Economists investigate “the causes of poverty”. It’s surely no more difficult than investigating the causes of nakedness. Where clothes are taken off or not put on there is nakedness. Where wealth is not acquired or squandered there is poverty.

Poverty is a lack or shortage of necessary goods and the means to acquire them. It is the condition in which multitudes live short lives in Africa. And it is the condition to which once rich populations, notably those of Cuba and Venezuela, have been reduced by socialism.

The Democratic Party has become the party of socialism. Using its militant wing under various names – Antifa and Black Lives Matter the best known – to make the country seem ungovernable, it is working passionately, unremittingly, no-holds-barred to establish a collectivist, redistributionist, one-party, totalitarian socialist regime in the United States. It would certainly mean the impoverishment of the nation.  

Strangely, it seems there are persons in the US who don’t fear poverty. They are very wealthy types who have always been wealthy, or in some rare cases have forgotten what it was like when they weren’t.

Some have political power and use it to advance policies of redistribution, a reliable cause of impoverishment. Some give millions to help the redistributionist politicians keep or gain political power (so they could confiscate all their property but won’t, they trust).

So why are these olympians helping to accomplish a general ruin?

Because they are Christians? They believe that the rich will not get into heaven? Mmm – no. We don’t think it’s that. Not even in the case of old, rich, bewildered Nancy Pelosi who says she is “an ardent, practicing Catholic”.

Because they are Democratic Socialists? Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Jeff Bezos owner of Amazon and the richest man in the world, George Soros  who has given billions to organizations working to destroy the Constitutional Republic of the United States, John Kerry who acquired billions by marriage, and many a president of a colossal corporation – do they believe so ardently in the Ideology of Redistribution that they would give up all they have for it? Mmm – no.

Do they think that when the Redistributionists come to absolute power they will be among them, in a position to redistribute the wealth of others to themselves? Probably. Or that the  Redistributionists will spare their helpers and benefactors? Surely not! Could anyone, even in her dotage, be so stupid as to believe that? Yes, they probably do.

Blindly, or desperately, or as true believers, they press on with the revolution. And they sense victory. 

Joel B. Pollak writes at Breitbart:

Three events last week showed that Democrats do not want a mere transfer of power if they win the November election: they intend to revolutionize our entire system of government.

The first happened Wednesday [June 24, 2020], when Democrats blocked the Senate from considering a bill on police reform by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).

Scott, who is African American, has been working on the issue for years. He had the full support of the rest of the Republican caucus. He also agreed to consider whatever amendments Democrats offered.

They still used the filibuster to block the bill from even being debated.

The episode showed that Democrats do not actually care about police reform. Nor do they want to unite the nation behind any sort of bipartisan compromise. They simply want to use the issue in the elections, which they hope will give them the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Then they can get rid of the filibuster and pass whatever they want.

The second episode happened later that same day, when the school board in Democrat-dominated Oakland, California voted unanimously to abolish the police force in local public schools.

With school shootings still a concern, the board bowed to the wishes of Black Lives Matter activists and removed a crucial layer of defense for the city’s children.

It is not an isolated episode: Democrats on the Minneapolis City Council voted Friday to disband their city’s police.

This is not a party that is interested in rational decisions on public policy. This is a party committed to a revolutionary course.

The third episode happened Friday [June 26, 2020], when the House of Representatives voted along party lines to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state.

It is an utterly absurd proposal. D.C. is barely even a proper city; in land area, it is smaller than Stockton, California. There is no pressing national demand to add another state and redesign of the national flag.

There is only one reason Democrats want to add another state: they want to add two Senators, who — given the partisan makeup of the Swamp — will always be Democrats. That means Republicans would have to work much harder to gain a majority. …

With a permanent majority in the Senate, and the filibuster gone, Democrats will be able to redesign the country, even without passing a constitutional amendment. They will be able to expand the Supreme Court and pack it with liberals with just a simple majority. They will be able to make all eleven-million-plus illegal aliens in the country voting citizens, permanently altering the electorate in Democrats’ favor. They will pass a version of the Green New Deal. And so on.

The Democrats knew a D.C. statehood bill would not pass now; their goal is to soften opposition so that they can pass it next year with minimal opposition, if and when they sweep the November elections.

Democrats have made their intentions clear. The only way to stop their socialist revolution is to beat them in November. 

Can the meeting in Helsinki of the presidents of the US and Russia be reckoned a success for President Trump?

Joel B. Pollak thinks it can. He writes at Breitbart:

President Donald Trump scored a diplomatic win on Monday at his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

The media, the Democrats, and the Never Trump contingent declared immediately that Trump had failed. But they were bitterly prejudiced against the meeting from the start, to the point where many insisted that Trump cancel it.

To them, looking at the summit through the lens of “collusion”, the summit could only be the ultimate payoff for Putin’s election meddling in 2016. But viewed through the lens of diplomacy, the summit was a milestone in US-Russia relations.

Judging from their remarks at the press conference that followed, the two leaders touched on every major important area of foreign policy: Syria, where the U.S. wants Russia to keep Iran at bay; North Korea, where the U.S. wants Russia to help it pressure the Kim regime to denuclearize; Iran, where the U.S. is attempting to re-organize international pressure; and Ukraine, where the U.S. wants Russia to de-escalate.

President Trump, as promised, challenged Putin on the subject of Russian interference in U.S. elections. It was Putin, not Trump, who pointed that out [at the press conference] — adding: “I had to reiterate things I said several times, including during our personal contacts, that the Russian state has never interfered and is not going to interfere into internal American affairs, including election process.”

A lie, of course. Putin is a liar and a murderer – a KGB crocodile with a deceptive smile. Still, the interference was trivial, no doubt routine, and accomplished nothing. And as Putin is the ruler of Russia, President Trump is right to try to establish person-to-crocodile relations with him.

Putin also volunteered the information that Trump had insisted the Russian annexation of Crimea was “illegal”. So much for appeasement.

Trump was also aggressive on the topic of Europe. Having just come from the NATO summit, where he berated Germany over buying gas from Russia while relying on America’s protection, Trump announced that the U.S. would compete with Russia to sell gas to Europe.

That is a major challenge of geopolitical significance, a sign the U.S. is going to use its technological edge in oil and gas production to boost Europe’s economic independence from Russia. All Russia has, Trump noted, is the advantage of location.

At the press conference, the Russian journalists — who do not enjoy press freedom — asked questions relevant to foreign policy. The American journalists – who are theoretically free to think freely – devoted nearly every single question to allegations relating to phony charges of Russian “collusion” with the Trump campaign, including the latest developments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Their concerns had little to do with US-Russia relations and everything to do with domestic US politics.

Trump’s critics are seizing on a single phrase: “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

He never “attacked” US intelligence agencies, nor did he explicitly take one side over the other. He said that he trusted Putin — as he should have done, if his goal was to improve relations. He added that “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia who carried out the hacking, nudging Russia toward a less adversarial posture.

Trump-haters are also pretending that Trump somehow elevated Putin by granting him a one-on-one meeting. Putin does not need the U.S. to make him more important. He has a massive nuclear arsenal. He just handed out the trophies at the FIFA World Cup. He has military bases in strategic points in key conflict zones.

The question is not whether Trump should have met Putin but rather why they had not met sooner, given the fact that certain US interests in 2018 cannot be achieved without cooperating with Russia.

It is worth noting that in meeting with Putin, Trump was honoring an explicit campaign promise. At a Republican primary debate in 2015, Trump said of Putin: “I would talk to him. I would get along with him. I believe–and I may be wrong, in which case I’d probably have to take a different path, but I would get along with a lot of the world leaders that this country is not getting along with.” Whatever the merits of that approach, the fact that Trump kept his word increases his credibility, at home and abroad.

Conservative critics — including myself — suggested at the time that Trump’s approach would fail, for the same reasons Obama’s “reset” had failed: namely, that the two countries have several divergent interests and values that transcend any particular pair of leaders.

But Trump has built an advantage that Obama never enjoyed by showing Putin that he is prepared to use the U.S. military to back American interests. That caught Putin’s attention and showed him he has at least some interest in cooperating, for now.

The meeting was also noteworthy for what was not said. Putin complained about the US pulling out of the Iran deal, but he was quiet about reports that the U.S. had killed hundreds of Russian military contractors in Syria (without losing a single American). Putin also said nothing about US airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

He dared not complain. That is because, far from being weak, Trump has been tougher than his predecessors toward Russia, letting his actions speak louder than his words.

The ultimate test of the Helsinki summit lies in the future. The Soviet Union was thought to have “won” the historic conference in Helsinki in 1975, until the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords helped bring down communism.

What is clear already is that Trump advocated for American interests without conceding anything to Putin other than his dignity. Trump’s critics, who are reduced to worrying that a soccer ball [gifted to him by Putin] could be used to spy on the U.S., are hysterical precisely because they know he succeeded.

We too think the meeting was a success for President Trump. And yes, the test lies in the future.

Russia’s future does not look rosy.

Its economy is precarious. Its main export commodity is oil. Competition with America selling fossil fuels to Europe would be a serious blow to it.

As the Financial Times reported on February 27, 2018 [links to the FT do not work for non-subscribers]:

The lack of investment shows everywhere: low levels of industrial automation paired with a rapidly ageing and shrinking workforce; weak infrastructure; increasing bureaucracy; and corruption are driving production and transaction costs up, hampering attempts to compete with other emerging markets.

And the Russians themselves are dwindling away. Though Russia’s fertility rate has risen from 1.25 in 2000 (a rate which, if sustained, would halve the population with each generation) to 1.6 in 2018, it is still shrinking. Hence the “rapidly ageing and shrinking workforce” that the Financial Times mentions in passing.

However, the Democrats and their media shills cannot bear the idea that the summit was another success for President Trump.

John Brennan, one of the most evil players, erstwhile director of the CIA, goes so far as to say that the president’s meeting with Putin amounts to treason. That such a man makes such an accusation is deeply ironic.

George Neumayr explains at The American Spectator:

John Brennan’s anti-Trump tweets grow more and more maniacal. His latest tweet holds that Donald Trump’s Russian diplomacy in Helsinki “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors’. It was nothing short of treasonous.”

That tells people all they need to know about the unseriousness of the left’s impeachment drive, not to mention exposing once again the demented malice behind the Obama administration’s spying on the Trump campaign.

The unhinged criticism is also hilariously rich, given that John Brennan, who supported the Soviet-controlled American Communist Party, meets the textbook definition of a useful idiot for the Russians. At the height of the Cold War, he was rooting for the Reds, casting his vote in 1976 for Gus Hall, the American Communist Party’s presidential candidate. If anyone is adept at serving as a dupe for the Russians, it is John Brennan. …

Anybody familiar with Brennan’s past, which includes not only supporting the evil empire of the Soviets but also the evil empire of radical Islam (his time as Obama’s CIA director was marked by apologetics for the thugs of the Muslim Brotherhood, ludicrous attempts to sanitize the concept of jihad, and nonstop whitewashing of the problem of Islamic terrorism), can only laugh at his anti-Trump antics.

That the media gives this fulminating fool and fraud a platform is a measure of its own lack of seriousness and absurdly sudden hawkishness.

The outrage about the Trump-Putin meeting is empty noise, generated by the America Last crowd to hurt an America First president. It won’t work. From Hillary to Pelosi to Brennan, they are the little lefties who cried wolf — after decades of feeding wolves. Their credibility is nil; their counsel is immature and reckless. …

Brennan isn’t just throwing stones from his glass house but boulders. He once said that he feared his support for Soviet stooge Gus Hall threatened his entrance into the CIA in 1980. This sounds like a wild satirical parody, but it isn’t: a dupe for the Soviet Union rises to the top of the CIA, uses his position to shill for Islamic radicals, eggs the FBI into spying on the Trump campaign, then leaves the CIA only to resume the radicalism of his youth, calling for civil disobedience and the overthrow of a duly elected president. Brennan’s only expertise on treachery comes from his own.

The mainstream media are aghast at President Donald Trump’s comments on North Korea as he promises “fire and fury” and warns that American military solutions are “locked and loaded”.

-So Joel B. Pollak writes at Breitbart.

Of course the mainstream media are aghast at the prospect of the US using its military might. They are on the side of America’s enemies. May those enemies be even more aghast!

Pollack goes on to defend the President’s rhetoric – as a substitute for military action?

The political elite, and the foreign policy establishment, oscillate between bitter scorn and sheer panic at his tactics. But one does not have to be convinced of Trump’s rhetorical genius to note that he has already re-framed the conflict in a way that is advantageous to the U.S.

First, Trump has radically changed the costs of a potential conflict, for both sides. The dominant paradigm of nuclear face-offs is mutually assured destruction (MAD), which is why the Soviet Union and the U.S. never attacked each other during the Cold War. Most of the discussion about North Korea has followed the same pattern, because of the threat of ICBMs to the U.S. mainland. After Trump threatened to annihilate North Korea, however, Kim Jong-un threatened to attack … Guam. Trump doubled down, indicating that a North Korean attack on Guam would trigger an attack against the regime. That shifted the costs of a war radically in our favor and against theirs.

Second, it is noteworthy that the North Korean threat to Guam did not refer to nuclear weapons, but rather hinted at conventional missile strikes. There is no way to know for sure that the regime would not use nuclear weapons, if indeed the North Koreans can miniaturize them, but a conventional attack is certainly less serious than a nuclear one. In threatening the most violent possible attack, Trump elicited a response that is significantly less threatening.

Third, Trump diverted attention away from North Korea’s more vulnerable neighbors, South Korea and Japan. Of course the North Koreans could attack them if the U.S. launched a war. But instead of talking about the potential deaths of millions of people in densely-populated areas, the world is now talking about the qualms felt by a few people on a remote island. That makes Trump’s words look less scary, and eases pressure for the U.S. to back down.

Update: Fourth, the Chinese government is now indicating that it will not defend North Korea from a retaliatory strike if the regime attacks the U.S. (which includes Guam). The Global Times, which reflects the view of the Chinese government, indicated that China would stop the U.S. from trying to overthrow the North Korean regime but would not defend North Korea if it struck the U.S. first. That is a significant change from the status quo ante.

The situation remains unstable, and could escalate. But Trump’s rhetoric is not as former Obama adviser Susan Rice claims, the problem. In fact, it is part of the solution. It has, at the very least, restored some of our deterrence.

But is deterrence what is needed?

What is needed is the destruction of the Communist regime of North Korea and the total destruction of its nuclear warheads and missiles. 

And even that would not be enough. It is also – and far more urgently – necessary to destroy the nuclear facilities of Iran. Which the United States can do by using its deep bunker-buster bombs that no other power has.

The precision-guided, 30.000-pound GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) would destroy Iran’s underground nuclear installations however deep in the earth they may be.

Little North Korea could do some serious damage on its own with its nuclear warheads, but it is unlikely to use them because that would be inviting its own destruction.

But Kim Jong-un, the Communist dictator of North Korea, is working with the ayatollahs who rule Iran to launch nuclear war, and Iran is far more dangerous to the United States and the world.

The co-operation between North Korea and Iran has become closer in recent days.

The New York Daily News reports:

On Aug. 3, the No. 2-ranking official in North Korea, president of the Supreme People’s Assembly Kim Yong Nam, arrived in Tehran for a 10-day visit, longer than many honeymoons and suspected to be chock-full of meetings on how the two can widen cooperation in a range of fields and battle sanctions hand-in-hand.

Pyongyang just opened an embassy in Tehran to, as the state-run Korean Central News Agency declared, “boost exchanges, contacts and cooperation between the two countries for world peace and security and international justice.”

[Iran and North Korea] already had a share-and-share-alike relationship when it comes to missile technology, with Iran’s Shahab-3 intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of striking Israel almost mirroring the North Korean No Dong 1 — and Pyongyang, in the line of nefarious hand-me-downs, likely borrowed their engine technology from Russia.

Iran was an investor in the No Dong before it even went to the testing ground. This long-running “you do the research, we provide the cash” marriage is basically tailored for a post-P5+1 deal world: Iran rakes in the dough from lifted sanctions, continues their ballistic missile program that wasn’t included in the deal, and has extra cash from above board or under the table to send North Korea’s way for continued nuclear development and testing that will be shared with Tehran in the end.

To avert a potentially devastating conflict, the State Department is dangling the offer of conditional talks with North Korea. And Iran would be an invisible yet powerfully influential presence in the negotiating room.

Yes, Kim Jong-un would be speaking for an anti-America North Korea-Iran-Russia axis.

Talks would achieve nothing. There has been far too much talk for far too long.

It is time NOW to use force against North Korea and Iran.