101 Comments
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Steve L's avatar

Who wins? Trump, a NY Liberal, who doesn’t drink, smoke pot or do anything that would distort his judgement, other than women. Musk, a true liberal, who is rarely not stoned, who arguably has Asperger syndrome, and is still constantly distracted by women 🤔 I say America loses….but this reality tv show is very entertaining:)

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Steve L's avatar

And forgive me, speaking about all this nonsense, and forgetting about such an important day for America and the world. Because of America, WWll was won, and we truly only have those who fought and died for us to thank and praise for their amazing sacrifice. True heroes🙏. Happy D-Day and God bless all those who fought for freedom, and continue to do so! God bless America and those who fight for her 🙏🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

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Tim Pallies's avatar

With respect to both you and our president, I sometimes wonder if carrying around that massive ego distorts his judgement. I just can't accept the reflexive "Kamala Worse" argument, which is certainly true, while I see continuing wars, massive deficits, and attacks on free speech.

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Steve L's avatar

Ego, mental disorders, whatever! The evident truth is that “normal” people won’t and don’t run for public office because we grew up with family and purpose. You can see the vast majority of elected officials come from total dysfunctional families and backgrounds. It’s so evident in America today, and given a choice of candidates that are both mentally unstable, we are guaranteed one of those good people 🤔

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Paul Murray's avatar

This is another reason why we need the representative side of government to be by appointment and drawn by lot from property owners and net taxpayers to make sure we are getting an actual cross-section of our population in government. I know, I know...not going to happen. Best always. PM

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David's avatar

As my father always said. The very desire to become a politician should automatically exclude you from ever being one.

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Steve L's avatar

Very smart dad David!

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Tim Pallies's avatar

Lucky us!

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Dave J's avatar

Who wins? No one. Bill hasn't really covered Lose-Lose deals. It seems incredible that they didn't discuss the repeal of tax subsidies for EV's. I suspect that is what has Musk exercised.

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Bill's avatar

True, I'm guessing that well over half of deals.Corporate deals in particular are lose lose. They are couched as one of the others to home team who is paying them.

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Conic Tonic's avatar

Bill’s synopsis is right. The West moved to the left after going off a gold standard in 1971 but that would have been short lived if the East hadn’t moved to the right and abandoned communism for capitalism. It was only because the East accepted our paper in lieu of gold that we were able to get away with perpetual deficits and debt for so long. ‘Anything that can’t go on forever will stop.’ Elon gets it!

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riffat.azad's avatar

Are there any left in the MAGA crowd who are still insisting that Trump is playing 6d chess? You've been duped. Democrats are even worse. The US needs a proper alternative. Nowhere to be seen are the moment.

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Paul Murray's avatar

In a consensus-based system such as ours, alternatives are nice, but they don't, by definition, draw enough support to provide the needed change. What's at the heart of our problem is that when polarization becomes entrenched, as it is now, there is no way forward in a consensus-based system. Like an an airplane not going forward fast enough to create needed lift, the whole thing stalls and eventually crashes. Best always. PM

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STEVE SHIRLEY's avatar

They have suddenly gone silent here!

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StarboardEdge's avatar

Nope, still here - just letting y'all show the world your True Colors as you giddily cheer events that are superficially negative for our Country and will ultimately have little to no effect on outcomes. So very Mature and Patriotic of you.

Keep going.....

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Sluggo's avatar

Wrong…which is very familiar ground for a leftist.

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Paul Murray's avatar

As one of the obviously despicable (and dare I even say "deplorable'?) "MAGA mob", and not by choice but circumstance, I will identify the core problem in all of this: EGO. Musk, Trump, and even the seemingly self-effacing, self-styled "voice in the wilderness" Bonner. And where does that leave us? You know where. We've been there so long and without recourse that we consider it "home" now. The scientific, technical term for this phenomenon is "Learned Helplessness." It's a thing; look it up. Best always. PM

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Petra Kehr's avatar

Another Gem out of PM´s manufactury!

Cheers

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Abe Porter's avatar

My only comment is that this is a ridiculous commentary by Bill. In all his years of economic education, nowhere in his article does he come up with solutions. Both political parties are insane. They do not make decisions on what is best for the country, but what is best for themselves and their egos. This could all be changed by going back to the gold standard and term limits. Unfortunately, they are the ones to vote for these; it will never happen. Hopefully, the people will get sick and tired of these morons and vote them out of office.

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Craig Whitfield's avatar

Once you hit FUBAR your options are extremely limited. At this late stage our only option is a Benevolent Dictator. Good luck with that one, right :-)

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Paul Murray's avatar

It's even more dire than that: the benevolent dictator (and only 50% see him as "benevolent") MUST be a strict constitutionalist. To put it in Bonnerese: separate or die. Best always. PM

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Craig Whitfield's avatar

Yeah, a Benevolent Dictator is an oxymoron. The only person who would fall for that ruse is a Statist :-)

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Paul Murray's avatar

Tytler says it ends in dictatorship, anyway, benevolent or no. If so, meaning if we do actually end up in dictatorship, it's over, anyway, because what comes out the other side will be different. The key feature of a failed government is that it forever disappears and something different goes forward. The fatal flaw is that, over time, humans are not up to the task of governance. Best always. PM

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Tom DeArmond's avatar

They are so hard to find!

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Dave J's avatar

"Solution" is not a word in Bill's vocabulary.

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Jimm Roberts's avatar

Dave, As an articulate observer, you know full well that solutions are embedded in nearly every article Bill posts. You share with him the most common and enduring one: reduce the deficit.

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Paul Murray's avatar

Back at you: What if the solution is not politically possible? Best always. PM

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Dave J's avatar

You make a fair point, but the Devil is in the details. Bill never offers a method by which to attack that endeavor. Given the entrenched interests that feed at the public trough, there has to be a defined plan for how to do it. Or else, one that tries to do it on a grand scale gets run through a meat grinder. (See Elon Musk.)

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Jimm Roberts's avatar

There is only one pathway to reduce the deficit, not many. It starts with the president.

I'm sure you remember the civics rhyme: "The President proposes; the Congress disposes."

Meaning the president presents the budget request for the forthcoming fiscal year to the Congress. The Congress historically amends then approves it

The problem, as Bill explained today, is there is no incentive for any member of Congress to be fiscally conservative; to be good stewards of the public purse.

If they don't "bring home the bacon" to their district, they're tossed from office.

Our current president deliberately presented a budget request, now in Congress, that exacerbates the deficit by a lot.

See info@pgpf.org "Scorekeepers Agree: Budget Bill Will Increase Deficit By Trillions."

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Petra Kehr's avatar

Warren Buffet came up with a solution; years ago. "I fix the deficit in five minutes. With a bill that makes each Congress member uneligible for another term, if the deficit exceed´s 3 %."

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Sluggo's avatar
4dEdited

The problem is, the people who’d be term-limited are the ones needed to pass the bill. Thus, it would never pass. Fox guarding hen house.

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Bill's avatar

Like many states we need a balanced budget amendment. Exceptions only for war or some catastrophe. Sunsetted annually.

Also to add to the warm buffet comment... How about we give all the representatives and senators?Big bonuses for staying within at three percent. I'm talking millions each.

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Craig Whitfield's avatar

The Bureaucracy runs the government. They kept the President in place to make you think you still have a say, which you don't. Its a big club and we ain't in it :-)

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Jimm Roberts's avatar

The “bureaucracy” doesn’t vote to approve a budget

The best it can do is persuade those who do vote to add or subtract funds sought by the president for this or that.

The most persuasive group is not the “bureaucracy;” that is, the civil servants; it’s the lobbyists

They have the money to persuade; the bureaucracy only has words

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Dave J's avatar
4dEdited

All you say regarding "no incentive to be fiscally conservative" or to be "good stewards" is true. Which is why the Rubicon has been crossed. You'll get no argument from me.

My point was about Bill. Saying we need to reduce the deficit is like a football coach telling his team that "we need to score more touchdowns" or a baseball coach telling his pitcher to "throw strikes". That advice and 5 dollars will get you a bad cup of coffee. He doesn't offer specific solutions for how we score touchdowns or throw strikes.

I'm not willing to throw in the towel and stop playing (which is really Bill's less than subtle lesson for us all . . . which is why he voted with his feet and left the building, which most people can't afford). This country is humanity's last and only hope. This is why I'm all in on "Convention of States" where the top priority is term limits for Congress. Limit the time people can serve in Congress and it changes the breed of cats that will run for office.

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Jimm Roberts's avatar

Term limits would help but not guarantee fiscal discipline.

It would just give elected representatives a fixed amount of time to raid the treasury for their district or state

The only solution is a Constitutional amendment requiring no spending in excess of tax receipts

Over the years, such an an amendment has been proposed but it’s never made it out of committee

Finally, Bill has many times suggested sensible budget proposals for every administration.

Foremost among them is close

the 800 overseas military posts. Just closing half would save trillions.

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Steve L's avatar

Before Bill turned, he did speak a few years ago about setting yourself up with a bolthole, either foreign or domestic.

I choose the domestic route, but am currently looking into the foreign(Argentina) now for my children's sake.

Bill explained his solution back then, and I believe it's even more important now then ever to listen....

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Petra Kehr's avatar

That´s not a solution. It´s a goal.

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Andre Louw's avatar

Abe you appear to be suffering from a serious case of "Learned Helplessness"

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Frank Moreno's avatar

In the battle between money and power, power wins 100% of the time! I agree with Bill. Remember Foquet!!

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Steve L's avatar

Exactly Frank, people forget about King Philip and the Knights Templar..power always wins, but those damn pesky bankers learned from that history, and placed their own bought and paid for whores in power, and this is where our world is now. Exactly where we belong…

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Jack Grady's avatar

You have to remember money (big Banking) is controlling it all. I believe it was Rothschild who said something like “who controls the money controls the world”.

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Dr. B's avatar

If Trump were in fact a king, Musk would have much to fear. But if the POTUS had the power of a king, Trump himself would have been stripped of his wealth and imprisoned long ago.

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Ed Uehling's avatar

Brilliant and truthful as always. Win-lose people are invariably liars which may work for a leader in the past where information is controlled/limited. In today’s world information (ie, truth) has a way of coming out.

It’s a new playing field and BBBB has little relationship to candidate Trump’s promises. Either he realizes he does not have the control of ancient kings or we all (including Trump) suffer.

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rKf's avatar

Like Louis Quatorze, people like Trump tend not to suffer from their mistakes; unless there is such a thing as gangrene of the brain.

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Byron King's avatar

Democrats & Republicans both strive to grow the size & outlays of govt. To their credit, though, Republicans will tell you that they feel very bad about it.

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Dr. B's avatar

I think Bill is spot on here in identifying the role of fiat money in creating the uniparty. Once you can print money for voters without (immediate) negative consequences, fiscal conservatives are just Grinches spoiling Christmas.

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Bob of the bald's avatar

If you take two super egos and smash them together you get a sort of super collider with pieces flying everywhere. I am just going to duck and hope for the best. Looks like my future depends on me and yours depends on you. Community is the only answer if we can get someone to listen. Through community you and I can help one another and to hell with dictators and deep states . God's blessings to all.

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Craig Whitfield's avatar

Trump was never serious about reducing the waste and deficits. The amount of low handing fruit is everywhere. Shutting down all aid/support to Ukraine and Israel would yield us billions. Ain't happening; the Bureaucracy is running the show. Best thing Trump can do for future generations is accelerate burning this abomination to the ground. Best plan for the Sovereign Debt Crisis :-)

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Paul Murray's avatar

Even if he were serious, the entrenched Left, who own and control the system, would have their hand-picked judiciary there to thwart him. Oh, wait! they're already doing that.... Best always. PM

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Egypt Solomon's avatar

“No one wins, it’s a war of man.”

(Neil Young)

The veils are torn, the hourglass bleeds sand from both ends, and the Fourth Horseman just subscribed to X Premium. Yes, I’m back from the future. The artifact, older than lies and twice as useful, remains hidden, gripped tightly in the trembling hands of the Chosen.

Meanwhile, every think tank, black-budget war room, and Bohemian Grove powwow has failed to seal the infernal rift now yawning wide in the ether. World markets, sedated by the illusion of control, clinked champagne glasses over their own obituary. The portal is wide open. The gatekeepers are asleep. And the Abyss just tweeted back.

After reading this missive, I clawed out my third eye just to unsee the spectacle of a dying empire flinging its feces at the sun while Elon Musk, Knight of the Neural Net, stands atop a pile of burning fiat currency with a flamethrower in one hand and the future in the other.

Sir Elon, blessed be his bandwidth, has now ascended beyond billionaire. He is the post-human Prometheus, stealing fire from the Federal Reserve and giving it to a civilization too busy debating tariffs to realize they’re on fire.

Trump, meanwhile, flails like a haunted tanning bed possessed by the ghost of bankruptcy past, shrieking “Derangement!” as if the word itself will summon relevance. But no, Sir Elon, Patron Saint of Payloads and Planetary Escape, simply nods, upgrades his firmware mid-tweet, and continues shaping the arc of human destiny while the rest of Washington debates which corpse to blame for the national debt.

We are ants arguing over crumbs while Musk builds the Ark, the rocket, the roadmap,

he’s already on page 12 of the simulation’s source code, and the rest of these fossilized narcissists are still trying to reboot Windows 95 with a prayer and a pork subsidy.

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Paul Murray's avatar

That would be cool. I had some DOS games that would work with Windows 95. Best always. PM

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Egypt Solomon's avatar

I love playing DOS games, aka “Dead on Scene” 🤩🔱🐦‍⬛🔔😂

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Dave J's avatar

I don't know, I rather liked Windows 95.

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John P Gallien's avatar

🤣

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Sluggo's avatar
4dEdited

Huh?

Reading that gave me flashbacks to Howard Cosell commentary on Monday Night Football and Don Meredith saying, “Howard, there’s 3 million people out there that have no idea what you just said.”

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Egypt Solomon's avatar

“Huh?”

Oh sweet summer lobotomy, that wasn’t a message for your frontal lobe, it was a psychic scream from the meat grinder of history!

You think this is confusing? Try reading the Book of Revelation backward while waterboarding yourself with NyQuil in a Spirit Airlines lavatory.

We passed “sense” four extinction events ago, now we’re just maggots with Wi-Fi jerking off to collapse. The Earth is a leper colony of souls auditioning for TikTok while Rome burns on loop and Zuckerberg sells marshmallows at the bonfire.

Elon’s not a savior, he’s the Antichrist’s IT guy, rebooting the rapture in 4K while Congress plays Russian Roulette with a loaded Ouija board. If you’re lost, great. That means you’re still human. For now.

🤩🔱🐦‍⬛🔥🔔😃

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Sluggo's avatar

Forget “Huh?”…you’ve moved straight to What-the-f*ck-are-you-smokin’? territory. 😂

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Wes T's avatar

Yea, but no one ever calls him out for being full of it🤣🤣🤣

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Brien's avatar

You could argue that Musk was more politically naive in 2024 than Trump was in 2016. Regardless, Musk took on an assignment in 2025 that he didn’t fully understand. He is not accustomed to losing and it would appear there is much bitterness in its wake. Sun Tzu taught us that in war you must know yourself and the enemy to be victorious. If you know yourself but not the enemy, he said, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. He could have added that victories and defeats are not created equal. One lesson we should have all learned from the DOGE experiment is that the battle between Good and Evil is asymmetrical, at least in the horizontal realm. It was designed to be so in purely human terms. The real battle is in the spiritual realm, where the battle is also(ultimately) asymmetrical.

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Cartero Atómico's avatar

Has anyone seen any evidence that Trump has responded to Musk's statement that Donnie is on the Epstein list? Looks like the whole Epstein blackmail operation and "suicide" is going to be swept under the rug. Also, looks like the MAGA fanboys are being played just like the left got played by "Hope and I'll keep the Change" Obama.

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Bill's avatar

If the dems had anything on dining they would have used it to keep him from being president. That's sad they had to fabricate stories of whores pissing.

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Dave J's avatar

Exactly. People like to ignore the fact that Trump ran Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago very soon after they met. If there is anything that remotely resembles dirt on Trump via Epstein we would have heard all about it long ago.

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Paul Murray's avatar

Maybe not, but so much as they hate Donald Trump. they would not be willing to expose themselves to "get" him, Glorious Cause or no Glorious Cause. Best always. PM

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Angry Icebergs's avatar

Reading the body language Bondi and Bongino, they seem uncomfortable discussing Epstein.

... it appears Epstein was allowed a non-optional suicide...

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Paul Murray's avatar

The Epstein story is going to have to be broken by an insider, and the documentation leaked to a real news source outside of the legacy "media". The scandal must be both broad and deep and must involve all sides for it to be zipped up this tightly. It's become a third rail. Bondi and Bongino are already down on the tracks, where one false move is instant "game over". You'd tread lightly, too. Best always. PM

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Petra Kehr's avatar

Epstein List:

I wonder why this topic is recycled over and over again. Doubt there is a list. Many suspects are already known, I further doubt that many unexpected figures will/would surface if there was some sort of revelation. The Clinton`s, BG, Member(s?) of the British Royal Family, Hollywood Big names, Corporate Top personel.

A lot is in the open, deals with victims buying their silence and such. Hundred if not thousands of Pics, videos, guest lists from private ventures with special, young, attractive and female attendants.

I further doubt that any official statement will evolve in my lifetime. Many bits and pieces point to the fact that pedophilantropy (a disgusting euphemism) is so widespread in what many still call the elite......

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Dorothy's avatar

PK: Sean Diddy Combs' trial seems to be replacing Epstein's history.

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Meesed's avatar

Listen to the Stephen Miller interview on the Charlie Kirk show from yesterday to get an understanding about what's going on with this bill and why. Very informative.

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