes confrontational conversation. Emotional Intelligence is a made-up term, like gender-affirming care, to mask the truth and forcing the use of "kind" words.
Don, you have opened my eyes a little more. You are right. We NEVER see the term left-wing zealots, which confounds their use of the term "right-wing" zealots.
Given that history shows beyond question that both parties have shifted so far left that our right shoulders are bruised from being pushed and shoved, both mainstream parties ARE the left-wing zealots. They don't stand out because there are so many of them.
Shrug, many years ago, I had exactly the same reaction you've had to my post. The source of this enlightenment was "Word Abuse --- A Lexicon," by Dennis Prager.
I have it taped into my dictionary; unfortunately it is undated. It might even predate the book's copyright (1992, a new edition of the American Heritage Dictionary), but the point is that this lexicon has been around for quite some time (Prager was born in 1948).
If you can find a copy of it, it will be worth your while.
I should add that one can also tell how old the lexicon is because the words "liberal" and "progressive" were at that time considered to be synonymous. Today, the "progressives" (a multi-racial KKK) hate the liberals (the few surviving ones) equally as much as they do Trump et al.
Never go away empty-handed. An amusing non-political headline:
"Convicted Serial Package Thief Nabbed By East Rutherford Detectives Trying To Hop Bus" Edgewater Daily Voice (12/18/23)
And here's someone who's on email-speed-dial to becoming the next Malibu-mansion-recluse-Barbra-Streisand, crazy-texts-and-all:
"Comedian Sarah Silverman claims she was ‘stoned’ when she endorsed Israeli move to shut off Gaza’s water, electricity" NY Post (10/20/23)
Thank you for responding. I got a good workout writing this up!
I just got back from an exhausting road trip to San Jose, and as I sailed past Poca, WV, I waved. Don't think you saw us though; it was dark. All best to you and yours during the Christmas season. Thanks for your perspective; we just may make it.™
When I began my first business back in the early 70’s we were hired to do a promotion for HUD’s “New Town” project, a huge government boondoggle (one of them to build a city in the swamps of Louisiana’s Lake Ponchartrian). I remember visiting the HUD headquarters in DC which was a big slightly curved building the effect of which was if you stood at one end of the hallways on each floor you were unable to see the other end. As we walked down these halls (which were lined on each side with file cabinet after file cabinet after file cabinet) we could see in the many open doors employees doing absolutely nothing. A real eye-opener of my tax dollars at work.
If Washington DC disappeared with all its bureaucrats would anyone care? No Federal government is better than the FJB one. They are failing on the one thing they are needed for: protecting the populace.
There seems to be very very little non government influence in our lives. I don’t think this was the purpose of the federal government when the country was formed.
We need to go back to the days when the feds left us alone to do our own thing.
Our congress critters seem to want to build another edifice (metaphorically & concretely as well) to another god, one as unholy as the first time around. It doesn’t escape our Lord’s attention.
Spot on Poca-Man and Joy to the people.A congress that only wastes money in pursuit of one-up-manship is best in permanent recess.Great and needed post, wishing all a MAGA Merry Christmas and FJB.
"Congressmen need to spend more time with their families"
Perhaps - I just don't want them in session in DC.
Like Jimbo Fisher, we're happy to pay them - handsomely, too - NOT to do their jobs. If each felt it his/her job to actually serve his/her constituents, I might feel differently.
"Axios reported, 'The vast majority were uncontroversial bills that passed either by unanimous consent or with minimal opposition, including multiple measures to rename Veterans Affairs clinics and another to mint a coin commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.'"
It's sad that this is what we pay our legislators to do - enact legislation that is largely symbolic, and of little to no benefit to Americans.
"I want a dysfunctional Congress. I want a Congress that is so partisan and divided that nothing ever gets done, because I have seen their work and I am not impressed; in fact, I am frightened."
As do I, and I am too, Brother Don! PREACH!
"The problem is not that Congress has not addressed the problems. The problem is Congress addressed the problems."
Indeed. The Republican Party that was, and continues to be possessed by the ghost of Bob Michel, simply acquiesces to whatever the Democrats want - even when the Democrats are the minority party.
"Congress is terrible at its job."
Yet, we continue to pay the representatives that constitute it.
If the poll ever gets loaded (visible), I'll vote, then.
Dec 19, 2023·edited Dec 19, 2023Liked by Don Surber
The Founding Fathers intended that change be implemented slowly at the Federal level. Their thesis was that states would lead any charge towards change and, if successful, the policy might be adopted nationwide if appropriate. So years when there are few new laws put on the Federal books are evidence that not much worth enacting nationally has bubbled up from the states. Intra-state fights over access to abortion may yield some results but pharmaceutical advances - pills to induce miscarriages - may make that moot anyway. Laws prohibiting pills have a history of being largely unenforceable as the drug trade evidences. This is one example of that same bubbling up.
The bigger issue is the notion that the White House can substitute fiat decrees for Congressional legislation. This is the "I have a pen and a phone" Presidential authority which exists nowhere in the Constitution and is more in the mode of kings and queens. In the context of various forms of emergency authority and under the cover of "Congress won't act" the President simply orders his Executive Branch employees to implement certain favored policies. The larger problem with that is the inclination of the rest of America - individuals, groups, business, corporations, all of it - to go along with these orders. The enormous body of Federal law can usually be mined to find some justification, some color of interpretation, to justify these orders. But justification isn't really required. No one wants to be a test case and so as long as the order isn't totally egregious, we comply. Pushing back as ordinary citizens and enterprises is distracting, disruptive and expensive. Executive overreach operates on the principle of divide and conquer since most just go along and make the best of it.
My suggestion is that we level the playing field a bit. Successful litigation to roll back unsupportable Executive orders should come with legal fees for plaintiffs paid by the Executive branch agency that lost at trial. Make it double. Incentivize better agency behavior. Make it clear that trying to enforce orders based on dodgy law carries the threat of layoffs at that agency since fees paid would have to be taken from the agency's operating budget. Let those who seek to overreach feel the sting of the lash.
That's true but the result would be shrinkage in agencies that overreach. The savings from killing unjustifiable overregulation and intrusion would accrue to taxpayers as well. Future overreach would be attenuated by the shrinking staffs of the offending agencies since it's hard to fight battles with fewer soldiers. When the President goes looking for an agency to implement these fiats, Cabinet meetings might be exercises in trying not to make eye contact.
That one change would quickly be adjusted to a FAIR decision... now, the idiots just push another idiotic agenda forward, and no one does anything about it.
Seth, I don’t believe the founders ever intended gridlock. They did predict a day when our government would stop serving the interests of their constituents and only serve their own selfish desires. Liberty and freedom give us the ability to screw up the system, but the original plan was almost perfect. We have abused it and misused it like a teenager with a fast car.
I don't think us ordinary Americans abused and misused it, though. I think our good will and trust was taken advantage of by an intruding enemy (the Marxist Left/Progressives/ etc.) that came in stealth in recent decades and committed sedition, and committed a treasonous Coup D'Etat through the election fraud of 2020.
I always appreciate your posts, Shrugged. Was surprised recently when (if I understood correctly) you said you worked in university administration? You must be the last sane person at your institution! I bet it must be frustrating, but thank God they have you!
TPG I am in faculty. I love teaching and I love the students. The caveat is it is a College of Business which makes more leeway for classic conservative thought. I can’t recall numbers or names but there were quite a few Trump supporters (secretly) in the college of business because they “get it “. Not so for the majority of campus or the faculty union (of which I am not a member). Thanks for remembering and asking.
Ah... yes, "Business" still runs on the principles of results and accountability--otherwise known as "Reality", haha. So you do have some more leeway there.
That is wonderful though, that you love the students--that is a real opportunity to support their intellectual development.
I would think that we're seeing the beginning of DEI starting to crumble. It would be so good to see this poison purged from academia. Maybe someday you will be able to breathe freely again at your institution. If you can hang in there, you can help move things in the right direction.
I'll never forget Mikhail Gorbachev. We know that he played a big role in turning around the status quo in Soviet Union. But the one thing I always marveled at about him, was that--knowing that he was an out-of-the-box paradigm changer--that he SOMEHOW managed to be steady and patient and work his way up in the Soviet system for decades, until he became premier and could revolutionize it from the top. Just imagine all those years he spent observing the Soviet system from the inside and probably being extremely frustrated. But he stayed inside, and ultimately got into a position to have a big, big impact. Here's hoping you can similarly endure and maintain your peace of mind.
Someone said: "Every time a legislature meets your freedom is at risk." True.
Climate 'change': God bless CO2 - even at its miniscule amount in our atmosphere(.04%) - as it gives me the beef and bacon I absolutely need for survival...
Yes sir. Same. A scam to transfer your wealth to others. Like Covid. Like Race™. Like War™.
A fully developed hurricane is equivalent to 10 megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes: I am far more afraid of what Gaia can do to me than what we supposedly can do to her.
How about making every senator and representative work from their home state in a glass office in the middle of town? Give the voters 24/7 access to watching their every move. Close DC. Shutter it.
My buddy Joe and I were the geekiest of geeky kids who ever grew up in the Head of the Holler. (That's a real place, as real as any place in my mind.) In grade school, at recess we would stand behind the White Building and talk instead of running and playing ball, and Joe usually brought the best ideas to the conversation.
One day, out of the blue, he turned to me and said, "You know, they are always making more laws but they never take any off the books. That means that in America, personal freedom becomes less and less every year." This was a GRADE SCHOOL kid.
I keep trying to get them to make me the king - not president, king - so if I say it, it happens. My first edict would be term limits for all elected officials in the land - and all civil servants, who would have to resign after four years and reapply for their jobs. My second would be a Constitutional amendment requiring all laws to sunset after ten years. Since the Federal Register (of federal laws) occupies 80 feet of shelf space, it would be impossible to keep up with those going out of effect until they dwindled to a manageable number. The third would be that the unconstitutional 3-letter bureaus could not pass their own rules which are, in effect, laws. All laws, like the Constitution says, would be passed by Congress. Do those three things and those bastards who get their mail in Washington, DC would be so busy keeping all the plates spinning that they could do very little mischief - forever.
It's good to dream, I suppose.
How about legislators serving much like jurors? Their districts, and/or states pay them a minimal per diem, ans when the session wraps up, they come back home and work their regular job.
No pension, no standing committees, no staying on as a lobbyist, et al.
…and they only come together in DC twice a year, say Jan/ Feb and Aug/Sept. The rest of the time must all be spent in their districts. It would give them Less time together to plot mischief, dislocate the K Street lobby influence, plus force them to actually be in closer contact with their actual constituents (novel concept!).
And clever of you to land them in DC in the worst climate parts of the year! 😊
Totally intentional! 😏
Unfortunately the climate change rules don’t apply to them, so they’ll be all too happy to stick around the air conditioned /warm as toast offices/meetings/parties doing the devils’s work all day everyday, long weekends on holiday excepted, laughing all the way Ho Ho Ho.
I like the New Hampshire approach--elected legislators get $200.00 a year plus mileage.
Check out my post where I suggest they all work in glass enclosed offices in their home state where the voters can watch and control their every move. Close DC. Shutter it.
Too damn sensible doncha know.
Wonder what Joe is doing today?
He's a retired doctor, living outside of Charleston. We're both seventy, have known each other since second grade and we still talk at least twice a week. We refer to each other as, "my oldest and best friend."
My best friend is still back in Minnesota. They say you only have one best friend but lots of acquaintances. Your best friend would come running to bail you out of jail. No questions asked. However, later you’d get the “What the hell were you thinking?”
He still hasn’t forgiven me for giving him my paper route. We’re 73
They say that a great friend will bail you out of jail, but your best friend will be sitting there next to you.
Ah, I should have read further down before making my earlier post.
How blessed are you both to have such a terrific friendship! I'm jealous!
The BIG ONE I would change is all government budgets would go to "zero-based budgeting" each fiscal year, rather than the cheaters method used today.
When was the last time that a small business or your own household budget just added percentage increases in wages and expenditures without actually realizing it?
I hope you still stay in touch with Joe. He sounds like a treasure to have as a friend!
Geez. I don't even remember grade school.
My own thought on the law was that the more of it they make, the more ignorant of it we become. And since ignorance is no excuse for disobedience, it becomes a snare.
God kept it simple, and still it is a curse to all except the blameless – for by it we are condemned.
I'd start to work for you now, but I'm already committed to a fundraiser for a Silver Bentley.
Just make sure the throttle will release.
I'll make a suggestion here; Instead of repealing Section 702, make it mandatory that the Director of the FBI be hung from a lamppost on Pennsylvania ave when Section 702 is misused.
Let's do that, anyway...
🤣
But but but! Who then will star in the clandestine-repugnant vacant Senate Room videos?
The only thing that made my life more pleasant than the adjournement of the last House of Representatives' session was the writer's strike in Hollywood. Good times, good times.
And the morning we woke up to President elect Donald Trump! That was as good as it gets. Maybe only thing better was Hillary's drunken hissy-fit. Would have loved being a fly on the wall to witness that!!
And no one* even noticed that they'd had been on strike for eight months!
*Except the writers' parents, on the receiving end of the "HELP! Send Money!" messages.
"Honey, didn't we used to get these 30 years ago when they were in summer camp?"
"Yes sir. And with MAs and Masters Degrees, they're still sending postcards. Written in crayons..."
***
No poll?! To The Rescue!
The NFL's Fiasco Game of The Year (if you live in Philly):
A) Eagles-Seahawks MNF December 18, 2023;
B) Eagles-Seahawks MNF December 18, 2023;
C) Eagles-Seahawks MNF December 18, 2023.
I'm slowly waking up. The second time. Started later in my new routine as a hybrid fusion ninja night owl, going to sleep around 2ish and getting up at 6 ish.
"Pearlstein wrote, “a small band of right-wing zealots forced Republican leader Kevin McCarthy through 15 rounds of voting"
Opinions like this one show how absolutely ignorant journalists (and most Americans) are about the political process. That process is DESIGNED to be confrontational, opinionated, argued, and fought hard for. It is a legal process as we might see in the court room, including the tension and surprise when hearing the jury's decision. Don't stop this important process because one's temperament can't handle it. Congressional processes are NOT tea parties in polite society. And don't get me started on the new concept of Emotional Intelligence used to negate the appropriateness for direct, truthful, and sometimes confrontational conversation. Emotional Intelligence is a made-up term, like gender-affirming care, to mask the truth and forcing the use of "kind" words.
They're ALWAYS "opposed by right wing zealots" --- There's no such thing as a left-wing zealot --- and this statement is always in the lead sentence.
Don, you have opened my eyes a little more. You are right. We NEVER see the term left-wing zealots, which confounds their use of the term "right-wing" zealots.
Given that history shows beyond question that both parties have shifted so far left that our right shoulders are bruised from being pushed and shoved, both mainstream parties ARE the left-wing zealots. They don't stand out because there are so many of them.
Always enjoy seeing your posts
Shrug, many years ago, I had exactly the same reaction you've had to my post. The source of this enlightenment was "Word Abuse --- A Lexicon," by Dennis Prager.
I have it taped into my dictionary; unfortunately it is undated. It might even predate the book's copyright (1992, a new edition of the American Heritage Dictionary), but the point is that this lexicon has been around for quite some time (Prager was born in 1948).
If you can find a copy of it, it will be worth your while.
I should add that one can also tell how old the lexicon is because the words "liberal" and "progressive" were at that time considered to be synonymous. Today, the "progressives" (a multi-racial KKK) hate the liberals (the few surviving ones) equally as much as they do Trump et al.
Never go away empty-handed. An amusing non-political headline:
"Convicted Serial Package Thief Nabbed By East Rutherford Detectives Trying To Hop Bus" Edgewater Daily Voice (12/18/23)
And here's someone who's on email-speed-dial to becoming the next Malibu-mansion-recluse-Barbra-Streisand, crazy-texts-and-all:
"Comedian Sarah Silverman claims she was ‘stoned’ when she endorsed Israeli move to shut off Gaza’s water, electricity" NY Post (10/20/23)
Thank you for responding. I got a good workout writing this up!
FYI. I keep getting this error message “We were unable to load this poll. Please refresh the page”
Same here.
Cat's still sleeping
I received the same note.
9 am EST and the same message appears on my screen.
I just got back from an exhausting road trip to San Jose, and as I sailed past Poca, WV, I waved. Don't think you saw us though; it was dark. All best to you and yours during the Christmas season. Thanks for your perspective; we just may make it.™
When I began my first business back in the early 70’s we were hired to do a promotion for HUD’s “New Town” project, a huge government boondoggle (one of them to build a city in the swamps of Louisiana’s Lake Ponchartrian). I remember visiting the HUD headquarters in DC which was a big slightly curved building the effect of which was if you stood at one end of the hallways on each floor you were unable to see the other end. As we walked down these halls (which were lined on each side with file cabinet after file cabinet after file cabinet) we could see in the many open doors employees doing absolutely nothing. A real eye-opener of my tax dollars at work.
If Washington DC disappeared with all its bureaucrats would anyone care? No Federal government is better than the FJB one. They are failing on the one thing they are needed for: protecting the populace.
…and #1, UPHOLDING the Constitution!
There seems to be very very little non government influence in our lives. I don’t think this was the purpose of the federal government when the country was formed.
We need to go back to the days when the feds left us alone to do our own thing.
Our congress critters seem to want to build another edifice (metaphorically & concretely as well) to another god, one as unholy as the first time around. It doesn’t escape our Lord’s attention.
Oh how DC crowd do babble away.
Spot on Poca-Man and Joy to the people.A congress that only wastes money in pursuit of one-up-manship is best in permanent recess.Great and needed post, wishing all a MAGA Merry Christmas and FJB.
"Congressmen need to spend more time with their families"
Perhaps - I just don't want them in session in DC.
Like Jimbo Fisher, we're happy to pay them - handsomely, too - NOT to do their jobs. If each felt it his/her job to actually serve his/her constituents, I might feel differently.
"Axios reported, 'The vast majority were uncontroversial bills that passed either by unanimous consent or with minimal opposition, including multiple measures to rename Veterans Affairs clinics and another to mint a coin commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.'"
It's sad that this is what we pay our legislators to do - enact legislation that is largely symbolic, and of little to no benefit to Americans.
"I want a dysfunctional Congress. I want a Congress that is so partisan and divided that nothing ever gets done, because I have seen their work and I am not impressed; in fact, I am frightened."
As do I, and I am too, Brother Don! PREACH!
"The problem is not that Congress has not addressed the problems. The problem is Congress addressed the problems."
Indeed. The Republican Party that was, and continues to be possessed by the ghost of Bob Michel, simply acquiesces to whatever the Democrats want - even when the Democrats are the minority party.
"Congress is terrible at its job."
Yet, we continue to pay the representatives that constitute it.
If the poll ever gets loaded (visible), I'll vote, then.
BEST RESPONSE OF THE MONTH! THANK YOU!
You're most welcome!
The Founding Fathers intended that change be implemented slowly at the Federal level. Their thesis was that states would lead any charge towards change and, if successful, the policy might be adopted nationwide if appropriate. So years when there are few new laws put on the Federal books are evidence that not much worth enacting nationally has bubbled up from the states. Intra-state fights over access to abortion may yield some results but pharmaceutical advances - pills to induce miscarriages - may make that moot anyway. Laws prohibiting pills have a history of being largely unenforceable as the drug trade evidences. This is one example of that same bubbling up.
The bigger issue is the notion that the White House can substitute fiat decrees for Congressional legislation. This is the "I have a pen and a phone" Presidential authority which exists nowhere in the Constitution and is more in the mode of kings and queens. In the context of various forms of emergency authority and under the cover of "Congress won't act" the President simply orders his Executive Branch employees to implement certain favored policies. The larger problem with that is the inclination of the rest of America - individuals, groups, business, corporations, all of it - to go along with these orders. The enormous body of Federal law can usually be mined to find some justification, some color of interpretation, to justify these orders. But justification isn't really required. No one wants to be a test case and so as long as the order isn't totally egregious, we comply. Pushing back as ordinary citizens and enterprises is distracting, disruptive and expensive. Executive overreach operates on the principle of divide and conquer since most just go along and make the best of it.
My suggestion is that we level the playing field a bit. Successful litigation to roll back unsupportable Executive orders should come with legal fees for plaintiffs paid by the Executive branch agency that lost at trial. Make it double. Incentivize better agency behavior. Make it clear that trying to enforce orders based on dodgy law carries the threat of layoffs at that agency since fees paid would have to be taken from the agency's operating budget. Let those who seek to overreach feel the sting of the lash.
If legal fees are required to be paid by the “Executive branch”, that merely translates to taxpayer money, as it has no money of its own.
That's true but the result would be shrinkage in agencies that overreach. The savings from killing unjustifiable overregulation and intrusion would accrue to taxpayers as well. Future overreach would be attenuated by the shrinking staffs of the offending agencies since it's hard to fight battles with fewer soldiers. When the President goes looking for an agency to implement these fiats, Cabinet meetings might be exercises in trying not to make eye contact.
That one change would quickly be adjusted to a FAIR decision... now, the idiots just push another idiotic agenda forward, and no one does anything about it.
All hail gridlock, just as the founders designed.
Seth, I don’t believe the founders ever intended gridlock. They did predict a day when our government would stop serving the interests of their constituents and only serve their own selfish desires. Liberty and freedom give us the ability to screw up the system, but the original plan was almost perfect. We have abused it and misused it like a teenager with a fast car.
I don't think us ordinary Americans abused and misused it, though. I think our good will and trust was taken advantage of by an intruding enemy (the Marxist Left/Progressives/ etc.) that came in stealth in recent decades and committed sedition, and committed a treasonous Coup D'Etat through the election fraud of 2020.
Yes, a better accounting of our problems with Congress. Thanks, TPG.
I always appreciate your posts, Shrugged. Was surprised recently when (if I understood correctly) you said you worked in university administration? You must be the last sane person at your institution! I bet it must be frustrating, but thank God they have you!
TPG I am in faculty. I love teaching and I love the students. The caveat is it is a College of Business which makes more leeway for classic conservative thought. I can’t recall numbers or names but there were quite a few Trump supporters (secretly) in the college of business because they “get it “. Not so for the majority of campus or the faculty union (of which I am not a member). Thanks for remembering and asking.
Ah... yes, "Business" still runs on the principles of results and accountability--otherwise known as "Reality", haha. So you do have some more leeway there.
That is wonderful though, that you love the students--that is a real opportunity to support their intellectual development.
I would think that we're seeing the beginning of DEI starting to crumble. It would be so good to see this poison purged from academia. Maybe someday you will be able to breathe freely again at your institution. If you can hang in there, you can help move things in the right direction.
I'll never forget Mikhail Gorbachev. We know that he played a big role in turning around the status quo in Soviet Union. But the one thing I always marveled at about him, was that--knowing that he was an out-of-the-box paradigm changer--that he SOMEHOW managed to be steady and patient and work his way up in the Soviet system for decades, until he became premier and could revolutionize it from the top. Just imagine all those years he spent observing the Soviet system from the inside and probably being extremely frustrated. But he stayed inside, and ultimately got into a position to have a big, big impact. Here's hoping you can similarly endure and maintain your peace of mind.
Someone said: "Every time a legislature meets your freedom is at risk." True.
Climate 'change': God bless CO2 - even at its miniscule amount in our atmosphere(.04%) - as it gives me the beef and bacon I absolutely need for survival...
It breaks my brain that 'they' keep saying C02 is poison..... We have less C02 now than they did in the dark ages. It is plant food.
I expect that volcano going off in Iceland will do more for changing the planet's weather than us.
Yes sir. Same. A scam to transfer your wealth to others. Like Covid. Like Race™. Like War™.
A fully developed hurricane is equivalent to 10 megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes: I am far more afraid of what Gaia can do to me than what we supposedly can do to her.
Try as we may we are unable to alter climate noticeably as our Creator intended.
Amazing how the planet endures..... Amazing how our bodies try to heal themselves too. God's design.
How about making every senator and representative work from their home state in a glass office in the middle of town? Give the voters 24/7 access to watching their every move. Close DC. Shutter it.
LOVE THIS!!