“Local Moralist Doing His Part to End Income Inequality”
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American Conscription Ends
On Jan. 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force.
The Selective Service System, the federal agency that would administer a military draft, continues to be funded. Furthermore, American males continue to be forced to register for the draft.
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Beaumarchais
“Calumniate, calumniate; there will always be something which sticks.”
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville (1773).
Yesterday, we decried the rigged superdelegate voting process used by establishment Democrats to Hillary Clinton’s benefit — and party members’ detriment. Today, we switch parties to find the GOP establishment in full panic mode, so terrified at the prospect of a Ted Cruz victory that they’re now rallying around Donald Trump.
Republican Party stalwart Bob Dole, the 92-year-old former Senate Majority Leader and a 35-year Washington insider, called Sen. Cruz an “extremist.” A Cruz victory would lead to “cataclysmic” losses for the party, Dole contends, and by the way . . . “Nobody likes him.”
“Nobody in Washington,” Dole means.
As for Trump? Dole thinks Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”
The right personality?
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a fixture in Congress for the last 41 years, introduced Trump recently by clumsily validating Trump’s campaign slogan: “we have an opportunity, once again, to make America great again.”
And again.
According to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Trump does not have any particular enemies down here. I don’t think anyone gets up in the morning and is irritated with him. That’s not how it is with Cruz.”
Former GOP congressman turned lobbyist Vin Weber says that the establishment’s hated of Cruz “has forced some people to look past all of Trump’s issues and think about what he could offer.”
Offer?
The Republican establishment really, really, really despises Sen. Ted Cruz. But they can live with Donald Trump.
Hmmmm . . . advantage Cruz.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On January 26, 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
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Irving Kristol
“The inner spiritual chaos of the times, so powerfully created by the dynamics of capitalism itself, is such as to make nihilism an easy temptation. A ‘free society’ in Hayek’s sense gives birth in massive numbers to ‘free spirits’ — emptied of moral substance but still driven by primordial moral aspirations. Such people are capable of the most irrational actions. Indeed, it is my impression that, under the strain of modern life, whole classes of our population — and the educated classes most of all — are entering what can only be called, in the strictly clinical sense, a phase of infantile regression. With every passing year, public discourse becomes sillier and more petulant, emotions become, apparently, more ungovernable. Some of our most intelligent university professors are now loudly saying things that, had they been uttered by one of their students twenty years ago, would have called forth gentle and urbane reproof.”
Irving Kristol, “‘When virtue loses all her loveliness’ — some reflections on Capitalism and ‘the free society,’” National Affairs, No. 21, Fall 1970.
Democrats aren’t very good at democracy.
Consider the party’s presidential contest, as I did yesterday at Townhall.
As an appetizer, I noted the Democratic National Committee policy of hiding their debates from viewers by placing them on weekend evenings pitted against major sporting events.
For meat and potatoes, ponder my warning of the very ugly scenario of Sen. Bernie Sanders capturing as much as 58 percent of the primary and caucus vote and resulting delegates, but still losing to Hillary Clinton.
How could that possibly happen?
Because of folks designated as “superdelegates” — those awarded voting delegate status for holding a party office or being an elected or former elected official.
Democrats brag that they’ve reduced these insiders’ impact. Democratically-unaccountable superdelegates once accounted for 30 percent of Democratic Party convention delegates; now it’s only 15 percent of the total. Still, Clinton leads Sanders 380 to eleven among superdelegates.
At that rate, she could lose the actual state elections and still win the party’s presidential nomination.
The Democrats’ dereliction of democratic duty doesn’t end there, either.
The process by which various powerful party “interests” endorsed either Sanders or Clinton is quite telling. Journalist Zaid Jilani reports in The Intercept that, “Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.”
“Meanwhile,” Jilani found, “all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide. And several of those endorsements were accompanied by criticisms from members about the lack of a democratic process.”
Seems the insiders have decided Mrs. Clinton will be on the Democratic Party presidential menu, whether Democrats like it or not.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
When you systematically reward failure, incompetence and irresponsibility…what results should you expect?
QE – Toxic Asset Government Purchases
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Beaumarchais
“I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.”
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville (1773).
On January 25, 1787, Shays’s Rebellion experienced its largest confrontation, outside the Springfield Armory, with four of the rebels dead, 20 wounded.
The rebellion was a key moment in United States history. Daniel Shays and his followers objected to Massachussetts’s high taxes and rampant cronyism. The revolt, which was completely suppressed, led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and drawing George Washington from his retirement.