“While the presidential election wasn’t called until early Wednesday morning, by midnight the overwhelming evidence was that the Democrats were heading for a catastrophe on par with 2016. Donald Trump was already leading in all the battleground states; Republicans were poised to win the Senate, and the House of Representatives remains agonizingly close. There is a real danger of a Republican trifecta once the last votes are counted. It also appears that Donald Trump has won the popular vote, something he failed to do in his first two runs for the presidency. Trump is now in a position to do enormous damage during his second term in office.” (11/06/24)
“Trump will claim a popular mandate for everything he does. He did that when he eked out a narrow Electoral College victory in 2016, and he will do it now. But there is no constitutional mandate for authoritarianism. No matter what the Roberts Supreme Court says, the president is not a king, and he is not entitled to ignore the law in order to do whatever he pleases. Americans cannot vote themselves into a dictatorship any more than you as an individual can sell yourself into slavery. The restraints of the Constitution protect the American people from the unscrupulous designs of whatever lawless people might take the reins of their government, and that does not change simply because Trump believes that those restraints need not be respected by him.” (11/06/24)
“Sorry, Chuck Schumer: You’re set to become Senate minority leader as Republicans recapture the Senate. That’s darn cheery news for the nation, especially with Donald Trump winning the White House. The GOP went into the race holding 49 seats to the Democrats’ 51 (including independents caucusing with them), with a near-lock to pick up more at least two seats. Sure enough, in West Virginia, Republican Jim Justice flipped the Democratic seat Sen. Joe Manchin left open …. In Ohio, Republican Bernie Moreno beat incumbent Dem Sherrod Brown, with Tim Sheehy overwhelmingly expected to oust Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, that’s plus three.” [editor’s note: As long as the GOP doesn’t get 60, the filibuster remains intact … unless the Republicans are lying sacks of crap whgo reverse their positions on it. Which seems likely – TLK] (11/06/24)
“Donald Trump, despite who he is, has won the 2024 presidential election and will retake the White House for a second term. Trump’s win became official early Wednesday morning after media outlets called Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, giving him enough Electoral College votes for the White House. Republicans made every mistake they could along the way in nominating Trump again, but Democrats threw them a lifeline in mismanaging Joe Biden’s exit from the race and making Kamala Harris campaign from behind most of the way. Instead of persuading Americans to vote for Harris, they spent their efforts persuading them to vote against Trump, and that was not enough for Americans. In the end, Biden took the presidency from Trump and gave it right back to him.” (11/06/24)
“The punishment meted out last night to the Democratic Party represents a simple fact: pandemic profligacy has bitten Western government’s backside. Inflation, rather than employment, now decides elections. For those on the centre-right, there should be some relief that it is Hayek after all, who is winning the debate over Keynes.” (11/06/24)
“Former U.S. President Donald Trump won a second term. Handily. I see, already, the overwhelming dread flooding my social media. After all, Americans elected a man who has bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, who has bred fear and hatred toward Central American migrants, who has pledged to undo any climate protections he can get his grubby little orange hands on, who oversaw the eradication of abortion rights, who has praised white supremacist, antisemitic marchers as ‘very fine people,’ and who fostered an insurrection. Again. Knowing this, what do we do next?” [editor’s note: Let’s thank this pundit for citing the fine people hoax right off the top, so we can ignore her lack of awareness of reality – SAT] [editor’s note: Sad to see SAT still buying in to the Charlottesville Hoax Hoax – TLK] [editor’s note: Sadder still to see TLK still buying into the hoax, when even Snopes has now debunked it! – SAT] (11/06/24)
“At the start of this year, experts warned of chaos in the 2024 U.S. election, fueled by artificial intelligence and deepfakes that could sway public opinion and muddy the truth. According to a recent Pew poll, over half of Americans were deeply concerned about AI’s potential to disrupt voting and spread disinformation. Yet as Election Day came and went, fears of AI upending the democratic process turned out to be overblown. … The deeper reality, however, is not that deepfakes failed to fool voters; it’s that these technologies have redefined how we perceive truth.” (11/06/24)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Michael Njoku
“Within the social order, characterized by the division of labor and private ownership of the means of production, there exists instances of human action—purposeful behavior—whose origins consist in the motive and choice to attain one’s ends. In entrepreneurial endeavors this entails outperforming fellow participants in serving consumers. Acting man in his entrepreneurial capacity, striving to expand the boundaries of attractive opportunities available to consumers in the market, much more than his competitors. This could be in the form of differentiated products of better quality, lower prices, or a combination of both.” (11/06/24)
“Will Democrats learn the lawfare lesson? We’ll soon find out. One week after President Trump’s smashing victory, there is slated to be action in a New York State court, where the president-elect must still deal with 34 felony business-records charges on which a Manhattan jury found him guilty this spring. Judge Juan Merchan is expected to rule on Trump’s motion to vacate the guilty verdicts. Team Trump argues that, under the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling that former presidents have presumptive immunity from prosecution for official acts, the case must be thrown because District Attorney Alvin Bragg recklessly chose include official-acts evidence in the prosecution. Judge Juan Merchan, an activist Democrat, has ruled against Trump with numbing regularity throughout the proceedings. Past being prologue, we should expect Merchan to deny Trump’s immunity claim. Then things get interesting.” (11/06/24)
