February 27, 2017 – CA’s MAGICAL THINKING

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Two weeks ago we witnessed a near catastrophe as the Oroville, CA dam was near collapse. For today’s short post, we have four items that illustrate the shear stupidity, and more, that brought California to this point. First we learn from Instapundit that one month ago the state provided the feds with a wish list $100 billion of infrastructure improvements. Was the Oroville dam on the list? Of course not! 

Then we learn from David Cole of the CA government’s opinion that rain was not in their future. The drought was forever and there was no need to repair a dam that would be holding back very little water. 

Then from Legal Insurrection we learn it was not just stupidity. Evil intent can be seen in the allocation of the 2009 stimulus to DEM voting areas of the state at the expense of GOP areas. 

Finally, if you really want to lose your lunch, we have a four year old item from Ron Hart in the Orange County Register that tracked the 2009 stimulus money throughout the country to DEM constituencies.

In Instapundit, Ed Driscoll posts on California’s Magical Thinking.

“Reinforcing the Oroville Dam was not included on Mr. Brown’s $100 billion wish list of projects prepared last month at the request of the National Governors Association in response to Mr. Trump’s call for $1 trillion in infrastructure improvements, CNBC reported.

One project that did make the list: California high-speed rail, a pet project of Mr. Brown’s with an estimated price tag of $100 billion that has become for state Republicans a symbol of out-of-control government spending.”

During their flight from reality in the post-Clinton years, elite California lefties bragged they were “dam busters”; in the early days of Obama’s administration, his then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Deanna Archuleta, promised the enviro-faithful, “You will never see another federal dam” — and maintenance on state-run projects was apparently out as well. Like the famous Monty Python architectural sketch, Sacramento seemed to consider magical thinking as sufficient to prop them up.

  

In a Jeremiad in Taki Magazine, David Cole takes on more magical thinking of both the right and the left. Follow the link for Mr. Cole’s complete rant.

… If spending is the equivalent of prayer to a leftist, “climate change” is the equivalent of Christian “end-time” cultism. Let me share with you a very recent, and very relevant, example. Over the past week, we here in sunny insane California have faced the prospect of a major calamity as three merciless months of near-nonstop rainfall have led to the possibility of a massive failure at the tallest dam in the U.S., in Oroville, near Sacramento. It’s a big deal; 188,000 people have been evacuated. Concerns about how the aging Oroville Dam would fare in the face of record rainfall were raised years ago, but the state and the feds ignored them.

The story has been amply reported locally and nationally. But what the press conveniently leaves out of its coverage is the underlining theory behind the dam inaction: climate-change apocalyptics had convinced the Silly Putty-brained California powers-that-be that rain was never returning to the state. Quite literally, new dams, and improvements on old ones, were rejected because a doomsday cult had convinced politicians that water was “over,” that the drought that began in 2012 was not a passing thing but an “era,” something that would last decades if not a century. And why build new dams if there’ll be no water for them to hold? Why refurbish old ones if there’s no chance they’ll ever be filled again? …

… Witch doctors in white coats who study tree stumps like gypsies read tea leaves told The San Jose Mercury News in 2014 that the drought might last over one hundred, maybe even one thousand, years. If you Google “California,” “drought,” and “will last” or “may last,” you’ll see endless links to left-certified “scientific” snake-handlers who claimed, right up until a few months ago, that the drought may last hundreds of years, or thousands of years, or “forever.”

Yet here we are in February 2017, with the drought completely over in Northern Cal and close to being over in the South. The rainfall of the past few months has shattered all records. The last “abnormal” California winter, 1982/1983, saw rainfall that was 88% higher than the 30-year average. Winter 2016/2017? 120% higher. Cities like Long Beach have seen rainfall at levels never before recorded. …

… Expect more superstitious nonsense from leftists in the years to come, because if leftists have demon-haunted minds, Trump is the ghost rattling around inside, clouding all judgment and giving rise to visions and fever dreams. Undeservedly famous leftist comedians are seeing signs and wonders. Sarah Silverman’s phantom pavement swastikas were nothing more than the leftist-Jewish version of seeing Jesus in a tortilla.

Silverman’s response after being told that her “swastikas” were simple construction markers boiled down to “I’ve been driven to lunacy by Trump’s anti-Semitism.” In other words, she’s possessed; a demon made her do it.

These days, the left has no moral high ground over the religious right. In fact, I’d take a conservative Christian over a demon-haunted leftist any day, because at least conservative Christians admit that their beliefs are faith-based. They don’t go around screaming “science! science! science!” while drinking sacrificial goats’ blood Santeria-style because the rain gods are angry.

I have nothing against people of faith. But hypocrites? They piss me off like a sonofabitch.

  

Leslie Eastman of Legal Insurrection shows where the CA money went.

… Legal Insurrection readers recall that I noted that Oroville Dam lays in a deep red part of California. Despite the fact that issues with the structure were noted 12 years ago, Obama’s Stimulus Package monies for infrastructure were never sent for the needed repairs and enhancements.

However, one California dam get see several million Stimulus dollars, though it was in much better condition.

Over $22 million in stimulus funds did go toward safety improvements to the Folsom Dam, which was described as in “good shape” at the time the grant was awarded in 2009.

“The dam is in good shape but is starting to show its age,” a Bureau of Reclamation spokesperson said of the Folsom Dam at the time.

The stimulus was intended to “shore up the nation’s aging infrastructure,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, a Democrat who served California’s 1st District before being redistricted to the 5th.

The fact that the dam was in a “blue” county may have been a contributing factor. …

… Mahatma Ghandi once noted that action expresses priorities. …

  

Ron Hart follows the 2009 stimulus funds in a article in March 26, 2013 Orange County Register. Follow the link for more details.

… Of the money spent in swing state Wisconsin, 80 percent went to public sector unions – those with already locked-in jobs. In fact, right-to-work states got $266 less per person in stimulus money than heavily unionized states. Where Democrats had a vast majority of representatives, their states got $460 per person more.

When Obama signed the stimulus bill in 2009, he promised it would provide “help for those hardest hit by our economic crisis.” Clearly, it did not. The states hurt the most, the ones with more foreclosures, unemployment and bankruptcy, got less money than richer states closer to power. Washington, D.C. got the most stimulus money: $7,602 per capita.

The stimulus was a huge political slush fund with little accountability. …

February 18, 2017 – TOLD YOU SO – TWO

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After our post on the Bureau of Labor Standard’s unemployment reports, a reader and good friend wrote; “You need more than what you wrote to credibly attack the BLS. Have you any thing more?” In fact there is much more but it is poorly organized and hard to understand. We have selected three items that address how the BLS reports are produced  

You will learn something about how the reports are created, and you will also learn the numbers are very easy to manipulate. The key thing to remember is the manipulation always favor one political party. It is important to know the labor reports are a product of 60,000 interviews conducted by the Census Bureau every month in contract for the Dept. of Labor. 

 

We have a NY Post article contemporaneous (November 18, 2012) to the 2012 ”miracle” when the unemployment rate dropped to 7.8%. The article was titled Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report.

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy. …

… I hope the next stop will be Congress, since manipulation of data like this not only gives voters the wrong impression of the economy but also leads lawmakers, the Federal Reserve and companies to make uninformed decisions.

To cite just one instance, the Fed is targeting the curtailment of its so-called quantitative easing money-printing/bond-buying fiasco to the unemployment rate for which Census provided the false information.

So falsifying this would, in essence, have dire consequences for the country.

  

 

On the same day as the NY Post article above and working with it, Zero Hedge’s Tyler Durden posted on the BLS report.

On Friday October 5, 2012, the BLS released what was arguably the most important report of Obama’s first term: the final jobs number, and unemployment rate before the November 2012 presidential election. As so many predicted, it “plunged” from 8.1% to 7.8% allowing the president to conduct countless teleprompted speeches praising the success of his economic recovery. It also served as the basis for the infamous Jack Welch tweet: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers” and prompted the pro-Obama media to quickly brand all those who questioned it as conspiracy theorists. …

  

 

Four years later in October 2016, Tyler Durden takes exception to the retiring president’s star turn on job creation. This suffers from the lack of an editor, but there are many nuggets of information here. However, you will come to understand why this was not included originally. 

Bismarck’s dictum “mankind should not see how laws and sausages are made” will ring true as you read this. But remember when we started we saw how the BLS produced reports that were always favoring the Democrat party.

… So, before President Obama takes his final victory lap with claims of creating the most robust employment recovery since the 1990’s, the data clearly suggests otherwise.

Of course, if you ask the 37% that are no longer counted as part of the labor force, they will tell you the same thing. …

 

 

In a similar vein, Matthew Continetti addresses the issue of who is going to run the government. He starts with Gen. Flynn’s troubles and then shows how, what some have called the ‘deep state,’ is trying to wrest control of the government from the people we elected.

… Nor is Flynn the only example of nameless bureaucrats working to undermine and ultimately overturn the results of last year’s election. According to the New York Times, civil servants at the EPA are lobbying Congress to reject Donald Trump’s nominee to run the agency. Is it because Scott Pruitt lacks qualifications? No. Is it because he is ethically compromised? Sorry. The reason for the opposition is that Pruitt is a critic of the way the EPA was run during the presidency of Barack Obama. He has a policy difference with the men and women who are soon to be his employees. Up until, oh, this month, the normal course of action was for civil servants to follow the direction of the political appointees who serve as proxies for the elected president.

How quaint. These days an architect of the overreaching and antidemocratic Waters of the U.S. regulation worries that her work will be overturned so she undertakes extraordinary means to defeat her potential boss. But a change in policy is a risk of democratic politics. Nowhere does it say in the Constitution that the decisions of government employees are to be unquestioned and preserved forever. Yet that is precisely the implication of this unprecedented protest. “I can’t think of any other time when people in the bureaucracy have done this,” a professor of government tells the paper. That sentence does not leave me feeling reassured. …

… The last few weeks have confirmed that there are two systems of government in the United States. The first is the system of government outlined in the U.S. Constitution—its checks, its balances, its dispersion of power, its protection of individual rights. Donald Trump was elected to serve four years as the chief executive of this system. Whether you like it or not.

The second system is comprised of those elements not expressly addressed by the Founders. This is the permanent government, the so-called administrative state of bureaucracies, agencies, quasi-public organizations, and regulatory bodies and commissions, of rule-writers and the byzantine network of administrative law courts. This is the government of unelected judges with lifetime appointments who, far from comprising the “least dangerous branch,” now presume to think they know more about America’s national security interests than the man elected as commander in chief.

For some time, especially during Democratic presidencies, the second system of government was able to live with the first one. But that time has ended. The two systems are now in competition. And the contest is all the more vicious and frightening because more than offices are at stake. This fight is not about policy. It is about wealth, status, the privileges of an exclusive class. …

February 12, 2017 – TOLD YOU SO

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In a particularly prescient Pickings post (January 4, 2017) we suggested the least of President Trump’s problems would be hostile media. More danger would come from the federal bureaucracy which would obstruct him whenever possible. For example, we said, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) would find a way to accomplish “the reappearance of the disappeared.” Here’s that from a month ago;

“The media will be the least of Trump’s problems. Wait until the federal bureaucrats get into action. They will be on President Trump’s agenda like white on rice. During the last eight years the Bureau of Labor Statistics statistically disappeared 15 million people. They have increased the number of people “not in the labor force” to 95 million from 80 million. This created favorable unemployment rates for the current administration. Pickerhead predicts the reappearance of the disappeared. … 

Guess what? The BLS started the very first month. Here’s a report from Washington Free Beacon;

The number of Americans not participating in the labor force declined to 94,366,000 in January, according to the latest numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

More Americans joined the labor force this month, leading to an uptick in the labor force participation rate and a decline in the number of Americans who are out of the labor force.

The number of Americans not in the labor force hit a record-high of 95,102,000 in December. This month, that number declined by 736,000 individuals.

The bureau counts those not in the labor force as people who do not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks. … 

There is a website for the BLS. Exploring there produced a two interesting charts. The first is a monthly chart for 10 years of the raw numbers for those not in the labor force. It is below. The only one found is for the unadjusted numbers which show a drop of 368,000 not the 736,000 indicated by the Free Beacon above. Presumably the difference comes from seasonal adjustments, but that could not be confirmed. Spend a lot of time on the BLS site and your hair starts to hurt. Is BLS an acronym for bullshit? One thing that stands out in the numbers, is that the January report, the first in the Trump administration, was the first time in 7 years the ‘not in the labor force’ number dropped from December to January. Coincidence? 

The next chart is 10 years of the monthly unemployment rate we’re all familiar with. Something interesting is here. Going back six years of a settled economy we track the year-to-year drop in unemployment from October to October. In three of those years the drop averaged 1.23%. In the other three the drop averaged .63%. The years with the largest drop in unemployment rates were 2012, 2014, and 2016. Why October you ask? Because that’s the last report issued before nationwide elections. And what do the three best unemployment reporting years have in common? Why they’re election years dummy! Coincidence? 

Here’s another item, this from the chart of unemployment rates. In September 2012 the rate went through the 8% level to 7.8 which carried forward to October. In fact, the September rate was revised to that level in the October report, so the October report was the first to reach the magic 7 percent level. Trouble is, it was over done and the December rate moved up to 7.9% and January was 8.0%. Would you be surprised to learn that was the only time in the six years we’re covering there was a sustained (4 months) increase in the unemployment rate? But the job was done. A Democrat president was reelected. Coincidence?

 

Over the six years covered in the charts below, there were four anomalies. First was the large January 2017 decrease in citizens “not in the labor force.” Next, for the first time in seven years those not in the labor force decreased from December to January. Third we see the large drops in unemployment occurred in election years. And fourth, the rate of unemployment rose for only one four month period; the one following the reelection of a Democrat president. What are the chances that all four of those anomalies would benefit one political party? These are the people who lay in wait for Donald Trump. 

It was Mark Twain who popularized the phrase “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” which Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime Minister. From the January 4th post also; “Fooling with statistics is how you get a paragraph like this from Aaron MacLean of the Free Beacon.

… For years, Americans were told that after the financial panic in 2008, the president’s policies had put us on a steady course to a strong economy. But in much of the country, people looked around them and thought, That just doesn’t seem right. Especially in those parts of the country hit the hardest by the transition from the Industrial Era to the Information Age, people asked a number of questions. If the economy is doing so great, why are my adult children not moving out? If the unemployment rate is declining, why are so many prime-age males not working? And doesn’t it matter that the quality of jobs for non-college graduates is so obviously worse than it was a generation ago? Why, instead of working, are so many people dependent on public benefits and falling prey to addiction? …”

So out of nowhere, Trump is elected and the bien pensants on the coasts can’t understand why. It is partly because they believe the lies of simple servants and the subsequent applause of the media. The media, by the way, that should have been drilling into the numbers, but never has.

 

 

A broader look at federal bureaucrats written by Tevi Troy, was in Commentary. The title of his article is “Will There be an Internal Revolt Against Trump?” To which we ask, “Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear poop in the forest? etc. etc.

My first face-to-face encounter with the federal bureaucracy came on January 22, 2001. I was the deputy director of a “parachute team” for incoming president George W. Bush, and our job was to “secure the beachhead” at the Department of Labor on the first day of the new administration. (The political realm loves to borrow military metaphors.) That meant stopping the department from issuing guidance, rules, and statements that reflected the views of the departing Clinton administration. The most important tactical objective in this mission, we were told, was this: Secure the fax machine! (It was 2001, after all.) At that time, there was one specially designated fax machine used to send new regulatory language to the Federal Register, which publishes all newly minted regulations. There was a bureaucrat I’ll call Mitchell Sykes whose job it was to man that fax machine. We were to find Sykes and stop him from doing anything. …

 

… There were indications of bureaucratic resistance to the legitimately elected president during the transition period. In one Politico piece, career officials at HHS were disturbingly candid about their disdain for President-elect Trump, while at the same time protecting themselves in the veil of anonymity. One told reporter Dan Diamond that “it’s tough from the career staff side,” before asking, “Do you stay and try and be the internal saboteur?” Another called the Trump win “obviously shocking and upsetting,” a third “soul crushing.” One of the staffers quoted paid lip service to the fact that they “respect the need to have a peaceful transition of power,” but added that “it’s just frustrating to calmly hand over the keys when you know they’ll wreck the car.” Politico’s Blake Hounsell quoted one anonymous, presumably career, official lamenting the appointment of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson at the State Department: “I’ve been resisting the urge to drink since 7 a.m., when I read the news.” 

Diamond noted in his story that the older, more senior career HHS officials he spoke to were “more sanguine,” having seen transitions in the past. It’s possible, therefore, to say that the less judicious individuals were just venting and will come into line come the inauguration. But it’s also possible that these younger staffers may represent the new face of a more partisan career bureaucracy. First, the overtness of the career officials cited was alarming, especially given how careful they typically are. Second, Diamond points out that there are 1,000 HHS officials who “can trace their jobs back to Obamacare.” Presumably, these individuals will be most resistant to repealing and replacing Obamacare, the stated policy of the new president. And finally, the open speculation from a career official, even if anonymous, about serving as an “internal saboteur” should raise alarm bells among not only incoming political officials but also career employees, whose jobs are directly tied to their ability to work with, and generate the trust of, political appointees. …

  

Yes, we did find some humor.

February 8, 2017 SUPER – HEH!

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A short post that grew out of the Super Bowl and the way it was reported.

 

 

Boston Globe had a Dewey Wins/Chicago Tribune moment and Howie Carr caught it.

NOT OVER TILL IT’S OVER: An early Super Bowl edition of yesterday’s Boston Globe hastily used the front-page headline, ‘A Bitter End,’ above, before the Patriots historic comeback.

There’s fake news and then there’s FAKE NEWS!

Today’s early edition Boston Globe made a historic blunder with its Super Bowl coverage, running the headline: A BITTER END.

Above it is “Super Bowl LI.” LI meaning “51” in Roman numerals, but now it has another meaning, wouldn’t you say? You can’t have a LIE without LI. 

These fake-news collectors’ items are on sale all over Florida. If you’re reading this in at least some parts of the SunshineState, you can probably still buy one at your local Publix supermarket. (Not in Palm Beach – my neighbor just bought all five copies for me.)

Given its squalid past as a purveyor of fake news, the Globe just began a new PR campaign about how “The truth matters.”

This morning the Globe’s Truth Matters campaign came to … A BITTER END. …

… The tradition continues.

Let me quote from the Globe’s truth-matters statement. The headline is: “Our mission. Why we do what we do.”

It begins: “The truth matters. At the end of the day it may be the only thing that matters.”

Which is why the Globe doesn’t – matter, that is.

What little remained of the Globe’s credibility has come to, dare I say it, an end, A BITTER END.

 

 

 

John Hinderaker has another feel good moment from the Super Bowl at the expense of a creepy lefty.

It wasn’t the Atlanta Falcons, or Matt Ryan, or Dan Quinn, or even the bettor who put down $1 million on the Falcons not long before game time. No, the Super Bowl’s biggest loser was Touré. If, like most people, you haven’t heard of Touré, he is a far-left commentator on MSNBC. Here, for your entertainment, are some of Touré’s tweets during the Super Bowl, in chronological order:

 

Trump is sinking the Pats the same way he’s sinking America.

— Touré (@Toure) February 6, 2017

 

With Gaga romping and the Pats getting killed it feels like the good guys are winning for once.

— Touré (@Toure) February 6, 2017

 

Tom Brady out there looking for help from the Electoral College. #SuperBowl

— TruthBeTold (@Big6domino) February 6, 2017

 

 

Yes, there’s some cartoons too and you’ll probably guess who is featured in a few.

February 5, 2017 – WAR IS POLITICS, BUT WITH HONOR

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Our title for today’s post, War is Politics, but With Honor tweaks a phrase by Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian general, in his 1832 book On War. Here’s how he wrote in the book. “We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means.” Here’s the variant translation that is most commonly used; “War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.” 

So the long version of our title could be; “war is merely the continuation of politics, but conducted by honorable means.” An example of war making’s honorable means might be The Geneva Conventions. And conversely, it is obvious there is no Geneva Convention in our presently poisoned politics.  

Of course, what we want to explore today is the dishonorable conduct of America’s political left. Salon provides the first example of the left’s deplorable dishonorable acts reporting the Senate vote confirming Rex Tillerson’s appointment as Secretary of State.

… The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, on a largely party-line vote of 56-43. Three Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Warner of Virginia — and independent Angus King of Maine joined Republicans in backing the choice. … 

… The Senate confirmed President Barack Obama’s choice of John Kerry 94-3 and Hillary Clinton 94-2. President George W. Bush’s nominee Condoleezza Rice easily won confirmation 85-13. Colin Powell was confirmed for the job by voice vote.

 

 

From Townhall we get the back story for another outrage; this time by the media.

They say that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has the chance to put its shoes on. In this case, a lie went viral, was one of the top stories on Reddit, and was used to slander a president before the truth came out.

The backstory: Mike Hager, a U.S. citizen, said that his mother was stuck in Iraq due to President Trump’s executive order restricting immigration and visa holders from certain countries. Hager claimed his mother, Naimma, who was very sick, was not allowed to travel to the U.S. on Friday despite having a green card. She then passed away in Iraq the next day. …

… As it turns out, the real reason why Hager’s mother wasn’t permitted to fly to the United States on Friday was because she had been dead for five days.

Hager’s Imam confirmed on Wednesday that the original story was not accurate and that Naimma had passed away on January 22. Fox 2 was able to confirm the date of death as well. …

  

 

From the Hill, Asra Nomani writes on the dishonorable events at UC Berkeley.

On Wednesday night, an Afghan-American software engineer and self-described “global geek girl” videotaped her friend Kiara Robles as a local TV reporter interviewed Robles about the raucous protests at University of California Berkeley that canceled a speech by controversial Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Robles wore the trademark red hat of the Trump presidential campaign, only with the message, “Make BitCoin Great Again,” her straight, long blond hair sweeping out from under the cap.

Suddenly, a masked attacker in a leather jacket lunged at Robles and doused her face in stinging pepper spray. “My friend was giving an interview when some coward peppersprayed her,” Robles’s friend wrote on Twitter, posting the video. She was maced, too. (She said the attacker was a woman.) …

… protesters slammed Robles and her friends against a barricade. Unable to breathe or see from the pepper spray, rioters surrounded her, some of her friends getting stomped on. “I thought I was going to die,” Robles, who is gay, told me. …

… In fact, while the Trump administration must of, course, lead from a place of compassion and moderation, intolerant tolerance-loving people are threatening the very safety of Americans, fomented by irresponsible Democratic Party leaders who refuse to accept the election results of 2016, (and) fear-mongering “social justice warriors” who behave as if they are on the set of the “Hunger Games,” … 

  

 

From Twitchy we learn the pepper spray trick was used at NYU too.

It wasn’t quite a repeat of the UC Berkeley riots Wednesday night, but so-called anti-fascist protesters clashed with police outside New YorkUniversity, where Gavin McInnes was invited to speak by the NYU College Republicans. McInnes confirmed other reports that he was pepper-sprayed at the event.

Thanks for asking if I’m OK guys. I was sprayed with pepper spray but being called a Nazi burned way more. 

 — Gavin McInnes (@Gavin_McInnes) February 3, 2017

There were reports of punches thrown by both protesters and supporters as well, but police were out in force.

  

 

A calmer look comes from Matthew Continetti.

“What happened to the honeymoon?” Charles Krauthammer asked last month. The opposition has long granted presidents time to form their administrations, to announce their signature initiatives. Donald Trump’s honeymoon lasted all of 10 days—from his surprise November 8 election to the rude treatment of his vice president at a performance of Hamilton on November 18. After that, divorce.

The same forces that opposed Trump during the Republican primary and general election are trying to break his presidency before it is a month old. At issue is the philosophy of nation-state populism that drove his insurgent campaign. It is so at variance with the ideologies of conservatism and liberalism predominant in the capital that Washington is experiencing something like an allergic reaction. Nation-state populism diverges from Beltway conservatism on trade, immigration, entitlements, and infrastructure, and from liberalism on sovereignty, nationalism, identity politics, and political correctness. Its combative style and heightened rhetoric offend the sensibilities of career-minded Washingtonians of both parties, who are schooled in deference, diplomacy, being nice to teacher, and the ancient arts of CYA.

The message this establishment is sending to Trump? Conform or be destroyed. …

… So unlikely did the election of Donald Trump seem to Washington and its denizens that the reality of it still has not sunk in. All of the city’s worst traits—the self-regard, the group think, the obsessions with trivia, the worship of credentials, the virtue signaling, the imperiousness, the ignorance of perspectives and people from outside major metropolitan centers and college towns—not only persist. They have been magnified with Trump’s arrival. There is so much negative energy coursing through the city that circuits are overloaded. That the president still draws support from the coalition that brought him to office, that a fair number of people see his policies as commonsensical, seems not to affect any of Trump’s critics in the least. They will press on until Trump behaves like they want him to behave.

Which means the war between the president and the Washington establishment may last a very, very long time.

  

 

The women marching after the inaugural had some strange bedmaidens.

On “The First 100 Days” tonight, women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali reacted to a recently resurfaced tweet written by an organizer for last month’s Women’s March, which disparaged Ali and another activist.

Linda Sarsour, of the Arab American Association of New York, tweeted in 2011 that Ali and Brigitte Gabriel should be assaulted and that she wished she could remove their private parts because they “don’t deserve to be women.”

Ali, a victim of genital mutilation while living in Somalia, blasted Sarsour as a “fake feminist” who is not interested in universal human rights.

“She is a defender of Sharia law,” Ali said, “No principle degrades and dehumanizes women more than Sharia law.”

Ali said Sarsour hates her and Gabriel because they speak out against Sharia.

She suggested that instead of protesting in Washington, Sarsour should have organized a march for Yazidi women kidnapped by ISIS, “mass rape” incidents in Europe, or Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman sentenced to death for “blasphemy.”

  

 

Piers Morgan, no friend of the GOP, has some interesting views of Trump in The Daily Mail, UK. 

… The popular global narrative just ten days into Donald Trump’s tenure as President of the United States of America is that he is a monster. But a new poll has revealed that 49% of Americans support Trump’s travel ban, as opposed to 41% who are against it

For example, there’s one video that’s gone viral of a large rally in Brighton, on the UK’s south coast, where thousands of people simply chant ‘Donald Trump, you’re a c**t!’ at the top of their voices.

This just about sums up the ridiculous Trump-bashing hysteria that has enveloped the world since his inauguration.

People are literally losing their minds over the mere thought of him sitting in the Oval Office.

A mental faculty failure that is driven, I fear, by sore loser syndrome. …

… A Reuters poll last night revealed that 49% of Americans support Trump’s travel ban, as opposed to 41% who are against it.

And in the UK, a YouGov poll today revealed 49% of Britons are in favour of President Trump’s state visit going ahead, compared to just 36% who are against it.

So despite all the howling, marches, social media onslaughts and foul-mouthed chants, more people in America and Britain appear to be behind Trump than against him. 

And as we saw with the US election and Brexit, these polls are probably understating that support.

Perhaps the reason for this is that the further away you get from the hysterical liberal elite conclaves of places like New York, Los Angeles and London, the more calmer common sense prevails.

Those people see a travel ban portrayed as a ‘racist Muslim ban’, then work out for themselves that 85% of the world’s Muslims aren’t actually banned, and shrug their shoulders.

They know President Obama had a shockingly poor record on admitting Syrian refugees, and let many of them die by not engaging with Assad when he crossed the fabled ‘red line’, so can’t get too worked up about Trump not letting any in.

They remember Bill Clinton had ‘sexual relations’ with interns inside the Oval Office, so can’t get too wildly outraged by Trump saying women throw themselves at celebrities either.

Just as they know Bill’s wife Hillary voted for war with anything that moved, so they rather like Trump not instantly nuking Russia but instead making friendly overtures to Putin.

And so on.

In short, they don’t over-react. …

  

 

Don Surber posts on Orrin Hatch becoming a Trumpster. How come? Because the Dems dishonorable deplorables disgust him.

… Hatch heads the finance committee which needed to vote on Steve Mnuchin before the Senate can vote to confirm him as Secretary of Treasury, and on Tom Price as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Cheered on by a complacently liberal media, Democrats boycotted the meeting, in an effort to avoid confirmation. Committee rules require at least one Democrat be present before a vote occurs.

Hatch had his committee waive the rule.

“This is all approved by the Parliamentarian,” Hatch said. “I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been.”

He could have sent the Senate’s sergeant at arms to force Democrats to attend the hearing. He did not.

From CNN:

Hatch chuckled when confronted by questions from reporters about the little notice that the public received about Wednesday’s meeting. “You were scrambling? Well, you know, that’s neither here nor there,” he said.

The chairman also said that he had not yet spoken with the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, Wednesday morning. “I don’t feel a bit sorry for them,” Hatch said.

This is a refreshing new attitude, long overdue. …