“At least 20 alleged terrorists in the past three years were immigrants or refugees from the seven majority-Muslim nations President Trump temporarily banned migration from Friday.
Immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen won’t be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. for the next three months. Several journalists from outlets such as The Washington Post and Vox have complained that Trump picked the wrong countries as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Afghanistan aren’t covered in the temporary immigration bans. Some pundits or politicians have gone as far as to say no terror is caused by immigrants from these nations.
The Obama administration’s Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security refused to make public the immigration status of individuals implicated in terrorism, so the exact number of immigrant terrorists is unknown.
However, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest used publicly available information and identified at least 17 individuals from these seven nations that from March 2014 to June 2016 were implicated in terrorism. Eight of these are terrorists convicted for crimes mainly related to giving material support or attempting to give material support to ISIS.”
“Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared a ban on so-called sanctuary cities and sweeping reforms in the state’s troubled child-protection system as top priorities for emergency action this legislative session.
To cheers and a standing ovation as he addressed a joint session of the Legislature, Abbott said elected officials should not have the option of whether to enforce state and federal laws on immigration — an obvious reference to his ongoing fight with Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez.
“Elected officials do not to pick and chose which laws to enforce,” Abbott said in his State of the State speech, insisting that state and local officials “must protect Texas” from deadly criminals.
“This will be the session where we ban sanctuary cities,” he said to cheers and a standing ovation as he addressed a joint session of the Legislature.
Hernandez has announced she will decline some federal detention requests of undocumented immigrants who are jailed.
Abbott has given Hernandez until Wednesday to rescind her new policy or face possible sanctions, including a cutoff of state grant funding — and possible removal from office. He earlier said he wants state law changed to allow for removal.
Abbott also said he intends to maintain state-funded security along the Texas-Mexico border, though he hinted that federal officials may be poised to step up their presence in a move that could allow Texas taxpayers to trim their current $800 million investment.”
“On . . . Breitbart News Daily, SiriusXM host Alex Marlow asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton about a study from the Center for Immigration Studies that revealed that “there could be as many as 43 million non-citizens in the United States right now.” Fitton had previously spotlighted this study on Twitter as evidence of potential voter fraud issues.
“There’s 43 million people who are not citizens and are ineligible to vote, but a good percentage of them do register to vote. And of those that do, some vote,” Fitton explained.
“Most tend to vote Democrat. It’s a fact,” he continued. “There’s been a study out of Old Dominion University that shows it is enough of a vote to sway elections, one way or another. It may have resulted in election, specifically, of Al Franken to the United States Senate, and all the bad things politically or public policy-wise that happened as a result, like Obamacare and things like that.”
“Are we supposed to be so naive as to think that tens of millions of people are here, present in the United States, and none of them are illegally voting?” Fitton asked. “In states where you don’t have voter ID, in states where most voter registration, you’re not required to certify citizenship, other than signing and saying you’re a citizen?”
“It happens repeatedly where you have these voter registrations signed by aliens because they shouldn’t be voting, so they’re registered to vote – and the irony is, once they’re registered to vote, voter ID ain’t gonna protect you,” he noted, “because they have the ID necessary to vote, once they’re registered. So you have many non-citizens voting in elections, and they vote in large numbers in a way to sway elections.””
“Priorities, priorities at Planned Parenthood: women’s care, or core business? The nation’s largest abortion chain has demanded that Republicans in Congress stop attacking “women’s health care” with their proposals to bar federal funds from flowing into their coffers. When it comes to actual caring, however, Planned Parenthood focuses its resources on abortions. Live Action has two new videos out today demonstrating that PP’s clinics use their ultrasounds — a key diagnostic tool for expecting mothers — only to prepare to terminate the life within the womb in all but a handful of their clinics:”
“Here are a few examples of caring:
Planned Parenthood uses ultrasounds to determine a baby’s age and position in the womb before it kills her. In the “Ultrasounds for Killing, Not Care” video, investigators posing as pregnant women asked 68 Planned Parenthood facilities for ultrasounds to check the health of their babies, but only three centers would provide them. The remainder either used ultrasounds for abortions or did not perform ultrasounds at all. Investigators received responses like:
“No, we don’t do any ultrasounds for prenatal care. We do them when we’re doing abortions, but not for any other reason.” – Council Bluffs, IA, Planned Parenthood
“No. Nope. Not – not something we offer. Well, we do have to do an ultrasound with an abortion, but we don’t offer them for – we can’t do anything to make sure that the pregnancy’s fine.” – St. Louis, MO, Planned Parenthood
“We only do ultrasounds if you are terminating.” – Corning, NY, Planned Parenthood
Two former PP managers confirmed the policy. And when PP does do ultrasounds, they make sure that women can’t see what those ultrasounds show:”
———————–
Gee, I wonder why they don’t wanna show the mother…..
Can’t have her changin’ her mind at the last minute.
“Donald Trump has been put on notice. (This is the… what? The 7,256th time he’s been put on notice?) The nation’s environmental activists aren’t going to take his regulatory and administrative changes without a fight. They’re lining up their legal teams and getting ready to tie the White House up in lawsuits such as they’ve never seen. Or at least so they say. (Associated Press)
The night before Donald Trump’s inauguration, five environmental lawyers filed a federal court brief defending an Obama administration clean-water rule that the new president and his Republican allies have targeted for elimination, considering it burdensome to landowners.
The move served as a warning that environmentalists, facing a hostile administration and a Republican-dominated Congress, are prepared to battle in court against what they fear will be a wave of unfavorable policies concerning climate change, wildlife protection, federal lands and pollution.
Advocacy groups nationwide are hiring more staff lawyers. They’re coordinating with private attorneys and firms that have volunteered to help. They’re reviewing statutes, setting priorities and seeking donations.
Let’s review, because this seems to be the marching orders. They are:
Yes, you need to get that “seeking donations” clause in there early, don’t you? Not to worry. I’m sure the President has taken notice and will soon be reconsidering his plans in the face of such a robust #Resist movement. What mere mortal could stand up to that hash tag?”
What a happy day to be a globalist overlord! I am eating blackberries from Chile for breakfast that cost less than $1.00. I am watching basketball highlights on a big screen TV made by a Japanese company at a Mexican plant that cost less than the 19 inch American-made TV we bought during the Carter Administration. My iPad is made from components produced in 200 factories around the world. Soon I will jump in my $12,995 Kia that gets 40mpg and head to work. Today is the first day of the month, so we will be paying income and payroll taxes to help fund the government including food, housing and healthcare for many Democrats and quite a few Trumpkins.
I do feel sorry for Democrats and Trumpkins who are neither poor enough for Medicaid nor old enough for Medicare. They are trapped in the one area of our economy virtually untouched by globalism. The largely socialist, heavily regulated healthcare system that costs almost twice as much as any other in the world is pure American, created by economically illiterate Democrats from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama.
My bubble seems to be growing very rapidly. It appears that large numbers of those highly skilled, entrepreneurial Asians I am always talking about are moving in all around me. It is no wonder that there are scarcely enough Mexicans available to build our houses.
Yes. That is why we always must always have our eyes on New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, the Baltic states, Chile and other places where there are fewer Democrats and Trumpkins sitting in the wagon, waiting to be pulled. Even as Abraham left Ur and as our ancestors left Europe, there will be a time for my family to leave the US, but not just yet, not yet. We need to see how this current drama plays out and how Texas emerges from the storm.
I am saddened, but not surprised to hear that. You are not an American at all. You have no love for this country. But God has a plan for everyone, and I wish you well wherever you may land. Go in peace.
Family ties, familiar surroundings and even inertia are very powerful things. It is interesting to watch as productive American young people wrestle with the future their children may face here along with the problems and risks that go with relocation.
It has given me a new appreciation of the faith it took for Abraham and early American pioneers to pull up roots and move. I think the Trump Administration will give us a clear indication of America’s future. It should also force other nations to make hard, courageous choices about world leadership. We will know much more in 4-10 years if the Lord tarries.
“wave after wave of anti-Trump hysteria” — isn’t that the truth, day after day now? Wearying.
__________________________________
.. What this angry public theater allows is opportunity for the left to steamroll Democratic centrists out of the way, so they can grab control of the Democratic Party apparatus.
Because that’s what this wild, seething game is all about now: control of the Democratic Party, or what’s left of it.
Perhaps that’s why Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer was crying the other day, not over Trump’s executive order on immigration but for his own prospects.
Schumer is like the boy dancing on a log in the river, trying not to fall in. He must keep moving farther to the left to accommodate that leftward roll, while trying to help 10 Senate Democrats running for re-election in states Trump won.
So the hard left deconstructs the Democrats, eases old Bernie Sanders out to some apple orchard where he can sit in a chair with a warm blanket on his legs and exiles the old Clinton establishment centrists to some desert island. …
Meanwhile, Trump plays his own game. He was sent to Washington by angry and disaffected voters of middle-America to impose economic nationalism and dismantle the corrupt old establishment.
That establishment on the Republican side is the old big-government GOP war party led by Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Trump promised to dismantle it, and that’s what he’s doing. And that’s basically why McCain, and Graham and the war party boys hate him so. They’ve joined the establishment media as allies against Trump. …”
_____________________________
Interesting to me, that of all of the Texans I have known, I thought they held their state in highest regard. I don’t know any true Idahoans that would give up on their state just because the country went bad many years ago. We just keep plodding along. Though it is our thought that the nation will continue to drive the people from the land to the cities.
Speaking as someone stuck out here in the People’s Republic of California, I’d love to move to Idaho. God, however, has determined I’m to stay put. Sigh. It’s not me I worry about, it’s the kids. Who can determine whose act of lawlessness is right? See the book of Judges. 😦
In michelle’s link also, at the end, he makes some pertinent observations about the scary state of the media in all of this.
I largely blame the media’s own inability to take what’s been the long-standing criticism seriously. I’ve said this before, but I’ve had numerous conversations just with my own colleagues in the business through the years who insist — INSIST — that the media does NOT lean left, in any way, shape or form. They dismiss all of this as Fox News propaganda.
It’s a blindness and smug refusal to admit that anything could be wrong with the way the media covers political stories.
And so the media has shot themselves in the foot, essentially, by refusing to look inward and to see & address seriously what is really so obvious.
With the dawn of Trump, the media is jumping the shark — joining too often in the nation’s hysteria.
Now it seems no one trusts what they read from any source, it can all be dismissed so easily.
Well, I guess the NY Times opinion writers aren’t impressed with what they view as a “stolen” Supreme Court seat:
______________________________________
It’s been almost a year since Senate Republicans took an empty Supreme Court seat hostage, discarding a constitutional duty that both parties have honored throughout American history and hobbling an entire branch of government for partisan gain.
President Trump had a great opportunity to repair some of that damage by nominating a moderate candidate for the vacancy, which was created when Justice Antonin Scalia died last February. Instead, he chose Neil Gorsuch, a very conservative judge from the federal Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit whose jurisprudence and writing style are often compared to those of Justice Scalia. …
________________________________
I was reading with TV on mute during the speeches. But I was happy with the bottom line.
It got to where I couldn’t tolerate Obama nor Hillary speaking. Trump isn’t quite there yet, but close. It isn’t his voice, as it is with the other two, it’s his stage presence.
Nice ‘n’ easy? Donald Trump debuted a new hair color while announcing Judge Neil Gorsuch as his U.S. Supreme Court nominee at the White House on Tuesday, January 31. The 45th president of the United States’ hair appeared to look more dirty-blond than his usual bold yellow tone.
_________________
“Let’s agree that President Trump’s travel ban on visitors from seven nations was a sensible idea hobbled by flaws, especially regarding green card holders and dual citizens. Let’s also agree we haven’t seen a rollout this clumsy since the debut of ObamaCare, which was far more serious because it penalized millions of Americans while Trump’s order inconvenienced hundreds of foreign nationals.
Still, we can assume, based on past performance, that Trump will learn from the mistakes. His fierce determination to be a successful president cannot co-exist with rookie blunders.
But what about the other players in the drama? Can we say the media will now correct its excess of bile and cover Trump as a legitimate president and not as an invasive species?
No, no, no. On the contrary, we must say that Trump aide Steve Bannon was on target when he called the Washington media “the opposition party.”
Don’t take his word for it. Stick a toe into the toxic sludge that passes for straight-news coverage in the Washington Post, the New York Times and others.
Look for the use of tell words like “Muslim ban” to describe an executive order that is no such thing. Look for hero worship of protesters, immigrants, refugees, lawyers rushing to the barricades and congressional critics.
Look, too, at the Twitter feeds of editors and reporters from those papers and the major networks. You’ll see their embrace of everything anti-Trump, further evidence they are part of a movement to obstruct the president, not cover him.”
“Unfortunately, the Dems are following a dangerously different path. Starting with a wide boycott of the inauguration and including their boycott of committee votes on Trump’s cabinet and their pledge to filibuster any Supreme Court nominee, Democrats resemble a party fomenting a secession movement.”
————————–
They’re pushing for a fight they won’t win, but they’ll scream “see, they ARE Fascists!!” when a response comes that hurts.
And then they’ll use that as justification to break, burn, and riot.
What happens when you don’t show up to work at the place that employs you? Does the company come to a grinding halt at work due to your absence?
Of course not, with or without you, work goes on. Democrats are apparently unaware of this concept. And it certainly telling that they turn out to be the worst type of employees. The type who call off for no reason except to slow down business. Figures.
“Senate Republicans brushed aside a boycott from angry Democrats and took emergency steps Wednesday to advance the nominations of Steven Mnuchin to run Treasury and Tom Price to head Health and Human Services.
The Judiciary Committee separately approved the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general on Wednesday in a straight party-line 11-9 vote, one day after Democrats forced a delay by making lengthy speeches blasting Trump for his executive actions on immigration and questioning Sessions’s independence.
The steps move the three men a step closer to confirmation, as Democrats intensify their offensive against several of President Donald Trump’s nominees. At the same time, Democrats stalled committee votes on two other nominees Wednesday — Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Representative Mick Mulvaney to head the Office of Management and Budget.
Even so, Senate rules leave the minority party with no ability to block the nominees, as long as Republicans remain united in support of Trump’s picks.”
“Without any Democrats present, the Senate Finance Committee moved Wednesday to report Mnuchin and Price to the floor on 14-0 votes, after voting to suspend the panel’s rules.
The action came one day after Democrats forced a delay on scheduled votes by skipping the committee’s meeting and denying it a quorum. Democrats said they need more time to scrutinize Trump’s picks, particularly after the president’s controversial executive action on immigration.”
—————————-
And they’re going to totally freak out when the Senate follows Harry Reid’s lead and nukes the filibuster for SC nominees. That will be a temper tantrum of epic proportions.
😆
On that day, there will be MUCH caterwauling in the media, and amongst the leftist hordes. Twitter will finally crash from the sheer weight of it’s own stupidity, and everyone will simultaneously un-friend their Republican friends and family on Facebook, much to the delight of said friends and family. 🙂
All while Our Benevolent Leader sips the salty sweet tears of social justice warriors from a golden chalice in Trump Tower.
It will be a fine day indeed. 🙂
And the next day? Well, life will just go on, as it always does. Until the next outrage opportunity appears. And then it’s lather, rinse, repeat. It’s the circle of life, or something……
I had a hard time walking into the gym this morning because I knew I’d hear politics in my dance class. But, as Mumsee noted above, this is part of my mission field.
I must be quiet and pray. But I hated dancing to a song about how we’re not going to take it anymore, our rights are being trampled and so forth.
Turns out it was a Latino song.
Does that make it better?
This is excellent character stretching opportunity to examine my heart toward God. What they do is their business, what my heart looks like as a result is between me and God.
Fortunately, confessing sin appears to be my hobby . . .
The Gorsuch pick supports the wisdom of such a vote. The reasons for not voting for Trump are more complex. It will be interesting to see how things play out.
We used to meet, years ago, to pray for our local pregnancy counseling center, but I always prayed for those who worked as the abortion clinics. Can you imagine what nightmares they must have?
I couldn’t resist replying to an unhinged liberal friend who has been posting two or three anti-Trump post a day. She asking if it mattered that DeVos plagiarized something. I just asked if Biden did as well. Answer; that has nothing to do with it.
The problem, though, is the force of law loses its meaning if people do not accept the Supreme Court Justice–or any of the other people being put into positions of authority. Per the articles above, lawlessness abounds and elected officials are not only refusing to do their jobs, but they’re encouraging dissent. This is dangerous for our country.
In California, they want to make themselves a sanctuary state. Well, fine and good–can we vote on that?
But who gets to decide which laws are kept and which ones are tossed aside because they don’t meet our personal values?
As in, will everyone still stop at red lights? There’s a lot of that going on now. Will everyone pay their taxes?
“Where were the Finance Committee Democrats? Holding a press conference in the hallway, which angered Hatch and provoked the rule change. Hatch then explained the action by painting Democrats on the committee as petulant cowards:
“We took some unprecedented actions today due to the unprecedented obstruction on the part of our colleagues. As I noted earlier, the Senate Finance Committee has traditionally been able to function in even the most divisive political environments. Personally, as longtime member of this committee, I have been proud of that distinction. And, in my time as both Ranking Member and Chairman of this committee, I have bent over backwards to preserve its unique status as one of the few places where Republicans and Democrats not only work together, but achieve results. That all changed yesterday. Republicans on this committee showed up to do our jobs. Yesterday, rather than accept anything less than their desired outcome, our Democrat colleagues chose to cower in the hallway and hold a press conference. Now, I get that my colleagues think these nominees are controversial. I get that they don’t want to see them confirmed. We’ve all been in that situation. It comes part and parcel with the job of being a Senator. And, this is hardly the first time a nominee deemed to be controversial has come before this committee.”
As publicity stunts go, this one seems exceptionally … foolish. Neither Price nor Mnuchin are the most controversial of Trump’s nominees; Price is a long-term member of the House and a medical doctor, certainly qualified to run Health and Human Services, and Mnuchin is a Democrat from Wall Street (and Hollywood!), which was good enough for Senate Democrats in the previous administration. Why not just vote “no” as a bloc and hold the press conference afterward? It’s as if Harry Reid had never nuked the filibuster.
That, however, is just normal foolishness. What makes this exceptionally foolish is pulling this stunt on Orrin Hatch — one only two Republicans publicly arguing to allow Senate Democrats to keep the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees (Susan Collins is the other). Hatch may not change his mind easily on this point, but Democrats had better believe that they just taught him a lesson about the level of comity he can expect from the next two years or more. They couldn’t have picked a worse venue for their impotent stunt, and now Hatch has set a precedent that can’t be easily walked back either. Dumb, dumb move.”
“I suppose this was bound to happen eventually. I noticed (and bookmarked) a story out of New Jersey back around Christmas regarding a “transgender boy” who was barred from joining the Cub Scouts. And just to be crystal clear here, when I say “boy” I’m not being disparaging of someone who is a few months shy of reaching adulthood. We’re talking about a little girl who is eight years old. And she’s very sad that she can’t be a Cub Scout. (North Jersey)
From the moment he joined, 8-year-old Joe Maldonado eagerly looked forward to camping trips and science projects as a member of the Cub Scouts. But his expectations were dashed after his mother said she received a phone call from a Scouting official who told her that Joe would no longer be allowed to participate because he was born a girl.
Kristie Maldonado said she was stunned because her son had been a member of Cub Scout Pack 87 in Secaucus for about a month and his transgender status had not been a secret. But some parents complained, an official from the Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts told her — even though her son had been living as a boy for more than a year and was accepted as a boy at school, she said
Something has obviously gone very wrong in that home and it’s not the little girl’s fault whatsoever. At eight years of age kids aren’t thinking about sex and their bodies aren’t even close to puberty in all but the rarest cases. Eight year olds should be out playing hopscotch, jumping rope and getting into the usual sort of trouble that younger elementary school kids get into. But this one clearly lives with parents who are exposing her to massive doses of SJW propaganda and filling her head with strange ideas.
But “Joe” (dear God, please tell me that you didn’t already legally change your little girl’s name to “Joseph”) may not have to worry for much longer. Now there’s been a decision handed down by the Boy Scouts (one rung up the ladder from Cub Scouts and Webelos) saying that these “transgender boys” will be admitted to their ranks.”
The ending of DJ’s linked NY TImes article: “That may have played well on the campaign trail, but Mr. Trump’s failure to choose a more moderate candidate is the latest example of his refusal to acknowledge his historic unpopularity and his nearly three-million-vote loss to Hillary Clinton. A wiser president faced with such circumstances would govern with humility and a respect for the views of all Americans.”
Um, OK. A newly elected president is supposed to say “I’m not popular, nobody likes me, so I’d better choose a candidate more liked by the New York Times and the liberals who didn’t vote for me”? I don’t remember their asserting Obama’s responsibility to choose “moderation.”
Great point, Cheryl, not to mention the popular vote is ENTIRELY EAR ELEPHANT! It means almost nothing; I can’t even really think what its significance could be. If we could visit the alternate universe where the candidates competed for the ENTIRELY DIFFERENT GOAL of winning the popular vote, then maybe we could learn something. Seeing how we can’t do that, the popular vote is irrelevant. Neither the NYT or Trump, himself, should refer to it as a thing at all.
Hi Kevin B. AJ can likely answer better than I, but I’ll chime in with my loud mouth, anyway. If the emphasis of your question is on the ‘SJW’ part, the acronym refers to Social Justice Warriors. If you’re asking what propaganda AJ may have been referring to, I could surmise a guess that it includes the kind of psychological theory invented in the last 5 minutes that says young children will flourish most when their true choice of gender is nurtured and championed–even if they’re 8. So dress them accordingly, and the like.
SJW is a newish one to me this year, along with the phenomenon of “virtue signalling.” Probably always existed; just has a fancy name now.
AJ — Eight people from seven countries were convicted of giving or attempting to give material support to terrorists organization. And that’s justification for the chaos, the broken families, the broken promises, leaving people in war zones, etc??? I think far more Canadians have been convicted in the US for far more heinous crimes yet the US lets thousands of us cross over daily and even live there; not to mention all the comedians we export — mind you if Samantha Bee keeps it up, I can see a mass deportation of Canadians to alleviate Trump’s fragile ego.
Sanctuary Cities — My understanding is these have two purposes. The first is law and order. Ironically it makes more sense to ignore the lack of immigration papers. Illegals will be more willing to assist and call police if they know the police will not inform immigration. Secondly, local municipalities have to bear the cost of incarcerating illegals until ICE or the Border Patrol picks them up. Given both rationales it makes sense for urban areas declaring themselves sanctuary cities. In my own city, city employees are instructed not to ask about immigration status — this enabled police to arrest members of Eastern European gangs engaged in human trafficking; their victims weren’t afraid to speak up.
Ricky — the American health care system is costly because the profit motive is entrenched in every aspect of the system. Affordable systems around the world are the result of gov’t intervention in the right place and time. The US doesn’t need more free market in their health system, just better management.
Well, it must be encouraging for the Hillary campaign to know that they got the inmate vote…well, would have if they could have voted. There seems to be no end of public petulance over the election.
Inmates inside a Delaware prison where four staff members were being held hostage reached out to a newspaper in two phone calls to explain their concerns, including the leadership of the U.S., educational opportunities, rehabilitation and how the state spends money on prisons.
Prisoners at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center funneled the calls Wednesday to The News Journal in Wilmington with the help of one inmate’s fiancee and another person’s mother. The mother told the paper her son was among the hostages.
In that call, an inmate said their reasons “for doing what we’re doing” included “Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he’s doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse.”
I don’t know how wide spread it is in real life, but on Facebook I have seen that there is a supposed progressive “revolution” that is going to happen. How they are going to “fight”, I don’t know, but I suspect that most of them may only do so by posting anti-Trump stuff on social media. So they can sit at home (or wherever they may be) on their device of choice, posting on social media, & feel daring, like they are being revolutionary & doing something for their cause.
Was it here that someone said this? Don’t remember who said this, but somebody somewhere made the point that if people truly thought that Trump & his administration would be as bad, or even only nearly as bad, as the Nazis, they wouldn’t waste their time posting on social media, but would be stockpiling weapons & organizing themselves.
The Democrat party will move to the left just as the Republican party moved to the right during the Obama admin. Already on the left wing sites, there are calls to primary any Democrat who hints at cooperation. Given the the obstructionism of the Republicans in the last eight years, Democratic activists believe its their turn to obstruct.
A key indicator will be how Democrats treat the Supreme Court nominee. For most Democrats the seat belongs to Garland and they are still extremely upset on how the Republicans refused to recognize Obama’s authority. If the Democratic politicians bend, the left wing perception of the Democratic party elite as incompetent, outdated, etc will be confirmed.
I’m amused to hear the left is hysterical. When Obama was elected, the right wing flooded gun shops afraid the socialist would steal their guns, not to mention the implementation of the ACA made them fear death panels. As a popular left wing meme points out, who are the real snowflakes? Perhaps its the ones buying guns, hiding behind walls and refusing to watch anything but FOX.
The US media isn’t left wing. Its profit oriented. If there is money in left wing media, then its left wing media you will get. But as the success of FOX and alt right websites point out, right wing media is far more profitable. If you want left wing newspapers, try reading the Guardian or the Toronto Star. The NYT looks positively reactionary in comparison.
HRW, The American healthcare system is so costly because (unlike Singapore) the patients pay very little of the bills. There is no incentive to avoid unnecessary procedures or keep costs low. The original Medicare and Medicaid programs were simply blank checks to the medical community. The government spent 9 times as much as they estimated they would during the first 15 years of the Medicare program. All attempts to control costs have been a day late and a dollar short. If we had Accounticare and Accounticaid, the accountants would all live in $5,000,000 homes and we would spend 20% of our GDP on accounting. If we had Autocare and Autocaid (where the government was giving free cars to the old and the poor) most cars would cost $100,000.
By the way, the kids gave me the book “White Trash” for Christmas. Why did you not warn me? I glanced through it for about ten minutes tonight. It is without question the single most communist book I have ever read (parts of) in my entire life. I can’t believe that the author is allowed to live South of the Mason-Dixon Line and actually teach at LSU.
Given the present administrations attempted to ignore court injunctions and orders, I think the rule of law is threatened by the White House not by the state of California.
Trump is a narcissist and his popularity matters to him. Hence, appeals for him to moderate in face of bad polls is a strategy that may have some effect. However, I don’t think Bannon or his ilk care. As for Obama, he was a moderate.
And Ricky — if you tire of all the Trumpkins in Fort Worth, why don’t you take a weekend trip to Austin.
I expect the Democrats to obstruct in Congress, as is their right. The people will speak again in 2 years, and I’m thinking Democrats are going to be disappointed— again. Voters want jobs. As long as Democrats persist in identity politics, it will continue to be obvious they are incapable of making that happen. Trump really has to produce minimal results to counter their gross incompetence. That’s a shame, because we really do need two vibrant parties. We don’t have that now.
HRW, Here is my take on the US media. The writers for the big papers (NYT, WaPo and LATimes) and most folks at the major TV networks other than Fox definitely tilt left. It is not that they try to be biased. They just don’t really know many conservatives or really understand conservative positions. I think they generally try to be fair, but if they feel they helped cause a “conservative” debacle, they then go nuts and lose all perspective. This has happened three times in my lifetime:
1. The press felt they helped LBJ make the case for the Vietnam War at or about the time of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
2. The press (rightly) felt they helped Little Bush make the case for the stupid invasion of Iraq in 2003.
3. The press felt somewhat responsible for the nomination and election of the lunatic Trump by giving him so much free publicity and failing early on to adequately document his lies, misbehavior, insanity, dishonesty, narcissism, immaturity, lack of self control, etc.
In each of those three cases, the press tried to make up for prior mistakes with biased coverage in the other direction.
Debra, I think the Democrats may wind up being split as badly as the Republicans. If Trump moves in the direction you want him to move (to curtail trade and immigration), he will attract more white, blue collar Democrats like those who gave him Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. However, he may drive many young, successful libertarian type Republicans into the Democrat Party. That could make for an interesting 2020 primary season in both parties.
Kizzie — the left is getting some energy in the past few weeks. The present actions in airports and the DAPL protests in North Dakota are focal points. They prefer not to stock arms and ammo — rather looking for mass movements and a little help from the lawyers. And already they are planning for the midterms with or without the party’s approval. They believe and probably rightly that Sanders would’ve won and thus they feel the Democrat party needs a good house cleaning
Ricky — How gov’ts set up programs and markets for accountability matters more than the amount of “free market principles” that are involved. Universal health care in the western world has all types of structures but all insist that everyone is covered and cost is contained. The US systems and structures insist on neither and that is the core problem.
I am a third through White Trash — I don’t find her much of a communists but she’s a typical social historian and thus there are some methodological problems to her technique — surveying the language used to create picture of the historical time period has a danger of become more literary analysis than history but her research is quite good and the picture is quite conclusive — class and the underclass exists a long time before Charles Murray discovered them in the 21st century.
SolarP, For most of the Obama Administration, deer hunters in Texas had great difficulty finding ammo. Our people don’t cry or march or dress like sex organs. They buy up food and ammo and guns and hide all that stuff in their cellars.
Singapore’s healthcare system is much cheaper and more efficient than those of Western Europe because it is more market oriented. The rule is: For every procedure or visit or drug, the patient is going to pay something. They have universal coverage, great treatment, all for half the cost of the average Western European system and 27% of the cost of the US monstrosity.
Isenberg is attacking a straw man. Murray never said that class didn’t exist before 1960. He said that around 1960, most white Americans (regardless of income) had similar levels of employment, church participation, criminality, illegitimacy and marriage. Those are simply demonstrable facts.
Debra — if the leftist and progressives take over the Democratic party expect a Sanders like message on jobs as opposed to identity. And if Trump’s policies fail to deliver or fail completely (as Ricky believes), you can expect the left’s message to resonate.
Ricky – your first two points indicate the press will always give deference to the party in power. Your third point is the power of the profit motive — they covered Trump because of the ratings. Its all about power and profit. Now I will admit that most journalist are slightly left of centre only because they tend to come from a similar background — urban, college educated.
SP — For every protestor in the last week calling Trump a fascists, I can remember eight years ago someone buying a gun and calling Obama a communist, or a Muslim, or a socialist, etc.
Ricky, I think you’re right about the re-alignment of the parties. But not everyone is pessimistic about the trade outcome.
This isn’t a trade war. This simply is a different kind of negotiation than we have come to expect from an American president. Mr. Trump does not want a trade war with Mexico or with anyone else. He wants to win, and he wants to be seen to win………..
….China understands that Trump wants a deal, not a war. That is why Alibaba’s Jack Ma came to Trump Tower in early January to promise a million new American jobs among small businesses exporting to China via his e-commerce platform. There will be many more such Chinese proposals. China has been attempting to shift its economy away from export dependency to domestic consumption for the past five years, in what may be the best-publicized and most-discussed economic policy shift in modern economic history. Like B’rer Rabbit in the Tarbaby story, China will tell Washington, “Please don’t throw me in the brier patch!” There will be plenty of body blows and flying kicks, but the contending parties will emerge as intact as the stuntmen in a Kung Fu movie. The negotiation between Washington and Beijing will look something like this.
Many European systems have a small users fee for the patient to pay. Although conservatives keep trying to enact one in Canada, its considered almost sacrilegious to even think about a user fee in Canada. For the most part, studies show that users fees do not change the way the system is used or access. And the collection of the user fee cost more than the revenue generated. Singapore’s success is a lower labour costs which you can achieve in an economic system with very little collective bargaining. In addition, I’m sure they allow for bulk discount buying of drugs and have shorter patent protection, something Trump will not change in America and thus Bush jr’s pharmacare will continue its looting of the Treasury.
Murray treats 1960 as a starting point. He describes an unravelling from that era as if the shrinking middle class and the growth of an underclass is brand new. Isenberg demonstrates the underclass was always there and hence Murray’s analysis which has a moralistic element and cites modern changes as the causes ignores history. The large middle class was a post war phenomena created by strict gov’t regulations and market structure. Once this was torn down by Reagan and the succeeding presidents including Clinton, America reverted to its traditional class structure.
hwesseli- I had thought the same, but Sanders has brought himself into disrepute because of his support of Hillary. When it came to jobs and trade policy, Hillary had more in common with Ricky (no offense intended) than the average American worker–and her politics showed it. The left really doesn’t have anyone who is not wed to identity politics. Maybe Jill Stein. But I don’t know of anyone else who would come close to being reputable to blue collar working voters. It’s my feeling that most of the chaos now is being caused by Hillary supporters. I know some Bernie supporters voted for Trump and support him. Some Stein supporters too. And now some of the Unions are talking favorably of Trump. It’s an uphill climb for Democrats—unless you know of some superstar waiting in the wings?
HRW, Do you think the press is giving deference to the party in power right now?
Debra, I agree that Trump “wants to be seen to win”. However, as Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley demonstrated, economic illiteracy can produce horrible unintended results.
It’s the things Solar mentioned, and a whole lot more. Sadly, it is entrenched in our education systems, masquerading as educational theory. It’s rampant in today’s colleges. It’s what’s being taught in gender studies and education majors, and is written into student handbooks in order to censor certain ways of thinking. It tells what you can and can’t say, lest you offend, what pronouns you can use to address a person, and you better get it right, or suffer the wrath of the offended. It’s uni-sex bathrooms, white privilege, safe spaces, and a whole lot of other nonsense. It’s everywhere now, but it emanates from college campuses.
Campus Reform does a good job of monitoring it, and mocking it where appropriate. 🙂
You’ll notice the propaganda in most stories. It’s written into college policy, student handbooks, as well as textbooks, and is responsible for much of these ridiculous ideas and educational theory resulting from it. It’s indoctrination, not education. It has bled down to public education now as well. not mention what it’s done to the journalism profession who write it into their supposed “news” stories, like the type exalting gay marriage, while bashing a small bakery because they won’t violate their religious convictions. And it’s 40% of Facebook posts. At least……
HRW, The strong postwar middle class was caused by several things. At the top of the list I would put:
1. The temporary extreme competitive advantage that the US enjoyed by being the only major (Sorry, Canada.) industrialized nation while Western Europe and Japan rebuilt.
2. The GI Bill.
3. The creation of a culture of thrift as a result of the Depression.
4. A very strong period of church participation, leading to better moral behavior.
By the 60s, all of these things were gone or in decline.
Ricky, I doubt we need a new Smoot Hawley act to renegotiate our trade agreements. We already have tariffs on a whole slew of products. We can either tweak that list to encourage production here, or enact some kind of BAT (and I’m not sure how I feel about that one.) I tend to be a fan of going slowly. Business like it better and so do families for the most part. Trump has made a big splash. Hopefully he’s as good at negotiating as he says he is. If he’s only half as good, we’ll be soaring before long. ;–)
I will give you all four of your points — but this blimp of a huge middle class was also guaranteed by economic structures, tax policy, low cost tuition, easy income and social mobility etc. If Murray is discouraged by the decline of the middle class — why doesn’t he advocate for the policies that created the middle class including a 1950-60s level taxation. He doesn’t. If we want to avoid a return to the “white trash” of the 18th and 19th century — we need to avoid the economic and social policies of that time period. And these policy changes will make the difference.
I do think the media is tiptoeing around outright criticism and Spicer/Bannon’s challenging rhetoric has them scared.
Australia is one of the key nations around the Pacific Rim that has been wooed by both the US and China. China buys much of its raw materials from Australia and has been leaning on the Aussies to choose between China and the US. Here is how our lunatic made a big splash with the Australian leader:
Oh dear. This is awkward. It’s an economic post and I agree with Ricky @10:22.
The problem is, 1)you can’t base an economy on the aftermath of a World War (well, if McCain and Lindsey have their way, maybe we can before too long) OR 2) rely on the resulting GI bill to provide sufficient education for growth.
Anyway, having an emaciated production capacity is not desirable for any country that aspires to remain sovereign in uncertain times. It’s not good for workers, and it’s not even good for the long term stability of the country.
HRW, I watch CNN and read the NYT and the WaPost among other newspapers. The media ain’t scared. They see Spicer as a nitwit and Bannon as a neo-Nazi and they intend to get both of their scalps soon. If not, they will beat Trump about the head and shoulders with Spicer’s incompetence and Bannon’s dark side.
Debra @ 10:37 A breakthrough! Trump’s economic plan is to bring back US manufacturing dominance (and all those blue collar jobs) which could only be done by destroying the industrial capacity of our major competitors in a repeat of World War II.
Reagan, by his tax cuts, regulatory reform and tax reform sought to free and unleash all Americans to participate in a high tech, high skills, entrepreneurial economy. The first generation Indian, Philipino, Thai, and South African immigrants to the US have figured it out and have a higher per capita income that any people in the world. Can you understand my frustration with the Trumpkins who do not seize the golden opportunity and instead let the con man sell them on an impossibility.
Wandering Views 
Despite claims by Democrats and their media mouthpiece’s to the contrary…..
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/30/at-least-20-alleged-terrorists-since-2014-came-from-countries-affected-by-trumps-immigration-ban/
“At least 20 alleged terrorists in the past three years were immigrants or refugees from the seven majority-Muslim nations President Trump temporarily banned migration from Friday.
Immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen won’t be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. for the next three months. Several journalists from outlets such as The Washington Post and Vox have complained that Trump picked the wrong countries as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Afghanistan aren’t covered in the temporary immigration bans. Some pundits or politicians have gone as far as to say no terror is caused by immigrants from these nations.
The Obama administration’s Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security refused to make public the immigration status of individuals implicated in terrorism, so the exact number of immigrant terrorists is unknown.
However, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest used publicly available information and identified at least 17 individuals from these seven nations that from March 2014 to June 2016 were implicated in terrorism. Eight of these are terrorists convicted for crimes mainly related to giving material support or attempting to give material support to ISIS.”
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Ricky,
Have you seen what your Gov. is up to?
http://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/Abbott-Emergency-on-sanctuary-cioties-10896947.php
“Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared a ban on so-called sanctuary cities and sweeping reforms in the state’s troubled child-protection system as top priorities for emergency action this legislative session.
To cheers and a standing ovation as he addressed a joint session of the Legislature, Abbott said elected officials should not have the option of whether to enforce state and federal laws on immigration — an obvious reference to his ongoing fight with Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez.
“Elected officials do not to pick and chose which laws to enforce,” Abbott said in his State of the State speech, insisting that state and local officials “must protect Texas” from deadly criminals.
“This will be the session where we ban sanctuary cities,” he said to cheers and a standing ovation as he addressed a joint session of the Legislature.
Hernandez has announced she will decline some federal detention requests of undocumented immigrants who are jailed.
Abbott has given Hernandez until Wednesday to rescind her new policy or face possible sanctions, including a cutoff of state grant funding — and possible removal from office. He earlier said he wants state law changed to allow for removal.
Abbott also said he intends to maintain state-funded security along the Texas-Mexico border, though he hinted that federal officials may be poised to step up their presence in a move that could allow Texas taxpayers to trim their current $800 million investment.”
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And yes, illegals are voting….
http://www.newsmax.com/TomFitton/aliens-fraud-illegal-voter/2017/01/30/id/771123/
“On . . . Breitbart News Daily, SiriusXM host Alex Marlow asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton about a study from the Center for Immigration Studies that revealed that “there could be as many as 43 million non-citizens in the United States right now.” Fitton had previously spotlighted this study on Twitter as evidence of potential voter fraud issues.
“There’s 43 million people who are not citizens and are ineligible to vote, but a good percentage of them do register to vote. And of those that do, some vote,” Fitton explained.
“Most tend to vote Democrat. It’s a fact,” he continued. “There’s been a study out of Old Dominion University that shows it is enough of a vote to sway elections, one way or another. It may have resulted in election, specifically, of Al Franken to the United States Senate, and all the bad things politically or public policy-wise that happened as a result, like Obamacare and things like that.”
“Are we supposed to be so naive as to think that tens of millions of people are here, present in the United States, and none of them are illegally voting?” Fitton asked. “In states where you don’t have voter ID, in states where most voter registration, you’re not required to certify citizenship, other than signing and saying you’re a citizen?”
“It happens repeatedly where you have these voter registrations signed by aliens because they shouldn’t be voting, so they’re registered to vote – and the irony is, once they’re registered to vote, voter ID ain’t gonna protect you,” he noted, “because they have the ID necessary to vote, once they’re registered. So you have many non-citizens voting in elections, and they vote in large numbers in a way to sway elections.””
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And in other non-surprising news……
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/01/31/new-planned-parenthood-undercover-videos-ultrasounds-only-for-abortions/
“Priorities, priorities at Planned Parenthood: women’s care, or core business? The nation’s largest abortion chain has demanded that Republicans in Congress stop attacking “women’s health care” with their proposals to bar federal funds from flowing into their coffers. When it comes to actual caring, however, Planned Parenthood focuses its resources on abortions. Live Action has two new videos out today demonstrating that PP’s clinics use their ultrasounds — a key diagnostic tool for expecting mothers — only to prepare to terminate the life within the womb in all but a handful of their clinics:”
“Here are a few examples of caring:
Planned Parenthood uses ultrasounds to determine a baby’s age and position in the womb before it kills her. In the “Ultrasounds for Killing, Not Care” video, investigators posing as pregnant women asked 68 Planned Parenthood facilities for ultrasounds to check the health of their babies, but only three centers would provide them. The remainder either used ultrasounds for abortions or did not perform ultrasounds at all. Investigators received responses like:
“No, we don’t do any ultrasounds for prenatal care. We do them when we’re doing abortions, but not for any other reason.” – Council Bluffs, IA, Planned Parenthood
“No. Nope. Not – not something we offer. Well, we do have to do an ultrasound with an abortion, but we don’t offer them for – we can’t do anything to make sure that the pregnancy’s fine.” – St. Louis, MO, Planned Parenthood
“We only do ultrasounds if you are terminating.” – Corning, NY, Planned Parenthood
Two former PP managers confirmed the policy. And when PP does do ultrasounds, they make sure that women can’t see what those ultrasounds show:”
———————–
Gee, I wonder why they don’t wanna show the mother…..
Can’t have her changin’ her mind at the last minute.
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Well it took them slightly longer than I estimated, but the EnviroNut Freak Out has come.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/01/30/watch-out-mr-president-the-environmentalists-are-coming-for-you/
“Donald Trump has been put on notice. (This is the… what? The 7,256th time he’s been put on notice?) The nation’s environmental activists aren’t going to take his regulatory and administrative changes without a fight. They’re lining up their legal teams and getting ready to tie the White House up in lawsuits such as they’ve never seen. Or at least so they say. (Associated Press)
The night before Donald Trump’s inauguration, five environmental lawyers filed a federal court brief defending an Obama administration clean-water rule that the new president and his Republican allies have targeted for elimination, considering it burdensome to landowners.
The move served as a warning that environmentalists, facing a hostile administration and a Republican-dominated Congress, are prepared to battle in court against what they fear will be a wave of unfavorable policies concerning climate change, wildlife protection, federal lands and pollution.
Advocacy groups nationwide are hiring more staff lawyers. They’re coordinating with private attorneys and firms that have volunteered to help. They’re reviewing statutes, setting priorities and seeking donations.
Let’s review, because this seems to be the marching orders. They are:
Reviewing statutes
Setting priorities
Seeking donations
Yes, you need to get that “seeking donations” clause in there early, don’t you? Not to worry. I’m sure the President has taken notice and will soon be reconsidering his plans in the face of such a robust #Resist movement. What mere mortal could stand up to that hash tag?”
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What a happy day to be a globalist overlord! I am eating blackberries from Chile for breakfast that cost less than $1.00. I am watching basketball highlights on a big screen TV made by a Japanese company at a Mexican plant that cost less than the 19 inch American-made TV we bought during the Carter Administration. My iPad is made from components produced in 200 factories around the world. Soon I will jump in my $12,995 Kia that gets 40mpg and head to work. Today is the first day of the month, so we will be paying income and payroll taxes to help fund the government including food, housing and healthcare for many Democrats and quite a few Trumpkins.
I do feel sorry for Democrats and Trumpkins who are neither poor enough for Medicaid nor old enough for Medicare. They are trapped in the one area of our economy virtually untouched by globalism. The largely socialist, heavily regulated healthcare system that costs almost twice as much as any other in the world is pure American, created by economically illiterate Democrats from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama.
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Ha. Enjoy your bubble Ricky. :–)
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My bubble seems to be growing very rapidly. It appears that large numbers of those highly skilled, entrepreneurial Asians I am always talking about are moving in all around me. It is no wonder that there are scarcely enough Mexicans available to build our houses.
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You should enjoy it! Bubbles, by their very nature, are fragile habitations. :–)
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Yes. That is why we always must always have our eyes on New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, the Baltic states, Chile and other places where there are fewer Democrats and Trumpkins sitting in the wagon, waiting to be pulled. Even as Abraham left Ur and as our ancestors left Europe, there will be a time for my family to leave the US, but not just yet, not yet. We need to see how this current drama plays out and how Texas emerges from the storm.
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I am saddened, but not surprised to hear that. You are not an American at all. You have no love for this country. But God has a plan for everyone, and I wish you well wherever you may land. Go in peace.
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Another angle on the what’s happening with the Democratic party. This is all so very sad.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-trump-supreme-court-kass-0201-20170131-column.html
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Family ties, familiar surroundings and even inertia are very powerful things. It is interesting to watch as productive American young people wrestle with the future their children may face here along with the problems and risks that go with relocation.
It has given me a new appreciation of the faith it took for Abraham and early American pioneers to pull up roots and move. I think the Trump Administration will give us a clear indication of America’s future. It should also force other nations to make hard, courageous choices about world leadership. We will know much more in 4-10 years if the Lord tarries.
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Good link, michelle
“wave after wave of anti-Trump hysteria” — isn’t that the truth, day after day now? Wearying.
__________________________________
.. What this angry public theater allows is opportunity for the left to steamroll Democratic centrists out of the way, so they can grab control of the Democratic Party apparatus.
Because that’s what this wild, seething game is all about now: control of the Democratic Party, or what’s left of it.
Perhaps that’s why Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer was crying the other day, not over Trump’s executive order on immigration but for his own prospects.
Schumer is like the boy dancing on a log in the river, trying not to fall in. He must keep moving farther to the left to accommodate that leftward roll, while trying to help 10 Senate Democrats running for re-election in states Trump won.
So the hard left deconstructs the Democrats, eases old Bernie Sanders out to some apple orchard where he can sit in a chair with a warm blanket on his legs and exiles the old Clinton establishment centrists to some desert island. …
Meanwhile, Trump plays his own game. He was sent to Washington by angry and disaffected voters of middle-America to impose economic nationalism and dismantle the corrupt old establishment.
That establishment on the Republican side is the old big-government GOP war party led by Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Trump promised to dismantle it, and that’s what he’s doing. And that’s basically why McCain, and Graham and the war party boys hate him so. They’ve joined the establishment media as allies against Trump. …”
_____________________________
We are all in unchartered waters, indeed.
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That said, bravo for the Supreme Court nominee.
See? The court was a big deal in this election after all, right?
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Interesting to me, that of all of the Texans I have known, I thought they held their state in highest regard. I don’t know any true Idahoans that would give up on their state just because the country went bad many years ago. We just keep plodding along. Though it is our thought that the nation will continue to drive the people from the land to the cities.
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Speaking as someone stuck out here in the People’s Republic of California, I’d love to move to Idaho. God, however, has determined I’m to stay put. Sigh. It’s not me I worry about, it’s the kids. Who can determine whose act of lawlessness is right? See the book of Judges. 😦
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Some are called to the mission field. Some have the mission field brought to them.
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In michelle’s link also, at the end, he makes some pertinent observations about the scary state of the media in all of this.
I largely blame the media’s own inability to take what’s been the long-standing criticism seriously. I’ve said this before, but I’ve had numerous conversations just with my own colleagues in the business through the years who insist — INSIST — that the media does NOT lean left, in any way, shape or form. They dismiss all of this as Fox News propaganda.
It’s a blindness and smug refusal to admit that anything could be wrong with the way the media covers political stories.
And so the media has shot themselves in the foot, essentially, by refusing to look inward and to see & address seriously what is really so obvious.
With the dawn of Trump, the media is jumping the shark — joining too often in the nation’s hysteria.
Now it seems no one trusts what they read from any source, it can all be dismissed so easily.
And that’s a serious problem.
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Well, I guess the NY Times opinion writers aren’t impressed with what they view as a “stolen” Supreme Court seat:
______________________________________
It’s been almost a year since Senate Republicans took an empty Supreme Court seat hostage, discarding a constitutional duty that both parties have honored throughout American history and hobbling an entire branch of government for partisan gain.
President Trump had a great opportunity to repair some of that damage by nominating a moderate candidate for the vacancy, which was created when Justice Antonin Scalia died last February. Instead, he chose Neil Gorsuch, a very conservative judge from the federal Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit whose jurisprudence and writing style are often compared to those of Justice Scalia. …
________________________________
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Oops, forgot the link:
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If :NYT doesn’t like it, it must be good.
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I was reading with TV on mute during the speeches. But I was happy with the bottom line.
It got to where I couldn’t tolerate Obama nor Hillary speaking. Trump isn’t quite there yet, but close. It isn’t his voice, as it is with the other two, it’s his stage presence.
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Looks like the hair color has been tweaked, however. 🙂 Not as orange?
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/did-donald-trump-change-his-hair-color-w464280
________________
Nice ‘n’ easy? Donald Trump debuted a new hair color while announcing Judge Neil Gorsuch as his U.S. Supreme Court nominee at the White House on Tuesday, January 31. The 45th president of the United States’ hair appeared to look more dirty-blond than his usual bold yellow tone.
_________________
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Chas,
“I was reading with TV on mute during the speeches.”
My neighbor and I do the same, except we insert our own commentary. It’s more fun, and truthful. 🙂
————————
Donna,
It’s the new norm. EVERYTHING is a catastrophe.
Problem is, people get tired of it, and stop buying it. Well, except for the faithful mobs just looking to start something.
And it’s already getting old.
http://nypost.com/2017/01/31/democrats-are-digging-their-own-grave-and-boosting-trump-at-the-same-time/
“Let’s agree that President Trump’s travel ban on visitors from seven nations was a sensible idea hobbled by flaws, especially regarding green card holders and dual citizens. Let’s also agree we haven’t seen a rollout this clumsy since the debut of ObamaCare, which was far more serious because it penalized millions of Americans while Trump’s order inconvenienced hundreds of foreign nationals.
Still, we can assume, based on past performance, that Trump will learn from the mistakes. His fierce determination to be a successful president cannot co-exist with rookie blunders.
But what about the other players in the drama? Can we say the media will now correct its excess of bile and cover Trump as a legitimate president and not as an invasive species?
No, no, no. On the contrary, we must say that Trump aide Steve Bannon was on target when he called the Washington media “the opposition party.”
Don’t take his word for it. Stick a toe into the toxic sludge that passes for straight-news coverage in the Washington Post, the New York Times and others.
Look for the use of tell words like “Muslim ban” to describe an executive order that is no such thing. Look for hero worship of protesters, immigrants, refugees, lawyers rushing to the barricades and congressional critics.
Look, too, at the Twitter feeds of editors and reporters from those papers and the major networks. You’ll see their embrace of everything anti-Trump, further evidence they are part of a movement to obstruct the president, not cover him.”
“Unfortunately, the Dems are following a dangerously different path. Starting with a wide boycott of the inauguration and including their boycott of committee votes on Trump’s cabinet and their pledge to filibuster any Supreme Court nominee, Democrats resemble a party fomenting a secession movement.”
————————–
They’re pushing for a fight they won’t win, but they’ll scream “see, they ARE Fascists!!” when a response comes that hurts.
And then they’ll use that as justification to break, burn, and riot.
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What happens when you don’t show up to work at the place that employs you? Does the company come to a grinding halt at work due to your absence?
Of course not, with or without you, work goes on. Democrats are apparently unaware of this concept. And it certainly telling that they turn out to be the worst type of employees. The type who call off for no reason except to slow down business. Figures.
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-02-01/senate-panel-approves-mnuchin-price-through-emergency-action
“Senate Republicans brushed aside a boycott from angry Democrats and took emergency steps Wednesday to advance the nominations of Steven Mnuchin to run Treasury and Tom Price to head Health and Human Services.
The Judiciary Committee separately approved the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general on Wednesday in a straight party-line 11-9 vote, one day after Democrats forced a delay by making lengthy speeches blasting Trump for his executive actions on immigration and questioning Sessions’s independence.
The steps move the three men a step closer to confirmation, as Democrats intensify their offensive against several of President Donald Trump’s nominees. At the same time, Democrats stalled committee votes on two other nominees Wednesday — Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Representative Mick Mulvaney to head the Office of Management and Budget.
Even so, Senate rules leave the minority party with no ability to block the nominees, as long as Republicans remain united in support of Trump’s picks.”
“Without any Democrats present, the Senate Finance Committee moved Wednesday to report Mnuchin and Price to the floor on 14-0 votes, after voting to suspend the panel’s rules.
The action came one day after Democrats forced a delay on scheduled votes by skipping the committee’s meeting and denying it a quorum. Democrats said they need more time to scrutinize Trump’s picks, particularly after the president’s controversial executive action on immigration.”
—————————-
And they’re going to totally freak out when the Senate follows Harry Reid’s lead and nukes the filibuster for SC nominees. That will be a temper tantrum of epic proportions.
😆
On that day, there will be MUCH caterwauling in the media, and amongst the leftist hordes. Twitter will finally crash from the sheer weight of it’s own stupidity, and everyone will simultaneously un-friend their Republican friends and family on Facebook, much to the delight of said friends and family. 🙂
All while Our Benevolent Leader sips the salty sweet tears of social justice warriors from a golden chalice in Trump Tower.
It will be a fine day indeed. 🙂
And the next day? Well, life will just go on, as it always does. Until the next outrage opportunity appears. And then it’s lather, rinse, repeat. It’s the circle of life, or something……
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I had a hard time walking into the gym this morning because I knew I’d hear politics in my dance class. But, as Mumsee noted above, this is part of my mission field.
I must be quiet and pray. But I hated dancing to a song about how we’re not going to take it anymore, our rights are being trampled and so forth.
Turns out it was a Latino song.
Does that make it better?
This is excellent character stretching opportunity to examine my heart toward God. What they do is their business, what my heart looks like as a result is between me and God.
Fortunately, confessing sin appears to be my hobby . . .
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A very good article on how the Supreme Court was the reason that many evangelicals voted for Trump.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2017/january/gorsuch-many-evangelicals-supreme-court-stupid.html
The Gorsuch pick supports the wisdom of such a vote. The reasons for not voting for Trump are more complex. It will be interesting to see how things play out.
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This is why I so much appreciated Breakpoint this morning.
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/30431
We used to meet, years ago, to pray for our local pregnancy counseling center, but I always prayed for those who worked as the abortion clinics. Can you imagine what nightmares they must have?
Mission field, not our enemies.
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Here is an interesting article about Jim Mattis’ task in Asia:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/james-mattis-asia-trip-214723
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I couldn’t resist replying to an unhinged liberal friend who has been posting two or three anti-Trump post a day. She asking if it mattered that DeVos plagiarized something. I just asked if Biden did as well. Answer; that has nothing to do with it.
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The problem, though, is the force of law loses its meaning if people do not accept the Supreme Court Justice–or any of the other people being put into positions of authority. Per the articles above, lawlessness abounds and elected officials are not only refusing to do their jobs, but they’re encouraging dissent. This is dangerous for our country.
In California, they want to make themselves a sanctuary state. Well, fine and good–can we vote on that?
But who gets to decide which laws are kept and which ones are tossed aside because they don’t meet our personal values?
As in, will everyone still stop at red lights? There’s a lot of that going on now. Will everyone pay their taxes?
Who picks and chooses?
That’s why reading Judges has been so chilling.
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Where does everyone find these liberal friends? We have a great shortage in North Texas. Even my black secretary is a reluctant Trumpkin.
HRW, You would be a rare gem here in the Fort Worth metropolitan area.
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Well, cowards do tend to cower.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/02/01/hatch-i-had-to-change-committee-rules-while-dems-cower-in-the-hallway/
“Where were the Finance Committee Democrats? Holding a press conference in the hallway, which angered Hatch and provoked the rule change. Hatch then explained the action by painting Democrats on the committee as petulant cowards:
“We took some unprecedented actions today due to the unprecedented obstruction on the part of our colleagues. As I noted earlier, the Senate Finance Committee has traditionally been able to function in even the most divisive political environments. Personally, as longtime member of this committee, I have been proud of that distinction. And, in my time as both Ranking Member and Chairman of this committee, I have bent over backwards to preserve its unique status as one of the few places where Republicans and Democrats not only work together, but achieve results. That all changed yesterday. Republicans on this committee showed up to do our jobs. Yesterday, rather than accept anything less than their desired outcome, our Democrat colleagues chose to cower in the hallway and hold a press conference. Now, I get that my colleagues think these nominees are controversial. I get that they don’t want to see them confirmed. We’ve all been in that situation. It comes part and parcel with the job of being a Senator. And, this is hardly the first time a nominee deemed to be controversial has come before this committee.”
As publicity stunts go, this one seems exceptionally … foolish. Neither Price nor Mnuchin are the most controversial of Trump’s nominees; Price is a long-term member of the House and a medical doctor, certainly qualified to run Health and Human Services, and Mnuchin is a Democrat from Wall Street (and Hollywood!), which was good enough for Senate Democrats in the previous administration. Why not just vote “no” as a bloc and hold the press conference afterward? It’s as if Harry Reid had never nuked the filibuster.
That, however, is just normal foolishness. What makes this exceptionally foolish is pulling this stunt on Orrin Hatch — one only two Republicans publicly arguing to allow Senate Democrats to keep the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees (Susan Collins is the other). Hatch may not change his mind easily on this point, but Democrats had better believe that they just taught him a lesson about the level of comity he can expect from the next two years or more. They couldn’t have picked a worse venue for their impotent stunt, and now Hatch has set a precedent that can’t be easily walked back either. Dumb, dumb move.”
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Sorry to hear this one, but not surprised. An organization can only battle against deep pocketed liberal groups and their lawsuits for so long.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/01/31/welcome-to-the-era-of-transgender-boy-scouts/
“I suppose this was bound to happen eventually. I noticed (and bookmarked) a story out of New Jersey back around Christmas regarding a “transgender boy” who was barred from joining the Cub Scouts. And just to be crystal clear here, when I say “boy” I’m not being disparaging of someone who is a few months shy of reaching adulthood. We’re talking about a little girl who is eight years old. And she’s very sad that she can’t be a Cub Scout. (North Jersey)
From the moment he joined, 8-year-old Joe Maldonado eagerly looked forward to camping trips and science projects as a member of the Cub Scouts. But his expectations were dashed after his mother said she received a phone call from a Scouting official who told her that Joe would no longer be allowed to participate because he was born a girl.
Kristie Maldonado said she was stunned because her son had been a member of Cub Scout Pack 87 in Secaucus for about a month and his transgender status had not been a secret. But some parents complained, an official from the Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts told her — even though her son had been living as a boy for more than a year and was accepted as a boy at school, she said
Something has obviously gone very wrong in that home and it’s not the little girl’s fault whatsoever. At eight years of age kids aren’t thinking about sex and their bodies aren’t even close to puberty in all but the rarest cases. Eight year olds should be out playing hopscotch, jumping rope and getting into the usual sort of trouble that younger elementary school kids get into. But this one clearly lives with parents who are exposing her to massive doses of SJW propaganda and filling her head with strange ideas.
But “Joe” (dear God, please tell me that you didn’t already legally change your little girl’s name to “Joseph”) may not have to worry for much longer. Now there’s been a decision handed down by the Boy Scouts (one rung up the ladder from Cub Scouts and Webelos) saying that these “transgender boys” will be admitted to their ranks.”
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Nancy Pelosi calls Pres. Trump’s appointment to the SCOTUS a “hostile appointment” and a “bad decision.”
That remark alone by Pelosi should be enough for the President to rest assured that Neil Gorsuch is the right man for the job.
Thanks, Nancy!
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The ending of DJ’s linked NY TImes article: “That may have played well on the campaign trail, but Mr. Trump’s failure to choose a more moderate candidate is the latest example of his refusal to acknowledge his historic unpopularity and his nearly three-million-vote loss to Hillary Clinton. A wiser president faced with such circumstances would govern with humility and a respect for the views of all Americans.”
Um, OK. A newly elected president is supposed to say “I’m not popular, nobody likes me, so I’d better choose a candidate more liked by the New York Times and the liberals who didn’t vote for me”? I don’t remember their asserting Obama’s responsibility to choose “moderation.”
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AJ@1:45, what is “SJW” propaganda?
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Great point, Cheryl, not to mention the popular vote is ENTIRELY EAR ELEPHANT! It means almost nothing; I can’t even really think what its significance could be. If we could visit the alternate universe where the candidates competed for the ENTIRELY DIFFERENT GOAL of winning the popular vote, then maybe we could learn something. Seeing how we can’t do that, the popular vote is irrelevant. Neither the NYT or Trump, himself, should refer to it as a thing at all.
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Hi Kevin B. AJ can likely answer better than I, but I’ll chime in with my loud mouth, anyway. If the emphasis of your question is on the ‘SJW’ part, the acronym refers to Social Justice Warriors. If you’re asking what propaganda AJ may have been referring to, I could surmise a guess that it includes the kind of psychological theory invented in the last 5 minutes that says young children will flourish most when their true choice of gender is nurtured and championed–even if they’re 8. So dress them accordingly, and the like.
SJW is a newish one to me this year, along with the phenomenon of “virtue signalling.” Probably always existed; just has a fancy name now.
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AJ — Eight people from seven countries were convicted of giving or attempting to give material support to terrorists organization. And that’s justification for the chaos, the broken families, the broken promises, leaving people in war zones, etc??? I think far more Canadians have been convicted in the US for far more heinous crimes yet the US lets thousands of us cross over daily and even live there; not to mention all the comedians we export — mind you if Samantha Bee keeps it up, I can see a mass deportation of Canadians to alleviate Trump’s fragile ego.
Sanctuary Cities — My understanding is these have two purposes. The first is law and order. Ironically it makes more sense to ignore the lack of immigration papers. Illegals will be more willing to assist and call police if they know the police will not inform immigration. Secondly, local municipalities have to bear the cost of incarcerating illegals until ICE or the Border Patrol picks them up. Given both rationales it makes sense for urban areas declaring themselves sanctuary cities. In my own city, city employees are instructed not to ask about immigration status — this enabled police to arrest members of Eastern European gangs engaged in human trafficking; their victims weren’t afraid to speak up.
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Ricky — the American health care system is costly because the profit motive is entrenched in every aspect of the system. Affordable systems around the world are the result of gov’t intervention in the right place and time. The US doesn’t need more free market in their health system, just better management.
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Well, it must be encouraging for the Hillary campaign to know that they got the inmate vote…well, would have if they could have voted. There seems to be no end of public petulance over the election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-latest-union-corrections-officer-assaulted-at-prison/2017/02/01/763af7ac-e8c0-11e6-903d-9b11ed7d8d2a_story.html?utm_term=.643574e4d8af
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I don’t know how wide spread it is in real life, but on Facebook I have seen that there is a supposed progressive “revolution” that is going to happen. How they are going to “fight”, I don’t know, but I suspect that most of them may only do so by posting anti-Trump stuff on social media. So they can sit at home (or wherever they may be) on their device of choice, posting on social media, & feel daring, like they are being revolutionary & doing something for their cause.
Was it here that someone said this? Don’t remember who said this, but somebody somewhere made the point that if people truly thought that Trump & his administration would be as bad, or even only nearly as bad, as the Nazis, they wouldn’t waste their time posting on social media, but would be stockpiling weapons & organizing themselves.
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The Democrat party will move to the left just as the Republican party moved to the right during the Obama admin. Already on the left wing sites, there are calls to primary any Democrat who hints at cooperation. Given the the obstructionism of the Republicans in the last eight years, Democratic activists believe its their turn to obstruct.
A key indicator will be how Democrats treat the Supreme Court nominee. For most Democrats the seat belongs to Garland and they are still extremely upset on how the Republicans refused to recognize Obama’s authority. If the Democratic politicians bend, the left wing perception of the Democratic party elite as incompetent, outdated, etc will be confirmed.
I’m amused to hear the left is hysterical. When Obama was elected, the right wing flooded gun shops afraid the socialist would steal their guns, not to mention the implementation of the ACA made them fear death panels. As a popular left wing meme points out, who are the real snowflakes? Perhaps its the ones buying guns, hiding behind walls and refusing to watch anything but FOX.
The US media isn’t left wing. Its profit oriented. If there is money in left wing media, then its left wing media you will get. But as the success of FOX and alt right websites point out, right wing media is far more profitable. If you want left wing newspapers, try reading the Guardian or the Toronto Star. The NYT looks positively reactionary in comparison.
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HRW, The American healthcare system is so costly because (unlike Singapore) the patients pay very little of the bills. There is no incentive to avoid unnecessary procedures or keep costs low. The original Medicare and Medicaid programs were simply blank checks to the medical community. The government spent 9 times as much as they estimated they would during the first 15 years of the Medicare program. All attempts to control costs have been a day late and a dollar short. If we had Accounticare and Accounticaid, the accountants would all live in $5,000,000 homes and we would spend 20% of our GDP on accounting. If we had Autocare and Autocaid (where the government was giving free cars to the old and the poor) most cars would cost $100,000.
By the way, the kids gave me the book “White Trash” for Christmas. Why did you not warn me? I glanced through it for about ten minutes tonight. It is without question the single most communist book I have ever read (parts of) in my entire life. I can’t believe that the author is allowed to live South of the Mason-Dixon Line and actually teach at LSU.
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Given the present administrations attempted to ignore court injunctions and orders, I think the rule of law is threatened by the White House not by the state of California.
Trump is a narcissist and his popularity matters to him. Hence, appeals for him to moderate in face of bad polls is a strategy that may have some effect. However, I don’t think Bannon or his ilk care. As for Obama, he was a moderate.
And Ricky — if you tire of all the Trumpkins in Fort Worth, why don’t you take a weekend trip to Austin.
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I expect the Democrats to obstruct in Congress, as is their right. The people will speak again in 2 years, and I’m thinking Democrats are going to be disappointed— again. Voters want jobs. As long as Democrats persist in identity politics, it will continue to be obvious they are incapable of making that happen. Trump really has to produce minimal results to counter their gross incompetence. That’s a shame, because we really do need two vibrant parties. We don’t have that now.
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HRW, Here is my take on the US media. The writers for the big papers (NYT, WaPo and LATimes) and most folks at the major TV networks other than Fox definitely tilt left. It is not that they try to be biased. They just don’t really know many conservatives or really understand conservative positions. I think they generally try to be fair, but if they feel they helped cause a “conservative” debacle, they then go nuts and lose all perspective. This has happened three times in my lifetime:
1. The press felt they helped LBJ make the case for the Vietnam War at or about the time of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
2. The press (rightly) felt they helped Little Bush make the case for the stupid invasion of Iraq in 2003.
3. The press felt somewhat responsible for the nomination and election of the lunatic Trump by giving him so much free publicity and failing early on to adequately document his lies, misbehavior, insanity, dishonesty, narcissism, immaturity, lack of self control, etc.
In each of those three cases, the press tried to make up for prior mistakes with biased coverage in the other direction.
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There never was near the hysteria from the Right under Obama as there is from the Left now. That’s, like, totally obvious.
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Debra, I think the Democrats may wind up being split as badly as the Republicans. If Trump moves in the direction you want him to move (to curtail trade and immigration), he will attract more white, blue collar Democrats like those who gave him Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. However, he may drive many young, successful libertarian type Republicans into the Democrat Party. That could make for an interesting 2020 primary season in both parties.
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Kizzie — the left is getting some energy in the past few weeks. The present actions in airports and the DAPL protests in North Dakota are focal points. They prefer not to stock arms and ammo — rather looking for mass movements and a little help from the lawyers. And already they are planning for the midterms with or without the party’s approval. They believe and probably rightly that Sanders would’ve won and thus they feel the Democrat party needs a good house cleaning
Ricky — How gov’ts set up programs and markets for accountability matters more than the amount of “free market principles” that are involved. Universal health care in the western world has all types of structures but all insist that everyone is covered and cost is contained. The US systems and structures insist on neither and that is the core problem.
I am a third through White Trash — I don’t find her much of a communists but she’s a typical social historian and thus there are some methodological problems to her technique — surveying the language used to create picture of the historical time period has a danger of become more literary analysis than history but her research is quite good and the picture is quite conclusive — class and the underclass exists a long time before Charles Murray discovered them in the 21st century.
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SolarP, For most of the Obama Administration, deer hunters in Texas had great difficulty finding ammo. Our people don’t cry or march or dress like sex organs. They buy up food and ammo and guns and hide all that stuff in their cellars.
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Singapore’s healthcare system is much cheaper and more efficient than those of Western Europe because it is more market oriented. The rule is: For every procedure or visit or drug, the patient is going to pay something. They have universal coverage, great treatment, all for half the cost of the average Western European system and 27% of the cost of the US monstrosity.
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Isenberg is attacking a straw man. Murray never said that class didn’t exist before 1960. He said that around 1960, most white Americans (regardless of income) had similar levels of employment, church participation, criminality, illegitimacy and marriage. Those are simply demonstrable facts.
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Debra — if the leftist and progressives take over the Democratic party expect a Sanders like message on jobs as opposed to identity. And if Trump’s policies fail to deliver or fail completely (as Ricky believes), you can expect the left’s message to resonate.
Ricky – your first two points indicate the press will always give deference to the party in power. Your third point is the power of the profit motive — they covered Trump because of the ratings. Its all about power and profit. Now I will admit that most journalist are slightly left of centre only because they tend to come from a similar background — urban, college educated.
SP — For every protestor in the last week calling Trump a fascists, I can remember eight years ago someone buying a gun and calling Obama a communist, or a Muslim, or a socialist, etc.
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Ricky, I think you’re right about the re-alignment of the parties. But not everyone is pessimistic about the trade outcome.
http://www.atimes.com/article/trade-war-nobody-came/
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Many European systems have a small users fee for the patient to pay. Although conservatives keep trying to enact one in Canada, its considered almost sacrilegious to even think about a user fee in Canada. For the most part, studies show that users fees do not change the way the system is used or access. And the collection of the user fee cost more than the revenue generated. Singapore’s success is a lower labour costs which you can achieve in an economic system with very little collective bargaining. In addition, I’m sure they allow for bulk discount buying of drugs and have shorter patent protection, something Trump will not change in America and thus Bush jr’s pharmacare will continue its looting of the Treasury.
Murray treats 1960 as a starting point. He describes an unravelling from that era as if the shrinking middle class and the growth of an underclass is brand new. Isenberg demonstrates the underclass was always there and hence Murray’s analysis which has a moralistic element and cites modern changes as the causes ignores history. The large middle class was a post war phenomena created by strict gov’t regulations and market structure. Once this was torn down by Reagan and the succeeding presidents including Clinton, America reverted to its traditional class structure.
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hwesseli- I had thought the same, but Sanders has brought himself into disrepute because of his support of Hillary. When it came to jobs and trade policy, Hillary had more in common with Ricky (no offense intended) than the average American worker–and her politics showed it. The left really doesn’t have anyone who is not wed to identity politics. Maybe Jill Stein. But I don’t know of anyone else who would come close to being reputable to blue collar working voters. It’s my feeling that most of the chaos now is being caused by Hillary supporters. I know some Bernie supporters voted for Trump and support him. Some Stein supporters too. And now some of the Unions are talking favorably of Trump. It’s an uphill climb for Democrats—unless you know of some superstar waiting in the wings?
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HRW, Do you think the press is giving deference to the party in power right now?
Debra, I agree that Trump “wants to be seen to win”. However, as Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley demonstrated, economic illiteracy can produce horrible unintended results.
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Kevin,
“what is “SJW” propaganda?”
It’s the things Solar mentioned, and a whole lot more. Sadly, it is entrenched in our education systems, masquerading as educational theory. It’s rampant in today’s colleges. It’s what’s being taught in gender studies and education majors, and is written into student handbooks in order to censor certain ways of thinking. It tells what you can and can’t say, lest you offend, what pronouns you can use to address a person, and you better get it right, or suffer the wrath of the offended. It’s uni-sex bathrooms, white privilege, safe spaces, and a whole lot of other nonsense. It’s everywhere now, but it emanates from college campuses.
Campus Reform does a good job of monitoring it, and mocking it where appropriate. 🙂
http://www.campusreform.org/
You’ll notice the propaganda in most stories. It’s written into college policy, student handbooks, as well as textbooks, and is responsible for much of these ridiculous ideas and educational theory resulting from it. It’s indoctrination, not education. It has bled down to public education now as well. not mention what it’s done to the journalism profession who write it into their supposed “news” stories, like the type exalting gay marriage, while bashing a small bakery because they won’t violate their religious convictions. And it’s 40% of Facebook posts. At least……
Hope that clears things up. 🙂
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HRW, The strong postwar middle class was caused by several things. At the top of the list I would put:
1. The temporary extreme competitive advantage that the US enjoyed by being the only major (Sorry, Canada.) industrialized nation while Western Europe and Japan rebuilt.
2. The GI Bill.
3. The creation of a culture of thrift as a result of the Depression.
4. A very strong period of church participation, leading to better moral behavior.
By the 60s, all of these things were gone or in decline.
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Ricky, I doubt we need a new Smoot Hawley act to renegotiate our trade agreements. We already have tariffs on a whole slew of products. We can either tweak that list to encourage production here, or enact some kind of BAT (and I’m not sure how I feel about that one.) I tend to be a fan of going slowly. Business like it better and so do families for the most part. Trump has made a big splash. Hopefully he’s as good at negotiating as he says he is. If he’s only half as good, we’ll be soaring before long. ;–)
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I will give you all four of your points — but this blimp of a huge middle class was also guaranteed by economic structures, tax policy, low cost tuition, easy income and social mobility etc. If Murray is discouraged by the decline of the middle class — why doesn’t he advocate for the policies that created the middle class including a 1950-60s level taxation. He doesn’t. If we want to avoid a return to the “white trash” of the 18th and 19th century — we need to avoid the economic and social policies of that time period. And these policy changes will make the difference.
I do think the media is tiptoeing around outright criticism and Spicer/Bannon’s challenging rhetoric has them scared.
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Australia is one of the key nations around the Pacific Rim that has been wooed by both the US and China. China buys much of its raw materials from Australia and has been leaning on the Aussies to choose between China and the US. Here is how our lunatic made a big splash with the Australian leader:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/317480-trump-fields-tense-phone-call-with-australian-pm-report
Electing an insane ignoramus may work out fine, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
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Oh dear. This is awkward. It’s an economic post and I agree with Ricky @10:22.
The problem is, 1)you can’t base an economy on the aftermath of a World War (well, if McCain and Lindsey have their way, maybe we can before too long) OR 2) rely on the resulting GI bill to provide sufficient education for growth.
Anyway, having an emaciated production capacity is not desirable for any country that aspires to remain sovereign in uncertain times. It’s not good for workers, and it’s not even good for the long term stability of the country.
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HRW, I watch CNN and read the NYT and the WaPost among other newspapers. The media ain’t scared. They see Spicer as a nitwit and Bannon as a neo-Nazi and they intend to get both of their scalps soon. If not, they will beat Trump about the head and shoulders with Spicer’s incompetence and Bannon’s dark side.
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Well, they are incompetent so how can the media not help but make them look bad — simply repeating their own words makes them look bad.
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Debra @ 10:37 A breakthrough! Trump’s economic plan is to bring back US manufacturing dominance (and all those blue collar jobs) which could only be done by destroying the industrial capacity of our major competitors in a repeat of World War II.
Reagan, by his tax cuts, regulatory reform and tax reform sought to free and unleash all Americans to participate in a high tech, high skills, entrepreneurial economy. The first generation Indian, Philipino, Thai, and South African immigrants to the US have figured it out and have a higher per capita income that any people in the world. Can you understand my frustration with the Trumpkins who do not seize the golden opportunity and instead let the con man sell them on an impossibility.
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