It’s Monday, October 8th, Columbus Day 2018…but before we begin, a few random thoughts on the passing scene.
#1: As our friend Jeff Foutch noted on Friday, whoever Lisa Murkowski faces in 2022 will be getting a check from us. Consider this bit of pompous self-aggrandizement:
“I take this obligation…as seriously as anything that I am obligated and privileged to vote on. And so, I have a very high standard. I have a very high bar for any nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States.“
Had Murkowski held herself to the same standard she purports to apply to SCOTUS nominees, Republicans would have been spared the embarrassment of her infamous…
…Bridge to Nowhere, which, despite connecting Alaska’s barren (population 50 at the time) Gravina Island to the “booming” town of Ketchikan (population 50,000) and being the longest, most expensive route under consideration, was still…curiously…the one selected. It must have been coincidence Murkowski’s family owned otherwise worthless property directly adjacent to the approved route!
As this meme from our old and bestest buddy Chris Wilson suggests…
…Lisa, you broke our heart. But paybacks are a b*tch! As are you…and a worthless one at that!
…you ignorant slut…!!! (Like Blazing Saddles, we can’t begin to imagine such a classic comedy sketch being aired today.)
#3: When the likes of Eric Holder, Elena Kagan and John Paul Stevens question your legitimacy and qualifications, you know you’re headed in the “right” direction!
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up on the Columbus Day edition, courtesy of George Lawlor and Real Clear Politics, Never-Trumper Erick Erickson is finally contemplating going all-in for…
“I have wobbled back and forth on the idea of supporting President Donald Trump in 2020. I opposed him in 2016 and voted third-party. The candidate I supported, Evan McMullin, has, like so many others, abandoned all his values as his hatred of Trump poisons his conscience. I dare say the worst mistake in my life was not when I climbed a mountain only to remember I was scared of heights, or when I played with a scalpel that nearly cut off my finger as a kid. It was voting for McMullin.
…I have long been critical of Republicans who abandoned principles to stand with Trump, and I am as critical of Republicans who abandon principles to oppose Trump. Principle should stay, because people go. The Kavanaugh nomination has been clarifying in this regard. Seeing some conservatives aid and abet character assassins because Trump nominated Kavanaugh is disgusting.
I find myself in an odd position where, for the first time, I see myself, one of the original so-called “Never Trump conservatives,” voting for Trump in 2020…
…Trump may have criticized Kavanaugh’s first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, in a way I found inappropriate for a president to do, but his opponents have thrown out the millennia-old principle that a man is to be presumed innocent. The president may have enacted tariffs I find harmful to the economy, but his opponents are willfully destroying a good, innocent man so they can keep destroying children.
George W. Bush attempted to put Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and pushed comprehensive immigration reform, No Child Left Behind, the General Motors Bailout, etc. I opposed all those, but never doubted President Bush’s integrity, character or faith. Frankly, Trump does not have the character or strong Christian faith I prefer in a president.But he is positively angelic compared to his political opponents and the press.
…There is much in the present political age about which I am uncertain. But there is one thing about which I am absolutely certain: President Trump is not my enemy, and too many progressives view me as theirs.“
Which just goes to prove…
And why, writing at NRO even prior to Saturday’s vote, Conrad Black termed The Donald…
“The entire febrile effort to delegitimize President Donald Trump continues to be based on the ability of the Trump-hating media to confect or unveil a Trumpocidal deus ex machina every two weeks. I have just learned from a dear friend of many years, an intelligent and reasonable man who happens to be in the camp of the Trump-haters, what is being thrown into the line as the successor anti-Trump story to the Kavanaugh drama. The optimism about defeating that nomination is fading, and the sobering passage of a few days is melting the ardent hope that the fragile and completely uncorroborated account of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford would sink that candidacy. The last-trench defense on that subject is already filled with the retreating forces of the anti-Trump media.The smooth-faced talking heads are earnestly wagging in unison across the channels as they find the judge’s lack of a “judicial temperament” to be “concerning.” My friend has enlightened me that as thiscause célèbre evaporates like so many others, from Warsaw to Charlottesville to Pyongyang to Helsinki, the Trump presidency will be brought down by the New York Times’ revelation of a supposed tax fraud by Trump involving hundreds of millions of dollars. The president has been constantly subjected to tax audits for nearly 40 years. This is another clunker, after so many. I doubt that it will be more effective than the Times’ effort to fell Kavanaugh with the suspicion that he “may have” thrown ice-water at someone at a collegiate social occasion 35 years ago.
Even Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the last of the Never Trump Republicans in the Senate except for Jeff Flake of Arizona and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, acknowledges that the Republican majority in the Senate is holding and that Kavanaugh will be confirmed by Saturday. (In Sasse’s relatively agile mind, principle, opportunism, and snobbery are clearly contending fiercely.) The imprimatur of abject failure was placed on the Kavanaugh-temperament issue by the irreplaceable Hillary Clinton when she declared that Kavanaugh lacked the “stability” and “integrity” to be a Supreme Court justice.That comment from that source practically ensured his confirmation.Even my knowledgeable and highly intelligent anti-Trump friend, whose name would be familiar to most readers, acknowledges that it will be a cliff-hanger in the midterms in both houses. It won’t in the Senate, where there is minimal chance of avoiding some Republican gains, but the fact that the learned anti-Trump clarion call has become so faint is a persuasive barometer of the pre-electoral weather.
The mighty thundercloud of emasculating militant feminism, which on Friday seemed to be taking the lead over the good sense of the public with its lust for a regime of denunciation and the condemnation of men with no evidence, has almost evaporated. Not with a bang but a whimper does control of the Supreme Court pass to constitutionalists who believe that the intentions of the Constitution’s authors should be respected.(They weren’t framers and should not be so described.) With less than five weeks to go before the midterm elections, and the president running the most strenuous midterm-election campaign in history, his enemies are desperately grasping at anything that might avert the confirmation of the Trump ascendancy.
Just as he calculated that by speaking for all those who despised the entire incumbent political system he could win the Republican nomination, and that he could win by designing a campaign to exploit the possibilities of gaining a majority in the Electoral College rather than the popular vote (as five of his predecessors did, by design or otherwise), he is now exploiting the fact that there is no leader of the opposition in the American system, and between presidential elections he has no rival. The likely outcome is the most favorable midterm result since Franklin D. Roosevelt won nine additional congressional districts and gained nine senators in 1934.Even now, though the bunk about impeachment has subsided, Trump’s enemies have little idea of how profoundly hated the OBushinton era, 1989 to 2017, had become, as a time of sleaze and incompetence and stagnation. Now, in what is practically a full-employment economy, wages for the least well-paid are rising.Amazon and other retailers grumble about $15 an hour for unskilled work, but it is the first time people in that economic bracket have had real increases of purchasing power and the lack of fear of joblessness in more than 20 years.
If Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed and the Republicans hold both houses of the Congress, it will be the greatest and swiftest ascension to comprehensive power in all branches of American government in history. (As well as the quickest descent from executive overreach…
…in memory!)A measurement of how the tide has shifted is the disappearance from public consciousness of the Mueller inquiry. The number of Trump-haters who are still clinging to that waterlogged life-vest is statistically trivial. It was just six weeks ago, when Michael Cohen’s plea bargain was announced and Paul Manafort was convicted (of offenses that occurred a decade before he knew the president), that Trump’s enemies ululated their triumph and proclaimed, in the words of one often-published Trump-hater, that “The fat lady is singing; it’s almost over.”She wasn’t and it isn’t. It has only just begun, and it will get better.Trump isn’t an aberrant interlude; he is a sea change. He has a mandate to clean up Washington and he plans to fulfill it.“
Next up, a cartoon from Chris Muir which reminds us, while we might have triumphed in a critical battle, there’s still a war to be won:
While in hindsight Chuck Schumer gave Progressives’ strategy away back in July 2007…
…we offer, when you have the time, a few must-read articles on the incredibly destructive game Dimocrats continue to play:
“The Left ruins everything. That’s because the Left stands ready to eradicate any norm at any time if there is political advantage in it…” – Andy McCarthy, NRO
“…Willing to destroy any part of government they cannot corrupt with partisanship, members of the self-declared resistance are tearing America apart because the election didn’t go their way. They have unleashed a whirlwind of fanatical hate, with violence now routinely threatened and sometimes carried out.
There are no random events. It is a straight line from the unprecedented plot by President Barack Obama’s administration to infiltrate and wiretap the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016 to the scurrilous accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh…” – Michael Goodwin, New York Post (with a hat tip to Speed Mach!)
“We are in the midst of a cold civil war. The crux? Realizing politics is part of life, one side believes America is fundamentally a good country requiring some prudent improvements upon which reasonable minds may differ. On the other side, the Left, thinking politics is life, believes America is a hopelessly unjust nation requiring “fundamental transformation” and this is a point on which no reasonable minds can differ.
The Kavanaugh confirmation evinces the political abyss between us; and the bathetic depths to which this divide drives the Left to “win”…” – Thad McCotter, American Greatness (again, with a hat tip to Speed Mach!)
Though we’d respectfully suggest The Left realizes politics IS power…the power to direct the lives and futures of hundreds of millions of America who fail (inexplicably) to comprehend Progressive policies best represent their interests.
For those unfamiliar with the significance of Brooks’ attack on Sumner, it was in response to a rather fiery speech given by the Massachusetts Senator two days earlier in which he sharply chastised slave owners, including a relative of Brooks. Bully Brooks, quite literally, beat Sumner within an inch of his life; and the event, which elicited a particularly polarized response from the American public, is considered emblematic of the “breakdown of reasoned discourse” which ultimately led to the War Between the States.
Sound familiar?!?
Hells bells, the WSJ can’t even compose a headline without the professionally/perpetually oversensitive reacting in overwrought, politically-correct outrage:
“American political discourse gets worse by the day, a lesson we’ve seen first-hand again this weekend. TheTwittermob on the political left is claiming that our Saturday editorial headline, “Susan Collins Consents,” was intended as a sly “rape joke.”
…Like several readers in our comments section, our first reaction was that these people should get their minds out of the gutter.But the distortion of our headline is worse than that and reflects the left’s corruption of language to serve its political ends.
The left-wing mob doesn’t want to credit Senator Collins with making a considered judgment, or our endorsement of her speech as praise for the correct way the Senate should behave in assessing a nominee.The mob wants to interpret everything through the prism of identity politics and accuse opponents of condoning or laughing at sexual assault.As George Orwell said of the propagandists of his day, these people want to manipulate language to distort its meaning to make their opponents seem illegitimate…”
Here’s the juice: Think of America as Sarah Connors…
In response, the Southern Baptist Convention officially extended their worship hour to 75 minutes, the Pope announced the length of Mass would remain unchanged, while the Episcopal primate stated, “Ever since we started ordaining gays practically no one’s attending our church, so what’s the difference?!?”
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Turning now to yet another titillating tale torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter, we learn how a…
“…Natasha Ciara Joyner, 32 was arrested on Thursday after investigators say she started a fire at an apartment complex in New Carrollton that resulted in four damaged buildings, 130 displaced residents and $2.2 million in estimated damages.
…No one was injured but officials discovered that Joyner started the fire because “she was allegedly upset with an ex-boyfriend,” a press release from Prince George’s County Fire Department said. She has been charged with first- and second-degree arson, first-degree malicious burning and malicious destruction of property greater than $1,000, and reckless endangerment.
…It was not immediately clear if Joyner or her ex-boyfriend lived in the apartment complex.“
Holy Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Batman!
As the FOX News account had no picture of the jilted arsonist, we were curious as to why her photo had been omitted:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with another late-breaking, sordid story from The Crime Blotter:
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