Let's Get to Work

As the period for gloating and finger pointing draws to a close, it's time to get to work

The Budget, the Deficit and What It Will Take to Downsize.

I took some time this week to update my self with regard to the Federal Debt, the Deficit and how they came to be. Here are some quick facts to set the table (bear in mind these are government-generated numbers so they are jiggly):

• From 2015 through 2019, the budget (amount federal government spent per year) was in the $5 to 5.5 Trillion range.

  
  

• In 2020 it skyrocketed to $7.4 trillion as we threw the kitchen sink at Covid. Unfortunately it has not come back down to pre-Covid levels.

  
  

• Government spending in 2023 was 6.2 Trillion. Once Covid was over, Bidenomics and multiple spending bills were passed (Inflation Recovery Act, Student Loan Forgiveness, Infrastructure Act), which added trillions to government spending, which kept it far above pre-Covid levels.

  
  

• This year Biden proposed a $7.2 Trillion budget, which thankfully is in the dustbin now.

  
  

• (Aside: If you spent a $1000 a day it would take over 16 million years to spend One Trillion.)

  
  

• In 2023, the government took in $4.7 Trillion, mostly in taxes. $6.2 Trillion going out, $4.7 coming in and you have an addition of $1.5 Trillion added to the federal debt. This shortfall is called, of course, the Federal Deficit. The Federal Debt is now $33 Trillion. Which means if you spent a $1000 a day it would take...oh never mind. You get the point.

  
  

• As we all know, how here's the important part when it comes to getting this under control and headed in the right direction.

  
  

• Of the $6.2 Trillion the Government spent in 2023, a whopping $3.8 was MANDATORY. In other words, 62% was locked. Requires no laws, budget approvals or Biden boondoggles. It just is. Cannot be cut by Presidential fiat.

  
  

• Mandatory spending comprises $1.5 Trillion in spending for Medicare and Medicaid and $1.2 Trillion in Social Security plus food stamps and a few other items.

  
  

• Of the rest, $1.7 Trillion is discretionary (decided every budget year) and $700 Billion is interest on the money the government borrows to enable it to continue spending like drunken sailors. Military spending is also "discretionary".

• Bottom line - unless Mandatory Spending (read MCR & SS) are restructured, there is no hope of reducing deficits and debt long term. Ain't enough meat on the bone to cut.

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• As Rush Limbaugh always said, "Remember for Government to give away, it must first take."

  
  

• So let's see where it goes from here. Am really juiced by the idea Musk & Vivek will lead the cost cutting effort. Just hope it goes beyond simply taking a meat axe to functions we don't need. To achieve sustainable efficiency, we must also reengineer the remaining functions to perform at lowest possible cost.

  
  

• Anybody know Musk or Vivek? I'd like to offer my services because it's what I've been doing for 50 years.

  
  

• The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will, apparently, be led by Mush and Vivek. Good bye - Dept of Ed, which Bill Bennett wanted to close when he was Head. This is going to BE REAL FUN!

Staying in Control

I presume and sure as hell hope that by appointing Congressmen (women), Senators and Governors to his Cabinet and key positions, Trump doesn't mitigate the balance of control. I believe special elections must be held and I hope that isn't a crap shoot.

Could It We Actually Like Trump?

As clear from the pervasive finger pointing that has occurred so far - Democrats and their media enablers are trying to make sense of last Tuesday’s election (the biggest shift to the right since Ronald Reagan became president in 1980) and searching for where they went wrong.

Liz Peek of FN has a theory. She says, "The good news for the GOP is that they (Dems) haven’t got a clue."

The main disconnect, Ms. Peek hypothesizes, is that Liberals fail to acknowledge that tens of millions of Americans actually like Donald Trump; many even love him. Democrats are so blinded by hatred (there’s a reason that Republicans have coined the TDS label) they literally cannot fathom that Trump is personally popular.

Dems cannot imagine that Trump might NOT be a reflection of our country’s worst impulses and attitudes but instead embodies some of our best.  Honesty, common sense, patriotism, humor and authenticity

Start with honesty. Democrats accuse Trump of lying about everything, all the time. They have made a cottage industry of fact-checking his every utterance, every facial expression, every sneeze. What do they find? A tendency to exaggerate, to overstate the size of his crowds, to puff up his wins and minimize his losses. His is a great, big, beautiful world and those are the terms he deals in. His overstatements and hyperbole are often tongue-in-cheek and amusing, but only to his supporters. To Democrats, they are disqualifying. CME readers will recall in previous versions we have noted so-called Trump lies that turned out to be way more truth that fabrication.

By contrast, Democrats have been authors of some of the greatest and gravest falsehoods in our history. Pretending Joe Biden was fit to serve another four years was an outright lie spun by the White House, leading Democrats, the media and, worst of all, the person running to replace him. That is a consequential lie, and they are now paying for it.

In addition, the left-wing media and Hillary Clinton’s campaign cooked up the undermining Russia hoax, while Democrats also smeared the former president with dishonest interpretations of his comments about Charlottesville, about veterans and immigrants. These profound mistruths unfairly colored what many thought about Trump. 

Even in the final days of the campaign, Democrats took a stupid joke from Trump’s Madison Square Garden event and dishonestly pretended it reflected the former president’s racism. They kept beating on Project 2025 though Trump denied even reading it a million times. Supporters knew better.

The Left has branded Trump anti-female despite his record of hiring women for important posts (including his daughter Ivanka), anti-gay even though he chose the first openly-gay cabinet member in our history and anti-black despite his adopting measures like permanently funding the historically black colleges and setting up opportunity zones in black communities. These are false charges and were long dismissed by his fans.

Then there is my ATF. Common sense. A Trump virtue applauded by and shared with his supporters. Allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports is ridiculous; over 70% of adults agree. Allowing millions of people to enter the country illegally, unvetted, is outrageous; even a poll that favored Harris shows a majority of the country approves of mass deportations. Allowing criminals to walk free is dangerous; even the voters in ultra-liberal Southern California agree and booted progressive DA George Gascon in a landslide. Not backing Israel who was invaded and subject to mutilations, rape and murder. Defunding law enforcement. Common-sense voters chose Donald Trump to stop the progressive nonsense, including prioritizing DEI practices in the military. And he will.

Liberals cannot comprehend that Trump is authentic. You may not like what he says, but it’s pretty clear that he is telling you what he thinks. Polling showed that voters thought Trump meant what he said; that was not true for Kamala Harris. 

Finally, Trump has a sense of humor, something his fans enjoy, the media never displayed and the left never appreciated. Showing up at McDonald's and driving around in a garbage truck late in the campaign was funny and appealing. It was extremely difficult to square those gestures with the Left’s desperate portrayal of Trump as fascist and the second coming of Hitler. A destroyer of democracy

Last and not least...Trump is a patriot. Democrats tried to climb aboard that train at their convention, which was festooned with American flags and punctuated by renditions of the Star Spangled Banner. But the left for years has decried our nation as "systemically racist," has rewritten our history to defame our country’s brilliant Founders, and has denied that the U.S. is a land of opportunity and promise for all. By so doing their conversion came across as inauthentic as their candidate.

When Donald Trump promises to Make America Great Again, the left sneers. Voters believe him and have given him a mandate to try.

No Joy in Reidville

No Trump bump: MSNBC hemorrhaging viewers since Election Day, sheds more than half of primetime audience.

MSNBC’s reliably liberal audience has tuned out the anti-Trump network since Election Day with a staggering 54% drop in primetime viewership.  MSNBC averaged 1.1 million viewers during the month of October but plummeted to an average audience of 736,000 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week following President-elect Donald Trump’s historic landslide victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. MSNBC’s remarkable 31% drop comes as Fox News Channel’s viewership grew by 61% over the same time period. 

Partisan Hack Chuck Schumer Eats More Crow

Drops snub of Dave McCormick, Senator-elect from PA, and invites to Senate orientation.

Hollywood Hypocrites

Harris' Hollywood pals radio silent week after Trump victory; they ‘cannot afford’ to lose fans.

Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez are among list of Kamala Harris supporters who have yet to comment on 2024 presidential election

In the weeks leading up to the election, stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez, George Clooney, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Leonardo DiCaprio and more vocalized their support for Harris and encouraged fans to get out and vote. However, since Trump's victory, the radio silence from these particular stars actually speaks volumes.

Oh, by the way, The Terminator voted for Harris. I terminated him from my Netflix list.

Lies to the Bitter End

The Energy Department announced the end of replenishing the nation's strategic oil reserves on Friday, which were depleted by nearly half under President Biden, and used the opportunity to praise the administration for the work it has done to maintain and replenish the stockpile.

However, as of Nov. 1, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) inventory held just 387.2 million barrels of oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That is compared to 638.1 million barrels that were in the SPR inventory when Biden took over the presidency from former President Donald Trump. 

The major drop came from Biden's decision to flood the U.S. oil market with millions of barrels from the SPR to keep oil costs down following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The decision to do so was frequently met with backlash from his critics who argued the move was "political" in order to keep gas prices down ahead of the election this month.

Debating A Liberal

I'll go back to the late and great Rush Limbaugh once again. He had such fondness for saying there was no point to debating with a Liberal. Don't even try.

Here are some words from the great man himself (6/30/09):

"Folks, do you remember what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about the rich? He said, ‘The rich are different from you and me.’ Liberals are different from you and me. I think it’s time to forget holding out hope for liberal judges, folks. They are not like us. They don’t look at the judicial system the way we do. They don’t look at the law the way we do.

The liberal brain fires in a totally different way, years and years and years of propaganda has robbed liberals of the ability to reason and think. They are programmed human robots. Somebody got hold of them, either in the sixties, in college, junior high, when they’re watching cartoons on TV, Captain Planet, whatever it is, they don’t think like we do. They just don’t."

In my view, there are two ways to interpret the behavior of liberals, which, in too many cases, completely ignores common sense and hard facts. If you have sympathy for them and are a glass half full person, you are inclined to label them as compassionate and humane (however misinformed) as they hand out your taxes, because, "you can afford it." (However, when you say - Enough. You are selfish, greedy and uncaring.)

On the other hand, I look at their behavior differently. I come from the WIIFM school of motivation. The What's In It For Me discipline. My experiences prove overwhelmingly that most behaviors are rooted in a desire for some type of benefit or reward. So it is with liberal leaders. They are no more compassionate, more decent, more honest than Conservative counterparts. In many cases, they are less so.

Where liberal leaders and their media sycophants do excel is psychological manipulation. They brutalize opposition with false allegations, insinuations and news. Then do an about face and appeal to the greater angels of their brainwashed acolytes. What's in it for them? Why staying in power at all cost, of course!

No doubt Rush is right. No amount of logic will cause liberals to stop and rethink their positions or engage in level-headed discussion. They simply cannot do it. They throw their hands up thinking, 'there is no point in trying to explain to this insensitive moron.'

Fortunately we won't have to put up with liberal, leftwing, progressive, Woke points of view for at least a little while. That is until the leftwing media can find a few Trump comments to twist out of context. Then it will all start again.

(Oops. Started already! On Monday, The View Co-Host Anna Navarro proclaimed, "When you talk about mass deportations people think, ‘Oh it's just going to be the criminals.’ There's not enough criminals, aliens in the federal prison system for it to be mass deportations. What it means is grandmothers, what it means is brothers and aunts, what it means is abuelos and abuelas, what it means is dreamers. It means family members, it means your colleagues."

New Trump Border Tsar, Tom Homan, when asked if the new administration would be deporting legal U.S. citizens, after this claim was made said,

"No, exactly not. Look, ‘The View’ is such an island of misfit toys. They don't know what the hell they are talking about." More F-A-K-E news.)

Continuing...

Rush said the definition of a Bigot is someone who wins an argument with a liberal.

On the off chance I do get to engage with a liberal in the 7 minutes before they clam up or change their seat, I try to ask four questions. While, of course, acknowledging the inherently flawed assumption that the interrogatee gives a rat's butt about this country or its citizens.

1. Do you honestly believe it's a good thing for America to have wide open borders and allow millions to come into our country unvetted?

2. Or for America or our Allies to be dependent on sworn enemies for to keep the lights and heat on?

3. Or for America to have to borrow billions from China to pay our bills?

4. Or think it's OK for some people to break the law and not others?