“A strange development: Liberal members of the U.S. House of Representatives seem to think they can get everything they want on legislation for DACA without making major concessions to Republicans and the Trump administration.Democratic leaders are facing a potential revolt within their ranks as they edge toward a deal with Republicans that would protect Dreamers from deportation but also include concessions to conservatives that many Democratic lawmakers say are unacceptable.
…Why, it’s almost as if Democrats are in the minority of the House of Representatives, and they won’t be able to influence immigration legislation without making concessions!…”
“By putting it out there that the U.S. president is an “idiot,” a “dope,” “dumb as sh—” and basically insane, Michael Wolff may have ensured the success and continuation of Donald J. Trump’s improbable presidency. That’s right, Michael Wolff, who admitted on “Meet the Press” that “this is 25th Amendment kind of stuff,” did President Trump a favor.
It’s impossible to know which half of Mr. Wolff’s book is more-or-less true and which half is second-level hearsay (similar to many of the Russian collusion stories). So it follows that among those uncertain about what’s fake is Donald Trump. After all, someone did allow Mr. Wolff, a well-known stab-in-the-back specialist, to hang around the White House for six months.A lot of White House courtiers, including the exiled Steve Bannon, seem to have spent most of their working hours the first six months speed-dialing dirt to White House reporters. We all watched the muck leak into the Oval Office.
So if you are Donald Trump, and like any normal person don’t want the world to think you’re cuckoo, what do you do? You prove they are wrong.Which is what Mr. Trump did twice this week with conscious intent in public forums. Both events not only showed the president acting, in his word, “stable,” both also offered a successful model for a post-Bannon, post-Wolff presidency.
People who have a job that requires them to make a living by doing something other than watch Donald Trump in real time most likely didn’t see either of these events. The first was Mr. Trump’s speech Monday to the American Farm Bureau in Nashville, Tenn. The other, which is worth a look if you didn’t see it, was a nearly hour-long session on immigration legislation Mr. Trump held at the White House with about 24 members of Congress, TV cameras rolling and the press taking notes.
…Once you realized it wasn’t a brief photo-op before the doors closed, the meeting was sort of weird, with reporters and their notebooks looming over the legislators’ backs, but it was also weirdly impressive. They looked like politicians doing real work, and afterward the White House announced the framework of a deal on the Dreamers.
Contrast this with how Barack Obama invited congressional Republicans and Democrats to a public, televised forum on health-care reform at Blair House in early 2010, listened to a series of GOP policy proposals from serious people such as Lamar Alexander and Tom Coburn, and then smirked it all away as nothing new. It was a setup that poisoned the well.
Or how in 2011 Mr. Obama blew up the deficit-reduction deal Joe Biden had worked out in meetings and dinners with a bipartisan supercommittee. Mr. Obama then descended on the group to lecture it on his demand that they raise taxes on “the wealthy” and corporations. “I will not support any plan that puts all of the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans,” Mr. Obama magisterially intoned. The bipartisan deal collapsed.
The Trump-Republican-Democratic DACA deal, if it succeeds, will be a major bipartisan accomplishment…”
Though we’ll hold our applause pending the final form of the deal.
Since we mentioned Progressivism’s fanciful fabricator du jour, courtesy of his Private Papers, Victor Davis Hanson terms the incompetence…or ill-intent…which granted Michael Wolff access to the White House in the first place thusly:
“I agree with most commentators that Michael Wolff’s sensational mythologies in Fire and Fury will be largely forgotten within three weeks — with one caveat (see below).
Wolff confirmed what most already knew about the Left’s abandonment of standards of journalistic integrity in order to “prove” that Trump is unfit (an “oppositional” Jim Rutenberg or Jorge Ramos had already warned us that “the norms of journalistic objectivity” in the case of Trump no longer necessarily entailed disinterested reporting [as opposed to the straight reporting, say, of Susan Rice’s post facto explanations for Benghazi or for the echo-chamber Iran Deal]), while Wolff’s most sensational charges that Trump can be gluttonous, naïve, and narcissistic were long ago either rumored or detectable within Trump’s own tweets.
Instead, the only point of interest in Fire and Furyis how someone like a Wolff in sheep’s clothing ever talked his way into the West Wing — sort of in the manner that an otherwise savvy General Stanley McChrystal once allowed the flamboyant, left-wing late Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone into his inner circle to sensationalize off-the-record venting about the Obama White House.
Three explanations are plausible (and not mutually exclusive): Some in the Trump West Wing (perhaps worried about post-Trump careers) wanted to establish their maverick fides and undermine their own president; or some wished to sandbag their own rivals in the administration; or some were simply so naïve, so egocentric, or so outright stupid to think that they could charm someone with Wolff’s record and flip him into writing a book that would make them look fairly good.
The first two Talleyrand-like “crimes” of disloyalty are what we expect from West Wing intrigue, but the third is unforgivable as a blunder.“
Speaking of unforgivable blunders, The Daily Caller recently featured this report on another of the Dims’…
“The Center For American Progress (CAP) Action Fund circulated a memo on Monday calling illegal immigrants brought here at a young age — so-called “Dreamers” — a “critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”
Thememo, co-authored by former Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri, was sent around to allies calling on Democrats to “refuse to offer any votes for Republican spending bills that do not offer a fix for Dreamers and instead appropriate funds to deport them.”
President Donald Trump’s administration moved to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy in September, which former President Barack Obama instituted through executive order to keep immigrants who came here as children from being deported. Trump called on Congress to find a legislative fix for young immigrants, or “Dreamers,” facing deportation. House lawmakers recently put forward a bipartisan DACA compromise bill that also claims to address worries over chain migration. However, it’s unclear if the bill will pass.
CAP Action’s memo says protecting DACA is not only a “moral imperative” for Democrats, it also key to getting votes. “The fight to protect Dreamers is not only a moral imperative, it is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success,” reads Palmieri’s memo, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. (Which of course, in the Progressive mind, are synonymous!)
“If Democrats don’t try to do everything in their power to defend Dreamers, that will jeopardize Democrats’ electoral chances in 2018 and beyond,” reads the memo. “In short, the next few weeks will tell us a lot about the Democratic Party and its long-term electoral prospects.”…”
We particularly loved these two rather telling lines:
“The current crisis could have been averted. Instead, Trump seized an opportunity to play to the racists in his base by proactively and abruptly ending the program.“
Again, it has nothing to do with what The Obamao admitted…
…was an act of unconstitutional executive overreach, nor does it have anything to do with the rule of law, proper legislative procedure or the separation of powers. Rather, like everything else Liberals can’t refute with facts, it’s all about racism!
The importance of the illegal immigrant vote to future Dimocratic electoral success is exemplified by the latest example of egregious judicial activism, as detailed by Townhall.com‘s Guy Benson:
“…The only person who gets to decide whether DACA’s continuation is in the public interest is the President of the United States.Mind you, this is not an instance of Trump creating a new unilateral policy out of whole cloth, to which there may be legitimate constitutional objections. It is an instance of the current president simply undoing an existing unilateral executive action undertaken by his predecessor.If Obama had the authority to enact DACA through the stroke of a pen, Trump clearly has the authority to rescind it using the same method.That is how executive orders work, and it’s why lawsuits to thwart Trump’s call in this case should be dismissed out of hand as utterly baseless. And by the way, it’s not entirely clear at all that Obama actually did possess the power to extend an executive amnesty to an entire class of people the way he did. I’ll let a noted legal scholar explain the constitutional hurdles involved:
“With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations [of immigrants brought here illegally as children] through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.”
That was Obama in 2011 explaining why he couldn’t do precisely what he ended up doing the very next year, in an act that went beyond mere “enforcement discretion.” It also involved the issuance of work permits, an affirmative act. He took his overreach a step further during his second term, expanding the amnesty-by-fiat to millions of illegal immigrants to entered the United States unlawfully as adults. The latter move was struck down by the courts.So if anything, Trump may be wiping away an illegalexecutive order, appropriately asking Congress to do its job to rectify a situation that most Americans see as unjust. What’s striking here, though, is that the underlying proposition from which Judge Alsup proceeds is that the existing executive order was implemented legally. He’s decided, entirely unjustifiably, that Obama was permitted to implement this policy as he saw fit under his executive authority — but Trump cannot end the same policy as he sees fit, under the exact same executive authority…”
Thus a federal judge draws upon tweets to ascertain Trump’s motivation, but conveniently ignores The Manchurian Candidate’s own words as set forth in the video above.
It’s all part of a purposeful Progressive process the great Victor Davis Hanson quizzically characterizes as going…
Denial eventually leads to desperation…which inevitably breeds stupidity.
“…we have never quite seen anything like the opposition of the so-called Resistance to the elected presidency that followed the Obama tenure.
There were the initial false charges that pro-Trump Russians had shut down power grids in Vermont. There were frivolous suits claiming that voting machines in three states were rigged. There was an organized, anti-constitutional effort to subvert the Electoral College so that it would not reflect the vote tallies of individual states. On Inauguration Day, there were congressional boycotts of the swearing-in ceremony. There were demonstrations at which, to take one example, Madonna envisioned blowing up the Trump White House.
An entire genre of assassination chic followed. Politicians, celebrities, actors, academics, and wannabees variously reenacted beheading Donald Trump, stabbing him to death, shooting him, torching him, hanging him, or, in the words of Robert DeNiro, dreaming of punching Trump in the face.Few in the media were bothered by the imagery or threats.Yet sometimes the hysteria became real violence — as when Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson’s shot prominent Republican politicians practicing for a charity baseball game, gravely wounding Republican House whip Steven Scalise, or when libertarian senator Rand Paul (present at the Scalise shooting) was attacked and injured by a disturbed neighbor and proponent of socialized medicine.
Formal efforts followed to impeach Trump in his first months of governance. Some evoked the emoluments clause of the Constitution, claiming that Trump had sought the presidency only to profit. Others sought recourse in the 25th Amendment, hoping that he could be removed because of senility, insanity, or debility. A Yale psychiatrist, who has never met Trump, was brought before Congress to confirm that the president was psychologically unfit to continue his office — and then wondered whether he might be physically restrained and forced to undergo examination (apparently unaware that she was getting quite close to advocating a coup d’état and also channeling the old Soviet remedy to political undesirables).
Deep-state bureaucrats and holdover Obama appointees refused to carry out presidential orders and became causes célèbres for violating their oaths of office. Justices were cherry-picked for stays of presidential directives (such as the subject of our item immediately above.)on the basis on their liberal fides — until higher courts overturned their rulings. The Democratic congressional minority made wholescale effort to slow down confirmation of almost every presidential appointment.
Nonpartisan media research organizations found that 90 percent of all news stories concerning President Trump portrayed him negatively — an unprecedented negative rating. Late-night television morphed into 24/7 anti-Trump diatribes.
Journalists as diverse as the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg and Univision’s Jorge Ramos insisted that reporters could no longer be professionally disinterested in the age of Trump but must become activists to oppose the president and his agendas.
Indeed, the WikiLeaks trove revealed that marquee journalists such as the New York Times’ Glenn Thrush and the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank had actively colluded with the Clinton campaign to massage their news accounts and commentaries. The genre of “fake news” was born — ranging from the trivial of claiming in racist fashion that Trump had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the West Wing to the mythologies of a purported Trump plan to invade Mexico.CNN’s journalists and employees were sometimes fired for inventing anti-Trump narratives, or caught on a hot mic wishing for the president’s jet to crash, or reduced to using scatology to express their hatred. The network achieved a 93 percent negative treatment of all Trump news.
Obama political appointments had sought FISA court orders to surveille Trump associates, then unmasked the names and leaked them to friendly journalists, first, to hamper the Trump campaign, later to subvert the Trump transition. A Clinton opposition dossier, based on paid and unnamed Russian sources, peddled false stories to the FBI and Obama-administration Justice Department officials.It may well have been used to obtain the FISA orders.
Career FBI officers used government communications to express their hatred for the new president. Such bias may have (undoubtedly did!)fueled their efforts to warp their investigations.The director of the FBI knowingly leaked confidential notes of his meetings with the president. He probably passed (again, undoubtedly did!) on at least one classified document to a friend, with the instruction that it then be passed to a friendly journalist. James Comey’s hope was to ensure an investigation of the president by a special counsel — a position soon to be filled by his close associate and friend.
The deep-state resistance of bureaucrats ranged from the petty and trivial of refusing to hang the picture of the current president in their offices to the more substantial move of slowing down or refusing outright to carry out presidential directives.America had not seen such opposition to an incoming president since 1861.
If any such resistance had faced an incoming Barack Obama, the cries of outrage, media fury, and legal recourse would have proved overwhelming and been framed as a constitutional crisis. But no such pushback occurred. Instead, in 2009, power was transferred peacefully if not amicably.
Yet, so far, the Resistance, despite helping to drive down presidential approval ratings to the low 40 percent range, has not stopped the Trump agenda.The Mueller investigation will likely settle for face-saving charges against a few Trump officials for crimes not envisioned under its original directives. Its own biases and the FBI’s involvement with the discredited Steele dossier may result in a number of successful appeals of those who confessed or acquittals of those charged.
The frustrated Resistance is starting to morph into a more serious crisis of nullification, if not insurrection…”
Fortunately for us, unfortunately for them, those loyal to the Constitution and the Founder’s Republic possess the VAST majority of the weapons…which is why the evisceration of the 2nd Amendment remains so high on the list of Progressive priorities.
Next, we offer a question: What’s the inevitable result of more than 50 years of one-party rule? As the WaPo relates, it’s…
“Earlier in the week, some students returned from their winter holiday break to chilled classrooms and older buildings crippled by facilities woes. Pictures circulating online showed students in coats and a classroom thermometer with temperatures in the 40s. “As of now, I have on four shirts, two hoodies and a jacket,” high school senior Dennis Morgan told NPR. “It’s kind of hard to get comfortable when you’ve got so many layers on and you’re not used to it and you’re still cold.”
Baltimore City Public Schools were closed Thursday, both because of the snow and building conditions. Schools remained closed Friday. The decision came after the Baltimore Teachers Union on Wednesday sent a letter that asked the school system’s chief executive, Sonja Santelises, to close the buildings until officials could assess the situation.
…Santelises said in a phone interview 60 schools had registered a complaint or issue by the end of the school day Wednesday, about a third of the system…”
We should also note the city’s first Black female mayor, Sheila Dixon, was convicted of embezzlement for stealing gift cards intended for the less fortunate residents of the grossly misnamed Charm City, while the city’s second Black female mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, was effectively hounded from office following her infamous “we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well” in the wake of the 2015 riots.
Physician, heal yoself!
Which brings us, finally and ironically, to The Lighter Side…
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