The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
President Donald Trump and his supporters are right about one thing in this explosive clash between California and the federal government: It is a fight not just over position or even over public safety. It’s about values. And it’s been a long time building.
For Trump, it’s a battle of his choosing, giving him the opportunity to escalate conflict on a signature issue, immigration, in a city and state governed by political adversaries.
For California, it is the logical result of a long and profound transformation — from the days of Republican Party dominance to Democratic Party control — one I’ve watched and chronicled for more than 30 years and that I now see culminating in literal fighting in the streets. Californians are turning out against forces sent here by guardians of a value system that the state has rejected.
... full articleWhen you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, “Who is destroying the world?” You are.
The way Donald Trump sees it, he’s the greatest businessman to campaign for the White House.
“I’m the most successful person ever to run,” he told an Iowa reporter in 2015. “I have a Gucci store that’s worth more than Romney.”
That might have been an exaggeration, but this isn’t: A decade later, no modern American president has positioned his family to make so much money while in the White House. Already, since the early days of his reelection campaign, he’s more than doubled his net worth to about $5.4 billion.
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.
Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, most of them as they were seeking food from a US-Israeli distribution scheme, according to local health authorities.
Medical officials said at least 25 people were killed and dozens wounded as they approached a food distribution centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near Netzarim in central Gaza.
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