It’s Friday, March 24th, 2017…but before we begin, here’s our response to both Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell regarding reports Dimocrats are seeking a deal with the GOP to confirm Neil Gorsuch:
And the horse you rode in on.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, another rare instance in which we agree with O’Reilly:
Such is the inevitable consequence of Progressives putting politics above the safety and well-being of American citizens.
By the way, Bill: our immigration system ISN’TBROKEN; it’s just NOT BEING PROPERLY EMPLOYED, and the law is NOT BEING ENFORCED, as Victor Davis Hanson details in a recent commentary entitled:
“In the 1934 romantic movie “Death Takes a Holiday,” Death assumes human form for three days, and the world turns chaotic. The same thing happens when the law goes on a vacation. Rules are unenforced or politicized. Citizens quickly lose faith in the legal system. Anarchy follows — ensuring that there can be neither prosperity nor security.
The United States is descending into such as abyss, as politics now seem to govern whether existing laws are enforced.
Sociologists in the 1980s found out that when even minor infractions were ignored — such as the breaking of windows, or vendors walking into the street to hawk wares to motorists in a traffic jam — misdemeanors then spiraled into felonies as lawbreakers become emboldened.
A federal law states that the president can by proclamation “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”Yet a federal judge ruled that president Trump cannot do what the law allows in temporarily suspending immigration from countries previously singled out by the Obama administration for their laxity in vetting their emigrants.
In the logic of his 43-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson seemed to strike down the travel ban based on his own subjective opinion of a president’s supposedly incorrect attitudes and past statements.
Some 500 “sanctuary” cities and counties have decided for political reasons that federal immigration law does not fully apply within their jurisdictions. They have done so with impunity, believing that illegal immigration is a winning political issue given changing demography. In a way, they have already legally seceded from the union and provided other cities with a model of how to ignore any federal law they do not like.
The law states that foreign nationals cannot enter and permanently reside in the United States without going through a checkpoint and in most cases obtaining a legal visa or green card. But immigration law has been all but ignored.(Again, the system is broken; it’s simply not being used; no system, however efficient the design, will function if it’s not employed!) Or it was redefined as not committing additional crimes while otherwise violating immigration law. Then the law was effectively watered down further to allow entering and residing illegally if not committing “serious” crimes. Now, the adjective “serious” is being redefined as something that does not lead to too many deportations.
The logical end is no immigration law at all — and open borders.
…There is one common denominator in all these instances of attempted legal nullification: the liberal belief that laws should “progress” to reflect the supposedly superior political agenda of the left. And if laws don’t progress?Then they can be safely ignored.
But when the law is what we say it is, or what we want it to be, there is no law. And when there is no law, there is not much left but something resembling Russia, Somalia or Venezuela.“
See “Baltimore“, “Detroit“, “Washington, D.C.“, “Chicago“, “UC-Berkeley“, “Middlebury“, or most any other U.S. urban center or institution of higher propaganda.
And when those sworn to protect and defend the public’s health and well-being decide to sacrifice same so as to further their own political power and sense of moral superiority, the results are as inevitable as they are inescapable:
“If President Trump announces that North Korea launched a missile that landed within 100 miles of Hawaii, would most Americans believe him? Would the rest of the world? We’re not sure, which speaks to the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to his Presidency with his seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusations, implausible denials and other falsehoods.
The latest example is Mr. Trump’s refusal to back off his Saturday morning tweet of three weeks ago that he had “found out that [Barack] Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory” on Election Day. He has offered no evidence for his claim, and a parade of intelligence officials, senior Republicans and Democrats have since said they have seen no such evidence.
Yet the President clings to his assertion like a drunk to an empty gin bottle, rolling out his press spokesman to make more dubious claims. Sean Spicer—who doesn’t deserve this treatment—was dispatched last week to repeat an assertion by a Fox News commentator that perhaps the Obama Administration had subcontracted the wiretap to British intelligence.
…All of this continues the pattern from the campaign that Mr. Trump is his own worst political enemy. He survived his many false claims as a candidate because his core supporters treated it as mere hyperbole and his opponent was untrustworthy Hillary Clinton.But now he’s President, and he needs support beyond the Breitbart cheering section that will excuse anything. As he is learning with the health-care bill, Mr. Trump needs partners in his own party to pass his agenda. He also needs friends abroad who are willing to trust him when he asks for support, not least in a crisis.
This week should be dominated by the smooth political sailing for Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and the progress of health-care reform on Capitol Hill. These are historic events, and success will show he can deliver on his promises. But instead the week has been dominated by the news that he was repudiated by his own FBI director.
Two months into his Presidency, Gallup has Mr. Trump’s approval rating at 39%. No doubt Mr. Trump considers that fake news, but if he doesn’t show more respect for the truth most Americans may conclude he’s a fake President.“
Sure, Obama is as big a liar as has ever soiled public office; and the MSM never called him on it. And yes, as Cortney O’Brien records at Townhall.com, the fact one of his prevaricating pots still attempts to call the kettle black…
“Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who infamously misled the American people about what transpired in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, is the last person who should be judging the Trump administration’s rhetoric. Yet, in a new op-ed for The Washington Post, she goes on a tirade about how the president and his allies have made Americans less safe by “twisting the truth.” Here’s just one excerpt from her highly ironic piece.
The foundation of the United States’ unrivaled global leadership rests only in part on our military might, the strength of our economy and the power of our ideals. It is also grounded in the perception that the United States is steady, rational and fact-based. To lead effectively, the United States must maintain respect and trust. So, when a White House deliberately dissembles and serially contorts the facts, its actions pose a serious risk to America’s global leadership, among friends and adversaries alike.
She must have amnesia…”
…is especially rich. Yet the fact remains, like Hillary, Trump is an abysmal liar. He reminds us of Dr. Evil’s father:
If only The Donald drank instead of tweeting!
Still, as Dan Henninger records at the WSJ, his outrageous tweets notwithstanding, there’s still substance to the foundation of…
“The tale of Russia interfering in the U.S. presidential election has become a hall of mirrors that distorts and diminishes everyone who comes near it—the Trump presidency, Democrats, members of Congress, the intelligence community and the media. Vladimir Putin must be agog in Moscow at how easy it is to make America subvert itself.
But let’s walk through the funhouse door and stare at the first mirror, the one reflecting the face of former President Barack Obama.This nightmare starts with him.
The details of a March 1New York Timesstory deserve to be repeated with as much manic intensity as news sites report the repudiation of Donald Trump’s claim that Mr. Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
Well, he didn’t, but Mr. Obama did plenty else. This is the lead sentence of that Times story:
“In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election—and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians—across the government.”
This is what they did:
“At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low classification level to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government—and, in some cases, among European allies.”
Earlier, on Jan. 12, the Times also reported that Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed rules that let the National Security Agency disseminate “raw signals intelligence information” to 16 other intelligence agencies.
That is, the Obama administration put in motion the tsunami of anonymously attributed stories that is engulfing and disabling America’s government today.
They knew the drill.In 2011 the Obama White House leaked details of SEAL Team Six’s assassination of Osama bin Laden within hours of the operation. They politicized the SEALs and commoditized leaking, just as they now have politicized and undermined public confidence in U.S. intelligence agencies.
Mirror No. 2 reflects the face of Donald Trump, who took a legitimate complaint about all this and then, via tweets and public statements, put himself and then his presidency at war with 17 intelligence agencies. The no-surprise result is pretty ugly.
As well, Mr. Trump brought on Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, who’ve built mansions on the foreign-connections swamp, and former Defense Intelligence Agency director Mike Flynn, who fantastically sat at a table in 2015 with Mr. Putin to celebrate RT, Russia’s primary external propaganda arm.No wonder someone took a look…”
It’s unfortunate, but a number of The Donald’s own actions have only served to heighten the confusion: his incredibly clumsy tweets; not firing the demonstrably deficient Comey immediately upon taking office; Sessions’ ill-advised and unnecessary recusal; etc., etc., etc.
What’s more unfortunate is, as James Freeman records at Best of the Web, Trump’s own smoke has overshadowed the deliberate arson of Hussein the Torch:
The News from Nunes
Is anybody in Washington curious about presidential administrations spying on their successors?
“…But much of the political and media world is more upset with the way Mr. Nunes shared this news than with the news itself, which by the way provides a disturbing window into the breadth of government data collection. Mr. Nunes’s alleged sins include talking to the press instead of first sharing the information with his fellow Californian Adam Schiff, the intelligence committee’s Democratic ranking member. Mr. Nunes also went to the White House to brief the President.
Your humble correspondent thinks that Mr. Nunes erred in not trying harder to maintain bipartisan cooperation on his committee as it examines Russian efforts to disrupt our political process and our own government’s investigation of American citizens participating in a political campaign against the party in power. Various reports say that Mr. Nunes has apologized to his Democratic colleagues. It’s always vital that the intelligence committees are less partisan than other panels on Capitol Hill. Only bipartisan unity allows any progress in breaking down the natural resistance in the intelligence community to sharing details of its compartmented programs.
The reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Nunes didn’t think he could trust Mr. Schiff with the information, and Mr. Schiff’s reaction yesterday suggests that Mr. Nunes isn’t crazy.Given the opportunity by Mr. Nunes to act in a completely partisan manner, Mr. Schiff took it. At his own press conference, the California Democrat pronounced himself “gravely concerned” with the way Mr. Nunes had handled the situation and claimed it had cast a “profound cloud” over the committee’s work. But he seemed generally unconcerned with a report that the government was sweeping up lots of information about people working on a presidential transition, sharing it widely, and not being too careful about keeping their identities secret.Remember, this is the same Adam Schiff who spent years seeking to restrict government collection of telephone metadata that did not include the content of any phone calls…”
As is so often the case with Progressive politics, that was then, this is now.
And in the Follow-Up Segment, writing at NRO, Deroy Murdock asks…
“Ryancare suffers from a serious ailment: acute Senatitis. Conservative lawmakers prescribe urgent intervention to correct this condition. They fret that leaving it untreated could make the entire Republican party gravely ill.
Why is Ryancare so sick? In short, it’s a House bill written under Senate rules. House speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and the Republican leadership crafted the uninspiringly named American Health Care Act with an overabundance of caution.They have assumed that Senate Democrats would use a narrow reading of budget law to block major replacement ideas that would cut costs through consumer freedom and choice.
But why should the House GOP leadership be hogtied by Senate Democrats’ potential interpretation of the rules?
Under the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974, the reconciliation process would allow Senate Republicans to avoid a Democratic filibuster and repeal and replace Obamacare with a simple 51-vote majority. Nonetheless, the House GOP-leadership bill excludes popular, important, conservative measures because Democrats might try to disqualify them for having a “merely incidental” budget impact.
Au contraire! Freeing Americans to buy insurance across state lines, encouraging them to launch association health plans (such as Rotarycare for the Rotary Club’s 330,000 members and their loved ones), and letting anyone buy catastrophic coverage would have a significant budgetary impact. If those three ideas alone (among many more) shifted Americans from Medicaid to private insurance or kept them in the free market and out of government programs, this would limit federal outlays — big league. (In other words…
As this reconciliation question arose, Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) did something seldom seen on Capitol Hill: He read the relevant statute.
“The test for reconciliation is codified in the Budget Act of 1974,” Cruz said in an interview. “Repealing the Obamacare insurance mandates — which drive up insurance premiums by billions of dollars and impact the federal government by billions of dollars — is indisputably budgetary in nature.”
“Only a hyper-technical reading of the statute would prevent real repeal on reconciliation,” Cruz explained. “No Republican in Congress or the administration should accept the phony argument that we can’t repeal the insurance mandates, and we can’t drive down premiums, because the parliamentarian won’t let us…We have no ruling from the parliamentarian to that effect.”
Cruz added: “And even if the parliamentarian arrived upon that erroneous interpretation of the statutory language, the Budget Act of 1974 gives the authority to resolve this question to the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence.”
In fact, the word “parliamentarian” appears nowhere in the Budget Act of 1974!Rather than run in fear from Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, Cruz proposes that the House send the Senate a genuine repeal-and-replacement measure.If the Republican-appointed MacDonough does not object, what’s the problem? But if she balks, Pence can overrule her. And, in turn, the Senate’s Republican majority can sustain Pence’s decision.
“Why didn’t WE think of that?!?”
There is a major precedent for Cruz’s concept. The 1996 welfare-reform bill repealed and replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children via reconciliation. That huge federal-assistance program’s budgetary and non-budgetary provisions were swept away through reconciliation. What’s good enough for AFDC is good enough for ACA.
…The real risk is that President Trump will sign Ryancare as written today. Without the cost-reducing, pro-patient provisions that conservatives expect, Ryancare will trigger fresh chaos, including higher insurance premiums.Americans could open their insurance-renewal packets — and discover their rising premiums — in late October 2018. Imagine voters, eager for Obamacare repeal and replacement, feeling baited and switched as their insurance bills climb another 10 to 15 percent, just days before the midterm elections.
“If we pass a so-called Obamacare-repeal bill that leaves premiums still rising,” Senator Cruz warns, “the American people who elected us will rightly be ready to tar and feather Republicans who made false promises to them.”
Tar and feathers would be preferable to what actually may occur.
Ryancare and its discontents could demolish the prospects for securing a 60-seat, filibuster-proof GOP Senate majority. Even worse, Republicans could shrink or even sink their House majority, perhaps returning Nancy Pelosi to the speaker’s chair.
It is unfathomable that two months into a unified Republican government, such a nightmare scenario is being discussed.And yet it is, all because the highly intelligent, truly diligent, and dangerously cautious Paul Ryan has fallen victim to a virus that makes him think like a Senate Democrat.“
Which only makes us elated Ryan didn’t have the votes on Thursday to pass TrumpCare; and which is why we continue to refer to the GOP not only The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight, but as The Party of Stupid.
Which brings us to The Lighter Side:
Finally, we’ll call it a day with another disturbingly sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter…
“Three young boys have beaten a flamingo to death and badly injured another at a Czech zoo.The youngsters – aged five, six and eight – committed the unspeakable act by throwing rocks at the birds. According to local reports, they initially tried to attack an entire flock of the American flamingos at Jihlava Zoo in the Czech Republic’s south-central Vysocina Region.
The children, who have not been named, are thought to have scaled a fence to get near enough to the flamingos to be able to strike them with the rocks. They were kicking two of the birds when a local workman interrupted them. They fled the scene but police tracked them down using CCTV footage.
This is the latest in a series of shocking attacks on zoo animals which Heat Street has reported. Earlier this month, a male white rhino was shot dead by poachers at a zoo in the Parisian suburb of Thoiry. The poachers sawed off the rhino’s horn. Just a few days earlier in the north African state of Tunisia, a group of visitors at Belvedere Zoo in the country’s capital Tunis pelted a crocodile to death in what city officials denounced as “savage behavior.” And last month a much loved hippopotamus called Gustavito died after being savagely beaten in El Salvador’s national zoo.
…Martin Malac, the zoo’s spokesman, told Czech media that the boys had expressed no regret for what they had done.It’s claimed they refused to talk to municipal police so officers had to call in state police to deal with them. They are still investigating. It’s thought likely the boys’ parents will have to pay a fine…”
A fine…just a fine?!? That it’s incredibly disturbing children this young could intentionally inflict such harm on any of God’s creatures goes without saying. No, what puzzles us is how on earth the parents of these murderous mongrels permitted their progeny free-range privileges…and what the Czech authorities are going to do about it.
Not that it means anything, but as we recall, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper, Dennis Rader, Lee Malvo and a number of other infamous serial killers had similar starts. Just sayin’…!!!
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