"a frenzy of primal extremism"

Conrad Black’s take on President Trump and the potential historical impact of his policies is encouraging. Black concludes:  

Donald Trump’s greatest achievement may be the total annihilation of the Democratic Party in its present mutated and degraded form. The Democrats have been allowed to slither to their present state of moral degradation with the witless and spineless collaboration of look-alike Republicans who are easy to defeat, like McCain and Romney, or can be survived, like Reagan and the Bushes, or destroyed, like Nixon.

Faced with a Trump they could not defeat and cannot destroy, Democrats appear to be entering a frenzy of primal extremism. If the Democrats go to the voters next year as the party of infanticide, open borders, a 70 percent top personal income tax rate, and the practical abolition of private health care, they will vanish more quickly, and with less distinction, than the Whigs, who at least had serious leaders like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln before their party imploded. This thronging riff-raff of Democratic presidential aspirants couldn’t lead the country across Washington’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, and won’t get an invitation to try.

The full article at American Greatness is here.

# # #

SOTU and the Women in White

photo credit: Breitbart

Breitbart caption: 

President Donald Trump did the unthinkable Tuesday night during his State of the Union address: he inspired a phalanx of left-wing women members of Congress,

 wearing white in protest, to jump to their feet and applaud.

Lots of commentary on President Trump’s State of the Union speech last night – but here’s part of Don Surber’s posting:

President Trump gave Americans a reason to stand up and cheer their nation.

Even Democrats.

In 2018, they stoically refused to applaud anything in his speech even when he noted Democrats were doing well.

This year, be broke that wall of their resistance like it was Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on Election Day. It happened earlier in the speech.

“So let’s work together, compromise, and reach a deal that will truly make America safe. As we work to defend our people’s safety, we must also ensure our economic resurgence continues at a rapid pace. No one has benefited more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58% of the newly created jobs last year,” President Trump said.

The Women In White stood and cheered.

“You weren’t supposed to do that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before,” President Trump said.

“Don’t sit yet. You are going to like this. And exactly one century after Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in the Congress than at any time before.”

Then they really celebrated and shouted USA! USA! USA!

At that point, the president made it cool to want to Make America Great Again.

That scene told the tale of the night. He made those congresswomen feel good about themselves and about their country.

His full column is here. Full transcript of the SOTU speech is here (Conservative Treehouse).

# # # 

UPDATE: Patricia McCarthy at American Thinker had a more critical take:

Trump's SOTU speech was wonderful, factual and optimistic.  It was a celebration of America and the successes of the last two years.  No one would know it by the visible response of the ladies in white (allegedly an homage to women's suffrage), the mostly newly elected Democrat congresswomen.  The only part of the speech they sincerely applauded was themselves – more women in Congress.  For most of the rest of the speech, they sat on their hands, looking mad (Mazie Hirono), glum (all of them), petulant and dismissive (Kamala Harris), bored and studiously disinterested (Nancy Pelosi).  

. . .

It was a pathetic, un-American spectacle, those women.  In the end, they are about one thing, one thing only: rage.  Rage at whom and what?  Who knows?  But it cannot be the country.  Look at where they are, the success they've attained.  Each of them is an example of the opportunity, freedom, and equality that only this nation provides, and still they are angry.  They still want to abort fully formed infants, tax the rich into oblivion, and impose Venezuelan-style socialism on us all.

McCarthy's article is here.

# # #

Rainy afternoon in Cleveland

photo credit: patdooleyphotography

# # #

Super Bowl, competition, and politics

Ira Stoll's "Patriots Ignite Political Debate On Success" at The NY Sun on the Super Bowl:

American politics at the moment can pretty much be explained by what you make of the record sixth Super Bowl victory by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, coach Bill Belichick, and owner Robert Kraft.

One view of it is to marvel at, and celebrate, the hard work, risk-taking, and skill that produced the achievement. That’s the more conservative view of it.

Another is to complain about it and wish the winning were more evenly distributed. That’s the more left-leaning view of it. . . .

There is more with which to agree and disagree here.

# # #

Illegal aliens and national security

From our friends at Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 31, 2019

Is U.S. State Department Burglary suspect a known Mexican Illegal Alien?

Cleveland, Ohio – Steve Salvi, Founder of Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC today is calling for a federal investigation regarding serious breaches of security in January at State Department buildings in Washington, D.C and Arlington, VA. The two State Department buildings were burglarized January 3. A suspect, Joel Enriquez-Bueno was later arrested by the Arlington Police Department. Salvi believes the suspect now in detention at the Arlington County Detention Center may be the same Mexican illegal alien felon he has been recently investigating.

Salvi, who has conducted immigration policy and national security research since 2001, stated that he has federal criminal court documents for a Mexican illegal alien defendant also named Joel Enriquez-Bueno. Salvi says that that Joel Enriquez-Bueno is a convicted felon and has an arrest record dating back to 2003.

“If the two Joel Enriquez-Bueno's are one in the same, an investigation needs to find out how he has been able to remain free in the U.S. For so long. According to court records, he is an illegal alien with no known address, no money, but able to get multiple past arrest charges for assault from 2013 dismissed in New Jersey. In 2016 he was caught in possession with an illegally issued New York State Benefit card and U.S. Social Security card. Any individual, prosecutor, or city found violating the law by providing him sanctuary, should be prosecuted,” said Salvi.

“How is it possible that anyone, especially an illegal alien felon, is able to gain access to two U.S. State Department offices and walk off with dozens of government cell phones and other electronics that may contain sensitive if not classified information? There's more to this story than we currently know and what has reported in the press, “ Said Salvi.

Salvi's investigation of the Department of State burglaries uncovered a January 18, 2016 U.S. District Court Criminal Complaint for the Western District of Texas. That criminal complaint charged a Joel Enriquez-Bueno with violating Section 1326 of Title 8 of the United State's Code.

According to Salvi, Section 1326 offenses generally relates to aliens who have previously attempted illegal entry into the U.S. and or previously removed from the U.S. by the Department of Homelands Security. He said that Enriquez-Bueno had already been removed from the U.S. four times according to federal court records.

“Any breach of security is bad. If State Department security was breached by a foreign national, it doesn't get worse. This breach could have resulted in espionage, a shooting, or bombing in addition to theft of devices that may contain sensitive if not classified information.”

“This should be a wake up call not only for State but those who also oppose border infrastructure, call to abolish ICE, and create sanctuaries for criminal illegal aliens like Joel Enriquez-Bueno. ”

“It's time our public officials stop ignoring the lessons of 9-11 and take homeland security and immigration law enforcement seriously,” said Salvi.

-30-

Ohio Jobs and Justice PAC website: click here.

Undeclared Civil War

cartoon credit: anticap.wordpress.com

Steve McCann published a provocative essay at American Thinker titled “The Ruling Class and an Undeclared Civil War.” Tea Party people are part of his scenario:

. . . the current social structure has evolved into a near impregnable three-tier categorization in which the ruling class, that sits astride the social order, has revealed, thanks to the election of Donald Trump, open and unabashed disdain for the two lower classes and the unleashing of a radicalized army of malcontents.

The citizens who provide the primary labor and resources for the economic engine of the country constitute the second tier.  The third is comprised of those who have been betrayed by a self-serving education system and are conditioned to be totally dependent upon a government dominated by the ruling class.

. . .

There is at present an undeclared and non-violent civil war being waged in this country.  The underlying factor of any civil war is an elite ruling class desperate to maintain power at odds with a majority of a population seeking change.   Also prevalent in most civil upheavals is the unleashing, by those determined to retain power, of the radicalized and ultimately uncontrollable dogs of war who more often than not devour their sponsors.  Both elements are currently in play.

While the ruling class publicly obsesses over Donald Trump and denigrates the vast majority of the population, they have planted the seeds, by their actions, for a takeover of the country by a radical element that will turn on them as they are presently doing within the Democratic Party.

The American people must understand that the current ruling class will not willingly exit the stage or take on their mercenary army.  Donald Trump, while perhaps accomplishing a significant degree of change, cannot induce their demise.   This threat can only be marginalized through the determined utilization of political process which will encompass a number of political cycles and the long-term willingness to not be intimidated or cowed into submission.  The future of the nation as founded is at stake.

The full essay is worth reading; click here.

# # #

Voter fraud update

image credit:thedailysheeple.com

It's better than stuffing the ballot box. Investors Business Daily picked up the report:

Voter Fraud: When President Donald Trump brought up the idea that non-citizens were casting ballots in elections, the reaction was fast and furious. Such a thing, if it exists at all, is exceedingly rare, we were told. But when one state decided to take a close look, it found something quite different.

After a yearlong voter-fraud probe, Texas discovered that, lo and behold, 95,000 people identified as non-citizens had voter registrations. What's more, 58,000 of them voted in one or more Texas elections.

When Attorney General Ken Paxton led the state's investigation, he noted that Texas had already found 165 non-citizens in four counties who had cast 100 illegal votes in two years.

But wait. Isn't all this stuff about non-citizens voting a load of bull? When Trump appointed a voter-fraud commission in 2017, Democrats and the press howled in protest.

Sure, Trump almost certainly exaggerated the number of non-citizen voters. But in response, Time magazine declared that we "know that ineligible non-citizens do not vote in American elections." Vox.com, the "explanatory" news site, derided Trump as "indulging the long-standing myth of the non-citizen voter." Harvard researchers said that there is "no evidence" that non-citizens vote.

Less than a year after he put it together, Trump disbanded his commission, not because it didn't find anything, but because it faced a fusillade of lawsuits and stonewalling from state election officials.

More here. What about Ohio? Eric Eggers at Breitbart reported on the most recent election cycles:

Republican Troy Balderson clings to a narrow margin in last night’s special election for Ohio’s 12th Congressional district, underscoring the impact voter fraud can have in key elections around the country.

The separation of 1700 votes, or less than one percent, highlights the recent attempt by Democratic activists to fight efforts to prevent voter fraud from occurring.

For the past four years, George Soros has spent millions of dollars trying to weaken Ohio’s election security by funding efforts to both block its implementation of Voter ID and prevent the state from removing inaccurate registrations.

Soros pledged $5 million to fund Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias’s efforts to fight voter ID laws in Ohio and two other states ahead of the 2016 election. 

. . .

Consider that 170 registered voters listed as being over 116 years old still existed on the rolls of Ohio’s 12th Congressional when GAI accessed the data last August. That’s 10 percent of Balderson’s current margin of victory, pending provisional ballots. And 72 voters over the age of 116 who “live” in Balderson’s district cast ballots in the 2016 election.

But the Left hasn’t given up trying to create conditions favorable for voter fraud in Ohio. As former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has pointed out, “hyper-partisan liberals…have their eyes on Ohio.” Electing a Democrat as the state’s top elections official would undoubtedly roll back the hard-won safeguards Ohio has implemented. And as Blackwell points out, as goes Ohio, so goes the Presidency.

And it does not look good. Just two days ago, Peter Skurkiss at American Thinker reported:

Ben Stein, a once on-again, off-again conservative, now associates himself with a left-wing advocacy group called Policy Matters Ohio as a "staff associate."  Stein's affiliation with this non-profit came to light when he recently authored an opinion piece in the Akron Beacon Journal titled "Make it automatic for the people." 

Make what automatic?

Why, make voter registration automatic.  As if voting laws and policies haven't been weakened enough, there is now a drive across the country to make voter registration automatic.  It goes under the name Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), and 15 states have already enacted it in one form or another.

AVR works basically like this.  When a person has an interaction with a state government agency (say, Department of Motor Vehicle or a welfare agency), the data he gives will automatically be transferred to the Election Board.  And – presto – that person is registered to vote, unless choosing to opt out.  

Stein is disingenuous when he says AVR would screen out those ineligible to vote, such as non-citizens.  The fact is, there's no reliable way to ensure that all registrants are citizens.  

Read the rest here.

# # #

Speaking of Fake News

Here's chuckle from Powerline's The Week In Pictures: Epidemic Fakery Edition:

And in case you couldn't embiggen the image to read the caption:

"We're getting an unconfirmed report from anonymous sources making unverified claims in an out-of-context video, which -- if true, is huge news, and if not -- utter horse hockey."

Cartoon by Rick McKee  

# # #

Long term: getting along

photo credit (raid on Michael Cohen's office): freespeechden.com

Everyone has watched the media manipulate the Covington students harassed by the faux Vietnam vet beating his drum. Everyone watched the CNN footage of the FBI storming Roger Stone’s home at 6am. The corruption of the FBI, the DOJ, & the media is blatant. It's every day. But half the people I know don’t see it. Those who do see it are swimming against the current. And it is difficult to imagine that things will end well. John Hawkins at PJ Media pondered the problem in a thoughtful piece which concludes that

the basic response came down to, “He’s a smiling white kid wearing a MAGA hat, therefore he deserves everything he gets.”

It would be nice to make it into a joke by calling it what it really is, a “hat crime,” but it’s not funny. If you’re willing to falsely brand a kid as a racist, a Nazi, and a horrible person because he stood there and smiled while some weirdo beat a drum in his face, where do we go from there? . . . If Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination in 2020, is it acceptable to try to destroy the lives of random liberal teenagers for wearing “I’m With Joe” shirts?

This is the world liberals are dragging us into with their myopic vision, unquenchable hatred for people who disagree with them, and their raging intolerance. Is this good for the country? No way. Will it produce a better America? No. Is it entirely possible that this sort of thinking could lead to increasing amounts of political violence? Absolutely, because you can’t live in harmony with people who think there’s no punishment too great for people who wear hats designed to support their political opponents. 

Then again, maybe those Covington students represent hope for the next generations.

# # #

NewsGuard's Media Blacklist

art credit: inforrm.wordpress.com

Microsoft Teams with Establishment ‘NewsGuard’ to Create News Blacklist:

Without consulting with its users, Microsoft has installed an establishment media browser extension, purportedly designed to rate the accuracy of news websites, as a default setting on mobile versions of its Edge browser. In practice, it creates a news blacklist by warning users away from sites including Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail.

The browser extension, called “Newsguard,” presents users with a red warning label if they navigate to a website that it judges to be unreliable. A “green” rating is given to websites that NewsGuard considers trustworthy.

A number of pro-Trump websites, including Breitbart News, are given a “red” rating by the extension.

NewsGuard itself is not new, but its installation by Microsoft is. In a related Breitbart story titled “Bill Kristol Correctly Describes NewsGuard: ‘Establishment People’ Like ‘Establishment Websites’”:

In a March 2018 interview with NewsGuard Executive Editor James Warren, establishment conservative Bill Kristol correctly noted that NewsGuard, an app and browser plug-in which allows users to avoid what it considers “fake news” websites, would face skepticism since “establishment people” like “establishment websites.” NewsGuard has added Breitbart News, the Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail to its “fake news” blacklist.

. . .

NewsGuard lists Breitbart News, the Daily Mail, and the Drudge Report as fake news websites, but gives the all-clear to CNN, Buzzfeed, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Vice News, despite recent high profile fake news stories from a variety of these approved sites.

CNN? Buzzfeed? New York Times? Good grief. Who is making the decisions about what is and is not Fake News. Yet more media and social malpractice.

UPDATE 8:35pm on 1/23: A reader posted this as Reply #3 at the Lucianne aggregator:

While I think this is terrible, it is only on the phone version of [Mircrosoft's] Edge. Since the three users of that browser work for Microsoft I am not sure that anyone will notice. 

# # #

What is a Xanatos Gambit?

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit

The reactions to Trump’s White House speech offering a compromise to get the Wall funded and stop the partial government shutdown were in many ways predictable. Ann Coulter was apoplectic, the mainstream media called President Trump more names, and Democrat leadership Schumer and Pelosi rejected his proposal out-of-hand. Some conservative commentators were of the opinion that Trump knew full well his proposal would be rejected by the Democrats, putting them in the intransigence column in order to pacify their hard-to-the-left base, while not seriously advancing any real concessions to Dreamers. Maybe.

But one of the more interesting takes was at Chicago Boyz and linked via American Thinker:

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a ‘Xanatos Gambit’ is a plan for which all foreseeable outcomes benefit the creator — including ones that superficially appear to be failure.  

And here’s the theoretical application to the Wall stand-off:

President Trump’s “Big  Macs served at the White House” and grounding Speaker Pelosi’s Congressional Junkets on military transports during a government shut down over funding “The Wall” are both very much in that “Xanatos Gambit” frame work.  President Trump is staying on the offensive so House Democrats and the media cannot “get off a shot” over the Government shut down. 

More at all the links.

# # #

Eclipse tonight – no visibility in NE Ohio

blood moon photo by Doug Murray 

APnews has the thumbnail report on this evening’s lunar eclipse:

The celestial curtain will be rising soon on a lunar extravaganza.

Sunday night, the Earth will slide directly between the moon and the sun, creating a total lunar eclipse. There won’t be another until 2021.

It will also be the year’s first supermoon, when a full moon appears a little bigger and brighter thanks to its slightly closer position.

The entire eclipse will exceed three hours. Totality — when the moon’s completely bathed in Earth’s shadow — will last an hour. Expect the eclipsed, or blood moon, to turn red from sunlight scattering off Earth’s atmosphere.

Everyone everywhere can catch the supermoon, weather permitting. But the entire eclipse will be visible only in North and South America, and across the Atlantic to western and northern Europe.

Another report from ALNews [Alabama News] is here, and it shows the cloud cover map. Cleveland is in the middle of a winter storm with total cloud cover. So if you want to watch the supermoon and the eclipse, here’s the link to the eclipse livestream on YouTube (start checking the link around 10:30pm).

# # #

Election ‘reform’ encourages voter fraud

image credit: zazzle.com

A couple of days ago, I posted “How To Steal An Election,” highlighting analyses by J. Christian Adams at PJ Media. Today at Fox News, John Fund is sounding the alarm as well:

Pelosi's election ‘reform’ encourages voter fraud to benefit Dems

When Democrats reclaimed majority control of the House of Representatives under Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California this month, they had many choices on what to make their top legislative priority.

It says a lot that the new majority made a bill to upend federal election law House Resolution 1. The measure would give Democrats a partisan advantage over Republicans in everything from campaign finance to regulating online political ads.

Democrats would even go after the right of states to set “the time, manner and place” of elections that is guaranteed to them by the Constitution. States would be required to automatically register everyone in government databases as a voter unless individuals explicitly opted out.

In 2012, the Pew Research Center found that more than 3 million people were registered to vote in more than one state. In addition, 1.8 million dead people were on the voter registration rolls.

Requiring automatic voter registration would inject even more errors and potential for fraud into our already dubious voter rolls.

Under the Democratic bill, states would be required to offer voter registration online. They would also be required to offer at least 15 days of early voting and unlimited absentee balloting.

All of these so-called “reforms” trample on the rights of local election officials and raise the risk of fraud. And there is no crying need for such federal big-footing.

. . .

Please read the rest here. The group “MassFiscal” attempted to identify election and voter irregularities in Massachusetts and encountered considerable resistance. The report concludes that

other Democrats may not be concerned about evidence of possible voter fraud, but MassFiscal is hoping the local U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI may be. The group has sent its findings to the federal officials and is hoping someone in government will listen.

# # #

Thomas Sowell 1 -- AOC 0

This one is making the rounds...

# # #

How To Steal An Election

image credit: iowalabornews.com

The Electoral College is one of our guardians of states’ rights. J. Christian Adams reported on another priority of the Democrat-majority House of Representatives:

If you thought the midterm elections had problems, wait until you learn about Nancy Pelosi’s plan to terminate state control over American elections.

Democrats in Congress have announced their top legislative priority, and it isn’t health care, immigration, or taxes. Instead, they want to centralize power over elections in Washington, D.C. H.R. 1 is number one on the legislative agenda because it is the number one priority of House Democrats, leftist groups, deep-pocketed dark money, and those who use election process rules to help win elections -- or at least to cause chaos.

The bill is a 571-page dreamscape of wild wishes and federal mandates on states. The Constitution decentralizes power over American elections and puts states in charge. H.R. 1 would undo that.

Decentralization promotes individual liberty. When power over elections is centralized, it is easier for that power to be abused. When power over elections is decentralized, no single malevolent actor can exert improper control over the process. That is precisely why Democrats are so eager for Washington, D.C., to have more power over our elections.

H.R. 1 has 218 cosponsors. It forces states to implement mandatory voter registration. If someone is on a government list -- such as receiving welfare benefits or rental subsidies -- then they would be automatically registered to vote.

Few states have enacted these systems because Americans still view civic participation as a voluntary choice. Moreover, aggregated government lists always contain duplicates and errors that states, even without mandatory voter registration, frequently fail to catch and fix.

H.R. 1 also mandates that states allow all felons to vote. . . .

H.R. 1 would also force states to have extended periods of early voting, and mandates that early voting sites be near bus or subway routes. . . .

H.R. 1 mandates same-day voter registration and would obliterate state registration procedures. 

The full report is at PJ Media here. I doubt this will ever pass, but it certainly exposes the Progressive Left’s agenda.

# # #

Those phone calls = “public pressure”

Good news. Breitbart reports:

Six Republican Senators have failed to develop a coalition for their plan that exchanges a fifth of border wall funding for an amnesty for illegal aliens and increased immigration.

The plan, described to Breitbart News, was a creation of Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Susan Collins (R-ME), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and would have tied $5.7 billion in funding for President Trump’s proposed border wall to an amnesty for illegal aliens enrolled and eligible in President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Sen. Rob Portman is always a squish, but I had thought that Sen. Lindsay Graham was finally growing a spine. But you knew he was playing both ends against the middle on border security when he encouraged Pres. Trump the other day to declare an emergency and build The Wall. At least now he is backing off the DACA amnesty: “I see no path forward...”

More here.  

# # #

ACTION ALERT: DACA rearing its head again / and UPDATE

UPDATE from NumbersUSA:

Thursday afternoon, Vice President Mike Pence announced that Pres. Trump would not sign off on such a deal. Politico reported: 

Vice President Mike Pence and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had been consulting with senators about the matter on Thursday. Pence and Mulvaney took the idea to the president, who shot it down, according to multiple people directly involved in the talks. 

Again, thanks to all of the NumbersUSA activists who took action to help quell this threat!

Any calls that you made have made a difference!

-----------

The latest from NumbersUSA:

Gang of 8 sponsor, Sen. Lindsey Graham, working on DACA amnesty deal –

Urge Senate Republicans to oppose!

Amnesty-supporter, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), met with several other Senate Republicans and Pres. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on Wednesday to draw up an 'Amnesty-for-Wall' deal that they will pitch to Senate Democrats today [i.e., yesterday].

Voters didn't elect Donald Trump to the White House back in 2016 to pass an amnesty. They elected him because he was strong on enforcement and understood mass immigration's harmful impacts on American workers and their quality of life.

We need your urgent phone calls to senate republicans urging them to oppose any deal that trades border funding for amnesty!

Here is the number for your GOP Senator(s):

Sen. Rob Portman -- (202) 224-3353

You can also call the White House and tell Pres. Trump not to support an amnesty-for-wall deal!

WH Comment Line -- (202) 456-1111

It’s always good to have a better alternative when you are the phone or leaving a message. Here’s CTP's Ralph King’s suggested alternative (from his social media):

Instead of contemplating a deal of backdoor amnesty for DACA DREAMERS in exchange for Wall Funding, President Trump & the so-called "conservatives" in Congress should be pushing for Mandatory E-Verify.....

“Of all of the proposals, however, E-Verify would be the most effective at curbing illegal entries and limiting non-immigrant overstays. And the president could likely make it mandatory through executive action,” added Arthur, now a legal expert with the Center for Immigration Studies.

The push for the simple employment verification system, currently a voluntary opt-in for non-government contractors, comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed stunning new statistics of workplace enforcement investigations.

# # #

Trump’s Rhetorical Knockout Blow by Conrad Black

Cartoon credit: Pixshark.com

We all saw reactions to the President’s Oval  Office speech on border security and the rebuttal by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Some of the “memes” were pretty funny. But the most thoughtful commentary that I have seen so far comes from Conrad Blackin his article for National Review, “Trump’s Rhetorical Knockout Blow.” Some highlights:

The president was clear, factually unchallengeable, and credible, and Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer looked and sounded like a waxworks animated illustration of the embalmer’s art and her ventriloquist, the bearer of the broadest forehead since Pericles. The president spoke of a national-security, economic, and humanitarian crisis, and they spoke of the federal employees who are about to miss a paycheck. After Tuesday night’s eight-minute speech by the president from the Oval Office, the satisfactory resolution of the impasse over the government shutdown is fairly obvious. The president cannot abandon the border-security issue now, and the Democrats think they have him in a corner. The Democrats entered into this contest for the public’s support believing that as soon as the first paycheck is skipped, the lackey national media will be in 24–7 interviews with the sick wives, children, and relatives of the 800,000 unpaid federal employees. Public opinion will heave, the Republican senators will collapse, and the president will be splendidly humiliated.

Everyone with the slightest familiarity with the issue as it has arisen has seen the Democrats go from semi-zealots of border security to vapid opportunists laser-focused on the simplest aspect of unpaid federal employees. The president reminded the country of the proportions of the illegal-immigration issue — of the humanitarian tragedy, of the drug crisis, and of the crimes of an appreciable number of the illegal immigrants. The tactical problem of the Democrats is that they are so cynical they think no one will notice that they have come down steadily from $1.3 billion for border security to zero, in their conviction that they can put the unpaid federal employees’ problems ahead of what is an immense national crisis. They evidently believe that the endlessly repeated mantra of “the wall” as immoral, like 19th-century elocution students learning to spell by repeating such triumphalist expressions of literacy as “W-A-L-L spells wall,” will distract the country from the real problem. Their proposition to “open the government” (by Trump’s total capitulation and we will go back to interminable fruitless negotiation about the real problem) won’t fly. It is indicative of the serene complacency of the Democrats that they expect their control of the national political media to remain so airtight that no appreciable share of the public will dissent from their strategy, which is to give lip service to “border security” while portraying the president as peddling, as one of their lesser spokesmen put it last week, “a medieval fifth-century solution for a 21st-century problem.” The fact that he missed the middle ages by several hundred years is a rounding error for the Democrats, as they point to the Washington Post’s claim that the president has uttered 7,600 lies since he was inaugurated.

. . .

This torrent of illegal migrants is not the sort of immigration that is justly celebrated at Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty, of responsible people soberly determining to make their way to a new country, to enter it legally and become civic-minded contributors to their new nationality. It more closely resembles the movement of large masses of people, en bloc, ahead of the barbarians and into the territory of the Roman Empire in the third to fifth centuries a.d. They had no interest in Rome, but were terrified by the Asiatic hordes driving them westwards. Of course, this is not exactly what we have on the southern border of the United States now, though the effluxion of millions of refugees from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa into Europe in the last decade more closely approximates that than it does conventional immigration.

And it concludes:

The painful truth is that the American government has failed to deal with immigration, health care, infrastructure, and even abortion, though it at least managed to fumble that into the lap of the courts. It is a shambles, and the Democrats have tried to prevent Trump from dealing with any of it with this mendacious idiocy about collusion with Russia, and the nasty fantasy of removal from office by impeachment. Ultimately, the country will reward this president for getting the country’s government to function usefully, even as many regret that those elected to rule in difficult times are not always those that would be selected by typecasting studios.

Read the rest here .

# # #

Update on Trump's border security speech

U P D A T E S

Yesterday's blog reported that the major TV networks were not sure they would broadcast President Trump's speech this evening on border security - and The Wall. Here are two updates, both via Breitbart: 

UPDATE: According to new reports, every major news network plans to televise President Trump’s first address from the Oval Office Tuesday night.

CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News and Fox Business all plan to air Trump’s address focusing on border security.

UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer to Deliver Democrat Response to Trump Address

# # #