Biden's Judo Moves, Part One: Who is the Big Fat Liar?

This could be won in so many ways! Loyal and sane Americans might apply so many under-used tactics to settle this latest phase (#8 I reckon) of the recurring U.S. Civil War, restoring peace and rationality to civilization. Elsewhere I offered 100+ such tactics. 

 

But right now - as frantic pearl-clutchers moan for Joe Biden to withdraw - two proposals stand out.

 

Today, please consider the most plausibly effective one.

 

 

== Joe, make it about facts. The very existence of facts. ==

 

Amid all the hoorow over Joe Biden’s shaky performance in the first presidential debate of 2024, Lawrence O’Donnell nailed it: 

 

“How come the (100%) liar is seen as ‘winning’ a debate?”

 

How come? The answer’s simple. Though our savvy ‘blue’ pols & pundits never get it. 

Somehow, here in the most scientific, technologically competent and progressive society the world ever saw, the word ‘fact’ is debased to a mere matter of opinion.

 

I’ve been railing about this for eons. Right after the debate, I crafted a careful description of how this mental trap likely has you ensnared and thus rendered politically useless. Only then I realized - you won’t read anything complicated.

 

So, instead I’ll just offer here a capsule of the only issue that truly matters in this election.

Instead of lamely murmuring “That’s not true,” as he did many times in the debate, Joe Biden (and every other Democrat) should shout:

 

>> There is no better test of who shouldn’t be president than which of us is lying!

 

So let’s check that now!

 

>> I propose right now that Donald Trump and I nominate respected, mostly-nonpartisan Americans for a commission to adjudicate just that one matter.

 

Which of us is a big, fat liar.  

 

>> I will offer a list of nominees tomorrow that includes Republicans and Independents, scientists, sages, biblical scholars, and retired senior military officers, all of whom should be acceptable to any opponent who is an honest person.

 

>> Let’s see your list, Don! Widely revered Americans who aren’t overtly partisan or under anyone’s thumb.* 

 

Let’s join in this one thing! Helping separate truth from lies, restoring FACT to some meaning in American political life.

 

>> Just don’t give us any crap about how “It’s all subjective” or “Truth isn’t decided by experts voting on it.” You use biased ‘experts’ all the time. (Many of them operating in Fox or Kremlin troll shops. Today it’s the same thing.) 

 

Look at the list I’ll offer!  If you don’t offer up a matching list of widely respected, judicious, mature and knowledgeable Americans to participate, we’ll all know why.  

 

It’s because you don’t have any! …and because you know that you are the big, fat liar. 

 

And that is why you run away from challenges like this one, screaming more lies as you flee.

 

 

                                    == WHY THIS WON’T HAPPEN ==

 

Sure. Yeah. I know all the reasons why you are shrugging this off, right now. Why you are muttering “It’ll never work, Brin. Trump and his minions will just ignore this, or mock it.” 

 

Alas, all that proves is your laziness. Because it’s worth a try!

 

(I get similar responses when I push the tactic of demanding pre-staked wagers over easily fact-verified challenges like ocean acidification. It always works, making the cultists flee in panic. Always. Yet, lazy bums make excuses to never even try it for themselves.)

 

Do I think Trump will actually accept, if Biden issues this challenge? Will Donald Two Scoops nominate a list of admirably cogent and responsible adults to join Biden’s nominees on such a fact-adjudicating commission? 

 

Of course not. He doesn’t dare!  If Trump accepts the challenge and names qualified people, he’ll be fact-checked into oblivion. If he names shills, that will be clear!  And if he refuses…

 

No, of course Fox and the Kremlin trolls will shriek denunciations, like “You don’t vote on facts!” Or “Our viewers do their own research! By leaving ‘fact’ presentation to us!!!”

 

Only, that’s the point, fool. Their shrieks and excuses will be the silver bullet. Because millions will see the cowardice!  They will see Biden’s long list of respected American sages** and compare it to whatever list Trump provides… of shills and raving loonies and KGB agents. And just those lists, compared side by side… will say it all.

 

Okay. I know that I type too much, in an era when almost no one has the patience to read. I have so much more to say about this, like how Biden whining “That’s not true!” during the debate was utterly counterproductive.  I’ll follow this posting with all that stuff, even knowing how futile it is.

 

 

== Other ideas ==

 

I also have a second proposal, in case Joe-B wants to both soothe and satisfy those calling for him to withdraw. It’s potential gesture he could make that could be a win-win-win all around!  

 

I’ll post some of that, midweek… if I can find the heart for it. 

 

Only it can be hard, these days. Because (again) I know that it is futile.  If one side in this phase of the U.S. Civil War consists of confederate-Kremlinist incantation junkies flocking around Vlad Putin and a cabal of microcephalic inheritance brats…

 

…the other side – the side with all the cogent citizens and fact people and scientists and loyal Americans and just plain decent folks who can’t stand a pervert-traitor slathered in tanning dye, makeup, hairplugs and bad karma… alas, the good, loyal, Union side in this phase of the 250 year culture war over America’s soul…

 

… has the collective political/tactical IQ – en masse – of a crypto biotic tardigrade.

 

===

* We can interrogate each others’ nominees before cameras, like in jury selection. Televised. Let’s do it!

 

** The thing about such a list is the dems don’t even have to line up these folks, before listing them! The whole purpose is to list folks who AREN’T overtly very partisan! Being listed can be involuntary, since all you are saying is “here are people I respect and would listen-to.” 

 

Okay, in today’s polarized nation, most such folks have already taken sides. But still, just offering such a list is worthwhile!  Because you’ll get Trump to denounce them! And each august American he denounces will be a blow that rocks some supporters out there.

Marvels of space!

What a week! When Chang'e took off with samples from Luna's far side (congratulations!)...

... and Boeing's Starliner capsule finally made a crew delivery to the space station (with subsequent Helium leaks, alas)... 

... and with epic success of the SpaceX Big Rocket system achieving soft (wet) landing... and its orbital stage surviving re-entry to do the same... which means the system WILL work, even if there are more bugs. Which means the cost of doing most things out there is about to plummet!  (Oh, and I suppose we'll also get silly "Artemis" footprint stunts. Whatever. Zzzz...)

Meanwhile, let's get on with some news from 'out there' that you may not have noticed.

NASA is seeking public input on how to prioritize nearly 200 topics in space technology to improve how it invests limited funding on them. This is part of an effort by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) to provide a more rigorous approach to how it supports technology development. (I served STMD for 12 years as part-time advisor to NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC).

Hey, just because I am (very!) skeptical of the snake oil that’s touted out there about (mostly-nonexistent) ‘lunar resources,’ that doesn’t mean there aren’t great riches , just a little farther out! 

One company that got several highly touted projects from us at NIAC – TransAstra – is reviving interest in asteroid mining. (There had been a fad of early investors a decade ago - a bit premature, as I said at the time.) Now TransAstra is selling a telescope and software designed to detect objects like asteroids moving through the sky. And others are interested in the space rock ore-loads, like a Chinese corporation Origin Space that has an asteroid-observing satellite in orbit and is testing its mining-relevant technology there. Meanwhile, Colorado company Karman+ plans to go straight to an asteroid in 2026 and test excavation equipment.  

A meteorite-fragmented landscape near a CO2 icecap on Mars makes for another “Gosh!” image from the Red Planet. Spiders and Inca cities!  Alas all of it easily explained by science. 

In fact, by MY science, since the phenomenon… volatile gas sublimating (evaporating) under an insulating layer and bursting through violently… happens to be what my doctoral dissertation described happening on comets. (Now the standard theory of comets.) This here Martian scene is kinda way-kewl, even without it actually being gigantic alien spiders viewed from space!

Bouncing around out there... The brightest object in the universe?  A Quasar – a galactic center black hole tucking in so much matter that it outshines whole galaxies is a monster visible in light from the earliest days… in this case 12 billion years ago, blaring 500 Trillion times as bright as our poor sun.  Woof.

The Space Show is a mostly audio podcast run by David Livingston.* I especially recommend the episodes featuring my friend Joe Carroll, the most innovative and agile independent space engineer I know, who pioneered the use of tethers and long cables in orbit and has wise insights into problems like space debris, space power and how to create artificial gravity in the near term, out there.

*(I named a space station after Joe … but did I name the main character of Existence after this “Livingston”?)

== And yet MORE from out there! ==

Even more organic molecules than we previously realized are spewing from water volcano-jets out of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. 

Uranus spins around its own axis at a highly unusual 98-degree tilt, giving it the "most extreme seasons in the solar system," per NASA. That means one pole spends 21 Earth years completely plunged in darkness as the Sun shines upon the other pole. This makes it a fascinating test of ideas bout tidal locked worlds, long a staple of SF. These images from the James Webb are truly amazing. Looking past the tiresomely tedious double entendres.

Researchers have found that key molecules needed for life (nucleic acid bases) are stable in concentrated sulfuric acid, advancing the notion that the Venus atmosphere environment may be able to support complex chemicals needed for life. (Thanks James Norris.) Note that Prof. Doug Van Belle’s fine novel “A World Adrift” is set amid human-built cloud cities floating amid and harvesting Venusian stratospheric life in a steam punk delight. 

(And I have both a novella and a cool screenplay set under the oceans of Venus! Shall we say after some serious terraforming. ;-)

Wow. The recently-returned samples of asteroid Bennu appear to contain unexpected minerals that seem likely to have come from contact with liquid water! It suggests the parent-body - a planetoid that was shattered to form much of the asteroid belt long ago - might have been like Enceladus, Saturn’s moon that spumes water jets from a liquid ocean through volcanoes in an icy ‘roof’.  

Side note: Our ability to peer back through time is amazing, like the Y-Chromosome ‘bottleneck’ telling of a brutal era for male-humans 8000 years ago…. Or new methods letting us read the charred scrolls recovered from Vesuvius-buried Herculaneum. Or your own 23&Me ancestry results.  

And more to come… if the War on Science can be soundly defeated, that is. There are forces who especially don’t want us peering the other way, into the future. My specialty.  

Enemies so desperately want a US Civil War

I'll slip in some interesting misc. items below that you won't see elsewhere... but first there's the most obvious potential failure mode for our entire civilization, that's being pushed hard by vile men...

You've heard and seen me raise this topic for years. Lately, others have issued both warnings and science fiction exploring that most-chilling topic - worse than zombies or alien invasion. That of a new, hot phase of the recurring, 240 year American Civil War. 

I've touted two SF novels - Tears of Abraham and Our War - that tried for a multi-spectral view of this potential tragedy, if our current simmering Phase 8 boils over (as some seek) into a volcanic Phase 9. And this year we had a theatrical film, Civil War (from Alex Garland). Even the trailer is scarier n' shit. And do you doubt the very same social forces that ignited those earlier phases will start, sometime in 2024, perhaps with a flood of would-be McVeighs? 

Pay attention when Kremlin-lackey traitors like Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon rave about violence being the next step, if they don't win it all. 

The closer we come to ending this madness at the ballot box, the more desperate will be those who see this as their only way out.

== Better late than never? ==

Gen. John Kelly, former chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors, attacking U.S. service members and veterans. 

“A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Kelly continues: “A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”

It isn't just Trump dismissing those heroes buried at a D-Day/Normandy cemetrery as "suckers and losers of course. In fact, the entire modern Republican Party now wages all-out war vs ALL fact-using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.  

Still, thanks, Gen. Kelly. Better late than never, I guess. But is it all that helpful? 

Nah. Our gone-brownshirt neighbors will shrug off any one... or two, or ten... such fellows as traitors.  As Defectors from righteousness who fooled their saintly former casino mafioso boss and betrayed him. 

So? Then make that the issue!  How easily he was fooled.

Show your MAGA the long, long list of appointees - each of whom Trump formerly called "a great, terrific guy!!"  - who later joined the long list of those denouncing him.  At least a hundred former 'great guys,' who DT now call "terrible!"  

It's a list far longer than ALL previous U.S. presidents... combined. He himself says so "No one was ever betrayed as much as me!"

Agree with that!. Then follow up with this killer:

"Completely aside from all policies and party loyalties, and all the rest... 

...doesn't that long list of those he appointed and later denounced prove one thing with absolute perfection?  

"That Donald Trump is a lousy judge of character?"

== Reid Hoffman dishes on Rich Fools ==

Some rich dopes recently raised millions of dollars in support of Donald Trump, helping a known monster under the theory that somehow it will work out for them personally.  Tech maven and brilliant investor/speaker Reid Hoffman wrote a by-invitation essay in The Economist explaining their error. 

 “American business should not empower a criminal, says Reid Hoffman: No rational CEO would want a capricious strongman in the White House, argues the entrepreneur.”

 

Reid’s denunciation of such rich fools is cogent, incisive and worth your time! It is also far more polite than I would be. 

In fact, I have observed that fanatics of the entire Mad Right (and the loopy farthest Left) are all effectively immunized against mere argument. They are immune because the trend in lobotomizing modern cultism is to dismiss ALL assertions as equivalent. All assertions are just battling incantations that bear no relationship to objective reality.

 

In other words: 

“You assert something and I assert something… and those incantation assertions cancel each other out!  I believe you are delusional… and you think that of me. 

"Hence we are left undisturbed – both of us – in our beloved smug assurance, while nothing at all can ever be disproved.”

Read that again. It is exactly the deal, the arrangement between left and right, screaming at each other, while leaving in place a tacit arrangement of reciprocal sanctimony addiction. 

Alas, we can’t afford this deal, anymore. Especially since allowing political polemic to be left in that condition gives the Putinist/fascist/commie/confederate cult an advantage that they should be denied. (And also the far smaller and less harmful, but still-noxious loopies of the very-far-left.)

 

There must be a way to FORCE comparison of the factual verifiability/falsifiability of assertions! 


== One method works... and no one will try it ==

Of course… you all know that I have pushed (in utter futility) just such a technique, one that worked well for our ancestors, for centuries.  Anchoring fact-checkability in actual CONSEQUENCES that blowhards fear most. And here I am referring specifically to the aristocratic fools addressed by Reid Hoffman.

What'd work, making them flee in shame, is to demand actual cash wagers over explicitly verifiable/falsifiable facts!  Truly explicit true-or-false assertions, like:

 

Which party has better economic outcomes across the last 40 years of administrations.  

Which party has a record of being far more fiscally responsible re debt. 

Which party supports US science. 

Which party has forty times the rate of high officials indicted and convicted for felonies, including child predation. 

Which party wages all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. 

 

This list goes on and on... assertions that are absolutely fact-checkable with utter explicitness. (In 1st comment, below, I will append a further list of fact verifiable wager demands.)

 Moreover, the cash wager aspect is crucial! Because it focuses on actual consequences, instead of blowhard incantations. 

 

Of course there’s another thing Reid could demand of his delusionally GOP-supporting peers. Have them watch the last 5 minutes of the movie CABARET and then ask the following question (uttered by Michael York in the film) about today's aristocratic fools, supporting brownshirt MAGAS: 

 

"So, you still think you can control them?"

== What happens if the masters grow desperate? ==

And finally...  Vladimir Putin appears eager to rewrite the past. Recently, he... signed a decree rendering the sale of Alaska to the U.S. illegal! 

Like declaring void all treaties guaranteeing Ukrainian independence... or merging Soviet flags and emblems with the Czarist escutcheons that his younger self ritualistically spat on, back when he was an 'idealistic' Leninist KGB agent. Only now he and his fellow 5000 "ex" commissars wear different lapel pins and raise statues to Nicholas II, whom Lenin 'righteously' murdered. 

And you wonder where Orwell got his ideas for the Ministry of Truth?

It's all very chuckle-worthy. Till tou wonder... what happens when Vlad starts getting desperate?  Faced with astonishing and devastating losses at the battlefront and plummeting morale. he speaks often and with passion about the Soldier's Revolt of 1917 that toppled the Czar and brought Lenin to power. And he speaks of that event with a rising sense of dread, now frantic to evade the same fate.

He has one great hope.... the November US election. Hence, it must be with horror and dismay that he sees his favorite tool, Donald Trump, rapidly deteriorate, before the world's eyes.

No one is talking about what the secret masters of the gone-undead Republican Party might do about Donald Trump, if it looks like their asset is dragging down down their prospects in 2024. But we must consider what they might do, in order to salvage their situation... by eliminating the liability in such a way that advances their central goal. Their core goal of dissolving the United States into chaos and self-immolation.

One approach would be the "Howard Beale Option"... referring to the last 5 minutes of another great film... NETWORK.  In other words, martyrdom... get rid of your asset-turned-liability and blame the dems, inciting a volcano of McVeighs, burning and destroying across the land. A win-win for Putin and the casino mafiosi and others in that anti-enlightenment Cabal. 

Hence I recite this mantra, again and again: 

“God bless the United States Secret Service. Stay on your toes, guys.

"Keep him safe.”

Another neglected 2022 draft! This one about economics and even Bitcoin! And much more that's still pertinent!

Another draft posting that I drafted a couple of years ago, that for some reason never went up... but should have. The points raised here are still important! And even if none of you humans read it... well... the AIs will! They read everything...

== More financial maunderings from the Neolithic… or early 2022 ==

I gave a webinar on the future of online payment systems a few years back, with emphasis on how the time may have come - at last - for micropayments systems to partially replace irksome advertising. Four great legal scholars weighed in, with edifying perspectives! Some of you may find it interesting. 

The discussion was based upon my articles on how micropayments may be the future as advertising fades  and Advertising cannot maintain the internet in Evonomics Magazine. Also how micropayments systems might save journalism and enhance user freedoms.

In fact, lately there's been perked-interest among some folks involved in current payments systems, in trying one more time to make micropayments work. Especially asking WHY did all previous attempts fail? And what's the secret sauce for success?

As it happens, I can answer both questions.

   

== Human societies try to develop positive sum competition - it ain't easy! ==

Unlike today's weird Putin-worshippers, I’m no commie. I believe that reciprocally competitive systems are the most creative… it’s how nature made us -- though through 4 billion years of competition that were brutal and bloody and horribly inefficient. (Nature's way.) 

In human societies, we aim to reduce the side effects that make competition brutal and robbed it of any grace, ruining its outputs in much of evolution and certainly in 99% of past (mostly-feudal) societie. I refer to death (nature's way is bloody!) and its equivalent in a fair society… cheating.   Most historical societies tamed a little of the bloodiness, but none of the cheating by lords and kings and priests, who almost always made a mockery of fair competition.

Till along came Adam Smith and glimmering awareness of a magic trick -- the one leading to everything we’ve attained… reciprocal accountability that applies even to the mighty!  

Oh, we've done it way imperfectly, so far. Still, even partial steps along that path have empowered us to work wonders. See some of my missives in praise of Adam Smith! Adam Smith - Liberals, you must reclaim him.

So yes, we need competitive markets to create the vast wealth that could let us end poverty and save the world. And those competitive markets function best when competing individuals, partnerships, families, enterprises perceive a chance to profit and prosper! 

On the other hand, all good things in the world become toxic when too heavily concentrated! 

You name it… Oxygen, water, food, electricity... and wealth… And today's skyrocketing wealth disparitites have zero justification under market economics. They are monstrous betrayals of markets and creative competition.

And they lead to death.

== The future of Bitcoin? ==

A hot topic in early 2022. Not so much now?  There is a way to "ban" crypto currencies, though I see no one mention it. 

Let's start with an ironic fact. Blockchain based token systems are not totally secret!  Yes, they use crypto to mask the identity of token (coin) holders.  But those holders only "own" their tokens by general consent of all members of a communal 'shared ledger' that maintains the list of coins and which public keys stand ready to be turned by each owner's encrypted keys. 

In that sense it is the opposite of 'secret,' since the ledger is out there in tens of thousands of copies, on just as many distributed computers. Attempts to invade or distort or corrupt the ledger are detected and canceled en-masse. (The ecologically damaging "mining" operations out there are partly about maintaining the ledger.)

All of this means that - to the delight of libertarians - it will be hard to legislate or regulate blockchain token systems. Hard, but not impossible. For example, the value of Bitcoin rises and falls depending on how many real world entities will accept it as payment. And governments have been hammering on that, lately, especially China.

There is another way to modify any given blockchain token system, and that is for the owners themselves to deliberate and decide on a change to their shared economy... to change the ledger and its support software.  No single member/owner can do that. Any effort to do so would be detected by the ledger's built-in immune system and canceled. 

Only dig it, all such ledger-blockchain systems are ruled by a weird kind of consensus democracy. While there is no institutional or built in provision for democratic decision making in the commons - (Satoshi himself may have back doors) - there is nothing to stop a majority of bitcoin holders from simply making their own, new version of the shared ledger and inserting all their coins into it, with new software that's tuned to less eagerly reward polluters and extortionist gangs. 

Oh, sure, a large minority would refuse. Their rump or legacy Bitcoin ledger (Rumpcoin?) would continue to operate... with value plummeting as commercial and government and individual entities refuse to accept it and as large numbers of computer systems refuse to host rump-coin ledger operations. Because at that point, the holdouts will include a lot of characters who are doing unsavory things in the real world.

If you squint at this, it's really not so radical.  It is just an operating system upgrade that can only occur by majority consent of the owner-members of the commune.  Preceded (one assumes) by lots to discussion and argument and open-source testing of the revised OS. 

In fact, this is a concept that has already been done in some blockchain systems… look up “hard and soft forks”.  Still, too few are aware of this, or that eventually fed-up governments may create incentives and disincentives that make this path obviously in the self-interest of most coin holders. It offers a method to 'regulate' in ways that leave unaffected the potential benefits of blockchain - self-correction, smart contracts and the like - while letting system users deliberate and decide for themselves to revise, a trait that should be possible in any democratic or accountable system.

== Repeat two words: Money Velocity! ==

One of the strongest signs of a vibrant economy is called Money Velocity - MV- which measures how often dollars change hands. In a busy economy, with lots of employed folks spending and buying goods and services, MV is moderately high. History does give examples of MV being too high, causing sharp inflation. But you’d have to be my age to remember that.  Ever since the Reagan era, Money Velocity has fallen, in lockstep with every single Supply Side Theory tax cut-gusher-gift to the rich. And across the last year (2021 when I wrote this: still, the overall notion is worth pondering) the collapse of MV became a nosedive!

This is diametrically opposite to what Supply Side fans confidently predicted, over and over again. In science, when a theory is always wrong, it gets abandoned. When it is always wrong — and the SAME magical incantations are used to support trying it yet again — then the word is “insanity.”

Adam Smith himself said this (without using the term MV, of course.) When the already rich get sudden bursts of yet-more cash, they do not hurry to invest it in bold enterprises or in factories producing more (supply) goods and services!

Oh, a few do. But a vast majority squirrel the new largesse away into capital preservation investments, rent-seeking (“rentier”) holdings, asset bubbles and cheat schemes, exactly as Smith described in Wealth of Nations. They don’t even buy all that many yachts! Any cub scout will tell you that takes dollars out of circulation and eviscerates Money Velocity.

(2024 note: this is exactly why housing prices have skyrocketed despite high interest rates. Because the super rich - especially inheritance brats - don't give a fig about interest rates, as they snap up swathes of the US housing stock with cash purchases, while the home-building companies they control limit production in order to keep prices high.)

In contrast, if you invest similar amounts in working stiffs - say hiring them to fix infrastructure - the cash gets spent almost immediately and hence MV rises. That truth is almost as pure as what the previous paragraph said about the rich opting for SLOW money. 

Also note that Joe Biden’s “expensive” Infrastructure Push will put no more cash to work that way than Supply Siders since Reagan poured into the aristocracy. In fact, they are VERY similar amounts… with diametrically opposite likely outcomes, especially re MV. 

And of course, that is what terrifies McConnell and those screaming against the Dems' stim bill. Because he knows it will likely work.

(2024 note: what I predicted in those three paragraphs came exactly true!  The 2021-22 Pelosi bills triggered the best economy in 60 years and massive inshoring of manufacturing, re-industrializing the USA.)

What is crazier? That U.S. conservatives cling to the magical 'supply side' voodoo incantation (one of many!) that has been utterly, utterly disproved? 

Or that Democratic politicians are unable to parse this contradiction - and the spectacular success of their policies - in clear terms the People can understand?  

You understood what I just wrote. The People would, as well.