A Trumpian Snapshot of America

Tomgram: Engelhardt, | TomDispatch

The Art of the Trumpaclysm 
How the U.S. Invaded, Occupied, and Remade Itself 
By Tom Engelhardt

It’s been epic! A cast of thousands! (Hundreds? Tens?) A spectacular production that, five weeks after opening on every screen of any sort in America (and possibly the world), shows no sign of ending. What a hit it's been! It’s driving people back to newspapers (online, if not in print) and ensuring that our everyday companions, the 24/7 cable news shows, never lack for “breaking news” or audiences. It’s a smash in both the Hollywood and car accident sense of the term, a phenomenon the likes of which we’ve simply never experienced. Think of Nero fiddling while Rome burned and the cameras rolled. It’s proved, in every way, to be a giant leak. A faucet. A spigot. An absolute flood of non-news, quarter-news, half-news, crazed news, fake news, and over-the-top actual news.

And you know exactly what -- and whom -- I’m talking about.  No need to explain.  I mean, you tell me: What doesn’t it have?  Its lead actor is the closest we’ve come in our nation's capital to an action figure.  Think of him as the Mar-a-Lego version of Batman and the Joker rolled into one, a president who, as he told us at a news conference recently, is “the least anti-Semitic person that you've ever seen in your entire life” and the “least racist person” as well.  As report after report indicates, he attacks, lashes out, mocks, tweets, pummels, charges, and complains, showering calumny on others even as he praises his achievements without surcease.  Think of him as the towering inferno of twenty-first-century American politics or a modern Godzilla eternally emerging from New York harbor.

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Gearing Up for More War? Trump Seeks "Historic" 10% Increase in Military Budget

The Daily Sheeple

It has just been announced ahead of Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress that the president plans to cut funding to the majority of other agencies in the government in order to boost the defense and national security budget by ten percent.

Congress has already approved $607 billion for defense, compared to $543 billion approved for non-defense discretionary funding. Social Security and Medicare have been spared from Trump’s new plan, but every other agency will see a 10% decrease to boost defense spending by another $54 billion.

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Ernst & Young no longer Requires Degrees – No Evidence a Degree = Success

Armstrong Economics



I have warned that 2015.75 was the peak in government and the two many industries that government subsidizes has created the decay within our American society reducing disposable income – healthcare and education. Degrees I have warned are really worthless. About 60% of graduates cannot find employment in the degree they have paid for.  Both education and healthcare have become the greatest violation of consumer laws to date, and nobody does anything about it. Hospitals are growing trying to put out of business the private local general practitioner aided by the lawyers driving up legal claims enticing people to file suits as if this is a lottery or casino to get rich quick.



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Protest is Increasingly Becoming Criminalized in America

Liberty Blitzkrieg

The historical space available for Americans to engage in public protest has been declining for many years, and is a topic I covered on several occasions during the Obama administration. For instance in the post,  The War on Free Speech – U.S. Department of Justice Subpoenas Reason.com Over Comment Section, I noted:

Readers of Liberty Blitzkrieg will be well aware of the gradual erosion by the state of the civil liberties of the American public. Such attacks are typically sufficiently under the radar, so that the average citizen has no idea what is happening until it’s too late. I have written about such calculated assaults on many occasions, but the holy grail target of the status quo is the First Amendment of the Constitution, which enshrines a right to the freedom of religion, speech, the press, and the right to peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances. 

Many aspects of the First Amendment have been neutered in practice. For example, the right to assemble peacefully and effectively is often prevented in practice by the need to secure permits and other hindrances (see “free speech cages” and “protest zones”) . Meanwhile, on college campuses, where activism is historically most vibrant, many schools have embraced the Orwellian concept of “free speech zones” in order to prevent free speech.

Unfortunately, it appears this trend is about to get a lot worse following the DAPL protests and increased activism we’ve seen since Trump’s election. As The Hill reports:

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Trump to States with Recreational Pot: Drop Dead

Mises Wire

In the days following the 2016 election, there were already worrying signs that the Trump administration didn't merely view the War on Drugs as a useful source of rhetoric to please some Conservatives. With the appointment of Jeff Sessions — who appears to be a true believer in the War on Drugs — the threat to federalism, states's rights, and local control was all too real. 

The fears continue to be stoked by the administration itself, and yesterday White House spokesman Sean Spicer announcing that "I do believe that you'll see greater enforcement of [federal law against marijuana]." 

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Women’s Sports

The Z Blog

The other day, Steve Sailer had a post about the WNBA and various ways to make the sport more attractive to sports fans. I pointed out that the main issue is spatial awareness, as men are more abstract in modeling their environment, while women are more concrete. Knowing where the herd is going to be when going on a hunt is different than remembering where the berries are when going on a pick. The part of the brain, which controls the perception of speed and the mental ability to rotate 3-D objects, is larger in men as well.

Anyone who has tried to watch women’s basketball understands that it is terrible in just about every way imaginable. Basketball is about speed, jumping and obviously shooting. Fans go to NBA games to see freaks of nature, who can leap from the top of the key and dunk the ball over some other freak. The women’s game is described as low and slow, meaning the style of play is pretty much the opposite of what fans of basketball want to see. The girls look like they are nailed to the floor most of the time.

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Deep State Neuroscientists Believe They Can Turn Off Free Will

The Daily Sheeple

by Nathaniel Mauka

Neuroscientists have argued whether we even have free will, but now they want to turn it off.

The Libet Experiment

In the 1980s scientist Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment. He ‘discovered’ that what seems to be free will or the conscious choice to do or not do something is really just the observance of something that has already happened. This completely rocked the foundations of what most thought of as a prerequisite for being human, and the long-held religious view that free-will must always be honored.

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