When did it become cool to disrespect the national anthem?

Short answer: It's not.

I used to live in a nation where it was verboten to disrespect the national anthem and the flag. Long ago, the Left made desecration of the flag an acceptable form of political "speech" and the Supreme Court agreed.  We acceded to this, because it was rare and flag burners were obviously radicals who we knew hated the country.  When Smith and Carlos raised the Black Power salute at the '68 Olympics, they were roundly criticized, but it was understandable in the context of the times.  It was wrong then, and remains wrong today.

Colin Kaepernick thought he'd give himself some relevance by latching on to the morally bankrupt and dubious BLM agenda by taking a knee during the national anthem last year.  He's really the symptom, though, of something that has been happening really since the '60s, the inability, or unwillingness of people to appreciate, that by the miracle of the place of their birth, they get to live in the greatest, freest, most tolerant and diverse country on the planet, where people, even today, can rise from poverty to be a Supreme Court jurist, or run a huge fast food chain, coach a Super Bowl winning team, or even be President.

We need fewer Colin Kaepernicks and more Alejandro Villanuevas.

Now, here are some things I don't need.

I have no need of people disrespecting the country that is a beacon of freedom to the world, that has enshrined individual rights in its Constitution, and that has only asked in fighting foreign wars for a place to bury its dead.

I have no need of people dishonoring the men who fought to secure that freedom and the men who wrote those documents, who did so at great peril.  If we had lost, every one of those men who signed the Declaration of Independence would have been tried as a traitor to Britain (they were) and likely executed.

I have no need of people who won't acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of men died in a bloody civil war to free slaves and reunite the union and ensure the promise of the Declaration.

I have no need of those who ignore that these men's sons and grandson's fought in two world wars, in one final act saving the world from the scourge of the Nazis.

I have no need of those who find it acceptable to disgrace the men and women who served under the flag when the government wasn't allowing them to win in Vietnam, and conversely, when the government did provide the resources to face down the Soviets and stick the failed ideology of communism into the ash heap of History where it belongs.

I'm not a fan of compulsory military service, but, I think there's merit to the argument.

Why?

As the percentage of the populace who serves in the military continues to decrease, we find ourselves as a society increasingly disconnected from the personal sacrifices faced every day by men and women who serve, willingly, in dangerous places like Kabul, Mosul, Syria; at bases in far removed from their families like Djibouti, Guam, Diego Garcia, Incirlik, and on ships at sea for months at a time.

For parts of the country (I'm looking at YOU, Northeast and California), you're half as likely to run into someone who served as in the Sunbelt.  It's easy for rich, entitled brats to enjoy the blessings of liberty when they're largely being secured by young men and women from the places they detest.

Because we no longer enjoy the shared experience that every family could sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner and pray for at least one family member who was serving, or had served, we have fewer and fewer collective connections to our men and women who protect us, at great personal sacrifice, every day.

When BLM,  millionaire pro athletes, Hollywood Liberals, or NYC-DC axis "journalists" preen about anthem protests being about racism, or police brutality, or about the plight of minorities in this country, forgive me if I barf and say "Screw you."  The anthem is about these men and women who served. It's about the men who gave us this Republic.  It's about freedom.

It is one of the last of those shared experiences that ties us ALL to those who nobly made this country the last, best hope of earth.  It is why removing our hats, facing the flag, and placing our hand over our heart for 3 minutes at some sporting event is so important. When you abstain, you dishonor these men and women. Period.

Steyn on Comey

Mark Steyn, on Comedy and Trumprussia:

'Rubio's right: Trump is not "under investigation". That's a significant fact, and the only unleaked fact. Everything else leaks non-stop: Someone who met with someone who once worked for Trump in some hotel near Trump Tower two months before he launched his campaign once had business dealings with someone who knows a Kazakh oligarch who used to be close to someone close to Putin...

'This is thin gruel. It only thickens and congeals and sticks if in the general atmosphere Trump himself is believed to be "under investigation".

 'He isn't, and never has been. Comey confirmed that to Trump three times. '

Boeing Going Strong - Why Trump Matters

Because even if Donald J Trump gets very little accomplished legislatively, he has significantly changed the Executive's approach to dealing with issues like trade and regulations.

Boeing's CEO, in an interview with Aviation Week, noted:

"What we have with President Trump is an administration that is welcoming business input. We’re glad to have a seat at the table as we think through things like trade policy, tax reform, regulatory reform and a strong and stable defense budget. The president is very good at inviting dialog and is open to ideas and inputs."

Pressed about Boeing's business in China:

"I think that conversation has led to a very productive engagement between the U.S. and China. President Xi [Jinping’s] visit [to the U.S.] and the dialog he had with President Trump set a very cooperative tone. The world needs more than 39,000 new commercial airplanes over the next 20 years, and almost 6,800 of those will be in China. We’ve been able to make the case to the president and his administration that a productive trade relationship with China can create this kind of mutual growth."

Of course, Boeing wants to leverage the administration's "fair" trade stance to stop what it considers dumping by our Canadian neighbors:

"The fact that this airplane is being sold to customers in Canada at a much higher price than it’s being sold to [Delta Air Lines] should also provide pause. It’s clearly a classic dumping case. We stand on the principle of a fair and level playing field for trade."

Trump's trade and immigration rhetoric will turn out to have been mostly bluster.  He's turning out to be much more a mainline conservative republican, in the mold of, oh, Marco Rubio.

He just needs to ignore the ongoing attempts by Democrats and the Media to smear and slow him down, and get to work on doing the work the American people sent him there to do (and keep saying that, like Bill Clinton, over and over and over).

Trump v. Comey - Trump Wins (alternatively, Comey Loses)

It's been since March since I posted here.

What's happened?

Whether you post hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or rarely, the news in the Era of Trump changes so quickly you just can't keep up.

This week, of course, we had all the Comey news.

Andrew McCarthy does have a good take on this entire thing this weekend, and I commend it to you.  McCarthy, as you may know, wrote an incredibly important book, "The Grand Jihad" about how Islamism and the Left have teamed to shred America's Constitutional Democracy.  McCarthy was the federal prosecutor who convicted the Blind Sheikh who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing, and he makes all the ties to CAIR, ISNA, and other Muslim front groups who are engaged in terrorist activities here and abroad.

It's a must read if you want to know what's the lay of the land with these groups.

With that said, McCarthy's take on Trump/Russia and Comey (who McCarthy counts as a friend) is important.

You can read the essay for his take.

This is about mine.

Mine is that Comey is not the Boy Scout that people want to make him out to be.  He's a smart man who came up in the ranks at the FBI to get to be Director, and that takes no small amount of political acumen.

It also takes competence and hard work, and accomplishments, and all those things speak well of Comey.

But just as the Peter Principle is in play in every large organization, so the FBI is not immune from it, and with Comey, I think we may just have a bit of it, coupled with a desire to cover his ass and make up for his obvious shortcomings as the Cowardly Lion of the FBI.

I listened to Comey's testimony (alright, I admit, some of the dumber Democrat senators earned a mute button - don't blame me, I did need to get some work done, but seriously, who wants to hear Kamala Harris - the dumbest senator since Patty Murray and Claire McCaskill, or Ron Wyden?).  My initial impression was of a guy who admitted under oath that he at times acted cowardly, admitted hs was often confused and befuddled, and was, with respect to Trump, acting like a disgruntled employee.

Other than the fact that he did tell Trump three times he personally was not under investigation (this is at the crux of McCarthy's argument, so go read him if you want to understand why this was so important to Trump), a key take-away was Obama's AG, Loretta Lynch, asking, no ordering him to use the term "matter" to describe a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, which gave him a "queasy feeling."  But not queasy enough to act [pro[perl

He went on:

"And, again, you look back in hindsight, you think should I have resisted harder? I just said, all right, it isn't worth -- this isn't a hill worth dying on and so I just said, OK, the press is going to completely ignore it. And that's what happened. 

"When I said, we have opened a matter, they all reported the FBI has an investigation open. And so that concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about FBI's work and that's concerning.

"It gave the impression that the attorney general was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way a political campaign was describing the same activity, which was inaccurate. 

"We had a criminal investigation open with -- as I said before, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We had an investigation open at the time, and so that gave me a queasy feeling."

What we have here in this case is a guy willing to look the other way on the FBI's own rules and policies, and when he knows he is being manipulated by a political operative (Lynch) disguised as his boss, he says nothing of her actions, but uses it as an excuse for his horribly ill-advised non-indictment of Hillary Clinton.

Then there is the leaking.

This guy is the former Director of the FBI and he deigns it as acceptable to leak memos which are the property of the United States taxpayers, and that are subject to Executive Privilege, to the media, involving a "friend" of his in his duplicity, all in the effort to cause a Special Prosecutor to be named.  This wasn't your ordinary, "let's get the truth out there" leak.  This was designed with a political purpose, an arrow aimed right at the administration, who had so clumsily, and I am sure in Comey's mind, wrongly, let him go.

These are not the actions, boys and girls, of a Boy Scout. These are the actions of a man who has some kind of axe to grind, as I can't see how they fit into the CYA category.  These only make him look bad, and the President was right to tweet about this.

IMHO, this makes him not much different from Reality Winner, who leaked for much the same reasons as Comey (a devotion to a rotten causes).

Let's hear Comey's words:

"And my judgment was, I needed to get that out into the public square. And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn't do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a close friend of mine to do it."

This guy had plenty of opportunities to do something different.  Just as in the Clinton affair, he looked askance at an AG openly obstructing justice, and decided to take matters in his own hands, this time, he decided that he'd not discuss this with the current AG (or the Deputy AG), but he'd leak these memos, which belong to us, to the NYT through a third party.

Finally, of interest to me is the stake Comey drives through the Russian collusion angle the Democrats have been trying to gin up for weeks (is anyone STILL talking about Jared Kushner and back channels?).

On direct questioning, here is what Comey testifies, under oath:

BURR: Do you have any doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections? 

COMEY: None. 

BURR: Do you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the intrusions in the DNC and the DCCC systems, and the subsequent leaks of that information? 

COMEY: No, no doubt 

BURR: Do you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the cyber intrusion in the state voter files? 

COMEY: No. 

BURR: Do you have any doubt that officials of the Russian government were fully aware of these activities? 

COMEY: No doubt. 

BURR: Are you confident that no votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were altered? 

COMEY: I'm confident. By the time -- when I left as director, I had seen no indication of that whatsoever. 

BURR: Director Comey, did the president at any time ask you to stop the FBI investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. elections? 

COMEY: Not to my understanding, no. 

BURR: Did any individual working for this administration, including the Justice Department, ask you to stop the Russian investigation? 

COMEY: No.

Later, Comey testifies under questioning from future president Marco Rubio (who, I might point out, none other than Alan Dershowitz has praised for his handling of this):

RUBIO: Director Comey, the meeting in the Oval Office where he made the request about Mike Flynn -- was that the only time he asked you to hopefully let it go? 

COMEY: Yes. 

RUBIO: And in that meeting, as you understood it, that was -- he was asking not about the general Russia investigation, he was asking very specifically about the jeopardy that Flynn was in himself?

COMEY: That's how I understood it, yes, sir. 

RUBIO: And as you perceived it, while it was a request that -- he hoped you did away with it, you perceived it as an order, given his position, the setting and the like, and some of the circumstances? 

COMEY: Yes. 

RUBIO: At the time, did you say anything to the president about -- that is not an appropriate request, or did you tell the White House counsel, that is not an appropriate request, someone needs to go tell the president that he can't do these things?

COMEY: I didn't, no. 

RUBIO: OK. Why? 

COMEY: I don't know. I think the -- as I said earlier, I think the circumstances were such that it was -- I was a bit stunned, and didn't have the presence of mind.
And I don't know -- you know, I don't want to make you -- sound like I'm Captain Courageous. I don't know whether, even if I had the presence of mind, I would have said to the president, "Sir, that's wrong." I don't know whether I would have. 

RUBIO: OK. 

COMEY: But in the moment, it -- it didn't -- it didn't come to my mind. What came to my mind is, be careful what you say. And so I said, "I agree Flynn is a good guy.” 

RUBIO: So, on the cloud -- we keep talking about this cloud -- you perceived the cloud to be the Russian investigation in general, correct? 

COMEY: Yes, sir. 

RUBIO: But the specific ask was that you would tell the American people what you had already told him, what you had already told the leaders of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans: that he was not personally under investigation. 

COMEY: Yes, sir, that's how I... 

RUBIO: In fact , he was asking you to do what you have done here today. 

COMEY: ... correct. Yes, sir. 

RUBIO: OK. And again, at that setting, did you say to the president that it would be inappropriate for you to do so, and then talk to the White House counsel or anybody so hopefully they would talk to him and tell him that he couldn't do this?

COMEY: First time, I said, "I'll see what we can do." Second time, I explained how it should work, that the White House counsel should contact the deputy attorney general. 

RUBIO: You told him that? 

COMEY: The president said, OK, then I think that's what I'll do. 

RUBIO: And just to be clear, for you to make a public statement that he was not under investigation would not have been illegal, but you felt it made no sense because it could potentially create a duty to correct, if circumstances changed?

COMEY: Yes, sir. We wrestled with it before my testimony where I confirmed that there was an investigation. And there were two primary concerns. One was it creates a duty to correct, which I've lived before, and you want to be very careful about doing that.
And second, it's a slippery slope, because if we say the president and the vice president aren't under investigation, what's the principled basis for -- for stopping?

So, again, we see what a coward Comey is.  It's almost as though he's consciously trying to trip Trump up, but, we have his former experience with Lynch to inform us that he's probably a coward, and unwilling to rock the boat with his political superiors.

But there's more good stuff from Rubio, where he forces Comey to admit that the President had actually asked him to ensure the investigation continues, and if there are any "satellites" involved, that would be "good to know."

RUBIO: Now, on a number of occasions here, you bring up -- let's talk now about the general Russia investigation, OK? In page 6 of your testimony, you say -- the first thing you say is, he asked what we could do to, quote/unquote, "lift the cloud," the general Russia investigation. 

And you responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could and that there would be great benefit, if we didn't find anything, to having done the work well. And he agreed. He reemphasized the problems it was causing him, but he agreed.
So, in essence, the president agreed with your statement that it would be great if we could have an investigation, all the facts came out and we found nothing. So he agreed that that would be ideal, but this cloud is still messing up my ability to do the rest of my agenda. Is that an accurate assessment of... 

COMEY: Yes, sir. He actually went farther than that. He -- he said, "And if some of my satellites did something wrong, it'd be good to find that out." 

RUBIO: Well, that's the second part, and that is the satellites. He said, "If one of my satellites" -- I imagine, by that, he meant some of the other people surrounding his campaign -- "did something wrong, it would be great to know that, as well"? 

COMEY: Yes, sir. That's what he said. 

RUBIO: So are those the other -- are those the only two instances in which that sort of back-and-forth happened, where the president was basically saying, and I'm paraphrasing here, it's OK, do the Russia investigation. I hope it all comes out. I have nothing to do with anything Russia. It'd be great if it all came out, if people around me were doing things that were wrong. 

COMEY: Yes. As I -- I recorded it accurately there. That was the sentiment he was expressing. Yes, sir.

We have a president who at one time requested leniency for his friend, Michael Flynn, and at another, requested that the investigation continue and that any of his people involved be outed.

As most on the right, and even some left-leaning legal minds (Dershowitz) have suggested, there is juts no obstruction case, and the "collusion" case is certainly on the ropes.  That is the why the Dems have moved on from collusion, from Trump outing Israeli operations, from Jared Kushner, to now "obstruction."

They hate that they lost to Trump, and they will not stop.

Ever.

This is why I am in the Dennis Prager, Colonel Kurt Schlicter, and Ace of Spades camp on this.  Trump is the general we have now, and we're fighting a second civil war for the return of Constitutional government to this country, and ultimately for Western civilization, of which, we are the bulwark.

The Left, because they thirst for power, have been fighting this battle a lot longer.  They're better at it.  They've co-opted the Media and Academia and they have more outlets and mouthpieces, but they're wrong.  And I won't stop calling our these Fascists everywhere I can.

Neither should you.

Note: I don't consider Comey one of them, he's a tool, being used by them at the moment.  The fact that 12 months ago he was persona-non-grata to them is evidence that they'll use any tool available to them at the moment.  And right now, he's available.

VDH on the New Media in the Age of Trump

Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts in an NR corner post about the media in this day and age.

It bears a read.

The larger point is that the average person, getting his 'news' from Sean Hannity, is getting a much fairer recount of what is happening, coupled as it is, with the up front knowledge that Hannity has a particular point of view.

That The NY Times and WaPo try to conceal their biases while shading the news has hurt them by diminishing their credibility.

These media outlets have done this to themselves.

The Democrat Party of Racism

I hope that blacks and Hispanic people will soon become "woke" as our Prog friends like to say, to the fact that the Progressives, operating under the banner of the Democrat Party, have finally been able to do what Jim Crow and the militant wing of the Dem Party (i.e. the KKK) could not.

That is, get a segregated society that marginalized people of color. And get those people to think that's what they want, and need, to succeed in America.

Something called 'students4justice' at the University of Michigan is asking for

“a permanent designated space on central campus for Black students and students of color to organize and do social justice work.”

Over in Northampton, NH, we have a school board who cancelled a police outreach program because:

“Concerns were shared that some kids might respond negatively to a group of uniformed officers at their school,” the police department said in a post on its Facebook page last week. "People were specifically concerned about kids of color, undocumented children, or any children who may have had negative experiences with the police."

So, our little Prog SJWs celebrate and push for diversity by self-segregating, and we can't encourage better relations between the police and minority communities because we don't have better relations between the police and minority communities.

Welcome to Progland, folks.

Trump hates the media. Obama attempted to silence them

Remember when a president merely used the apparatus of the executive to silence the press?

Nothing compared to the jawboning being done by President Trump.

Good times.

"Reporters’ phone logs and e-mails were secretly subpoenaed and seized by the Justice Department in two of the investigations, and a Fox News reporter was accused in an affidavit for one of those subpoenas of being “an aider, abettor and/or conspirator” of an indicted leak defendant, exposing him to possible prosecution for doing his job as a journalist. In another leak case, a New York Times reporter has been ordered to testify against a defendant or go to jail."

Said New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote earlier this year, “it’s turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.” 

“President Obama had said that default should be disclosure,” Times reporter Shane told me. “The culture they’ve created is not one that favors disclosure.”ration spokesmen are often unresponsive or hostile to press inquiries, even when reporters have been sent to them by officials who won’t talk on their own. Despite President Barack Obama’s repeated promise that his administration would be the most open and transparent in American history, reporters and government transparency advocates said they are disappointed by its performance in improving access to the information they need." 

“This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times

Trump is Going Four Dimensional on Immigration Foes

Remember when President Trump gave a speech at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and proposed a bunch of radical stuff?


You know, totally crazy shit, like, "I’m asking all of you to enforce the laws.”


At the same time, he signed two executive orders that day, one to begin/continue construction of a border wall, and the second to restore the "Secure Communities Program" and strip money from so-called "sanctuary" cities and states. It includes the end of the "catch and release" program and money for more detention centers.  These EOs are a dead giveaway that the Trump administration fully intends to spend more effort on finding, detaining, and eventually removing these folks from society (whether it's by a long time in an American detention center, aka "jail", or by sending the scofflaws back to whence they came).  Absent anything else to distract attention, cue the sad stories about innocent mothers and their children separated by the evil Trump admin.  Ignoring that mom entered the country (illegally), then stole someone's identity to get papers to make her look like a legal citizen, something YOU or I would find ourselves serving some significant time for...


As I said, "absent anything else..."


Hence, in the next few days, we saw the wider travel ban on immigrants from seven previously identified failed states and Iran, and that's all we've been talking about since.


Many have pointed to the botched rollout of the travel ban, and its subsequent troubles in court, leading to the Ninth Circuit's ridiculous and willful disregard of the law and precedent this week, as signs of the incompetence or, at best, chaos, of the Trump White House.


But, what if this is not chaos, but orchestrated?


Trump and his advisors know that the travel ban, especially as short as it was going to be, would end up having little impact on the immediate national security prospects, and likely knew they could "figure out what the hell is going on" even without a ban.  And I have every confidence they will come up with much better vetting procedures, especially for those from the failed states in this order, but for all immigrants from countries who export terrorism (yes, I'm looking at YOU, Saudi Arabia).


They knew this would send the Left and their media squirrel chasers into paroxysms of outrage.  This would divert attention from the truly radical thing that happened here, and that's the actual enforcement of the law. 


Eventually, the media will bore of the travel ban.  The admin will lessen it's severity, they'll put something more modest together and the media will move on to those grieving mother stories.  But it'll be too late, with the die cast.


That this has the side benefit of exposing the Ninth Circuit for what it is, the Supreme Court of Californistan, well, that's icing.

Killing the Filibuster

This week was an eventful one for the President.

You have to give him some credit, the guy has a tireless work ethic.

He semi-carelessly implemented his promised "ban" on travel from 7 mostly failed-state, majority-Muslim countries, prompting the kind of theatrics one would have expected from The Left.  Cue the protests, the descriptions of it as "anti-Muslim," the faux crying by Chuck Schumer, the judge-shopping by Left-leaning State Attorney Generals, etc.

Then, he nominated Neil Gorsuch to be the next SCOTUS justice, which was a universally-applauded pick, even by those on The Left ^TM.  Which is the subject of this post.

Starting with Gorsuch.  He's an imminently qualified, well-liked and thought of jurist, in the mold of Scalia, with perhaps a bit more concern about the encroachment to Liberty we face from the administrative state.  He'll be a strong 4th Amendment advocate, which should please the libertarian-minded, and he has argued forcefully for religious liberty, and is a clear textualist, as was Scalia.

For conservatives, the pick is a home run.

Which is why he must be confirmed, and quickly.

What are the Democrats to do here?

Almost out of the box, their attack dogs, led by Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden, were painting Gorsuch as an ideologue determined to undo every civil liberty ever contemplated, and a danger to the American republic.  This despite Wyden's own vote to confirm him to the 10thDistrict Court of Appeals in 2006.

This was followed by calls that this seat should not be filled because it was "stolen" by the GOP when they refused to even give Merrick Garland a hearing.  Although that was a strategy that had been advocated by Joe Biden (remember him) in 2008, hypocrisy knows no boundaries in Democrat politics.

The fact on that argument is that the Supreme Court was a central theme, at least in conservative circles, and a key reason many reluctant Trump voters cast a ballot for him.  If The Left couldnt' get out the vote for this for Hillary Clinton, well, isn't that on their hands?  They held it within their own power to prevent a Trump nominee.  They lost.

Now, we will have to deal with the filibuster.

The GOP needs to peel off 8 Dems to prevent a filibuster, and given 2018's electoral map, that may be entirely possible.  I wonder how many of these 2018 Dems know they're dead senators walking and will just accept that and give in to their donor base and join a filibuster.  My guess is a vote against Gorsuch for a senator such as Manchin, Heitkamp, Tester, Donnelly, etc, is more dangerous to their chances than losing money from rich, progressive donors.

I advocate 2 options here for the GOP, if the Dems threaten a filibuster and can sustain it with numbers:

1. Force them to actually carry it out.  Enjoy the spectacle of Democrat senators actually bringing the senate to a halt and cover it full time on C-SPAN.  Change the rules so the Senate is in session 24/7 during it so they have to stay up all night.  Make these old geezers pay for their recalcitrance.
2. Nuke it.

For the Dems, what is the best political move here?

Given that the seat does not change the existing court balance, do they hold their fire for the next one, which will either be Kennedy or Ginsburg (my guessses).  They'd certainly want to go hard after a choice for Ginsburg.  If they retain the filibuster and give Gorsuch this seat, you might see Trump, in a Ginsburg situation, go for someone like Garland.  In fact, were it me, and I knew that one would be filibustered, I would nominate Garland for Ginsburg.  he's older, and wont' likely serve more than 20 years, and he's already been nominated by a Democrat. How would they filibuster that?

If they give up the filibuster and let the GOP nuke it, all future SCOTUS picks will be far right textualists.  Trump has a list, and he'd use it.  And he'd be mad enough to nominate the judges who piss the Dems off the most.

Also, nuking the filibuster will make Chuck Schumer and the Dems in Congress completely powerless for 2 years, most likely 4.  Do the Dems really want to take that chance.  I think they have to keep their powder dry.

We'll see.

Dem's Crack Up and Media Stupidity

A couple of articles caught my attention today

First....

The Washington Free Beacon's Matthew Continetti is joining Charlie Cooke and Kevin Williamson as my favorite NR contributors. Today, he writes about the Dem's crack-up.

The Dems are following the path the GOP was on pre-2016, without the benefit of a thriving base to their party, which the GOP had in the post Tea Party era. That base, and a generally unifying vision (opposition to Dems, but generally limited government and fiscal conservatism) led to the landslide that is GOP control of everything today.

The Dems have no such base, and much of that is because at the local level, what they are selling has no market. We see the results of long-term progressivism in places like Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, and only Silicon Valley permits the morons in California from destroying their state, and even that may not save it in the end.

At the national level, it's all ancient leaders beholden to their own donor class. It's generally retreads and losers, who are all too happy to tell these ancient politicians what they want to hear, and take their money from them.

It's nice to see the Dems have their own little Mike Murphy's.

Next, is Jonah Goldberg's weekly newsletter, the G-File, which occupies the primary space over at National Review Online today.

This is a cautionary tale from a former #nevertrumper that we need a conservative media to be wary and honest about Trump. His position, which I share, is that Trump isn't a conservative, and while he has those tendencies, he is first and foremost a showman, and the show is Trump.

He is going to do things antithetical to the conservative movement and its principles (trade chief among them) and we need a conservative polity that calls that out and makes fair and honest distinctions. I want to protect him from his worst instincts, because those have the capability to betray all the good things I think he can do. And he is doing a ton of good things. For example:

• He will nominate a real constructionist replacement to SCOTUS to replace Scalia
• He has put in place a serious, and professional national security team, particularly at DoD
• He is going to emasculate the EPA, the DOE and the Education by sending in heads who find what these agencies have been doing deplorable.
• Obamacare is going to get replaced by something that is more market-oriented and won't destroy the lives of the middle class people who are tasked with propping it up today
• He's serious about border security and fighting Islamic Fascism
• We will see a reduction in the corporate tax rate and real reform in the tax code, as well as loosening of regulations, like Sarbanes-Oxley, the Dodd-Frank reforms, and generally reducing the burden of regulation.

All those are tremendously positive things that I believe will happen, and quickly. Make what you will of Trump, there is no "Apology Tour" to be held in the first 100 days. He's hitting the ground running, and once the Dems figure that out, they'll either get on board, or get run over. Sound familiar, Trumpistas?

Anyway, back to Jonah, while he is primarily talking to the conservative media in this week's G-File, he has some scathing things to say about the left-wing (i.e 96% of the) media:

On "Fake" news, Jonah reminds it's always been around:

No, it wasn’t all “fake news” (man, am I exhausted by the ridiculous misuse of that term), at least not most of the time [insert outrage over Duranty’s Pulitzer, Janet Cooke’s and Steve Glass’s fabulations, and of course that time Dan Rather climbed the jackass tree only to hurl himself down, hitting every branch].

On Liberal Journalists, Jonah falls where many are, that they mean well, but they truly live in a bubble.  This doesn't impact us on the right so much, because we live in much the same cultural bubble as the Left.  We read their newspapers, we hear their "news," we watch their TV and movies.  We're ensconsed in that bubble.  On the contrary, they have never set foot in our churches, or attend the same sporting events as us, or know who Sean Hannity is (I am not saying that last thing is a good thing). Jonah:

Still, the more you get to know elite “objective” journalists, the more you can appreciate that they are trying to do it right. But it also becomes all the more obvious that they live in a social milieu where the borders between the Democratic party, liberal activism, and liberal experts are very, very fuzzy.

He adds, talking about reporters seeking verification of "facts" and opinions they agree with:

Reporters routinely call experts they already agree with knowing that their “takes” will line up with what the reporter believes. Sometimes this is lazy or deadline-driven hackery. But more often, it’s not. And that shouldn’t surprise us. Smart liberal reporters are probably inclined to think that smart liberal experts are right when they say things the smart liberal reporters already agree with.

On the right, we know Vox to be an excuse for the Left to have an echo chamber.  But I love how Jonah puts this:

Think of editors like security guards at a military base. They tend to wave through the people they know and the folks with right ID badges. But when a stranger shows up, or if someone lacks the right credential, then the guards feel like they have to do their job. This is the basic modus operandi for places like Vox, which seek to explain not the facts or the news, but why liberals are right about the facts and the news. [emphasis mine]

I linked on Facebook to The Atlantic's ridiculous "sciency" article on the Right-to-Life's use of ultrasound technology and abortion.  This ridiculous article deserved the ridicule it received.  Like Jonah, I am happy that this extremely  long piece has now been equalled by the length of the retractions and corrections The Atlantic has had to issue.

From here Jonah pivots to his discussion of how the right wing journos should approach Trump, and I think fair and balanced is the best way to describe what he wants.  In other words, not what the aforementioned Hannity is doing.

My observation is that Jonah's observation here is correct:

But if you actually watch the news side of Fox News, or read National Review, the Weekly Standard, Commentary (not to mention the more responsible conservative websites: The Federalist, Hot Air, etc.), you’ll find that we tend not to be swept up in the hysteria of the Left or the Right. There’s a diversity of writers and opinions to be sure, but on the whole we have praised some of what Trump has done and criticized other things. Fox reports inconvenient facts for the Democrats and inconvenient facts for the Trump administration. It’s not always easy to draw the lines — again, mixed bags and all — but so far I’m proud of the way most of my colleagues and peers have handled all of this weirdness.

YOU, on the other hand, should read the entire piece.

A-Listers not needed here

Salena Zito is the one reporter who most accurately understands the Trump voter.  She has written about them tirelessly this cycle, and she correctly predicted Trump.  Today, she explains why having no A-list celebrities at the inauguration is a feature, not a bug, of the Trump Administration.

Most telling is this section from a 19 year old Trump supporter who will be attending the inauguration:

Jesse Crammer, 19, can’t wait for Friday, and all he wants to see during the inauguration is President Trump’s remarks about the moment. “He is all of the celebrity I need,” said the high-school sophomore from the Keystone State. 

“This night is about him; it is about us. It would be really cool if he opened up his remarks and asked people attending one of the balls, in particular the ball that will have our military, police and first responders in attendance, and ask them to talk about their lives. 

“[Trump’s] message about ‘making America great’ was aspirational; it was about something bigger than ourselves, and perhaps that is what Hollywood does not get. They cannot imagine something bigger than themselves.”

Cory Booker & John Lewis Explained

Cory Booker broke a longstanding precedent and engaged in a bit of moral preening over the nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.

John Lewis has decided that Trump is not a "legitimate" president.

What is going on with these people?

It dawned on me today that they feel it is necessary to protect an important Democrat constituency, that is, black voters.

I believe, under Trump, the 90/10 numbers that Dems have built with black voters is the softest part of their coalition, and the race hucksters and black politicians who rely on this as the source for their jobs, let alone their power, recognize this and must do whatever they can to keep it going for the next 4 (8?) years.

Like accusations that Trump will somehow be less friendly to the LGBT community (come on, he waved their flag at an event and he thanked the GOP convention to cheering his line about equality for them), there is the likelihood that his policies will actually help the black community and inner cities and I think he actually means he is going to work on improving conditions in the cities.

So, buckle up, because these people are not going to let go peacefully.  The Democrats had made it clear that they have one playbook in opposition, and it's the same one they've had for 40 years.

It's old, it's worn, it's tattered, and it's basically been published for everyone to see.

The GOP has gotten much smarter at this game, and the public has grown weary of it.

I predict doom and gloom for Liberals for the next few years, if they don't truly revisit their worldview and how they oppose Trump.