I have always been a swing voter.
I swing between my usual cynicism and contempt for politicians and occasionally being practical and engaged and voting for Republican candidates.
“If you’ve been following the midterms, you know there are a lot of close Senate, House, and gubernatorial races. The irony is that if you are tuned in to what’s happening, the odds are low that you are among the small group of voters who will determine the results next week. Call them “swing voters,” “persuadable voters,” or simply “undecided” or “late-deciding voters,” the people with the most power to shape American government for the next two years are typically underinformed about, if not thoroughly alienated from, government and the political system. And as Lee Drutman and Charlotte Hill explain in a New York Times essay, “swing voters” are often far from being the thoughtful moderates that the conventional wisdom imagines …
They’re not typically moderate or milquetoasty in their attitudes, either, They’re often angry, yet disengaged.
[If] a shared outlook binds swing voters, it mostly seems to be generalized disdain for both major parties and a kind of anti-system, anti-partisan outlook. This only perpetuates their disengagement. It also leads to more candidates running against Washington, which further undermines trust in government. …”
I voted enthusiastically for Trump in 2016.
I stayed home in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 election.
In the 2022 midterms, I am feeling enthusiastic about voting for a number of reasons. I think Alabama Republicans are doing a good job. I also don’t see any downsides to turning Joe Biden into a lame duck president and limiting the damage he is capable of doing over the next two years.
Democrats have persuaded me to engage and vote against them. They weaponized the DOJ and DHS against their political opposition. They started a war with Russia. They have ignited the worst inflation in my lifetime. They DOUBLED the price of gasoline. They opened the border and allowed over 5 million illegal aliens to invade the country. They have threatened to nuke the filibuster to codify Roe. They are running on mutilating the genitals of children. They are using DHS to censor the internet. They bullied and fired people from their jobs for refusing to take the COVID vaccine while doing nothing similar about Monkeypox. They have set off a crime wave and a homelessness wave in cities like Montgomery. They have spent the last two years sanctimoniously droning on forever about 1/6 and defining themselves as Democracy.
Note: They have really checked all the boxes this year up to and including pushing the world to the brink of a nuclear war. George W. Bush never even f***ed up that bad.
OT
link — Interest payments on our $31 trillion in US debt is about to exceed what we spend on the Defense Department. … We are entering a debt death spiral. Interest on the debt will double if they leave rates above 4% for about 3 years. All of the debt maturing rolls over at higher rates.
Note: Not only do perennial deficits mean a constantly rising debt and therefore constantly rising interest expense, but when already existing government debt matures the Treasury pays it off by issuing more debt — rising interest rates means rapidly rising interest expense on both new and old (rolled over) debt.
This = interest expense on the debt exceeding DoD spending to become the 2nd biggest outlay in the federal budget after HHS (SS + Medicare) is happening much sooner than I suggested due to 1) ongoing large budget deficits ballooning the debt, and 2) the Fed raising interest rates in an attempt to reduce inflation.
Spread this info — it could (really should) be a powerful tool to help populists convince others of how evil the federal government and its enslavement of the population via the coercive tax system is — decent, hardworking people are taxed and the money does not go to help them or their communities or their country at all — instead it disappears into the DC swamp and the usurious sump of Wall St — and their children will endure the same madness — today the tax system is nothing more than a method of intimidation and control.
@eah
Yeah, the can that has been kicked down the road for the last 4 decades is about to hit the wall at the end of the road.
The debt death spiral is an apt description for where the collective West is heading.
I believe we are already teetering on the edge of collapse.
We will either have a deflationary outcome, leading to national, corporate and individual bankruptcy on a scale never seen before, or we will enter into a hyper inflationary crack up boom a la Von Mises.
While there is still time, accumulate hard assets like gold and silver, and anything that could be seen as barterable.
Here comes the pain.
Death to ZOG