It’s Friday, March 3rd, 2017…but before we begin, it deserves notice since posting our March 1st edition, we’ve been literally overwhelmed with must-read material. Take for example the following four…count ’em, four…quality commentaries from the great Victor Davis Hanson, none of which are overly lengthy in and of themselves. First, VDH rhetorically wonders…
“…I don’t have easy answers to any of these paradoxes but will only suggest that in the last 40 years, despite three different Republican administrations, frequent GOP control of the House and Senate, and ostensible Republican majorities on the Supreme Court, the universities have eroded, the borders have evaporated, the government has grown, the debt has soared, the red–blue divide has intensified, identity politics have become surreal, the nation’s infrastructure has crumbled, the undeniable benefits from globalism have increasingly blessed mostly an entrenched elite, the culture has grown more crass and intolerant, the redistributive deep state has spread, and the middle classes have seen their purchasing power and quality of life either stagnate or decline.
In sum, it is far more difficult in 2017 to enact conservative change than it was 40 years ago — not necessarily because the message is less popular, but because government is far more deeply embedded in our lives, the Left is far more sophisticated in its political efforts to advance a message that otherwise has no real record of providing prosperity and security, and the Right had avoided the bare-knuckles brawling of the Left and instead grown accustomed to losing in a dignified fashion.“
It’s right there in Matthew 10:36, people: “And a man’s foes shall be they…
…of his own household”.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, a few brief observations on The Donald’s first address to a joint session of Congress. Trump knocks it out of the park, and THIS is what The Opposition has to offer in response:
“Hoping to mount a renewed defense of ObamaCare in the wake of Donald Trump’s amped-up vows to repeal and replace it, former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear touted the health care law’s success in his home state during the Democratic response to the president’s address on Tuesday night.
“Even more troubling is that you and your Republican allies in Congress seem determined to rip affordable health insurance away from millions of Americans who most need it,” former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear said from a darkened diner in Lexington. “So far, every Republican idea to ‘replace’ the Affordable Care Act would reduce the number of Americans covered, despite promises to the contrary,” Beshear said.
…Under Beshear and ObamaCare, Kentucky’s uninsured rate fell to 7.5 percent from 20 percent and gave health care access to a half million Kentuckians. (Any chance we could see the statistics on how many Kentuckians lost the healthcare plans and doctors they were guaranteed to keep…let alone how much everyone else’s policies increased in cost?!?)
Beshear’s rebuttal was one of two delivered by the Democratic Party. The second was given by Astrid Silva, a community activist from Las Vegas. Silva, 28, came to the United States with her parents when she was 4 years old and has lived in Nevada ever since.
She is protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – or DACA –which allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally as minors a path to remain in the country. Silva, who gave her speech in Spanish, also spoke about women’s rights, climate change and the LGBTQ community.
Let’s distill this down: following an upset in November of staggeringly historic proportions, the Dimocratic response to the best speech The Donald could have possibly delivered was…a former governor of a state Trump won by over 30% touting the highly-dubious success of Obamacare, which is failing miserably everywhere else in the country…and a 24-year-old illegal alien lecturing America…in Spanish…why the U.S. should accept, house, feed and educate the entire Third World…with screeds on women’s rights, climate change and LGBTQ issues thrown in for good measure.
After all, everyone who needed to hear the broadcast en Español has women’s rights, climate change and LGBTQWXRZ issues at the top of their list of most pressing issues.
That rivals only sitting down while the rest of the audience honors the widow of a fallen hero…
…as a sure-fire strategy to win over the Heartland. One thing you have to say about the Dims: they certainly have their collective finger on the pulse of America!
Trump, on the other hand, resonated with the vast majority of the country in one quietly-delivered but incredibly powerful concept they’ve been yearning to hear for over eight years:
Meanwhile, in an eerily inept imitation of the Birther movement, The Left continues to fight an equally unwinnable battle, as FoxNews.com‘s Cody Derespina records:
“…Seeking to drive a stake into Sessions’ defense, however, McCaskill tweeted Thursday:
Except, that’s not quite true.
In a pair of tweets first unearthed by National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke, McCaskill twice wrote messages about meetings with Kislyak, in 2013 and 2015:
McCaskill later blamed Twitter’s character limit for the seeming disparity in her tweets, suggesting the limit prevented her from being more specific in Thursday’s tweet. She downplayed the significance of her own conversations with Russia’s ambassador.“
Seriously, folks: if this is the most Chucky and the Bride of Chucky can muster…
…is it any wonder The Donald’s laughing?!?
Perhaps the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger puts it best when he suggests we’ve just watched…
“That scene you saw at the moment President Trump ended his speech to a joint session of Congress was the Democrats abandoning the ship of state.
Like the progressive street demonstrations endured by the country the past four weeks, we may assume Congress’s Democratic delegation organized their post-speech bolt to the exits via the famous social-media hashtag #TheResistance.
During the speech’s most extraordinary moment, the tribute to Carryn Owens, wife of slain SEAL Ryan Owens, one notable Democrat who refused to stand was Rep. Keith Ellison, who just lost a close race for Democratic National Committee chairman to Obama Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, also a man of the left.
You’d have thought that at the two-thirds point, when Mr. Trump hadn’t self-destructed as expected, when instead he was looking less like Alec Baldwin and more like President Trump, that Chuck Schumer might have pulled out his smartphone to tweet the troops, “Walkout maybe not a good idea.”Not this crew.En masse, they went over the side, just as they’ve refused to attend hearings for cabinet nominees and voted as a bloc against virtually all of them.
Donald Trump extended an olive branch on key legislative issues,and the Democrats gave him the you-know-what.In fact, the party might consider making you-know-what its new logo because Mr. Trump has stolen their mascot, the Democratic donkey.
The donkey was the creation of Democrat Andrew Jackson, whose portrait hangs now in Republican Donald Trump’s Oval Office. Jackson’s opponents called him a jackass, which he transformed into a badge of honor by putting the jackass on his campaign posters.
Jackson served two terms. Eight years is going to be a long slog for Democrats if indeed they plan to conduct the nation’s business with the Trump White House from various street corners.
There is one other relevant image from the moments after the speech ended: Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin standing—alone—to shake Mr. Trump’s hand.
Last week, progressive activistspetitionedMinority Leader Schumer to expel Sen. Manchin from the leadership team as retribution for his vote in favor of Scott Pruitt’s nomination to run the Environmental Protection Agency. (C’mon Joe, smell the coffee!)
Sen. Manchin should admit reality and move across the aisle to join the Republicans.What do the middle-finger Democrats have in common anymore with West Virginia, which Mr. Trump carried by 42 points?
…If Mr. Trump succeeds, even with only Republican votes, Democrats alienated from the progressive capture of the party could drift further away. The Trump coalition, which is arguably a political bubble, instead could last a generation.
Option two is get out of the streets and get in the game Mr. Trump offered them in his speech.
There’s no telling what the politically eclectic Mr. Trump might concede the Democrats. He’ll insist that his tax bill include Ivanka’s child-care proposals. The Tax Foundation estimates they’d cause a revenue loss of $500 billion. Democrats might ask for a tax to pay for it, like the Obama “Medicare surcharge” on the 1%.
Not to worry.More likely is that the Schumer-Warren Democrats will spend two years listening to the resurrected voice from their past: “Hell no, we won’t go.”“
But we will, as we move forward with a follow-up to yesterday’s item detailing Mitch McConnell’s inexplicable objection to Trump’s proposed cuts to the Foggy Bottom budget. As detailed in the latest from Judicial Watch, McConnell’s opposition was even more ill-advised than we first believed:
“The U.S. government has quietly spent millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia by colluding with leftwing billionaire philanthropist George Soros, records obtained by Judicial Watch show. Barack Obama’s U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia, Jess L. Baily, has worked behind the scenes with Soros’ Open Society Foundation to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause, constituting an interference of the U.S. Ambassador in domestic political affairs in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
The cash flows through the State Department and the famously corrupt U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), which is charged with providing global economic, development and humanitarian assistance. USAID has allocated about $5 million to leftwing Soros groups in Macedonia since 2012, documents show, and at least $9.5 million has been earmarked by the agency to intervene in the Balkan nation’s governmental affairs for 2016-2011. State Department figures have been tougher to come by and Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the numbers. Judicial Watch also fired off a public records request to USAID because the preliminary figures, obtained through various sources in both the U.S. and Macedonia, appear to be incomplete.
Here’s how the clandestine operation functions, according to high-level sources in Macedonia and the U.S. that have provided Judicial Watch with records as part of an ongoing investigation…”
Trust us, it’s only sheer coincidence…
“…With a population of about 2 million, Macedonia has one of the more conservative governments in Europe. This includesthe lowest flat tax in Europe, close ties with Israel and pro-life policies.The country recently built a border fence to crackdown on an illegal immigration crisis that overwhelmed law enforcement agencies.“
As G. Trevor noted, what REALLY peeved The Obamao and Soros is the Russian effort at foreign interference proved more successful than their own!
Now we’re forced to inject a note of adult caution into what has otherwise been the relatively adolescent adulation over The Donald’s progress thus far, as NRO‘s Kevin Williamson correctly classifies the celebration about Trump’s premier as…
“Populismdoes not meanputting the American people first. Populism means telling the American people whatever it is they want to hear, even if it is bull and everybody knows it.
The courtiers and scribes spent the evening after President Donald Trump’s big speech to Congress engaged in increasingly absurd metaphysical speculation over the nature of what it means to be “presidential” and the degree to which Trump has achieved this. Never has so much gibberish been uttered by so many over a reflexive adjective.
And there were exclamations of surprise: “He came out against . . . bigotry!” Well, raise my rent. What did you expect him to do, endorse the vandalism of Jewish cemeteries? End Black History Month by saying, “Hey, you know what, Joe Biden was right: We do want to put you back in chains!”
Preposterous nonsense.But that is what we must expect from our increasingly ceremonial presidency. Who applauded? Who didn’t? Who was the first to stop clapping? What does it mean? It is difficult to imagine a self-respecting people’s consenting to be governed by these people, and to be condescended to by their sycophants.
Trump was, as expected, light on policy details. It is hard to blame him.
But I’m up for the challenge.
Nobody wants to be the first to offer any policy specifics, because there are only two kinds of policy specifics: Those that are transparently unserious and those that are unpopular, at least among some constituency. Nobody is volunteering to put the bell on the cat.
But what did Trump offer instead?
One, a promise to significantly reduce taxes.
Two, a promise to significantly increase spending.
…If you refuse to touch entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) and are intent on increasing military spending (which, arguendo, may actually need to be done) then you have put about 80 percent of the federal budget beyond the reach of any budget-cutting exercise.
Thanks to congressional Republicans, the deficit is today much smaller than what it was during the reign of the triumvirate of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, but we still run a deficit. The Congressional Budget Office projects that under current law — which is to say, even without Trump’s proposed $1 trillion stimulus — federal spending will grow by about 60 percent in the next ten years, driven largely by the parts of the budget that nobody wants to touch: entitlements. Federal spending as a share of GDP is expected to remain higher than its average over the last 50 years. If Republicans should decide to get rid of the unpopular parts of the Affordable Care Act (the taxes and individual mandate) and keep the popular ones (the subsidies), then you can expect that number to get even worse.
And much of this assumes that the interest rates on all that federal debt stay at levels that are by historical standards unusually low. A return to the historical average would mean a Pentagon-sized hole in federal finances, and there is no reason to believe that the average is the top limit. The CBO doesn’t think those rates are going to remain low: It already is projecting that interest payments will double (as a share of GDP) over the next decade.
Beyond this gross fiscal irresponsibility, what did Trump propose? A lot of federal commissions and blue-ribbon task forces writing a lot of reports.That and another expensive new entitlement: paid maternity/paternity leave.
Some Republicans no doubt will insist that the deus ex machina of economic growth will solve this problem. It won’t.Remember that expected future GDP growth already is included in the calculation of those unfunded liabilities (not only for the federal entitlements but also for state-level pensions and other obligations), meaning that growing our way out of that problem would require unexpectedly high economic growth not for a year or two but for many decades. Politicians always promise that they know how to make growth happen, but betting the nation’s future on that prospect would be indefensibly irresponsible.
A much more responsible course would be to take modest steps today to prevent the need for much more radical steps in the future.We cannot do that if we’re taking the great majority of federal spending off the table.
Populism is telling the people what they want to hear. Leadership is telling them what they need to hear.
And from where we sit…
…The Donald ain’t tellin’ it as it is!!!
Since we’re on the subject of things which ain’t what they seem, it’s time for the Environmental Moment, brought to us today by NRO‘s Julie Kelly, and Tucker Carlson as he totally destroys Bill Nye, the Junk-Science Guy:
“Climate-change alarmists who have been largely unchallenged by the media over the past decade have finally met their match in Fox News host Tucker Carlson. And it ain’t pretty.
…While it’s easy to dismiss Nye’s interview as a kooky one-off appearance from an unprepared celebrity scientist, he sadly represents the lack of integrity by most climate-change pushers. They move goalposts, manufacture facts, resist honest debate, and resort to smear tactics when confronted with specific questions they cannot answer. As Carlson said to Nye, “You really don’t know, and you bully people who ask questions.” Good thing Carlson is there to bully back for once.”
To put it bluntly, Nye is utterly unhinged; seriously: “weather back in 1750, grape growers in Europe, pesticides in the Midwest, and something about pine-bark beetles in Wyoming”.
Not to mention, like Walter in The Big Lebowski…
…WTF does anything have to do with Vietnam?!?
Not to mention what Tucker should have asked this climate charlatan is what ended the last Ice Age.
Oh, and lest we forget, courtesy of Jeff Foutch, another Hallelujah moment!
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side…
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