HOWS THE ECONOMY? WHERE’S IT GOING?
That depends largely on what happens in Washington DC. Thus the huge influence of politics on economics. The economy is growing, albeit still suffering from the post-Obama hangover. Americans are slowly coming back to work, but Obama provided so much welfare, so many freebies and so few jobs, that too many Americans no longer have the will to work—or the desire—as long as Uncle Sam will take are of them. Thus the conflict any time a "government freebie” is threatened. (as in Obamacare, Disability, etc.)
ONE OF THE MOST COMMON QUESTIONS I AM ASKED IS, "WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT TRUMP AND CONGRESS AND WHAT’S GOING ON?”
It is not a unique or original question, and thus my answer is partly enclosed in two articles attached: “Our Self-Interested Senators” and “He Fights.”
While I may disagree with a few parts of both, I agree with so much of their analysis, I’m sharing it all with you, so you can decide how you feel about it.
I’m skeptical whether the GOP Senators can remember that they represent America, not their personal private interests and do what is best for the nation—to remove Obamacare and work tirelessly to craft a better replacement. If they cannot, then we must wonder if they can pull together to reform the Tax Code, fix aging Infrastructure, enforce our Laws and the Border, and most of all, build up our Defense to stand up to foreign threats whether they are Radical Rogues from North Korean, Dictatorial Despots from Russia, a growing power-hungry bear in China or the Middle-eastern evils who hold human life in no regard at all. To afford all we must do for the USA, we must rein-in waste, foolishness, duplication of effort and the bureaucratic inertia that continuously raises government costs, staffing and buildings in the DC area faster than weeds after a spring rain.
The House, after considerable angst, pulled together enough to pass a new Health Care bill. Is it perfect? No. Can any such bill be perfect? NO! Postponed perfection is the enemy of planned progress. Worse yet, the metrics provided by the CBO are flawed. It has a horrible record of forecasting the outcome of such important things—so why do we still rely on CBO estimates? Call or write or meet with your Congressional Representative and remind them the CBO works for them. Just look at their missed forecasts—and wonder why we’d use them to guide any important decisions. Note: More than one-percent error in such CBO projections is a huge mistake.
HOW ABOUT TRUMP’S BEHAVIOR—HE COUNTER-ATTACKS WHEN HE IS ATTACKED (sometimes to his own detriment)
Yes, Donald Trump can be his own worst enemy at times, feeding fuel to the partisan, biased insanity that used to be the mainstream "news” media, led by CNN, MSNBC, The NYTimes, the Washington Post and others. BUT…Trump is doing everything he can (except “staying on script all the time”) to undo the massive mess made by The Manchurian Candidate President Barack Obama. Trump is making great progress in energy, immigration, labor, deregulation, and anywhere else (VA) where he can reverse Obama-minions, hundreds of misguided mandates and executive orders—and/or replace them with his own better orders.
The Democrats in the US Senate have so totally obstructed Trump choices to fill his administration, that 90% of the 1000+ spots remain vacant. Why? Because they are willing to employ every dirty trick and stalling mechanism that can be found, resurrected and distorted. The effect is to leave too many Obama-minions in place, undermining Trump efforts! Activist judges also need to be slowed or stopped by SCOTUS.
Media Shills like Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Paul Krugman and a host of others (e.g., anyone at the NYTimes) are the leading “poster-people," who relentlessly try to damage President Trump, without any regard for honesty or morality in what they do in the process. They show a total disregard for the truth, and complete disregard to the damage they are doing to the United States of America. Do they even know how much harm they are causing? Do they care?
Government is supposed to "work for & serve" the people of the USA, not vice-versa.
Democrats in elected office are supposed to act like elected officials (for the good of the USA and its people). News media is supposed to report the news (truthfully). Instead, they are all acting out like petulant propagandists preaching to a largely misinformed/uninformed population (half of the US citizens who chose not to elect Trump). The Democrats and liberal media are led by a similarly zealous group of "mostly-coastal, liberal-elitist” partisans—many whom might once have been part of a “responsible" Democratic Party—not just a partisan propaganda machine.
These are the “liberal losers.” who refused to accept that they lost the election(s). Note: They crow about Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote, but in fact, only a 3-million vote margin in heavily immigrant/minority California (where Trump didn’t campaign) gave her a 2.5 million margin in popular votes.
"Coastal hypocrites" rule the day—like NY’s Charles Schumer, who speaks out of both sides of his mouth so much, it proves that being two-faced is a benefit. (Evidence—his reversals on everything of consequence, even forgetting his public willingness to oppose considering a Supreme Court Justice for a year, then criticizing the GOP Senate for stalling a review. See http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/14/flashback-in-2007-schumer-called-for-blocking-all-bush-supreme-court-nominations/.)
The misguided bi-coastal, power-hungry politicians are now led by the "Wicked Witch of the West"—Nancy Pelosi and the "Wicked Witch of the East"—Elizabeth Warren. The raving Wizard of Oz Bernie Sanders still has a following, which left alone, would bankrupt the USA faster than you can recite his very short list of qualifications and accomplishments. Yes, some responsible Democrats still remain in Congress, but they dare not dissent nor even raise their hands or head, lest the get shunned by the party leaders (& starved for campaign support $$).
That’s plenty for one summer weekend. More to come.
Best,
JOHN
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at this point has busted pretty much every move in his effort to rally 50 votes for an Obama Care replacement. He’s listened. He’s negotiated. He’s encouraged. He’s cajoled. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Months later, still lacking a majority, the time has come for the Kentucky Republican to execute the final, clarifying move. It’s time for Mr. McConnell to make this all about his self-interested members.Up to now, this exercise has been about trying to improve health care and the federal fisc. The House bill isn’t perfect—no bill ever is—but it amounts to the biggest entitlement reform in history. It repeals crushing taxes. It dramatically cuts spending. And it begins the process of stabilizing the individual health-care market and expanding consumer freedom.None of this is good enough for a handful of senators, so now it’s time to make this exercise all about them. Mr. McConnell should make clear that the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party stands ready to make good on its repeal-and-replace campaign promise—and that it would have done so already were it not for a cynical or egotistic few. It’s time for some very public accountability.
That rests in Mr. McConnell giving his caucus a drop-dead date to broker a compromise, after which he will proceed to bring up the House bill. And any Republican who votes against moving forward, “a motion to proceed,” will forever be known as the Republican who saved ObamaCare. The Republican who voted to throw billions more taxpayer dollars at failing entitlement programs and collapsing insurance markets. The Republican who abandoned struggling American families. The Republican who voted against a tax cut and spending reductions. The Republican who made Chuck Schumer’s year.
And that’s only a short list of the real-world accountability. That vote might also provide home-state voters a new, eye-opening means to account for the character of their senators. Few things drive conservative voters battier than phony politicians, those who say one thing and do another to avoid hard choices. Nearly every Senate Republican is on record having voted to repeal ObamaCare—back when they knew that President Obama’s veto made the vote consequence-free.
And to be crystal clear, any senator who now votes against simply proceeding to debate is doing so for just one reason: To again avoid consequences, to again avoid accountability.Because the good senators understand just how illuminating those votes would be. Under the Senate reconciliation process, anyone can offer endless amendments—with roll-call votes. Voters would be able to see just how gigantic a Medicaid payoff Ohio’s Rob Portman, Nevada’s Dean Heller and West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito are demanding for their support. They’d watch supposed conservatives such as Tennessee’s Bob Corker vote against pro-growth tax cuts. They’d observe Utah’s Mike Lee offer up changes to ObamaCare mandates, muster not even a dozen votes, and realize how unpopular his position is. They’d witness Kentucky’s Rand Paul vote against all reform ideas—no matter how good—because they still weren’t good enough for Rand Paul. They’d see Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski cynically vote against the very same repeal-only amendment she supported in 2015, back when it didn’t matter. They’d see South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy cast the only two votes for a bill they’ve been pushing—and confusing everyone with—for weeks.
Mr. McConnell can meanwhile count on a great deal of help in this accountability effort. Conservative grass-roots groups have tried to play a constructive role throughout this debate, but they have had it with Senate egos. They’re mobilizing to name names. The chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed, sent a letter to every senator on Thursday, explaining that his group would be watching the voting and documenting any “no” votes on “tens of millions of congressional scorecards and voter guides to be distributed in 117,000 churches nationwide in 2018.”
A flood of other conservative outfits—the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots—are launching websites and Twitter campaigns to highlight holdouts. Some groups are planning primary challenges against those who refuse to debate a bill. The Murkowskis of the world may be hoping nobody will remember by the time they’re up for re-election, but they shouldn’t count on that. What the Senate leadership most needs to stress these coming days is that senators who claim they can’t “support” debating a flawed bill are snowing voters. Don’t like the bill? Get it to the floor and offer amendments. But do it in the open. Do it with some accountabilityMaybe, finally under the public glare, Republicans will get their act together.
Write to [email protected].
Appeared in the July 21, 2017, WSJ print edition.
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He Fights
7/13/2017 1:57:00 PM - Evan Sayet
My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”
Here’s my answer:
We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain? We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same.
This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.
I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”
The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.
The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.
With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.
During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”
General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.
Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent bastards, I read your book!” That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics.
That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.
Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do.
First, instead of going after “the fake media” – and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri – Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”
Everyone gets that it’s not just CNN – in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose “reporting” is in no way significantly different than CNN’s – CNN is just a piker.
Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. With Trump’s ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat. They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices.
They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery.
The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive
Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s, church.
Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.
This makes “going high” a non-starter for CNN. This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next “nothing burger” and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how it’s “worse than Nixon.”
This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do. The problem is that, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious. Each new effort at even faker news than before and faker “outrage” only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media.
And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes. Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case “l”) libel laws protecting the media, they’ve had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly.
Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme. This threat to “dox” – release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family -- a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasn’t meant just for him. If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their “deal” with him public.
Instead, CNN – playing by “Chicago Rules” – was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated. This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule.
So, to my friends on the Left – and the #NeverTrumpers as well -- do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do. These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.
So, say anything you want about this president – I get it, he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights.
Evan Sayet is the author of The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks. His lecture to the Heritage Foundation on this same topic remains, some ten years later, by far the single most viewed lecture in their history. Evan can be reached at [email protected]
http://mariotti.blogs.com/my_weblog/
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