Questions and Observations

Good golly Miss Molly – what a hysterical weekend!  What we saw was a poorly rolled out EO (by that I mean it appears not to have been run through the normal channels of consultation which would have allowed the responsible agencies to devise specific implementation plans) and a whole lot of selective and opportunistic outrage.

First the implementation. In an attempt to modify (within the rights of the executive) and enforce existing law, they made some unforced errors. Poor marks to the administration.  When you’re sending out something like that it would be nice if those who were to implement the actionable items had at least a passing familiarity of what was being required of them.  And when your chief of staff is saying one thing and one of your senior advisors is saying another about an issue, the lack of coordination appears fairly obvious. The green card nonsense was a disaster because of that lack of coordination. Got it.  Badly done.  A learning experience for a new administration, etc.  Sunday, the problem was fixed by a blanket declaration from HSSec John Kelly:

“In applying the provisions of the president’s executive order, I hereby deem the entry of lawful permanent residents to be in the national interest,” Mr. Kelly said. “Accordingly, absent the receipt of significant derogatory information indicating a serious threat to public safety and welfare, lawful permanent resident status will be a dispositive factor in our case-by-case determinations.”

But then there is the selective and opportunistic outrage.  Selective – not a word was said, not a protest was launched when President Obama banned Iraqi immigrants/refugees for 6 months by those hysterically protesting this weekend.   Same with his change of immigration policy on Cubans fleeing that dictatorship, effectively denying them escape.  But oh my goodness, put a temporary ban on a few countries in which it is known that jihadis are trying to infiltrate the refugee stream, and heads explode.

We hear cries of “racism”.  Get a clue, for heaven sake!  Islam is not a “race”.  Nor was what was done a ban on all muslims by any stretch of anyone’s imagination except those who dwell in the unthinking anti-Trump fever swamps – another swamp calling out for draining.

And, of course, there was opportunistic outrage because there was no reason for sane people to take the streets about this when it was clear things were being done to clarify and amend the new process.  But you can’t be a “virtue signaler” if you don’t trot your rear end out and pretend like the world is ending by using hyperbole and hysteria to make your point.  And the virtue signalers were out in force this weekend.  That includes the participants in another Hollywood back-patting event, the SAG awards.  The perfect example was provided by actor David Harbour as he accepted the award for Best Ensemble in a Drama Series for Stranger Things.

And I would like to say that in light of all that’s going on in the world today, it’s difficult to celebrate the already celebrated “Stranger Things.” But this award from you who take your craft seriously and earnestly believe like me that great acting can change the world, is a call to arms from our fellow craftsmen and women to go deeper and through our art battle against fear, self-centeredness, exclusivity of our predominantly narcissistic culture and through our craft to cultivate a more empathetic and understanding society by revealing intimate truths that serve as a forceful reminder to folks that when they feel broken and afraid and tired, they are not alone.

We are united and that we are all human beings and we are all together on this horrible, painful, joyous, exciting and mysterious ride that is being alive. As we act and the continuing narrative of “Stranger Things,” we 1983 Midwesterners will repel bullies. We will shelter freaks and outcasts, those who have no hope. We will get past the lies. We will hunt monsters, and when we are at a loss amidst the hypocrisy and casual violence of certain individuals and institutions. We will, as per Chief Jim Hopper, punch some people in the face when they seek to destroy the [inaudible] and the disenfranchised and the marginalized. And we will do it all with soul, with heart, and with joy. We thank you for this responsibility. Thank you.

Who is “we” kemo-sabe”?  And how can we “cultivate a more emphatic and understanding society” when you’re advocating “punch(ing) some people in the face?”  By the way we all know that David Harbour risks nothing playing to that crowd.  Nothing.  Virtue signaling, for the most part, is risk free, especially when done in one’s ideological bubble in front of people who share that ideology.  The fact that Harbour contradicts himself and makes his rant incoherent isn’t the point.  He validated his ideological virtue with the first contradictory statement and made a risk free beta male threat with his last. He’d never carry it out.  He prefers other less stable people be encouraged by his approval to carry that out.

Yes indeed, a rookie screwup by a new administration and we’re treated to another display of what I think will be a long line of examples of why Trump won.

By the way protesters, I’ll make you a bet that those who voted for Trump don’t care one whit how “outraged” you were this weekend.

~McQ

WaPo is reporting “cracks” appearing between the GOP conservative wing and Trump.  Issue?  Trade and spending.

Will Donald Trump coopt conservatives on Capitol Hill, or will he be coopted? This tug of war will be one of the most important storylines of 2017, and after a week of caving to the new president, there were glimmers yesterday that at least some principled conservatives in Congress will assert themselves after all.

The differences appeared on two issues that are definitional to modern conservatism: spending and trade.

Trump is unabashedly not conservative on these matters. He’s a nationalistic populist who believes in big government, as long as it’s doing what he wants (think eminent domain) and he’s the one who controls the spigot (e.g. a trillion-dollar “infrastructure” package designed to reward his cronies).

The president even told Fox News’s Sean Hannity last night that balancing the budget is no longer one of his priorities. “A balanced budget is fine, but sometimes you have to fuel the well in order to really get the economy going,” Trump said.

I think this analysis is both obvious and right.  He isn’t a conservative, never claimed to be one and isn’t going to act like one.  I don’t get the idea that this is a “developing” problem.  It’s always been one.  Trump has been promising “infrastructure” spending from day 1.  That’s a spending item and we all know how that went under Barack Obama.  What Trump is going to argue is after the 1.9% growth in the economy in the last quarter, this sort of spending is needed.  What the conservatives are going to run into is the fact that this sort of spending is one of the reasons his voter base voted for him (btw, here’s the priority list Trump has published of his top “initial” 50 infrastructure projects).

What Trump wants to do with trade is no secret either.  He likes tariffs. Of course, consumers pay the cost of tariffs, not companies and not countries. So “cracks” appearing?  They’ve always been there.  The question is, what is the so-called conservative wing (you know, the guys who helped amass this 20 trillion in debt?) going to do about it?

As I said early on, no matter who gets elected in November, we’re going to end up with a NY liberal in the WH.  Trump appears to have “evolved” (hey if Obama can get away with that farcical bit, so can Trump) on some issues, at heart he still believes in much of the more moderate liberal ideals.  Remember, during his first week in office, he made it a point to invite labor union leaders in for a chat.

By the way, I’m trying to think of a new acronym for “Conservative when it suits their political aims”.  All submissions welcome.

Speaking of the wall, and just as a historical note when they start their usual insults of racism and xenophobia, here’s a little factoid.  Make sure to note it well:

In addition to then Sens. Obama, Biden and Clinton, 64 House Democrats and 23 Senate Democrats voted for the wall in 2006. Many of them are still in Congress, including newly-established Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. —DailyCaller

Online, many liberal commentators and internet personalities have built fame and careers purely through trading in the currency of virtue. As more seek to mimic this, they rely upon the value of this precious currency, even as it is constantly devalued by its own abundance. So the rituals escalate in absurdity. Suddenly denouncing Trump is not enough, he must be “literally Hitler.” Soon denouncing all of society as literally Hitler is not enough; one has to turn inward and denounce oneself with the same ferocity. Others climbing the greasy pole of liberal virtue to careers in academia or ideological listicle-writing must seek to outpace and dethrone those taking up their spot in the limited room available at the top.

This isn’t Nazi Germany, none of you ladies and gentlemen in the pink hats is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the history books will not tell of acts of courage at the Battle of Soy Latte. You want a different political outcome? Go make it happen. This is politics, and politics can be ugly and stupid — but it beats the alternative.

As we watch the press anguish over Trump’s bad relations with them (and the inference that it’s all Trump’s fault), Jamie Dupree (one of my actual favorite newspeople) points to a reminder:

I know most people think the news media is in the bag for Barack Obama.  But the natural friction between the press corps and a President is already in full view.

“Press Relations Already Tense,” was the headline on politico.com last night.

“Media Frustration Spills Into Briefing,” said another.

How did this happen after only two days, you ask?

Well, the battles started on the very first morning of President Obama’s term, as he went to the Oval Office.

And the battle is simply the result of having a spoiled, entitled and coddled White House media corps.  Read the whole thing.

Andrew McCarthy makes the case for withdrawing from TPP.  He says it was too protectionist and undermined American sovereignty.  It’s a good read.  He conducts a class on how these treaties work, what Congress has to do with them and how the world views and treats them.

He also points out that withdrawal doesn’t cede anything to the Chinese or signal our withdrawal from Asia.  We are, after all, the nation all nations want to trade with, including the Chinese. However, he further notes that Tump may favor more protectionism in the bilateral trade agreements he plans on pursuing.  Read the whole thing.

I”d also point out that while TPP was mostly dead anyway, Trump’s formal withdrawal gave him a cheap win with organized labor.  Politics.

As I’ve been pointing out in recent comments at other places, Trump is a master at baiting the press and getting them to talk about what he wants talked about.  Politico is finally catching on:

It should go without saying that every new president dictates the news agenda. But has any new president’s dominance been as complete as Trump’s? His ability to move news by tweeting—as a candidate, as the president-elect—has been well chronicled. He’d send some ack-ack up in the air and the press corps would have a cow. Now that he’s inside the White House, he hasn’t changed a bit, and he’s using the pulpit of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to recycle the themes he trotted out on his presidential campaign. With his every gesture, he’s happily feeding the hand that bites him, and stories resolve into a picture of a decisive man of action enacting his campaign agenda.

It has been amazing to watch.  They seemingly can’t help themselves, so determined are they to destroy this presidency.  It’s been quite instructive to watch, with Trump emerging as the winner in most cases.

Is anyone really surprised by this?  Politico headlines it as “Democrats hold lessons on how to talk to real people“. No surprise, but still hilarious. The self-described party of “the people” learning how to talk to “the people.” How will they answer “what did you do for us the past 8 years”, I wonder?

While Democrats in the Senate attempt to savage Trump’s nominee for the Department of Education, here’s what they’ve accomplished in the past 8 years.  Not very impressive:

The final IES report on the School Improvement Grant program is devastating to Arne Duncan’s and the Obama administration’s education legacy. A major evaluation commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and conducted by two highly respected research institutions delivered a crushing verdict: The program failed and failed badly. (The Washington Post’s article by Emma Brown does an exceptional job recounting the administration’s $7 billion folly.)

Despite its gargantuan price tag, SIG generated no academic gains for the students it was meant to help. Failing schools that received multi-year grants from the program to “turn around” ended up with results no better than similar schools that received zero dollars from the program. To be clear: Billions spent had no effect.

And you thought only Hillary Clinton could waste a billion dollars to no effect.  How often does it have to be said that our education woes aren’t a result of a lack of money but the wrong approach enabled by an entrenched bureaucracy and teacher’s unions blocking meaningful reform?

The bottom line is our public schools are a failure and it is time to try something new – like introducing competition and choice and seeing the best rise and the failures go away – as they should. However, other than a woman’s right to choose, the left is adamantly against American’s having any other choice.

Apropos of the post yesterday, it seems more and more evidence of voting fraud is surfacing.  And the examples, apparently, are legion. Why should not come as a particular surprise to anyone:

What we do know, despite assertions to the contrary, is that voter fraud is a problem, and both sides of the political aisle should welcome a real investigation into it — especially since the Obama administration tried so hard for eight years to obfuscate the issue and prevent a real assessment.

Former Justice Department attorney Christian Adams testified under oath that he attended a November 2009 meeting at which then-deputy assistant attorney general Julie Fernandes told DOJ prosecutors that the administration would not be enforcing the federal law that requires local officials to purge illegitimate names from their voter rolls.

This refusal to enforce the law came despite a 2012 study from the Pew Center on the States estimating that one out of every eight voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date or a duplicate. About 2.8 million people are registered in more than one state, according to the study, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead. In most places it’s easy to vote under the names of such people with little risk of detection.

The Obama administration did everything it could to avoid complying with requests from  states to verify voter registration records against federal records of legal noncitizens and illegal immigrants who have been detained by law enforcement to find noncitizens who have illegally registered and voted.

A lawless, opaque administration that preferred the “pen and phone” to Constitutional order.

You’ve likely read the story about Secret Service agent Kerry O’Grady.  She had made it clear and public that should the occasion arise, she was not willing to take a bullet for Donald Trump.  Obviously, given their mission, that’s unacceptable.  Many are calling for her to be fired, something she richly deserves, however I think Ed Morrisey has a better solution.  The Secret Service has many other jobs that have nothing to do with Presidential security.  If she was such a Hillary fan then Ed suggests a perfect punishment would be to assign her to Hillary’s Secret Service detail – a detail that the majority of agents view as punishment of the worst kind.  I like it.

We’ve all been told for years that Barack Obama was one of the most popular presidents in our history.  Umm … maybe.  But more importantly than popularity, how did Americans approve of his job performance?  Well, it seems that Tricky Dick rated higher in that area, destroying the Obama myth once and for all.  Here’s Gallup’s average for all post-WWII presidents and it isn’t kind to Mr. Obama.

Of course, anyone who has paid attention intuitively and substantially knew his job performance was lacking.  Alas, Jimmy Carter, who all thought had benefited from a Barack Obama presidency, is found under Obama.  Also remember, Gerald Ford had all of 2 years in office facing problem inflation he inherited and Harry Truman had to follow FDR.

~McQ

The undeclared but glaringly obvious war between the “traditional” press and Trump continues to heat up.  Trump, it seems, made the claim that voting by illegal immigrants cost him the popular vote.  The press immediately claimed that there was no evidence that it happened and intimated it just wasn’t even possible.  Jake Tapper is typical:

CNN’s Jake Tapper, and many other pundits, assert there is “no evidence” to support Trump’s belief about a large number of illegal votes cast in the election.

But, as it turns out, that’s not true. There is a basis for Trump’s belief.  Now note, I’m giving Jake Tapper and other “pundits” the benefit of the doubt.  I’m not calling them liars.  I’m instead intimating they are ignorant.  Why?

The best study on the subject — a study that meets the Daubert standards for admissible evidence in a jury trial in a legal courtroom — provides substantial evidence that non-citizen voting alone likely reached over a million in this election.  A trio of well-regarded scholars used scientifically approved methods to study the question of non-citizen voting in federal elections. The result of their study published in one of the best-regarded peer-review political science journals, Electoral Studies. The evidence from their study suggested upwards of 10% of non-citizens voted in 2008; given the issues implicated in this election, a higher number would be a reasonable inference for a jury to conclude. Given the increase in non-citizen members of the population, the same study’s conclusions would project out to millions of illegal votes from non-citizen voters in this election. Now Trump’s opponents will surely argue several experts have questioned the study’s methods, with the Washington Post giving Four Pinocchios to the use of this study to support claims of problems with illegal immigrants voting. However,the scholars well defended their study against critics in this Washington Post article. At the very least, that is enough to move forward with a case, and I believe raises legitimate questions that should be debated.

Indeed, it should be debated, but this is something the left has long denied and claimed simply wasn’t true … period.  But unless they didn’t know about this study, the fact that it was positively peer reviewed and, in fact, establishes a basis for Trump’s argument, then they’re ignorant.  If they did know about it and dismissed it, they’re disingenuous.

Of course Tapper and the rest have some wiggle room if you parse the assertion – there’s no evidence about a “large number of illegal votes cast in the election.”  This election. Got it. That’s true to this point.  But it doesn’t change the larger point – there is indeed evidence, as presented by the study, that it has happened in the past and there is certainly reason to believe that something that happened in the past most likely happened in this election, given nothing has changed in voting procedures. With the numbers this election generated, the anomalies demand explanation.  For instance:

Trump’s inference of voter fraud, if true, should suggest disparate turnout rates in the parts of the country with the highest non-citizen population or history of ballot-counting controversy. Here again, California’s turnout both exceeded expectations, differed substantially from turnout in other non-competitive states, and produced vote totals no major pollster in California forecast for Hillary, when most polls under-counted Trump votes across the state and country.

Anyone who thinks our election system is fraud free is either a fool of a liar.  There are too many opportunities and benefits to be had with fraud (see Dem primary for immediate proof), starting with  lack of identification requirements and the horribly relaxed procedures for absentee ballots.  It’s also well known that many people are registered in more than one state.  So denial of fraud is ignorance on the part of the denier or it is advantageous for them to see it continue.

There is nothing particularly startling about Trump’s assertion to anyone who has looked at the voting system in this country in any depth.  The media relies on you not having that depth of knowledge and one final important thing – them having the last word on the subject.  That formula doesn’t quite work as well as it once did. The internet makes it easy to quickly research just about anything you wish to know about.  And, there are alternative sites now who actually do the work journalists used to do and present it to the public, denying them the last word.  Just ask Dan Rather.  Additionally, they’re faced with someone in Trump who won’t let them have the last word and punches back.  And that’s what really angers them.

By the way, I agree with Charlie Martin.

~McQ

Is this temporary until a new director for the FBI can be found and confirmed?  If not, it’s a big mistake:

Comey will continue to stay on as FBI director in the Trump administration

FBI Director James B. Comey, who is under a Department of Justice Inspector General investigation for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, has told people he has been asked to stay in his post in the next administration, people familiar with the matter said. President Trump had notably declined to say during a post-election interview with “60 Minutes” whether he would retain the FBI director, saying he wanted to meet with Comey first.

I find this man to have no credibility whatsoever and leaving him in as director of the FBI sends the wrong signal if your desire is to have the “rule of law” again be preeminent in the land.

Oh, good.  The Trump administration will make the EPA “pay” for the damage it did in the Gold King Mine spill:

Citizens of the Rocky Mountain state are relying on the incoming Trump administration to require that the EPA pay damages in the wake of a massive agency-caused toxic water spill in Colorado.

Republicans and Democrats have criticized the agency’s decision to ignore victims associated with the Gold King Mine spill, which released 3 million gallons of dangerous metals like lead, cadmium and arsenic into the Animas River.

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado and his Democratic colleague Michael Bennett blasted the Obama administration Thursday for its refusal to help the spill victims.

“I applaud Attorney General Pruitt’s commitment to review the EPA’s decision to not process FTCA claims related to the Gold King Mine spill,” Gardner said Thursday in a statement, referring to the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a nearly 70-year-old law the EPA suggested gives them sovereign immunity from paying $1.2 billion in damages.

Just wondering – does anyone realize from whence the $1.2 billion will come?  Yup, the taxpayer.  And, other than the taxpayer, who else were “victims”?  Oh, and how about a little accountability all up and down the line with fines and firings of those responsible for this gross neglegence?

A real “oh, good.”  The CDC is backing out of a “climate change” conference it had scheduled:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called off a major conference on climate change planned for February, E&E News reported Monday.

A statement from the CDC said it was considering plans to reschedule the conference, though it also acknowledged it would have to do so with consideration to budget priorities and another climate change meeting to be hosted by the American Public Health Association later this year.

Well not really.  Instead, consider this:

Georges Benjamin, the APHA’s executive director who was set to speak at the conference, told The Washington Post that the CDC called off the event amid fears that the Trump administration would cancel it anyway.

“They ran it up the flagpole and realized that it was so close to the inauguration, the chances of it being canceled were pretty real with the administration that was coming in,” Benjamin said.

Call it the “Trump effect.”  Also realize that the climate or it’s changes aren’t the job of the CDC.  Maybe they’ll get back to their business now.

Not everyone is happy with the so-called “women’s march” the other day.  They simply terrified the trans-gendered:

Mic.com also quoted a “nonbinary” individual—a person who does not identify with either male or female, has multiple gender identities, or a gender identity that changes over time, among other things—whose girlfriend is still a biological male.

“For 20-year-old Sam Forrey, a nonbinary student in Ohio, and their girlfriend Lilian McDaniel, who is trans, there had been other warning signs that the Women’s March might be a dangerous space for them,” according to the article.

The couple was upset by the “genital-based womanhood” espoused by the women’s march.

I’m coughing at the moment from laughing so hard.  Because we all know, just because you have the equipment doesn’t mean you are what your think you are … or something.  See, this is where the identity politics of the left derails and not only makes them a laughing stock, but seriously undermines their credibility.  You know, as well as I do, that those fools will take this seriously and then try to find a way to impose what they decide on the rest of us.  Hint: this is why Trump won. Please, keep it up.

And it appears the Democratic party has found a way out of the wilderness.  Yes, they’ve managed to launch themselves into deep space with no seeming way to get back.  On a recent CSPAN “debate” highlighting those who would like to have the chair of the DNC, each candidate seemed to try to find a position to the left of the one before.

My personal favorite?  The white woman from Idaho:

Democrats must provide “training” that focuses in part on teaching Americans “how to be sensitive and how to shut their mouths if they are white,” urged the executive director of Idaho’s Democratic Party, Sally Boynton Brown, who is white.

The event’s moderator, MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid, asked the candidates how the party should handle the Black Lives Now movement.

The candidates uniformly emphasized that the party must embrace the activists unreservedly.

“It makes me sad that we’re even having that conversation and that tells me that white leaders in our party have failed,” Brown said. “I’m a white woman, I don’t get it. … My job is to listen and be a voice and shut other white people down when they want to interrupt.”

“This is life and death” she emphasized. “I am a human being trying to do good work and I can’t do it without y’all. So please, please, please, get ahold of me. Sally at we-the-dnc.org. I need schooling so I can go school the other white people.”

I can’t think of anyone more qualified to tell people to “shut up” than an authoritarian lefty with “white guilt”. More surprisingly it seem, they somehow think this will appeal to middle America and rebuild their brand. Lady, you were just convincingly told that this isn’t the way to proceed and you double down instead.  You weren’t paying any attention, were you?

Please.  Keep it up.

Meanwhile, the range war will again heat up.  Trump just signed an executive order opening the way for the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline.  Infrastructure, you know. Getting my popcorn and preparing to watch liberal heads explode.  Always entertaining.

Speaking of liberal heads exploding, the precious White House Media is beside itself today.  Why?

Apparently, in an unwritten rule precious only to careerist Beltway journos, the Press Secretary calls on an Associated Press reporter first then follows with questions to other large media companies. For the first time, Spicer chose less storied agencies for the first handful of questions. Did he blacklist journalists from CNN, the New York Times, etc? No, he got to them a few minutes later. In fact, Spicer stayed as long as the reporters wanted, answering questions for well over an hour.

What so appalled the press was that Spicer upset the media’s caste system. After calling on the New York Post, he went to CBN (Christian cable network), Univision (Spanish-language channel), Fox Business Network, and American Urban Radio Networks (African-American focused service). He also announced the creation of “Skype seats” that will allow reporters who live 50 miles or more from Washington DC to ask questions.

Poor babies.  I’m enjoying every minute of the press’s outrage.

Boy, my lungs are getting a workout today.  Even beginning to cramp up in my ribs from the laughing.

I think I need to take a rest. [*cough* *guffaw*, “oh, ow”]

~McQ

Well other than the pro-abortion women’s march over the weekend, it was fairly quiet. Always fun to watch entitled and privileged people act like they are oppressed and in danger of losing their “rights”. Unconvinced isn’t even an approximation of what I felt watching them. This was just another facet of the progressive tantrum that’s been thrown since Trump’s election. Apparently self-respect is a no-no when turning up for one of these events. Just leave it at home, shout cuss words, make explicit and degrading signs and dress like a body part. Somehow that will convey the “oppression” to which one is subjected in today’s America. I’m sorry, it’s all just so laughable. You could make endless memes with the pictures. It is another in a long line of spectacles that underline the reasons Trump now occupies the White House. Introspection is not something the left does much of, apparently. Well, wandering the the political wilderness may help that. But I kind of doubt that.

Why, you might ask?  There’s the Democratic “leadership” to consider.  Like Nancy Pelosi.  You remember Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” gaff?  That told voters who didn’t agree with the leftist agenda that they were less than important to the Democrats despite all their nattering about “inclusiveness”.  It reinforced what they thought of the elites in the Democratic party, and that wasn’t much.  It helped them pull the lever for Trump who didn’t particularly resonate with them either.

Pelosi apparently hasn’t learned a thing from that.  On Inauguration Day she doubled down on dissing middle America. She showed up on “Morning Joe” and Scarborough ask her:

But how do Democrats who have the right policies economically. in their minds, how do they reconnect with a middle America who feels like sometimes they are looked down upon because of their faith or their values?

Her answer?

PELOSI: Well, thank you for asking that question because the cultural issue, and especially when it comes to rural America, the isolation that some people feel there, plus they don’t think that Democrats are people of faith, when the fact is that we are. And I say, this will be a little not in keeping with the spirit of the day of unity, but I say they pray in church on Sunday and prey on people the rest of the week, and while we’re doing the Lord’s work by ministering to the needs of God’s creation they are ignoring those needs which is to dishonor the God who made them.

She is truly the gift that keeps on giving as far as the GOP is concerned.  Thank you Democrats for reelecting her the minority leader in the House.  Given this huge dose of “progressivism” (“pray on Sunday” and “prey the rest of the week”) in which an elite progressive woman essentially calls “middle America” thugs couldn’t give a better signal that the left and Democrats haven’t learned a single thing from Trump’s election.  This is the most brain-dead but phenomenally offensive statement I’ve seen in a while.  If she mirrors current progressive thought, and I think she probably does, it’s going to be a long 8 years for them.

Hey, progressives – foolish statements like this is why you lost.

Speaking of losing, Liz Warren’s Senate seat may be in jeopardy.  It simply couldn’t happen to a nicer person:

Nearly half of Massachusetts voters are ready for a new senator to replace Democrat Elizabeth Warren in the 2018 election, according to a new poll.

Forty-six percent of Massachusetts voters who took the survey, which was conducted by MassINC Polling Group and WBUR, are ready to vote Warren out of office, Politico reported Monday.

Meanwhile, 37 percent of poll respondents said they disapprove of Warren, while 51 percent said they approve. These numbers show a sharp decline from April 2015, when a poll showed that Warren had a 62 percent approval rating and a 21 percent disapproval rating.

Don’t forget, it’s early, it’s Massachusetts and it involves polling, which has been so reliable in the recent past.  But the point is, the deplorables, even in deep blue country, are getting pretty tired of the elites and discovering that their values are not shared by them.  Liz better tap into some of those “native American” roots she claims to get back in touch with those predatory rurals.

The Trump/media war continues to heat up.  Frankly, I’m happy to see this happen.  The media deserves it more than one can imagine.  If Trump accomplishes nothing else in his term it will hopefully be to put the media back in their place and doing their job – as they should – and not being shills for a particular political party. One of the things he seems intent on doing is knocking them off of their self-erected pedestal.  Trump’s attempt to “democratize” the White House press corps by hinting that he would add a broader spectrum of media and floating the idea of moving them from their privileged enclave in the White House to the Executive building is, frankly, a pretty good way of helping to put them in their place.  Calling them out on their coverage when it is untrue (like the MLK bust, etc.) is, while certainly not traditional, badly needed.  And the medias attempts to make the Inauguration events less than they were, well that too is worth a shot.  Take a look at this CNN “gigapixel” shot of the  inauguration and pan back toward the Washington Monument.  Seems pretty darn packed to me. I wonder why CNN didn’t use this shot in their coverage?

Of course, that doesn’t mean the media will actually figure this out.  As an example:

Ben Smith, editor in chief of the website Buzzfeed, called Monday for news organizations to adopt “new rules” in order to properly cover the Trump administration, and said that may even require sometimes publishing “unverified information.”

In an op-ed published Monday, Smith said President Trump and his team frequently push falsehoods and aren’t sufficiently transparent, and said a new type of journalism is needed to foster “trust” with the public.

Ummm … wondering where Buzzfeed was the last 8 years with the most opaque administration in history which made a habit of lying to everyone?  Oh, yeah … shilling for them.  QED.

And this brings us full circle to the subject at the top of the page.  Slate seems to think that the new political group du jure, given the non-inclusive “women’s march” this weekend will be “angry women.”  Instead, it’s just more Nancy Pelosi’s refusing to understand that their agenda has been rejected by the huge number of “predators” out in middle America.

“This election brought awareness to the fact that people’s mindsets aren’t as progressive as we think they are,” Mugg said. “But I think the positive thing that we can take away from this election is that a lot of people who probably sat by, myself included, and didn’t vote at a local level, or pay attention to the policies that are in effect, are now showing up. Like here today.” Barnes, who is from Prince William County, Virginia, was wearing a T-shirt from her local National Organization for Women chapter. She’d gone to her first meeting the week before, after searching online for women’s organizations. “I like what I hear, I like the energy,” she said of NOW. “It gives me energy and it gives me hope.”

Well, good.  It also reinforces – again – why Trump sits in the White House and Hillary sits at home.  This sort to smugness is what middle America finds offensive.  They’re as “progressive” as they want to be, and groups of women showing no self-respect or self-restraint aren’t going to make them any more “progressive”.  In fact, it’s likely the opposite will occur.  And now that they know how the left really feels about them, well, they are certainly not going to worry about the progressive’s acceptance of them.  So let’s see where this “energy” and “hope” do for the left.  If it applied in the same way it has these past 8 years and was during the march, the 53% of women who voted for Trump may increase in 2020.

~McQ

The DDOS attack has resumed.  We’re fighting it as best we can.  However, here’s a contingency plan for you.   We’ll double post, i.e. we’ll put new posts up here and also post them on our temporary site.  If you can’t get in here, good deal.  If not, well, go there.  And we hope to have this cleared up at some point.

Thanks for your patience.

~McQ