It’s Monday, January 7th, 2019…now, here’s The Gouge…and in the interest of time, absent our usual colorful emphases!
First up, writing at NRO, Andy McCarthy details how…
“It’s a new year with a new Congress, but it’s the same question: When is Special Counsel Robert Mueller going to file his much-anticipated final report?
My 2018 answer was: When he’s good and ready.
I have a caveat for 2019, though: Maybe when President Trump stops giving him additional reasons to keep digging…
…This brings us to my 2019 caveat: If Mueller’s highly elastic warrant is to probe Trump “collusion” with the Kremlin, why would he stop if the president keeps giving him reasons to continue?
The first cabinet meeting of the new year found the president making the appalling claim that “the reason Russia was in Afghanistan” — i.e., the reason the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 — “was because terrorists were going into Russia.” Trump astonishingly added, “They were right to be there.”
These are such shocking assertions for an American president to make, it is difficult to know where to begin. The invasion was a familiar episode of totalitarian Communist aggression. There was nothing defensive about it. Moscow swarmed Afghanistan to prop up a deeply unpopular pro-Soviet regime that had seized power and was under insurgent attack for attempting to impose Communist “reforms” on a fundamentalist Islamic population. Terrorists did not provoke the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; as I outlined in Willful Blindness, the global jihadist movement is an outgrowth of the response to that invasion: specifically, the summons to Muslims worldwide to join the battle, and the aid provided by the United States and its Sunni allies (mainly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) to the mujahideen — in particular, to the so-called “Arab Afghans” who forged al-Qaeda. The president’s statements indicate that he grasps neither (a) the geopolitical challenge posed to the West by the Soviet Union and, derivatively, Putin’s revanchist regime nor (b) the roots of militant Islam in the modern era.
For a guy under investigation for colluding with the Kremlin, the president’s remarks are also noteworthy because they are exactly what Putin would want Trump to say.
Now, to be clear, I don’t believe Trump made these asinine comments because he is Putin’s stooge. I think he is uninformed and out of his depth. Even as the crow flies, Afghanistan is over 2,500 miles from Russia. But Afghanistan was in the Soviet sphere. Trump has border-crossing aliens on the brain, so I suspect the president was trying to make a point about the need for walls . . . or something.
Still, Trump’s remarks, echoing Russian propaganda about its aggression, are apt to be of interest to the special counsel.
As we have surmised in these columns over the past year and a half, Mueller is not investigating merely to determine whether Trump committed a crime. The wide berth he was given — authority to probe any “coordination” between Trump-campaign figures and the Russian regime — enables him to try to justify the Obama Justice Department and FBI’s controversial decision to investigate the opposition presidential candidate and his eventual administration…”
Then again, we can’t shake this nagging suspicion…
…Mueller’s on the wrong scent!
Speaking of that which carries Progressivisms’ particularly repugnant perfume, courtesy of Best of the Web, Jim Freeman relates…
The Pelosi Pay Raise
There goes another argument against funding the wall.
“Having already agreed to spend money on physical barriers to prevent illegal crossings of the U.S. southern border, Democrats are casting opposition to the particular architecture favored by President Donald Trump as a matter of conscience worth shutting down a portion of their beloved federal bureaucracy. This argument was already going to be difficult to sustain and Democrats have just made it even harder.
The problem lies in legislation passed on Thursday by the brand-new Democratic House. Reuters reports on the spending items approved after Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) reclaimed the Speaker’s gavel:
The two-part Democratic package includes a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security at current levels through Feb. 8, providing $1.3 billion for border fencing and $300 million for other border security items including technology and cameras.
The second part would fund the other federal agencies that are now unfunded including the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Commerce and Justice, through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
“We’re not doing a wall. It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with a wall is an immorality between countries. It’s an old way of thinking. It isn’t cost effective,” Pelosi told reporters late on Thursday.
To recap, the position of the Pelosi House—and also of many Senate Democrats—is that fences between countries are sensible and worthy of 10-figure appropriations of taxpayer dollars but “walls” in the same locations and serving the same purpose are immoral. Anyone thinking such a distinction is ridiculous may be encouraged to know that Speaker Pelosi seems to think so, too. A serious person normally would not call a program morally unacceptable and then add that it’s not “cost effective.” Is the Speaker demanding more efficient immorality?
Regardless, she is not alone in presenting opposition to the Trump border wall as partly motivated by a determination to protect taxpayers. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is also calling the Trump wall plan “expensive and ineffective.” For context, the President is seeking $5.6 billion in funding this year.
For additional context, when congressional Democrats aren’t publicly discussing the Trump border plan, they are privately engaging in a spirited internal debate about whether to spend 6,000 times as much on a government health care plan.
So Democrats have a natural credibility challenge in presenting themselves as guardians of the public fisc, even among those taxpayers who have forgotten the spending surge that followed the inauguration of the last Democratic President. With Thursday’s House legislating, Democrats have made themselves even less believable.
Government Executive magazine reports:
Trump last week issued an executive order finalizing his proposal to freeze federal employees’ pay in 2019. The consolidated package of spending bills the House passed on Thursday, however, would override that order and provide civilian workers with a 1.9 percent pay bump.
Building the Trump wall is not this column’s priority. But to oppose it for budgetary reasons while approving a pay raise for every federal bureaucrat only exacerbates the Pelosi/Schumer credibility problem, especially given the budgetary details.
The House-passed pay raise used the same legislative language that was included in a Senate bill scored by the Congressional Budget Office. That analysis pegged the cost of the pay raise for federal workers at $3.329 billion in fiscal year 2019.
In other words, take the money the Pelosi House has now approved for barriers and other equipment to prevent illegal border crossings and add the money the Pelosi House wants to hand out in raises for bureaucrats and you have roughly $5 billion, which would just about cover the President’s wall request.
Striking a border deal wouldn’t even necessarily require the Speaker to climb down from her claim of architectural immorality. At his Friday press conference the President seemed willing to call it a “structure” instead of a “wall” and said he’s happy to use steel. This means there can still be a legislative compromise even if the Speaker harbors some deep philosophical objection to concrete.
Even more intriguing, the President signalled a willingness to deal on the issue of people illegally brought to the U.S. as children. Most encouraging of all, he spoke at length on the need to keep talented foreign students in the U.S. after they earn valuable degrees at U.S. universities. If the Speaker is willing to compromise, she can achieve much of what her party claims to want in terms of immigration reform. If not, it means that what Democrats really want is to embarrass the President.
Regardless of the wall debate, a federal pay raise is a terrible idea given Friday’s report on the continuing American jobs boom and intense demand for workers in private business. Why should a deeply indebted federal government provide another financial incentive for its unaffordable workforce to stay put? Their help is wanted and needed in the private economy.”
Which reminds us…
Since we’re on the subject of money and its infernal influence on politics, the WSJ‘s Kim Strassel insightfully identifies…
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren built a political career on her reputation as a financial expert. Her prospective presidential opponents are learning how savvy she is, at least when it comes to campaign cash.
Political observers spent this week wondering why the Massachusetts senator rushed to become the first major Democrat to announce for 2020. She made her strategy clear in a Wednesday-night interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “This is going to be the fish-or-cut-bait year for the Democrats,” said Ms. Warren, in what was clearly a well-rehearsed declaration. “This is a moment for all of the Democratic nominees . . . to say: In a Democratic primary, we are going to link arms, and we’re going to say ‘grass-roots funding.’ No to the billionaires. No to the billionaires—whether they are self-funding, or whether they are funding PACs. We are the Democratic Party, and that’s the party of the people.”
This may sound laudable, and in keeping with Ms. Warren’s antipathy for plutocrats. It’s also in line with the progressive animus toward “big money,” intensified in 2016 by the Bernie Sanders campaign. All of which masks how useful this approach is to Ms. Warren as she tries to ward off or financially destroy her competition. Not for the first time, she is positioning herself as a campaign-finance purist, even as she attempts to fix the money rules to her advantage…”
Meanwhile, as the brilliant Stilton Jarlsberg observes, Joe Biden’s already approached PocaHonky about teaming with him in 2020:
Next up, again courtesy of NRO, Ramesh Ponnura suggests…
Truth be known, Ramesh is directing his advice at only ONE justice:
John Glover Roberts, Jr.! We’re frankly ashamed the two of us were born in Upstate New York in the same year.
Tell us again why Trump (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) should be condemned, but Bushes I & II (Souter and Roberts) deified?!? SCOTUS appointments alone confirm why the Bush family has always been the bane of Conservatism.
“Bane”…”Bain”: same RINO sh*t:
Different…
…privileged progeny!
Which brings us, inappropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Magoo
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.