Trump plans to blow up the budget. Conservatives don't notice.

Trump continues to pretend to be a serious candidate, at least part of the time. In that vein, he threw together a tax plan, cribbing a lot of it from Jeb Bush, and announced it yesterday. It's got lower tax rates, it's got more breaks for low-income people, it's got lower corporate tax rates.

What's interesting is that he seemed to choose the rates only to beat those proposed by Bush. That seems to be the extent of his math--just underbid Jeb.

Plenty of conservatives commented on the similarity to Jeb's plan, but few bothered to ask whether the plan would lead to huge deficits. Among the see-no-evil brigade are Mark Levin (who is possibly evil incarnate), the Daily Caller, and Breitbart.

Among the ludicrous praise:

• "Trump’s plan appears to be economically sound and is very clever politically in building a broader Republican coalition."
• "I did the plan with some of the leading scholars and economists and tax experts that there are in this country," he said. "They love it, they say, 'Why hasn’t this [been] done before?'" -- The Donald praising his own plan.

One conservative writer, a no-namer on HotAir, mentioned at the end of his piece that the tax plan might not be revenue-neutral, so The Donald might have trouble paying for his grand plans of military superiority and healthcare for all. But even the writer didn't mention that deficit spending would soar.

How much could the deficit soar? Maybe by $10 trillion over the next 10 years. So Obama-sized deficits. But when did Trump ever go small?

Image: townhall.com

Peeling through the many reasons for Boehner's resignation

Boehner's resignation is not a surprise to me. I don't know how he could stand the job. That said, I didn't know he would resign imminently, or that it would be on Friday, Sept. 25. So why now?

Reading the news reports, at first it sounded like Boehner was somehow inspired by the Pope's visit. Boehner stated that he woke up and knew that "this is the day."

The same story says that Boehner had determined to resign on his 66th birthday on Nov. 17, but brought it forward by a few weeks. Foolish me, I thought he finally got fed up.

Luckily I can read, and found much more revealing reports elsewhere. This article lays out the actual reasons pretty clearly:

• The Freedom Caucus (a very conservative group in the House) were planning to challenge Boehner's speakership if he didn't let them shut down the government by sending appropriations with poison pill/veto bait provisions defunding Planned Parenthood.
• Boehner found out that the Dems weren't going to help him stay as speaker, so the threat of being unseated was credible. 
• Boehner will resign, avoid the challenge, and gets to avoid the shutdown with a clean appropriation bill that lasts until mid-December.
• The GOP will have between now and mid-December to elect their new speaker, if they can settle on someone.

So the arch-conservatives are forcing Boehner out. This will almost certainly be destabilizing. The Freedom Caucus will either force a shutdown, or will face the humiliation of not being able to force one. Can that really be a good idea? It doesn't sound like a good idea now, but forcing a shutdown in mid-December, just in time for Christmas, sounds even worse.

Maybe they'll wait until February, except that it's primary season, so that's not a good time either. The further they push the shutdown, the closer to Election Day it gets. So a failed shutdown (the outcome I predict) will be fresher in the minds of voters.

THIS IS THEIR STRATEGY?

Unbelievable. I have got to watch this melodrama unfold. It may even be better than The Walking Dead. We may have flesh-eating conservatives attacking fellow GOPers on the House floor. Maybe Dems will come in toting assault rifles. What a spectacle! I can't wait! (Or maybe I'm losing my mind. Time to stop blogging for tonight.)

Image:backfromthedepths.co.uk

Extras. The conservative press didn't seem to know the resignation/ouster was about to happen. No articles in HotAir, Daily Caller, etc. announcing a planned move. The Hill warned about the coup two days before Boehner's resignation. A member of the Freedom Caucus told a local Arizona paper about growing discontent. But when hasn't there been growing discontent?

A listing from 538 of the ultra-conservatives who ousted Boehner. Maybe some Democrats were going to prop up Boehner. A reasonably good summary of Boehner's history from a MSM perspective. Most interesting point: Boehner got to the top of the leadership pyramid because he wasn't highly implicated in the lobbying (Abramoff) scandals that wiped out most of the House GOP leadership.

What I have in common with Donald Trump

I have almost nothing in common with Donald Trump. I haven't been divorced, haven't done deals or written books, don't have a terrible combover, and don't traffic in the swallow analysis like this: "I like the evangelicals, and it's really shown in the polls."

So, to stop being coy, I'm like the Donald because neither of us has to stay on a script. Donald can break with the business orthodoxy about immigrants. He can remind other GOP candidates that ripping up the Iran deal isn't the best course (while saying plenty of stupid shit about the deal too). He can talk about tax rates being too low for hedge fund managers. He can slam other Republicans for being foolish warmongers. He can respect someone in the past and slam them unmercifully now.

Liberty . . .

This liberty to say whatever, untethered from party or factional talking points, is absolutely great, and a lot of fun. At least the Donald certainly appears to be having fun.

For me, it's different. I don't want to be a zipperhead or dittohead, and I know it's actually hard work to avoid that. It's hard to question all your received ideas and political positions. For one thing, there are a hell of a lot of political positions, and reexamining them takes time.  You can't do it in a short span. It's going to be a long process, and an ongoing process.

For example, I don't take the typical liberal or moderate view on immigration. It took me a long time to accept what reason told me about immigration--that the high level during the last three decades has had enormous negative consequences. Despite my pride in my immigrant roots and my personal empathy for immigrants, I can't ignore the results I see. This is a bad situation, and we've been following the wrong policy for 25 years.

Liberty, Analysis, Socrates

What motivates me to be different, and to examine all these positions? I want to be realistic, grounded, and right about my opinions. I can only feel confident that I'm right if I've subjected the opinion to a lot of fact-checking and questioning.

That is what I learned nearly four decades ago when I first learned about the Socratic method. It was a powerful lesson--to question honestly, answer honestly, and examine honestly. That's hard work and a very high standard, but it's what I try to do on every important question.

Somehow, I bet the Donald can't say that.

Image: philadelphia-reflections.com

(My first attempt at Photoshop. Argghhh.)

A conservative blog investigates... and collects evidence

I've complained many times about how poor conservative journalism is. They provide much more conjecture and unsubstantiated claims than hard evidence.

So this is a remarkable difference. The Blaze, Glenn Beck's conservative news website, gathered a bunch of evidence that a 13-year-old black conservative is also a fraud. He appears to have made false claims that Obama banned him from following @POTUS on Twitter. Now the boy refuses to answer any questions.

Fraud happens regularly, and it's a real drain on time and resources. You can spend all your hours trying to debunk fraudulent claims. Meanwhile, new fraudulent claim are popping up, and there's no way to debunk them all.

So good on The Blaze for exposing this one.

Crop, cut, and paste for instant celebrity.

Image: theblaze.com

Short: What went wrong with Walker

Buried in a predictable but correct article by Sean Trende is perhaps the best guess at what happened to Walker's bid for the presidency:

Walker lost because he had no strategy. There was no David Axelrod for the Walker campaign; Scott Walker hired Scott Walker to be his David Axelrod.

...A presidential candidate has a more-than-full-time job: being a candidate. He or she does not have time to follow ever-changing electoral dynamics. So when a candidate without a good strategist is faced with Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage, questions about the legality of abortion to save the life of the mother, the rise of birthright citizenship as an issue or, say, the ascendency of Donald Trump, that candidate will flail.

Sounds plausible to me. Of course I read many comments from Wisconsiners about how horrid Walker was and predicting his failure. However, you can always predict the failure of a presidential candidate, and 95% of the time you'll be right. Only one person is going to make it to the White House, and all the others will reward your dour predictions. Predicting the winner is hard, predicting a loser is like hitting the broad side of a barn. I guess Walker hit that barn pretty hard.

Image: @Anomaly100

...Or did he tank because he frequently looks like a doofus?

The old appropriation two-step

The choreography we get from Congress at the yearly appropriation deadline is getting as familiar as the Christmas Rockettes show. Plenty of R's claim that only the Dems are talking about shutdowns, and a few mentally feeble ones (R's) might actually believe the Dems would be the cause of a shutdown.

The R leaders are giving their caucus lots of chances to vote for their issue du jour. (Not that the issue matters. Two years ago it was defunding Obamacare, and it didn't happen. This year it's defunding Planned Parenthood, and we can watch while it doesn't happen either.)

After the ritual yet useless votes, the R leaders will trot out a clean, status quo bill, and we'll all yawn and go to bed. Well, a few people will scream about betrayal and cowardice and turn strange shades of red (such as Erick Erickson), but the rest of us will be watching reruns and drifting off to dreamland.

The only question is how many times the Republicans will repeat this ineffective strategy. At least once after 2016, that's my prediction.

 Image: dailymail.co,uk

Trump tumbles?

Is it really possible to predict what will trip a candidate who's gotten away with saying this about Mexicans?

"They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Or one who's increased his stature by disrespecting John McCain for having been captured?

But, finally, this week Trump seemed to be dropping. Carly Fiorina put him in this place by pointing out that we hear him loud and clear when he spews his outrageous blather. The specific topic was her face (not generally a national issue), but it's true of everything he says. His own words are his clearest reflection. They should be his strength or his undoing, and Fiorina let them stand starkly. That's the best way to argue against him when he's blatantly being a horse's ass--just let his words stand.

This week Trump didn't correct a person at a town hall meeting who said Obama was a Muslim and not born in the US. Trump's been pandering to this type of person for over 5 years, so it's no wonder that someone said it at one of his own gatherings. However, Trump made a poor contrast to John McCain, who corrected a women back in 2008 who made a similar hateful and/or ignorant statement. Trump, who's supposed to be the big, brave alpha-man, was shown up by the past actions of John McCain.

Then Trump made it worse by tweeting that he wasn't "morally obligated" to defend Obama. No, he isn't morally obligated. However, Trump would be wise not to use the words 'moral' or 'obligated' because they are a reminder that Trump isn't moral and doesn't honor his obligations. That's why he's been married and divorced several times over, and declared bankruptcy rather than pay from his own billionaire pockets. Not to mention that Trump feels no moral obligation to the truth. reality, or humility.

Today, Trump is declaring that he has Muslim friends. That's got similar optics to saying that some of his best friends are black.

But as I wrote at the top of this post, can we actually predict when Trump's unending blather will hurt him? Maybe it's unsafe to predict, but this week's polls show that Trump has fallen considerably. He had 32% support, and is now down to 24%.

Better late than never.

Image: 123rf.com

Extra. There's still no shortage of blather. Carson says Muslims are unfit to be president.