Thursday 7th of November 2024
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one day, m'boy, you'll be president — unless you behave proper.....

The presidency must be destroyed. It is the primary evil we face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat.

 

BY The Misesian

       The Presidency Is the Greatest Threat to Our Freedoms

 

 

The presidency—by which I mean the executive state—is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power in itself and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, the business, the charity, and the community.

I’ll go further. The US presidency is the world’s leading evil. It is the chief mischief-maker in every part of the globe, the leading wrecker of nations, the usurer behind third-world debt, the bailer of corrupt governments, and the hand in many dictatorial gloves. The US presidency is the sponsor and sustainer of woke international agencies, of wars, interstate and civil, of famine and disease. To see the evils caused by the presidency, look no further than Afghanistan or Iraq or Serbia or Libya or Syria. These are places where the lives of innocents were snuffed out in pointless wars, where bombing was designed to destroy civilian infrastructure and cause disease. These are places where, in many cases, women, children, and the aged have been denied essential food and medicine because of cruel embargoes and US-imposed financial warfare. Look at the human toll taken by the presidency, from Dresden and Hiroshima to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and you see that the presidency is a prime practitioner of murder by government.

Today, the president is called the leader of the world’s only superpower, the “world’s indispensable nation,” which is reason enough to have him deposed. A world with any superpower at all is a world where no freedoms are safe. But by invoking this title, the regime attempts to keep our attention focused on foreign affairs. It is a diversionary tactic designed to keep us from noticing the oppressive rule it imposes right here in the United States.

As the presidency assumes ever more power, it becomes less and less accountable and more and more tyrannical. These days, when we say “the federal government,” what we really mean is the presidency. When we say “national priorities,” we really mean what the presidency wants. When we say “national culture,” we mean what the presidency funds and imposes.

The presidency is presumed to be the embodiment of Rousseau’s general will, with far more power than any monarch or head of state in premodern societies. The US presidency is the apex of the world’s biggest and most powerful government and of the most expansive empire in world history. As such, the presidency represents the opposite of freedom. It is what stands between us and our goal of restoring our ancient rights.

And let me be clear: I’m not talking about any particular inhabitant of the White House. I’m talking about the institution itself, and the millions of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who are its acolytes. Look through the US government manual, which breaks down the federal establishment into its three branches. What you actually see is the presidential trunk, its Supreme Court stick, and its congressional twig. Practically everything we think of as federal—save the Library of Congress—operates under the aegis of the executive.

This is why the governing elites—and especially the foreign policy elites—are so intent on maintaining public respect for the office, and why they seek to give it the aura of holiness. For example, after Watergate, they briefly panicked and worried that they had gone too far. They might have discredited the democratic autocracy. And to some extent they did.

But the elites were not stupid: they were careful to insist that the Watergate controversy was not about the presidency as such, but only about Nixon the man. That’s why it became necessary to separate the two. How? By keeping the focus on Nixon, making a devil out of him, and reveling in the details of his personal life, his difficulties with his mother, his supposed pathologies, etc.

Decades later, similar tactics are now being used with Trump, the alleged new threat to the unassailable dignity of the presidency. We are told that another Trump presidency would “end democracy” and destroy countless freedoms. If this is true, it would seem reasonable to conclude that presidents have too much power. But the governing elites will never admit that. They insist the problem lies with Trump the man.

But this tactic doesn’t work like it once did. Americans took from Watergate the lesson that presidents will lie to you. Few voters now expect honesty, integrity, or even decency from their presidents. Many vote simply in the hope that their favored candidate will be less awful than the other one. Most know that under our current regime of untrammeled executive power, we can’t expect any better.

This should be the first lesson of any civics course, of course, and the first rule of thumb in understanding government affairs.

https://mises.org/misesian/presidency-greatest-threat-our-freedoms

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without questions…”

         Gus Leonisky

they tried everything.....

With results pouring in from Tuesday’s long-awaited presidential election, the race between two candidates seeking to take America in two very different directions remains tight. Sputnik asked veteran observers of American politics Joe Siracusa and Michael Shannon what will be decided in the coming hours, and how we got here.

“A lot of the factors favor former president Donald Trump right now rather than Kamala Harris: particularly, Americans trust the Republicans on the economy, they trust them on the border, they trust them on inflation - that kind of thing. And keep in mind that Kamala Harris has been running her election bid for 16 weeks. Donald Trump, in a sense, has been running for president for the past nine years. So, you know, he is well known to the American people,” Dr. Siracusa, dean of Global Futures at the faculty of humanities at Curtin University, told Sputnik.

Then there’s the factor of the attacks Trump has faced from Democrats, both during his first term and over the past four years since 2020.

“They weaponized the Justice Department. They impeached him twice. They threw the FBI at him. They got him arrested and convicted in the state of New York. It was all political theater, as a matter of fact. Americans can see that they all ganged up on Donald Trump. Donald Trump's not that likable a figure, actually. But when the system goes up against an individual, Americans tend to cheer for the underdog,” Siracusa said.

But whoever comes out on top Tuesday, Dr. Siracusa emphasized that between now and January 20, 2025, when the next president is sworn in and steps into the Oval Office, a lot of damage can be done, both inside the US and internationally, by its current occupant, whose obvious loss of cognitive abilities was ignored by the media for much of the past year before the sudden ‘realization’ this summer after his debate with Trump.

“I think the most important thing about this election, whoever wins, is what happens between today and January 20 when there’s a changeover in power, because President Biden can still do a great deal of damage. You know, his policies in Ukraine have been contested. And Donald Trump has made it very clear that he’s going to be working with Putin to end this war as soon as possible,” the professor stressed, saying a similar case can be made for the situations in the Middle East, and tensions in Asia. 

“There are a lot of things at stake here, a lot of reputations. And a lot of people in Washington don't want to see Donald Trump come in because he looks like he's going to change the rules of the game and they don't want to change the rules of the game. I mean, a lot of these intelligence agencies, the foreign policy elite and the political elite, they're just doing their own thing and the American people follow suit,” Siracusa said.

PRESIDENT BIDEN ‘CAN STILL DO A GREAT DEAL OF DAMAGE’ BETWEEN NOW AND JANUARY 20

Throwing aside comparisons of the potential pros and cons of the next US president, it’s important to remember that between now and January 20, 2025, when Joe Biden’s successor formally takes… pic.twitter.com/iNV7kVmOmx

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) November 6, 2024

 

White House Not Enough

If Trump does manage to come out on top in the race for the presidency, there are “two other factors at play” which require attention: his need for political “coattails” in the House and Senate, says political commentator and Newsmax columnist Michael Shannon.

“We have a very small majority in the House now, and we're led by a very ‘small’ speaker. So we need to get a larger majority in the House and we need to get rid of that pipsqueak, Mike Johnson, who's currently the speaker, and get someone in there who will be an ally and fight with Trump,” Shannon told Sputnik, referencing the year-long running battles between Johnson and hardcore MAGA Republicans over an array of foreign and domestic policy issues, from spending on foreign wars to an implicit deal with Democrats in September to keep the government funded. 

“Then in the Senate, we need to take the Senate over by taking, I think we need to turn two or three Senate seats. But even better than that would be get, say, 54 senators. And at that point, Trump needs to meet with the Republican senators and tell them how the cow ate the cabbage, and that he's not going to tolerate another majority leader like ‘Glitch’ McConnell, who is stepping down, who will undermine the Trump agenda. He needs to simply tell the senators, assuming they get the majority, that they're either going to be on the Trump train or they're going to be under the Trump Train because the voters, if they give him the mandate, which I think is entirely possible, then these people need to get off the dime and get with the MAGA movement,” the commentator emphasized.

 

TRUMP WOULD HAVE HARD TIME GOVERNING WITHOUT ENOUGH ALLIES IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE

Donald Trump has got a real shot at winning the presidential election, but he’s got to have “coattails” – effective allies forming majorities in both chambers of Congress to have a shot at… pic.twitter.com/LQ8rMBHovK

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) November 6, 2024

Pointing to the latest reports of voting “irregularities” and “glitches” related to voting machines and mail-in ballots in key swing states, Shannon highlighted the issue as a problem that continue to plague America’s elections “until someone goes to jail” for manipulations and the country returns to Election Day voting.

“This has to stop. We have to go back to same day voting. The only absentee ballots are for the military and for government employees who are deployed overseas. Otherwise, you need to get down to the polls on Election Day and vote. Preferably with a paper ballot. Everything is counted by about 9:30 or 10 pm like we did for decades here in the United States,” he said.

With that said, Trump has gotten a lot of momentum in the 2024 race, in part thanks to his razor-close brush with death at a rally in Pennsylvania in July, Shannon believes.

“You have to remember, Trump has had these three iconic things happen to him in this campaign that, to my knowledge, has never happened to another candidate. First of all, he's shot and you've got that picture with his fist up and he's telling the voters ‘fight, fight, fight!’ And then you've got a picture of him in McDonald's, which was just a classic photo. And then the final picture was him in a in a rally with the garbage man's vest on,” Shannon said, referring to the candidate’s Wisconsin rally appearance with the vest on following President Biden’s instantly infamous gaffe appearing to call Trump’s supporters “garbage” days just before the election. 

Trump “has struck a nerve” with swing voters this election cycle, and has a strong chance to flip major swing states, the observer believes.

“But again, he needs to have enough momentum to pull other down ballot Republican candidates with him. If he wins, but doesn’t have a Republican House and a Republican Senate, he’s going to be hamstrung again,” Shannon summed up.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20241106/trumps-underdog-status-defined-2024-race-but-biden-can-do-a-lot-of-damage-from-now-until-jan-20-1120791073.html

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without answers…”

         Gus Leonisky