Once you get past all the noise on both sides, Donald Trump is clearly a different kind of Republican and he succeeded in the Republican primary and with swing voters in Flyover Country precisely because he isn’t a typical Republican. Too what degree Trump has fundamentally changed the GOP in his image remains to be seen, but Trump has clearly moved the party in a more economic populist direction. The party has become more overtly a party of the working class that better reflects its actual voting base.
There are all kinds of facts: historical facts, judicial facts, scientific facts, among others. And now there are “alternative facts.” The difference is there are rules for determining historical, judicial, and scientific facts. The rules of evidence, for example, control what kinds of things a finder of fact (judge or jury) can hear or see in reaching a verdict (from the Latin roots for “truth” and “say”).
Bitcoin – the world’s largest cryptocurrency- has become embroiled in a burgeoning currency war. Chinese traders have reportedly been discovered utilizing the blockchain money in order to bypass the remnants of the once-stringent capital controls designed to prevent capital-flight from the chaotic Far-Eastern economy.
When Trump first started naming his cabinet picks, there was a lot of noise from both sides complaining about some of his choices. The liberal mainstream media, who clearly don’t like Trump, was obviously trying to cause dissension in the ranks of Trump supporters by declaring certain of his nominees a betrayal of his campaign promises and his base (Puzder, Mnuchin, Priebus). This was transparently disingenuous. Do they really expect me to believe that they wouldn’t be perfectly happy for Trump to betray his base?
In its first executive action last Friday, within the hour after Trump took the oath of office, his administration suspended the implementation of a rule that would have reduced the cost of mortgage insurance for FHA-backed loans. The backing helps first-time buyers, people with poor credit, and those who lack funds for a 20% down payment obtain private loans.
About 16% of new mortgages are FHA insured. The premium rate would have been reduced from 0.85% to 0.60%, saving borrowers about $29 monthly on a $200,000 mortgage.
"Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and Mixed Martial Arts, which are not the arts,” ~ Meryl Streep
History is nuanced. The connections between what happened historically and the way things are now, are nuanced. Will anyone claim that President-Elect Trump has a nuanced understanding of the ways things are and the history of how they came to be that way?
Tweets are not nuanced. You can express a provocation in 140 characters or fewer, but you can’t express a concept, much less a nuanced concept. That’s why some people are tweeting in chains. But that too is a poor substitute for rational discourse.
Forgetful of the support of working class voters in the election, Mr. Trump will nominate an opponent of the Obama Administration’s new overtime rule, Mr. Andy Pudzer, for Secretary of Labor. The rule more than doubles, to $47,000, the salary threshold at which a worker can be considered overtime exempt based on job duties. It was set to go into effect later this year, subject to a challenge in the federal courts.
Recent comments