“Jingle Bells” Racist? Um….Who Cares? It’s a Secular Song That Has No Link to Christmas

A college professor came under fire on social media for publishing a paper that suggests that the winter song “Jingle Bells” is racist.

Here’s my two cents.   It’s a secular song that was supposed to be in use around Thanksgiving when it was first written, not Christmas.   It started getting used around Christmas instead, even though it isn’t about Christmas, and isn’t a traditional Christmas song that includes any mention of anything of a religious nature in it. 

It may be that the song is racist, maybe it isn’t.   I’m not going to say anything else about it other than this:   whatever.  

Trump May Be Using the Jerusalem Controversy to Distract International Attention from Somewhere Else in the World: What’s He Doing?

I can’t help but think that President Trump is using the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol and setting the Arab world on fire to distract the international community’s attention away from somewhere else in the world, where he may be preparing to take covert action.

Why do I get the feeling that Kim Jong Un is about to have a fatal accident?

Just a feeling.

Behar...HA HA HA!!

No sympathy for her and her forced walk-back.     She should be suspended too.

If Trump Wants to Fire Tillerson, Then Do It Already: We Don’t Have Time for Public Shamings or the Like; We Need a Wartime Secretary of State Who Can Rally the World Against North Korea

President Trump needs to quit screwing around with his Secretary of State and either let Tillerson do the job, or fire him and find a wartime Secretary of State.

I say “wartime” because we may be at war with North Korea within a matter of weeks, and we need a politician with thick skin, not a businessman who is calling President Trump a “moron.”

I’m openly biased against Rex Tillerson.  I opposed his nomination as Secretary of State, and don’t think he did the job that was needed.   Running the State Department is not like running a business at all.   He’d be much more appreciated at the helm of ExxonMobile, which is where I wish he had stayed.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt after he was confirmed, but now that the Administration is floating a balloon about replacing Tillerson, they should move on this now.

If Accusers Aren’t Prepared to Take Attackers to Court to Seek Justice, Should They Be Throwing Accusation Bombs Over Stuff That Happened Decades Ago? The 6th Amendment is Being Violated to an Unbelievable Degree

I’m very aware that sexual harassment and assault needs to be confronted in all of its forms, but the 6th Amendment to the United States Constitution seems to have fallen by the wayside in the process, or fed into a paper shredder.

If an accuser isn’t prepared to go to court to seek either civil or criminal justice, does the accuser really have the right to go public with their accusations?  If they can’t prove what they’ve accused their attacker of, does their target have the right to sue the accuser for damages? 

The presumption of innocence is one of the founding principles of the American nation.   The suspect is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but since people are being accused and tried in the media, it looks like the suspect is guilty until proven innocent.    That’s not the American way.

I don’t know if there’s a silver bullet to deal with all of these problems, but the criminal justice system and Constitution should not become casualties of a problem that’s going to become much worse in the coming days and weeks, if the media rumors are even halfway accurate.

I think if someone who is accused decides to sue his accusers to get them to prove their accusations or pay for damages done to the reputation of the accused will be extremely ugly, and it will probably be the end of the accused’s career, especially if they’re some kind of a high profile celebrity.   I think this scenario is very likely to happen than not.

Part of me is happy that these idiots are facing a reckoning of their own making, but the other part is concerned that laws are followed, and that if they can be prosecuted, they should be, with all the legal protections that they’re due as American citizens.

Sexual harassment is illegal.   I want to see some punishments handed out by the courts, not trials in the media.

Welcome to the 21st Century, Liberals: “It’s About Sex” Line Used to Protect President Clinton Is Finally Being Seen in the Correct Light That IT ALWAYS WAS IN!

Oh, so the liberals are finally seeing a huge mistake that they made in the 1990s?

Too little, too late.   We were telling you that it WASN’T about sex back then, and we’re still telling you the same thing today.  It’s about sexual power and sheer dominance by one person over another.   It always has been, and the Clintons provide one of the worst examples of corrupt political power being used to destroy victims who were seeking justice.

These liberals are quite correct in saying they should have pressured President Clinton to resign after his sworn testimony about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.  

Congressional liberals are the pebbles who wait until it’s too late to do anything but be swept along by the avalanche that is already roaring down the side of the mountain toward them.   They’ve got the “deer in the headlights” look on their faces.

They’re counting on disgust of the American public against the GOP’s lack of ability to pass anything to flip some seats in both houses, but if they don’t take decisive action against their own colleagues, they may take two huge hits on election day: they won’t flip the seats they’re expecting and they may lose additional seats when their own supporters stay home or vote for “none of the above.”  The Democrats should be worried.

The scandals facing the Democrats are much worse than the perceived weakness of the GOP and the loudmouth in the White House who can’t help but self-inflict wounds on himself and his Administration.  

When he criticized Minnesota Senator Franken’s actions, he opened up ANOTHER can of worms: a dozen women accused then-candidate Trump of sexual impropriety during the campaign, that situation had quietly went dormant; now it’s become political ammunition again, and he’s going to need buckets to catch the lead once Congress sorts out the riff-raff in their own ranks.

President Trump Needs to Remember That Mueller Investigation of Trump Campaign Has Been Going on For Months, While Revelations About DNC/Clinton Campaign Have Been Making the News For Less Than a Week: President Needs to Settle Down

President Trump has been hollering a lot on Twitter lately due to a leak in the Mueller probe investigating Russian connections to the Trump campaign, and the fact that there will likely be some kind of arrest by the FBI in the next twenty-four hours.  

I think Michael Flynn is the likely target, with Paul Manafort being in the running too.   And I don’t think the arrests will be related to Russia, either.   It’s something else that they found in the course of the investigation, if the leaks are to be trusted.

With President Trump, he’s demanding investigations of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, but he has to remember that the Russia probe against people around him has been going on for months, while news of the DNC/Clinton connection to Russia has been breaking news for less than a week so far.   The Mueller probe will make a splash first.

If there’s an independent counsel appointed, it’ll be months before anything is done about the President’s opponents.

The next twenty-four hours will be interesting.

Church Removing Memorial to President Washington Isn’t a Big Deal: That’s Their Business

I’ve considered the controversy involving the George Washington and Robert E. Lee memorials from the Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, and don’t think it’s a big deal.   I don’t come from a church that honors political and military figures in the chapel area with memorials to the left and right of the altar.  I’m accustomed to seeing religious items there.

I’m not inclined to comment further, with the exception of the following observation:

I see that the church itself has the good sense not to be hanging a Black Lives Matter banner outside while discussing removing a memorial to President Washington.  That would have been a huge lighting rod for controversy.

Let them do what they want with their church.

I Can’t Take Someone Who Dresses Like This Seriously, No Matter What Their Skin Color Is: Who is This, Princess Cowboy?

Does this Congressperson really expect to be taken seriously, dressing like this?  I’m sorry, but I just can’t believe someone dresses like this and is supposed to be a representative of a Congressional District.

I thought this was one of those rodeo clowns that I saw on TV the other day.

This is a joke, right?

Horror in Las Vegas: It Looks Really Bad

Still a lot of chaos coming out of Las Vegas, where a gunman opened fire during a country western concert on the Strip. 

Early indications point to a lone wolf with fully automatic weapons opening fire on a crowd of thousands.  The police are saying there are twenty dead and hundreds wounded.

Thoughts and prayers to the families of the dead, and the wounded in this nightmare situation.

The Sight of Spanish Police Breaking Up an Election (and Breaking Heads) Was Too Much: Is Spain a Democracy, or Is It a Totalitarian Regime?

Spain’s behavior in Catalonia as it voted on whether or not it wanted to remain a part of Spain was not worthy of a democratic nation that respects the rule of law.

I thought we were watching Soviet or Russian interior ministry troops at work, not the Spanish police.

Spain already said they didn’t recognize the vote; the Spanish courts ruled them illegal, so why break them up with violence too?   The UN Human Rights Council and the EU equivalent needs to look at how the Spanish handled this situation.   I think it was handled very badly.

And the Catalonian assembly will do what it’s going to do, regardless of whether they win the vote or not.  Will that get broken up by violence too?

I think Spain will have an uprising to deal with now.

GOP Health Care Plans Have Been Awful So Far: That’s Why They Haven’t Gotten a Single Repeal & Replace Plan Through Congress and to the President’s Desk for His Signature or Veto

The GOP is on the verge of shelving their latest healthcare plan after failing to convince enough Senators on their side to support the current bill.

There’s several very good reasons why it has failed so far, and why it will continue to fail.  The plans have simply been awful.  They propose throwing out what’s already in place and throwing too many Americans out of the market and costing jobs, while offering less coverage.  That’s a recipe for disaster, and something that makes Democratic crossovers extremely unlikely.

From my point of view, the whole point of the healthcare problem is to lower premiums, lower deductibles for Americans to make it affordable and offer more choices to the American people, and to enroll more people to make it self-sustaining.  That means fixing what’s already in place.

The GOP leadership will need Democratic help to overcome those who want to get rid of everything.  I won’t support that position (complete repeal) until they come up with something better than what’s in place now.  I was in favor of it, but not with the plans that the GOP has been coming up with. 

I think that’s also why so many don’t like the GOP repeal and replace plans put forward so far.  President Trump did the right thing by getting rid of the mandate, and that’s the only thing that’s been done correctly to this date.

Maybe Twitter Should Delete Both Tump’s Twitter Account and the White House Account: It Would Force Him to Upgrade His Press Team, Use Time-Tested Means of Sending Out Presidential Information and to Re-Establish the Walls of Separation That Have Disappeared With His Administration’s Lack of a Unified Message

I like the fact that President Trump makes public what many of us are thinking, including his thoughts on firing NFLers who are dividing the country—yes, they’re the ones doing the dividing by kneeling during the National Anthem, which one of the few remaining unifying forces (the flag and the military being the others) in our country—, but President Trump lets things run away from him with his lack of discipline and foresight.

What the President of the United States says DOES matter.   Wielding Twitter like a club against his political enemies has unraveled a lot of the already-limited trust that the American public has in the current office-holder.

Twitter should delete President Trump’s account as they would already already for anybody else.   What might happen?

Well, he might get more sleep and not be so cranky first thing in the morning.   How many tweets did he send out yesterday before breakfast?  18?  And most of them directed at the National Anthem controversy, which is now much worse than it was before. 

Some of us started boycotting the NFL two years ago over this issue, and it looked like it was getting better, but then Trump said and tweeted about the “SOB’s getting told that they’re fired,” and then all of a sudden, entire teams got involved.

He might also start to use his press team properly and use his advisors to vet what message is coming out of the White House so that they’re on the same page.  The new Chief of Staff has made things a whole lot better, but all of his progress can be unraveled by 140 character messages in a matter of minutes.  

The White House Press Office is a time-tested means of getting Presidential information out once information has been tempered for public consumption.  

We don’t need Donald Trump the entertainer to entertain us.  And it has been entertaining at times, but it’s not what the country needs.   We need a disciplined President, which we don’t have so far.

The messages coming out of the White House have been confusing.  His press secretary says one thing, then the President apparently changes his mind and then tweets out something totally different within minutes, leaving the Press Office with egg in their faces. 

And putting out international policy in 140 characters?  Rocket Man is going absolutely bonkers (I like Rocket Man better than Litt’l Kim).   I’d rather not have us go to war over a tweet.

I think it would do President Trump some good to get off Twitter and discipline himself to take some hits and to use his people to fire back.  It would be interesting to see how things improve, and how he’d try to get around a ban, that’s for sure.

I hope no future president does what President Trump is doing on Twitter.  The old ways work best.   And a unified message coming out of the White House is preferable to the utter chaos that the come out of the current Administration.

Antifa Needs to Be Declared a Domestic Terror Group: In Addition to Fighting the KKK and Neo-Nazis, They’ve Been Assaulting Conservative Americans and Trump Supporters

The “Antifa” movement has come into focus in the public spotlight in recent days, and the news isn’t good.

Apparently, this group has been around for a while, though not in American politics much before 2016.  Unlike their neo-Nazi and KKK opponents, Antifa doesn’t have a single central leader and shows up to events fairly disjointed.   They also do not subscribe to Democratic Party goals and ideas, though some of the more radical liberals have started to subscribe to Antifa goals and methods.

Some of the groups are not afraid to use violence to achieve their goals, and they’re the ones who clashed with the KKK and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville a couple of days ago.   President Trump was right, but he’s still under heavy fire from the House, Senate, media and others for not paying more attention to the neo-Nazis and singling them out, even though he had already done so.

If Antifa turns up at a political event wearing black masks, then they’re up to no good.  That's no different from the KKK showing up wearing their white hoods.  Thieves and criminals wear hoods and masks.

Violence has no place in American politics.    The loss of civility in political discourse is appalling.

Commentator on Fox News Made Statement That Hate Speech is Not Protected: Actually, It Is, Because the Constitution Makes It So

Before I go one step forward, I totally condemn the  violence that took place this morning in Virginia.  I also  condemn the white supremacists for holding this rally in the first place.   This kind of violence has no place in our society.

Using a car to mow down people you disagree with?   Give me a break!  I’d also like to point out that blacks and whites were both mowed down by this unthinking individual.

I’ve been a vocal opponent of the white supremacist movement in years past and renew that commitment to hold them to account.  

I got into an argument on this blog back in April 2006 with a neo-Nazi, and have included a couple of the links below.

https://thunderferret.blogspot.com/2006/04/big-trouble-neo-nazis-may-crash-city.html

https://thunderferret.blogspot.com/2006/04/neo-nazi-comments-on-this-blog.html

I had commented that the Noise Blockade and diversity festival being held in the city of Lansing would have thousands of people there, while the neo-Nazi turnout would be far below expectations.   He was laughing that “thousands” wouldn’t show up and that they’d have two hundred white supremacists there.  In actuality, 1,700 people showed up at the counter-rally while only 75 neo-Nazis (out of 200 predicated) bothered to show up.   They decided not to crash the diversity festival and stayed in the Capitol grounds.

Now, having said all that, a commentator on Fox News this afternoon said that hate speech is not protected speech.  Um, yes it is, as it is written in the Constitution of the United States and upheld by the United States Supreme Court. 

I believe what the commentator meant to say but fell short on is that inciting to riot is NOT protected speech, as decided by the Court in Brandenburg vs. Ohio (1969).

As detestable as hate speech is, it is protected speech, so long as it doesn’t incite riots and violence.  In other words, they had a right to protest the removal of a statue dedicated to Robert E. Lee, but not to physically hurt people.  Likewise, the counter-protesters had every right to be there to demonstrate in favor of removing the statue.

I’m also getting the impression that something else is going on with the other side who participated in the violence.  Apparently they call themselves “Antifa.”   From what I could tell in the videos I’ve seen, they physically blocked the neo-Nazis from advancing into the park in Charlottesville, which lead to the violence.   This “antifa” group shouldn’t have gotten physically involved as they played right into the neo-Nazi group’s hands.  The neo-Nazis appear to have come looking for a fight with batons, riot shields and some kind of spray that they used.  

I think that’s why the President responded with his blaming both sides for the violence.  It takes two to make a fight.   He’s getting blasted by everybody, but I think he’ll be proven correct.

Don’t know what this “antifa” thing is, but I’m going to find out.   I think I heard that term last year too, when they were blamed for attacking Trump’s supporters during the election.  I didn’t think much of it—just left-wing kooks stirring stuff up.

There was once a time when protesters and counter-protesters could yell at each other without resorting to violence.  If those days are gone, we might all come to regret the loss of civility, even when counter-protesting the hate message of the KKK and neo-Nazi barbarians.

North Korea Will Probably Test-Fire ICBMs Toward Guam to Test Resolve of U.S.: American Government Must Not Falter for a Moment

After all the dangerous rhetoric from the last week, I think it’s very likely that North Korea will test launch four ICMBs toward Guam, and then crash them outside of Guam territorial waters as a demonstration of the “strength” of their weapons.

Their own statements seem to support this theory.  The North Korean government said that

“…. The Hwasong-12 rockets to be launched by the KPA will cross the sky above Shimane, Hiroshima and Koichi Prefectures of Japan. They will fly 3356.7 km for 1 065 seconds and hit the waters 30 to 40 km away from Guam.

The KPA Strategic Force will finally complete the plan until mid August and report it to the commander-in-chief of the DPRK nuclear force and wait for his order.”

I seriously doubt they’ll enter Guam airspace, or that they’ll be nuclear armed.   This seems to be a declaration of intent, with their Liberation Day holiday coming up next Tuesday, August 15th.

If Little Kim wants to play with fire, he’s going to get burned badly.   But sometimes that’s the only way a petulant child learns the lesson.

North Korea Doesn’t Need an Accurate Guidance System to Cause Severe Damage to U.S.: He Just Needs to Get His Missiles Above the U.S. Mainland and Then Detonate the Bombs While They’re Still in Flight and EMP Will Do the Rest

The North Koreans don’t need to hit any American cities with their nukes to cause substantial damage to the U.S. infrastructure.    All the little runt needs to do is get his missiles above the U.S. and then detonate them at high altitude, and the resulting electromagnetic pulse will do the actual damage.

I don’t know what kind of altitude is needed to achieve maximum effect; the military types are better at answering these kinds of questions.  The only thing they may be missing is a way to have the warhead survive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere to get to the correct altitude to detonate.

North Korea’s weapons yields are estimated to be between 5 and 30 kilotons so far.  These are more suited for battlefield use, unless one is trying to put an enemy’s home territory at risk in a rush.  The North Koreans are definitely in a rush to put the U.S. within ICBM range.  

I think war is inevitable, unless one of North Korea’s generals puts a bullet into Little Kim’s skull.   He really needs to be in the Hague to answer charges of crimes against humanity for what he’s done to his own people.

He probably won’t survive a conflict with the United States.   But how much damage could he do to his neighbors and to us before he goes away?

Where is President Trump Finding These Clowns Who are Running His White House Into the Ground? Communications Director and Chief of Staff Lock Horns Publicly With Profanity-Laced Insults Being Traded Out in the Open

What kind of monkey business has overtaken the West Wing, and where is President Trump finding these FOOLS who are bumbling around in the open?

I’m speaking of his Chief of Staff, and his Communications Director who are feuding out in the open, in a Trump-worthy public relations disaster that hasn’t been seen in recent Administrations in quite a long time.

President Trump needs to make an example out of them and fire them both.  Trump is in charge of the West Wing, and both the Communications Director and Chief of Staff serve at the pleasure of the President, and they’re causing a headache for Trump.   Get rid of them both.

Now, Trump needs to settle things with Secretary Sessions over at the Justice Department, whether he makes peace, fires Sessions or causes Sessions to resign.   

At this stage, I don’t care if Trump stays in office or not, so he might as well finish off the Sessions feud how he wants to and move on to whatever awaits him.

I don’t think he cares either.   So why stay in a job he obviously hates?

McCain Votes to Kill “Skinny Repeal” Option and Helps to Kill Measure: His Vote Was Correct

The Senate saw some very late night/early morning dramatics as the “Skinny Repeal” option failed in the Senate, 51-49.   This is a very good thing as it was a half-baked measure that was kept behind closed and locked doors, wasn’t shared with anyone from the opposition or their own party (!) and when it was publicly revealed, it was quickly voted on, with the Republicans hoping that their entire membership would support the quick vote.  That’s not how it went down.

Senator McCain spoke of the need to return to ordinary business through Congressional committees, which I am in complete agreement with.

Now that the repeal has failed, they need to turn their attention to fixing Obamacare, which should be a lot easier than throwing the entire thing out the window and starting over.  The debate should be out in the open for all to see and discuss.  

The entire Congress needs to heed his advice and get back to the normal running of Congress, without locked doors, secret negotiations involving only a few people, and then rushing through
votes.

McCain’s stock has gone up with me with his votes and statements.  I hope that the Congress—House and Senate—heed his warning and return to normal business procedures, instead of one party or the other ramrodding stuff through.

Both parties are to blame for the current state of affairs, and both parties need to help clean up their mess.

Latest GOP Obamacare Repeal Bill Dies: Full Repeal Isn’t Possible

I can’t say I’m totally disappointed that the Obamacare repeal bill being pushed by the GOP failed again in the Senate.   I couldn’t support the current bill either.   It’s taking away too much and not keeping basic provisions in place, or doing enough to lower monthly premiums.

The GOP needs to face reality: their repeal efforts will keep failing as there is not enough support within their own party to get it passed.

Here’s another reality that conservatives need to come to grips with: a full repeal isn’t possible at this time—it never was--, so they need to start singing a different tune.  It was a nice campaign promise, but it’s one they can’t deliver. They’re also going to get mauled in the next election, in my opinion.

They should fix the Obamacare law, leave the current coverages in place, and work on getting more people who don’t have employer-sponsored coverage into the exchanges, which will allow the insurance companies to make a profit and stay in the market.  They must take steps to lower monthly premiums, which are killing just about everybody’s paycheck.

There’s no doubt that Obamacare is broken.  I hope the entire conversation shifts gears and they start doing business properly in Congress.

National Democrats Spent Millions and Can’t Win a Single Contested Election in the Trump Era: Rank & File Dems Shouldn’t Donate Money to Their Party Under These Circumstances

Democrats should be asking themselves what they’re getting for their money.   They just lost a special Georgia election that they were counting on to win, and had invested heavily in the campaign.

That makes the DNC victory count 0-5.  Zero wins in the Trump era…they’re definitely doing something wrong.   The excuses for the Democratic loss are pouring in, as one liberal outlet after another reluctantly reported that Republican Karen Handel had won the race.

The Dems just aren’t connecting, and the f-bomb campaign tactic doesn’t work for them either.  And the Republicans need to use caution with their language too. 

Just because it worked for one candidate (Trump), it doesn’t mean that it’ll work for everybody. Dropping f-bombs is simply red meat, and only appeals to the candidate’s base…sometimes.  At least some of the time, it turns voters off.

In any case, Democratic rank & file members should question whether they like the national party dumping their money into campaigns that they have a slim chance of winning. 

The Dems outspent Trump by nearly a 2-1 margin during last year’s Presidential campaign and still lost.  They did the same thing in Georgia and lost there too.  They haven’t learned the lesson that’s being taught about spending in districts that they have less than a 50% chance of winning, but it’s very likely that they’re learning it this morning.

Does Russia Really Think We Can’t Target Their Aircraft as Easily As They Can Target Ours? That Door Swings Both Ways!

Russia has threatened to target coalition aircraft if they interfere with Syrian and Russian bombing operations in areas where U.S. forces and allies are actively fighting ISIS.

So what?  We can target their aircraft just as easily, and shoot theirs down twice as fast.  The U.S. Air Force has more recent sustained combat experience with proven equipment. 

Putin needs to pull back or his air force will find itself in a war that it can’t win.   He’s going to have to accept that U.S. forces are on the ground, and that the U.S. Air Force will defend our personnel and interests in Syria.

A Russian-American air war over Syria benefits no one except ISIS.  

I should point out that United States armed forces are definitely fighting ISIS; Russia isn’t, hasn’t and won’t as they’re too busy defending Assad, who will bring them nothing but trouble.  

This is Russian bluster, nothing more.

Trump Shouldn’t Testify Under Oath: This Would Weaken His Presidency Even More As He Doesn’t Know When to Pipe Down and Listen

President Trump should not testify before Congress because he doesn’t know when to pipe down, and doesn’t care to either.

I’m sorry to say that about him, but he’s even more of a loose cannon than I had predicted he would be during the election.   I remain unconvinced that he’s temperamentally suited to be President.

I am convinced, however, that if Trump were to go before Congress and testify, that neither the Dems nor Reps would confine themselves to asking only about former FBI Director Comey’s testimony.  Trump has a lot of controversies going on, and the temptation to go after Trump’s wall, his travel ban, Michael Flynn, the entire Russia affair, witness tampering, obstruction of justice and all the other yaadaa yaadaa swirling around the President would be too tempting to ignore.

I would like to note that there is precedence for sitting Presidents and Vice Presidents to go before Congress to testify.  Some examples:

President Washington testified before the entire Senate on the various Indian treaties of the time.

President Lincoln (1862) went to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about a leak in the White House.  President Lincoln helped to free a New York Herald reporter who had refused to name his source that had given him an advanced copy of Lincoln’s State of the Union speech.  Congress was convinced that Mary Lincoln was the source, but President Lincoln assured them that no member of his family was involved.

Vice President Colfax (1873) went before the House Select Committee to answer charges that he was involved in the Credit Mobiler scandal.  Colfax had denied owning stock in the company, but got caught in a lie.  He did not run for office again.

President Wilson (1919) went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to extoll the benefits of joining the new League of Nations following World War I.  The Senate rejected the treaty twice and the U.S. never joined the League.

President Ford (1974) went before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice & the House Judiciary Committee on why he gave former President Nixon a full presidential pardon. 

Former Presidents have also testified before Congress, including Theodore Roosevelt (twice), Harry S. Truman, and Gerald R. Ford after his term of office (on the bicentennial of the Constitution).

Because of Trump’s repeated changing of his stories, he’d be put into a real negative light, much more so than he is right now.

I think he should tell Congress “no” to testifying.  He has nothing to gain, except petty revenge against Comey, and much more to lose.

I can’t help but think that he’s looking to be kicked out of office so he can resume his business dealings.

“Even North Korea’s Signed the Paris Climate Accords!” North Korea’s Fixing to NUKE Us! What Will That Do to Global Temperatures?

Some idiot came up with a new political slogan against President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the worst global groupthink disaster in history that says “Even North Korea Signed the Paris Climate Accords!”

What a stupid idiotic thing to say.   North Korea’s signature is worth even less than the useless Paris Climate Accord.

Last time I checked, North Korea’s threatening to nuke us.  What would a nuclear attack against the United States and South Korea and the subsequent nuclear destruction of North Korea by the U.S. nuclear counterattack do to global temperatures?

Raise them for a while before nuclear winter set in.

So North Korea signed.  Big whoop!

Any by the way, 195 countries can only drop the expected temperature change by only 0.2 degrees Celsius?   That alone shows how useless the current treaty is.   “Something is better than nothing” groupthink is what got us here and why 195 countries signed it.

Paris Accord is a Joke: It’s a “Feel Good” Treaty with “Set Your Own Goals” and “Make the United States Pay For It” Provisions; The Real Joke Will Come When We Drop Our Emissions Faster Than Most of the Treaty-Bound Nations Who Are Currently Condemning Trump

OK, the whining from the libs and global warming alarmists is too delicious to ignore.   Time for some lunch!

The Paris Accord isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, and it’s cost the United States billions to pay for other nations to lower their own emissions while transferring coal burning rights to other nations, and all at the expense of the American worker and economy.

It’s nothing more than a “feel good” treaty with “set your own limits” provisions and has absolutely no enforcement teeth.

Plus it was never submitted to the United States Senate for approval, which made it illegal by the Constitutional measure.  

No international treaty should be the basis for using American courts to force compliance with laws of any kind.  The Constitution of the United States reigns supreme here, and any international treaty that says otherwise is NULL and VOID.

Trump put America first in this case. 

I had earlier suggested remaining in it, but with European nations saying that the treaty cannot and will not be renegotiated changed my mind.  

I wonder how many nations who have signed the Paris Accords would sign a new treaty if it had strict rules, signatories had to pay 1% of their GDP across the board and could be enforced without infringing on the sovereign rights of the nations in question.   Not nearly as many as this weak smorgasbord treaty has.

Businesses want more efficient ways of doing things; so do people.  And if it is cleaner, more efficient, cost effective, and happens to lower CO2 emissions along the way, so much the better. 

The only thing funnier than this treaty will be if an Accord-unbound U.S. beats 95% of the treaty signatories in dropping CO2 emissions in the suggested timeframe.  2015 saw the U.S. lead the world in CO2 cuts at nearly 145 million tons.  This is at odds with the alarmist narrative.

I suggest  that those who are crying over this get over themselves, go buy a pack of LED lights, screw them in, and enjoy their lower electrical bill.  That’s a cheaper feel-good way to contribute to emissions cuts than a feel-good treaty that’s cost us in the neighborhood of $250 billion.

President Should Sidestep the Withdrawal from the Paris Accords Debate and Submit the Treaty to the Senate As Constitutionally-Called For: Congress Needs to Be Forced to Publicly Take a Stand With Their Votes for Approval or Disapproval

President Trump has an easy way to temporarily side-step the entire debate on whether or not to stay in the Paris Accords: submit the treaty to the Senate for approval or disapproval.   Such a far-reaching treaty with foreign governments needs to be put before the Senate for a vote, as called for by the Constitution, and not by presidential fiat (Executive Orders). 

I hope this is what he does.

This president has shown that he’s not afraid to reverse Obama-era Executive Orders, and this would be another way to re-establish the balance of power that the Obama Administration managed to blur beyond recognition..

If the Senate somehow manages to pass this flawed treaty that tells us to do what our businesses sector is already doing more efficiently than many Paris Accord-bound nations have been able to do so far with their treaty-imposed limits, President Trump always has the veto option available down the road. 

U.S. taxpayers should not be footing the bill for other nations to meet their own treaty obligations (referred to in the Accords as “climate finance.”)  

I really hope this is the option that President Trump takes.   Congress needs to go on the record, while at the same time fulfilling their Constitutional duties.

Merkel Says Europe Shouldn’t Rely on U.S. or U.K.: About Time She Figured It Out

Now that Angela Merkel has figured out that the United States isn’t big brother to Europe and Europe isn’t big brother to the United States, we can finally start to deal with each other on equal terms.

It’s a moment that’s been in the making for a long time.

We’re also seeing the difference in between an Omega leader and an Alpha leader, in terms of President Obama and President Trump’ s leadership styles.  Obama meekly went along with the crowd, while Trump won’t tuck tail and submit to European groupthink. 

I suspect Trump will keep the U.S. in the Paris Accords, but he’ll insist on stringent new conditions and exemptions in return for the U.S. honoring the treaty.   I also think that he will submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification, which is what should have happened years ago, but Obama chose not to out of fear that the GOP-controlled Senate would (rightly) reject it.

Merkel’s frustration with Trump is a very good sign; his speech calling on NATO members to pay their fair share was dead-on too.  It’s too bad it seemed to fall on deaf European ears, but hopefully they’ll come around.

There’s too much evil in the world for NATO to confront without having to deal with a budget shortfall created by its own members.

Government People Leaking Information to the Media Need to Be Found and Prosecuted: British Police Stop Sharing Information with U.S. Because They “Don’t Want Their Investigation Hindered”

The news from Britain was not entirely unexpected; British police have stopped sharing intelligence from their bombing investigation with the United States out of fear that it’ll be leaked to the news media over here and set their investigation back.

When our own allies don’t trust our government to handle sensitive information, that’s one more indicator that the sources---all of them---need to be found and prosecuted.   And the price they pay needs to be so high that it’ll discourage others from considering doing the same thing.

And President Trump needs to stay on-script with foreign leaders too, especially with governments that are not our friends.   Trusting them with intelligence gathered by the Israeli intelligence network?   That may not have been the best move, but what’s done is done.   Hopefully Israel asked President Trump to check with them first before revealing Israeli-generated intelligence.

Time to go back to Cold War tactics to catch spies and serial leakers.

Trump Fires FBI Director: He Didn’t Have Much of a Choice; This FBI Director Made Too Many Mistakes and Was Badly Damaged

The office of the FBI Director needs to be clear of political entanglements, and Director Comey was up to his eyeballs on them.  He had to go.  The timing was awful, but with everything going on, there was no guarantee that there would be a better time down the road.

An FBI director who doesn’t follow the chain of command is among the most dangerous people in federal government, because of the power of his agency.  He may not be able to order nuclear missiles to be launched, but his was the power to order investigations of national security issues on all levels of government, and out in public too.   Counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, and criminal investigations are just the tip of the FBI spear.

The FBI director also needs to be an independent observer and do his/her part to protect the public and to stay out of politics, which he didn’t do.  He was badly damaged from his foray into the political realm.

I had said on this blog back in October that I felt that the FBI Director had been overthrown because President Obama wouldn’t order an investigation of his preferred Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, and that the Department of Justice was probably involved.

It’s a reality now.

The hypocrisy of the Democrats who were screaming for Comey’s head eleven days before the election was on full display MINUTES after news broke, of course, but that label also extended to Republicans as well.   Senators and Congresspeople alike from both parties who wanted Comey gone were screaming bloody murder about his dismissal.

This firing has created another circus for the Administration to deal with, and it’s self-inflicted.   I’ve never seen an Administration stab itself in the leg as often as this one does.   Trump should have appointed an independent prosecutor at the same time…this would have given Trump some credibility that he so badly needs.

This is going to get seriously ugly.

Fox’s Letting O’Reilly Go Was the Right Move to Make in Spite of the Pain in the Ratings the Move Will Cost: Now They Need to Find Another Conservative Firebrand

Bill O’Reilly is out at Fox News, and it was the correct move to make.   O’Reilly’s alleged behavior was a continued liability exposure to Fox that could no longer be tolerated.

In doing this, Fox will probably lose their ranking in the ratings during the “O’Reilly Factor” timeslot for the time being, but if they put someone in there who is a firebrand and can keep part of the conservative audience that O’Reilly enjoyed, they’ll do OK and claw their ratings and advertisers back. 

Fifty companies pulled their ads out of the “Factor” timeslot when news of this scandal broke, which were worth in the neighborhood of $100 million.

Fox may be at risk of a lawsuit from O’Reilly, and possibly from the victims for failing to act, so their legal troubles aren’t over.   They’ll have to pay more out, but if they can change the culture over there, the hemorrhage will slow and stop, or move to a more manageable level, similar to other like-sized companies. 

It will be interesting to watch.

Fox Still Has Problems Over at Their News Division: Nothing’s Been Done to Deal With Fox & Friends Issues, and Now Bill O’Reilly’s on the Radar Too

The sexual harassment problem plaguing Fox News is still there and is intensifying; this is not good.

They’ve done nothing to reprimand members of the Fox & Friends team, and now Bill O’Reilly has popped up on the radar, and not in a good way.  One F&F cast member featured prominently in a sexual harassment lawsuit and helped to establish a hostile work environment, as I wrote about back in 2016.

Now, Bill O’Reilly has been settling lawsuits with accusers who have come forward to the tune of $10 million of his own money, and $3 million of the network’s money. 

If he was using just his own money to settle with women who are after him, I’d be willing to accept his explanation that he’s a target for lawsuits, and that he was trying to protect his kids from being humiliated.  But the fact that the network is contributing to payoffs to these women tells me there’s much more to the story than what has been revealed.

Fox management needs to deal severely with these situations.  It’s already cost them a lot of credibility with their conservative audience, at least $60 million to settle the Gretchen Carlson lawsuit and millions more to cover up whatever O’Reilly’s doing,  and they’ll lose a lot more if they don’t start making some examples out of these people and enforcing sexual harassment laws on and off the set.

Workplace sexual harassment is ILLEGAL.

Solution to North Korean Problem Rests With Chinese PLA Forces: They Could Seize Control of North Korean Nuclear Facilities, Missile Complexes and Weapons and Make It Unnecessary for U.S to Launch Military Strikes

China holds the key to solving the North Korean nuclear problem once and for all, and it is going to have to make a decision soon.

We already know that China doesn’t like the idea of U.S. and South Korean troops near its border with North Korea, as demonstrated in the 1950s when the Chinese sent their army across the border into North Korea to attack advancing UN troops.   

In this current crisis, North Korea doesn’t seem interested in following the advice of China, which has threatened to use force if North Korean actions lead to any kind of damage to northeastern China.  This is very interesting, especially since any use of nuclear weapons above ground will undoubtably damage large swaths of the Chinese electrical grid, and not just in the northeastern part of the country.

I say “above ground” because it is entirely possible that if a military confrontation begins between the U.S. and South Korea against North Korea, the idiot running Pyongyang will use nuclear weapons first, possibly on South Korean territory, possibly on his own territory or elsewhere.   Hopefully he hasn’t developed nuclear torpedoes yet.

China could stop this before it even started, if they were to send their army across the border and seize the missile fields, nuclear facilities/materials and weapons and take them back to China with them, along with North Korea’s nuclear scientists.   I think North Korean nuclear weapons under Beijing’s control is preferable to the immature and insane North Korean leader’s questionable control. 

I find it doubtful that the North Korean military would be prepared for a sudden Chinese military move.  They’re focusing all their attention south and not taking China seriously.

This is probably all wishful thinking, but if it were to happen, China could keep the peace on it’s own terms, prevent an exodus of North Korean refugees, and put Pyongyang in check, so that it would start to behave to international norms. 

I think we’d leave North Korea alone if they started behaving like grown-ups and not the petulant child nation.

Major Turn-Around in Trump’s Reaction to Assad and Syrian Use of Chemical Weapons: U.S. Military Hits Syrian Airfield Where Airstrike Originated

Finally, some decisive action on the Syrian chemical weapons attack.  Hopefully North Korea and China are watching very carefully, and considering what kind of U.S. President that they’re dealing with now.  

President Trump may still be formulating his foreign policy, but once he decides to do something, it’s become very clear that he will.   It’s very encouraging, and a reversal of his words from a couple of days before.  The videos coming out of Syria horrified President Trump, too.  

U.S. forces struck the Syrian airbase where the chemical airstrike originated from.   I think that Assad took a gamble that the U.S. would do nothing, and he miscalculated very badly.  This is not the previous Administration.

Russia and China should encourage their clients to start behaving to international norms.   They’re in a very good position to do so now, if they weren’t before. 

I found it interesting that Russian air defenses apparently did not engage the Tomahawk cruise missiles.  I’m sure we’ll hear more about this as the story develops.

Trump Language on Syria Chemical Weapons Attack is Disappointing: We Need a Really Strong Response

President Trump took the opportunity to blame Obama’s weak red line foreign policy concerning Syria’s chemical weapons and ducked saying what he’s going to do about today’s chemical weapons attack.

Old news, Mr. President.  What are you going to do differently?

And for that matter, are we sure that is was the Syrian government, or was it ISIS with aircraft that they’ve seized from Syrian air bases during the initial  ISIS overrun of Syria?   I doubt it was Russia.

What I saw on TV this evening in the aftermath of the chemical attack is going to give me nightmares.   

If the world doesn’t react with overwhelming negativity and start handing out some severe punishments, this won’t be the last time that we’ll see chemical weapons being used in a war zone.  They’re either illegal, or they’re not.

I hope President Trump watches those videos coming out of Syria in detail.  They’re HORRIFIC.

“Nuclear Option?” Nonsense! Senate Should Have Been on Majority Vote (51 Votes to Cloture) LONG Before Now, Not This 60 Votes Garbage That Has Paralyzed Congress for Far Too Long

I’ve never liked the 60 vote rule in the United States Senate, and think they should have been doing majority votes LONG before the current Supreme Court nominee was up for a vote.

The sooner they go back to majority rules in the Senate, the better.

The only 2/3 or 3/4 votes that should be required are the ones specifically mentioned by the Constitution of the United States.  Everything else should be a simple majority, like in the House.

If a Supreme Court nominee is truly awful, or is discovered to be an axe murderer during the confirmation process, he or she will not get 51 votes.  Enough people in Congress will vote against the nominee, or they’ll convince either the nominee or the President to withdraw the candidacy and choose someone more palatable.

And if the party who doesn’t control the Senate doesn’t like being in the minority, then they need to do a better job of getting people in their states out to vote for their party’s candidates. 

Currently the Republicans run the Senate, but there will more than likely be a turnover eventually, as control has swung in both directions at one point or another.

If anything, we’ll get better Congressional performances from both parties, which have been dismal going back to before the 2000 elections.

Forget about Friday, change the rules now.

GOP Sabotaged Their Own Bill By Trying to Go It Alone: With Their Own Party in Disarray, How Could They Possibly Hope to Pass Anything Until Their Ducks Are in a Row?

I’m trying to comprehend how a political party that is as fractured as the GOP possibly thought they could ramrod their incomplete health care bill through the House with every Democrat prepared to vote “No” on it.  

The attempt to do this was done in extreme haste, and without doing the groundwork first.   Votes should never have been scheduled until the GOP had their entire party on board, which they never did with the health care reform bill.   Moderate Republicans thought the bill went too far, the conservatives didn’t think it went far enough, and everybody else was scattered across the divide.

The GOP couldn’t have more than twenty-one of their members vote against the bill; in between thirty and forty indicated that they wouldn’t support it.  That number, combined with the Democratic numbers was enough to cause the GOP leadership to pull the vote.

If this kind of GOP thinking continues, and they don’t do their homework, I fully expect this kind of thing to happen again on the other agenda items that President Trump has.  I’d prefer he didn’t rule by Presidential fiat in the same way that President Obama did (through Executive Orders). 

I don’t know if Speaker Ryan will be able to hold onto his leadership position, given the kind of defeat he’s just been handed.  If he can’t control his own party in the House, he can’t be expected to control the direction of the whole House either.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out.

GOP Effort to Repeal and Replace Obamacare Will Likely Fail: Their Plan, Quite Frankly, Isn’t As Good as What They’re Attempting to Repeal, So They Should Probably Focus on Fixing What’s Already in Place

I can’t support the Republicans on their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare until they present a plan that is much better and less expensive than what’s already in place.

Which leads me to this point: the original Affordable Care Act was put into place with a plan to put amendments in to fix shortcomings of the law, but the wind direction shifted in Washington and the GOP got control of both houses of Congress, and those amendments were never made.

Someone in Washington needs to look at those amendments and see if they are viable fixes that will help fix the problems, or if they’ll make the situation worse.   Nobody in Washington seems to be talking about this.

People see and feel the monthly premiums the most, and many states have seen double-digit increases in their monthly premiums; insured citizens in Arizona will see a 116% jump in 2017.   This isn’t right or affordable. 

I think the GOP needs to focus on fixing what’s already in place.   Those who are saying that if the GOP screws this up are right: they (the GOP) will pay a heavy price during the midterm elections if millions lose their health insurance.

It may be “Obamacare Light”, but it will have a better chance of succeeding in both houses of Congress, especially with enough of the Republicans in open revolt over supporting the GOP alternative.

They need to do what is necessary to lower premiums, lower costs, and get rid of the mandate. 

Get it right, GOP, or suffer the consequences at the next election.

Police Agencies Should Be Reimbursed for President’s Weekend Trips to Florida and for Protecting Trump Tower: Local Police Aren’t Equipped to Protect President and His Family 24/7/365

President Trump seems to be asking a lot of police departments in New York City and in Florida.   They’re being required to supplement the Secret Service and provide equipment and personnel to protect the President and his family in areas of the country where it’s traditionally not happened before.

Presidential vacations are one thing, but the First Family is residing in Trump Tower in downtown NYC, instead of the White House, and President Trump has spent 1/4 of his Presidency living in Florida.

What gives?  He tweeted in 2016 that he was going to be so busy that he wouldn’t leave the White House.  Yet he’s been in Florida every weekend at his resort, resulting in $60,000 a day in police protection that was not budgeted by Palm Beach County for their Sheriff’s Department.  Residents shouldn’t have to have their taxes raised to pay for President Trump’s protection.

In New York, where the First Family is, it’s even worse.  It’s $146,000 per day, which is actually down from the November-January transition time, which cost NYC $308,000 per day.

The sooner that the First Family moves to the White House, the better.  That way the Secret Service can boost their personnel on the White House grounds, and provide better protection to the President and his family.  Recent security problems at the White House illustrate the need for more Secret Service agents to be on the grounds.   Taking 17 minutes to detect someone (who has no military or infiltration training) who hopped the fence?  That’s a huge problem.

The federal government should reimburse Palm Beach County and New York City for the extra protection that they’re providing.   And President Trump should spend more weekends at the White House to give the residents of Palm Beach a break.

Also, President Trump’s budget will cut federal funding to cities for anti-terrorism efforts, so why is he asking them to spend more while cutting the budget for their police forces?  That doesn’t make sense.

Arrangements need to be made, and a policy written or updated for the future protection of the First Family.

Streisand Tweets That Trump is Making Her Gain Weight: No, Mrs. Streisand, Your Choices Are Doing That

Understand that this is not a fat shaming post as I despise fat shamers.

Barb Streisand tweeted over the weekend that President Trump was causing her to gain weight.

With all due respect to Mrs. Streisand, her choices in foods and when she eats them are responsible for all that, not another person.   If the news is causing stress, turn it off.   Throw the maple syrup out if it’s causing a problem and switch to something else.

Hypothetical: I just ate fifty jelly donuts, and it’s Barbara Streisand’s fault because I don’t like her political stands.   It’s all her fault for my eating fifty jelly donuts and putting on 200 pounds as I eat fifty jelly donuts a day.   Barbara Streisand is going to kill me!   Sound utterly ridiculous?  Now read the story in that vein.

Reality: I hate jelly donuts.   And I eat what I want because I want to.  That’s on me.   Barbara Streisand and her political beliefs have nothing to do with it.   It’s all about making personal choices and taking responsibility for them.   That’s how I see it.

Where Did Trump Get His Information About Wiretapping Going On at Trump Tower From? Did He Get a Briefing on It? And If So, Who Gave It?

If President Trump doesn’t get his act together fast, and start providing information on where he got the notion that Trump Tower was being wiretapped, his adversaries are going to multiply exponentially.

Trump needs allies in Washington if he’s going to make anything of his first term of office, and going off the way he has based (according to some) on the meaningless prattling of an ultra-right wing radio show host (not Rush Limbaugh) simply will not do.  The petulant child routine from President Trump is getting real old, real quick, whether the Tower was bugged or not.

Was President Trump briefed by someone at 6am in the morning?  His first tweet at 6:35am said that he had just found out that the Tower had been wiretapped.  Context, please, Mr. President.

I liked the President Trump I saw on TV addressing Congress.  That’s the one that needs to be out in front, not the Twitter lunatic.

Yes, he should be upset at the Russia story upstaging him again.   And Sessions probably should have talked to the White House as a professional courtesy before having his press conference.

Trump’s chief of staff isn’t doing his job in coordinating the efforts of the Administration.   It’s time to get rid of some people, starting with the chief of staff.

Some Liberal Networks Replace “Fact Check” With “Reality Check”: Former Term Became Too Politicized, And So Will the New One

I see that NBC News and CNN both replaced their “fact checks” with “reality checks.”  I thought something like that was going to happen as “fact checks” and all the variants had become political hot potatoes.   And since President Trump is openly treating the news networks as an opposition party, the fact check terminology was not working to their advantage anymore.

A lot of people would instantly start to bristle if they heard a news anchor even say “fact check” or read it on an openly biased news network’s web site.    I looked at CNN’s evaluation of the President’s address to Congress last night, and the only thing that changed was the title of the piece.

They still issued verdicts of Trump’s statements as being “true”, “true but misleading”, “mostly true”, and “false.”

The problem with these kinds of checks is that the statements of CNN and other news organizations in their fact checks also have to be checked for accuracy.  They got into a nasty habit of misleading readers with inaccurate statements in their own fact checks.

For instance, the following on-screen fact check was put on the air on August 11th, 2016, in response to Trump’s political statement that Obama founded ISIS:

See the fact check?  It’s wrong.  ISIS was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, while al-Baghdadi was the leader of ISIS after al-Zarqawi’s death.   I found it particularly funny that CNN had “He’s Not” in parenthesis in their defense of their Great Leader.

Trump was making a political statement that because the Obama Administration pulled troops out of Iraq too soon, it became possible for groups like ISIS to fill the vacuum as the still-in-training Iraqi Army wasn’t up to the task of fighting off ISIS.   (The Iraqi Army was badly beaten in 2014 and ISIS took over a large swath of Iraq).   Trump was saying Obama should be credited for making the conditions possible for ISIS to flourish, but it didn’t come across right and the left tried to make political hay about it with….mixed results as the photo above shows.

And then there’s the question of one news outlet saying that a statement is true, and another one blasts the same statement as being absolutely false, especially if both news outlets are of the same political color—such as CNN vs. MSNBC.   Throw both fact checks out and go to a third, fourth, fifth or sixth source.

I couldn’t help but notice that the Washington Post’s fact check piece focused in only on statements it considered false and ignored everything else from the rest of the speech, including statements that CNN said were true. 

“Reality checks” will take on the same hue as “fact checks” did, and possibly faster, even without a red-hot political campaign raging across the country.  They’re mostly political attack articles from the Democrats, who really need to get over themselves.

What? The Second Round of the Celebrity Democratic Pity Party Was On Last Night? Oh, Gee, I Missed It When I Turned Off the TV and Went to Bed: Did Anything Happen Other Than the Usual Bull?5

Not that I care.

The news people keep talking about some kind of a screw-up at the end of the show, but I think the entire show is a screw-up.   If they kept the politics out of it and would cease their unending meltdown over the election, I’d probably stay up to watch it or at least DVR it.

I’m not remotely interested in anything that a melting/melted down celebrity has to say about politics.  Get over it.

Quick Repeal of Obamacare Was Never Realistic: GOP Needs to Slow Down, Take a Good Look at Existing Health Care Law, and Proceed One Step at a Time

The GOP is finally realizing that a quick repeal of Obamacare was never a realistic goal.   To quickly repeal it would lead to even more chaos in the health care insurance field than there already is, and no Republican wants to be responsible for large numbers of American losing what they already have.

This is why I’m in favor of a slow examination of  the law, and gradual implementation of a new system, which may or may not involve keeping the better parts of the ACA.

Caution is warranted, not speed, when it comes to health care.  The repeal of Obamacare cannot be done by Executive Order alone, which is as it should be.   It took an act of Congress to pass the ACA, and the repeal or replacement has to follow the same course.

Whatever they do, at the end of the process, people need to have access to health insurance, whether by mandate or by their own volition, and it can’t involve raising premiums much higher than they are now.   A decrease in premiums would be very welcome news, especially in states that have had huge increases in premiums.

Oh, and an $89,000 medication?   I think not.  A $600 epipen injector that’s available in Britain for $69?  That kind of health care robbery has to end.  The $89,000 drug is available overseas for $1,200 and has been for years.

Proceed with caution, GOP.

John McCain Pulled a Bill Clinton-Like Stunt With a Twist: Protesting Against the Government He’s Overseas Representing?

I jumped all over Bill Clinton in 1992 when it came out that he participated in anti-Vietnam War protests against his own country (while he was a student living overseas) in 1969, and now it appears I must jump all over a United States Senator for pulling a Clinton-like stunt over the weekend.

John McCain also made waves during the 1992 campaign, criticizing Bill Clinton’s choices while he (Clinton) was protesting overseas as a student (and at the same time that McCain was being tortured in North Vietnam for information), so I’m having a hard time believing that John McCain would do this.

McCain made a mistake when he traveled to Germany and delivered a speech that was critical of the Trump Administration.

I’m sorry, but a senior Senator like McCain should know better than to pull a Bill Clinton.  He has every right to say what he did, but not off American soil.  He’s over there representing the United States government, and he just slapped it in the face in the presence of a foreign audience.  Gee, thanks for nothing, Senator.

It was a bad decision, and one I can’t support.   And I don’t care how mad he is; American domestic politics stops at the waterline.   Politicians should know better than to air their laundry away from home.
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Just how many of Senator McCain's Arizona constituents live in Munich, anyway?

If the Mainstream Media Still Thinks It’s Part of the Government After Yesterday’s “Press Conference”, Then They’re Delusional: A Free and Independent Press Cannot Be Joined At The Hip With the President The Way That They Were During the Obama Administration

The liberal headlines about President Trump’s impromptu press conference yesterday were exactly as expected.  Terms that they used were mostly negative (epic rant, unhinged, rambling, media-bashing, unplugged, crazy, scorched-earth, wild, shock, bluster, bravado, exaggeration (that’s the one term I agree with), and about a dozen other terms that they looked in the thesaurus to find). 

I called it brilliant, and exactly what the arrogant elitist press needed to hear: a sitting President putting them into their place.

Some of the elitists still believe that the press is part of the federal government, which is dead wrong.  A free, independent and healthy press must not seen to be a part of the government, or they run the risk of becoming presidential spokespeople, which is what they were for the Obama  Administration, and for the failed Obama heir-apparent . 

I believe Trump served them up a big helping of humble pie yesterday.  And the press is still trying to figure out what it is they’re dealing with.   They withered under Trump’s fire, and that’s a good thing.   He’s treating the media as political opposition, which is what they’ve allowed themselves to become.  And it’s a good strategy for now.   He needs results when the public gets bored with his current antics. 

Now, there are still a lot of unanswered questions that President Trump hasn’t answered yet, and he said some things that were blatantly incorrect during the press conference, like his Electoral College being the biggest one since Reagan.   Nope.  Not even close.  In the eight Presidential elections after the 1984 Reagan landslide, five of the victors had more electoral votes than President Trump’s 306 electoral votes.  He really needs to get with the program, stop putting out incorrect information and be honest about how rough things have been so far.

And it is the media’s job to ask probing questions. but as the free press, and not the political opposition, and certainly not as the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

The real free press has been missing in action for a long time.  I wonder if we’ll ever see them again, without all the liberal bias that currently exists in today’s news media.

In the meantime, the liberal press can have fun with the monster that they themselves helped to create.  

White House Chief of Staff, National Security Advisor and Press Secretary’s Jobs Are in Varying Degrees of Danger: Chief of Staff and Press Secretary Will Probably Be Able to Hold On, But National Security Advisor is Likely to Resign or Be Fired

Three members of the Trump Administration appear to be in danger of being forced to resign or being fired outright.

The National Security Advisor appears to be in very hot water as he may have misled the White House on his communications with the Russian government prior to President Trump taking office.   This is not good.   If something happens here, it will happen in the next day or two.

The Chief of Staff doesn’t seem to have a handle on the White House staff.   A good Chief of Staff not only manages the staff, but also the message being put out by the staff as representatives of the Executive Branch.   He/she also controls who gets access to the President.   With so many contradictory statements coming from the Executive Branch, they need to get things under control fast.  This is a very disorganized White House.

Finally, the Press Secretary is a fool and is putting on quite the side show, and given the President’s reputation for being a no-nonsense businessman, he may be forced to find someone else who will more accurately represent him to the media, which he doesn’t particularly care for.

It’s likely that the Press Secretary and the Chief of Staff will keep their jobs, but I’m not so sure about the National Security Advisor.   He’s in big trouble.

Before Questioning Trump’s Mental Health, Liberal Snowflakes Should Get Their Own Heads Into Order Before Making a Sound About What’s Rattling Around in Trump’s Head

Ultra liberal Al Franken made the rounds on the Sunday news shows, saying that President Trump’s mental health needs to be examined.

Um, which side organized cry-ins, therapy dogs and free grief counseling services across the country to our dear dear precious snowflake population after the election?   It wasn’t the Trump people, those deplorable people who got tired of liberal hypocrisies and whining and voted the way they really wanted to just to stick it to the Democrats and Hillary Clinton.

It turned out that being called a deplorable was like being awarded a badge of honor.

Trump’s White House IS very disorganized, and he may need to clean house three weeks into his Administration and bring in some new people to correct some of the big screw-ups.

But for the king of hypocrites telling the President to get his head examined?   Al Franken should tell his side to go get their heads examined first.  After all, one of those snowflake basket cases needing free grief counseling over a lost election might be President down the road.  (God help us if we have a crybaby for a President!)

We knew going in to the campaign that Donald Trump might not be temperamentally suited to be President; are the libs just figuring this out?

Usually When a Circuit Court Rules an Act of Congress Unconstitutional, It Throws the Law Out: 9th Circuit Did No Such Thing When It Refused to Reinstate Trump’s Executive Order

Something’s very wrong here.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate President Trump’s travel suspension on Constitutional grounds, but left the law being quoted by the Executive Order intact instead of throwing it out like it’s supposed to.

In fact, it barely mentions the law, 8 U.S. Code § 1182, in its ruling.  That law was passed in 1952 by the Democratic-controlled House and Senate, vetoed by Democratic President Truman, whose veto was then successfully overridden by his own party in both houses of Congress. 

It’s ironic that a law passed by the Democrats with such decisiveness (including overriding their own party’s President) is being used by a Republican President under the exact circumstances that prompted the Democrats to pass it in the first place.

The 9th Circuit has definitely screwed something up.  And as huge a problem that was created by the failed rollout of this EO, the Supreme Court will have to look at the 9th Circuit decision and decide if judicial activism has inserted itself into a (seriously fouled-up) national security situation.

I look forward to hearing what the Supreme Court has to say on the matter.

Where is the President Getting His Information? Is He Even Bothering to Look Up The Facts He’s Getting Wrong? FBI Records Show That The U.S. Murder Rate is Among the LOWEST in Fifty-One Years, Not Highest in Forty-Seven Years As He Claims

I can’t believe what I’m hearing the President say on an almost daily basis.   He keeps getting facts wrong, to an extreme level.

For example, today he told a law enforcement group that the U.S. murder rate was the highest in forty-seven years.  Yet a simple Google search clearly shows that the murder rate is among the LOWEST in almost fifty-one years.

I don’t know where President Trump is getting his information from, but if it’s from someone other than himself, he needs to fire that individual for misleading him.

He’s been claiming that during the campaign too, but he’s just plain wrong.  

President Trump needs to start looking up information himself and quit parroting back false information.  In a way, he’s spreading the very kind of false news that he’s accused others of doing.  He isn’t helping his Presidency.

Still waiting.

DeVos Confirmed: Disappointing, But Not the End of the World

As anticipated, the Senate tied 50-50 on voting for the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education, and Vice-President Pence cast the deciding vote.

While this did not go the way many were hoping, it’s not the end of the world.  Hopefully she helps all students in all forms of education, and not just her failed system.   With any luck, the Michigan Department of Education will take care of her mess in western Lower Michigan.

Moving on.

Senate Should Vote Against Betsy DeVos and Send Her Back to Michigan to Clean Up the Mess She Created: There Are Much Better Potential Nominees for Secretary of Education Out There

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the Secretary of Education nominee, Betsy DeVos, around noontime today.

She’s created quite the mess back home, and hopefully the Senate will not confirm her, so that she can return to Michigan and clean up her huge mess that she made in the years prior to her nomination.

We don’t need a rich lobbyist as the Secretary of Education….we need someone who was the Superintendent of a highly successful public school district with a proven track record of turning a failing system around, which is something that DeVos has failed at.

Republicans have a reputation for not rewarding failure, and to have them vote for someone with a track record like hers would be downright discouraging and a huge black mark against that reputation.

I hope the Senate votes wisely today and turns her nomination down.

House Bill HR861 Will Eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Not Sure if This Is Good Or Bad, But It’s Likely That the Next Democratic President and Congress Will Revive It

It looks like the EPA itself is becoming a hot potato, with threatened termination of the agency.  A GOP Representative introduced HR861, which calls for the termination of the Environmental Protection Agency.

I’m not sure how to react to this, but I’m enjoying the initial reaction to the news from liberals, who are melting down again.   One of my associates wrote on Facebook that…“we ought to get our Representatives on speed dial, ‘cause they’re going after the f’ing EPA!!”

Relax, liberals.  Agencies come and go and come again, depending on who’s in power.

I have mixed feelings on this topic.  On one hand, the EPA has done a lot of good to help protect the environment and the public, but they’ve made some critical mistakes in their interpretation of various acts of Congress, such as the Clean Air Act.  In one such instance, the Supreme Court ruled the EPA was in error with their interpretation of the Act in regards to cost.  I also am wondering if the EPA is effective against major polluters.

Many of the EPA’s functions can be transferred to the states if this proposed bill becomes law.

This is still in the early stages, and it may not advance, but I’ll be watching with great interest.

Trump Still Hasn’t Got It Together: He’s Still in “Impulse” Mode, Still Tweeting, and Still Acting Un-Presidential While Things Are Going From Bad to Worse

Still waiting for President Trump to start acting like he won the election, waiting for him to get off Twitter and start using traditional Presidential communications mediums, and waiting for him to act like he’s the President and not a petulant child who’s just been denied something at the supermarket or on a school playground.

We also don’t need a part-time President.  We need and expect a full-time President who does the job he was elected to do.  And he doesn’t need to comment on everything in sight, whether it’s Ah-nold’s ratings, what this celebrity or that celebrity was wearing on the red carpet, or anything else.  

(Non-emergency) Executive Orders (EOs) that are intended to take immediate effect need to be disseminated to the agencies that will be responsible for carrying them out so that they can explain to and train their personnel in how to handle the myriad of issues that are sure to arise.  This needs to be done before any EO comes into force.

As we saw with the non-vetted travel ban, and now which has a nationwide injunction against it, the government was ill-prepared to execute this plan, because it was drafted by political people, and not shared with the right agencies.   And the result was almost beyond belief. 

The TSA and Immigration/Naturalization people did the best they could given the limited information that they had.   The blame for the disaster that unfolded rests with the Trump Administration, not the rank and file trying to do their jobs.

Now President Trump’s EO is unenforceable by court order, and we’re left with the petulant child syndrome taking center stage again.  The President took to Twitter and attacked the judge who did his job better than President Trump is doing his.   If he had vetted this EO first, the President wouldn’t be in this very bad political spot.

The travel ban EO is and remains a self-inflicted wound that cannot be repeated by President Trump if he has any hope of getting stuff done and fulfilling his pledges.  

He also needs to get with his party in Congress and talk to them to get them on his side, because right now, everybody’s on their own side: Trump, the Republican House, and the Republican Senate act like the other doesn’t matter and Congressional Republicans are distancing themselves from Trump’s self-inflicted injuries. 

I encourage the President to change his strategy.  He’s got a lot of stuff to get done.

8 U.S. Code § 1182 Gives President the Power to Stop or Suspend Classes of People From Entering the United States Under Certain Conditions: Trump Administration’s Interpretation Will Probably Have to Undergo Court Test

It appears that President Trump’s 90-day travel ban Executive Order is based in part on a federal law-- 8 U.S. Code § 1182 which is titled  “Inadmissible Aliens.”  The part of the federal law being discussed is in Section 3 of that code.

It’s an open question as to whether this federal law can be applied to what President Trump wants to do.  Detecting someone who might be a terrorist simply because they’re from a country that has known terror affiliates in their territory may not pass Constitutional muster.  The courts will have to determine it.

The link above leads to the law in question.  Here is the link to President Trump’s Executive Order.

President Should Probably Dispose of Any Leftover Obama Appointees: He’s Firing Away at Pillars of Obama Legacy So Rapidly That Anyone With Loyalty to President Obama Will Not Be Able to Take It

Word broke tonight that the President fired the Acting Attorney General and appointed a new one after the former Acting AG refused to do her duty which she swore to do. 

All political appointees serve at the pleasure of the President, and if they can’t follow Presidential directives, they should resign immediately.   President Trump didn’t wait very long to make his move.

This probably isn’t the last quick termination that we’ll see.

Openly defying the President by ordering her subordinates to not defend the policy was the wrong way to go about making her point.  

What next? 

Trump’s Travel Ban Seems to Rely on “Winging It”: Nice Theory, But This Should Have Been Implemented in Stages, Rather Than Everything at the Same Time

President Trump signed a 90-day immigration ban via Executive Order on Friday, which took effect immediately.  And shortly afterwards, people began to be detained, especially from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

The result was immediate chaos and confusion, and the filing of at least one lawsuit, which resulted in a partial injunction against the order.  Protests were quickly organized at many airports, which compounded the airport problems.

I’m not sure that the White House alerted the Customs and Immigration people that this was in the pipeline.   The rank and file appear to have been taken by surprise, which is never a good thing.

A roll-out of this immigration policy should have been done in smaller steps, such as Trump’s first order against Obamacare.

I’m looking at the other issues. 

It’s amazing how a page and a half Executive Order can wreak so much havoc almost instantly across the country. 

Before He Authorizes Torture, President Trump Should Follow the Example of Others and Voluntarily Undergo Waterboarding Himself; He May Not Want Others to Go Through It After That

Veterans who have undergone waterboarding at the hands of enemy nations have told us for a long time that the technique is torture.   Navy SEALs undergo waterboarding as part of their survival training; some former SEALs like Jesse Ventura are adamantly opposed to it, as are war veterans like John McCain who were brutally tortured by the North Vietnamese.

Journalists such as Christopher Hitchens have voluntarily undergone waterboarding to have firsthand experience on what it’s actually like.   Here’s the video of him being waterboarded.  So did Steve Harrigan of Fox News.

I’m of the opinion that if a politician who has not served time in the military and has not been captured and tortured by the enemy should not order torture without undergoing a brief torture session themselves, so that they understand what they’re ordering done to others.

I think President Trump should voluntarily undergo a brief waterboarding so that he can see the consequences of what his executive order authorizing torture really entails.  He may sing a different tune afterwards.

Liberal Outlets Zero In on Trump’s Unsubstantiated Claims Again: Still Waiting for Trump Administration to Knock It Off

Sources: CNN.com, ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com, NBCNews.com

These stories were at or near the top of the news sites listed above this evening, with CNN’s lead story remaining unchanged for most of the day today.   They continued with a “Breaking News” theme on their evening TV shows, even though they carried the story throughout the entire day and it wasn’t the dramatic “Breaking News” that they crave.

Rehashing these stories isn’t helping President Trump build support or confidence in his Presidency. 

I really don’t know if Trump’s Press Secretary is helping or hurting him.   In any case, Trump or anyone in the Administration mentioning any of his more controversial/incorrect statements ends up dominating another news cycle, as it did today.

The Administration needs to settle down and focus on what the President is currently doing, not rehashing past controversies that President Trump hasn’t got time to fight. 

Trump Administration Needs to Stop Giving the Media Ammunition and Tell It Like It Is: Obama’s Inaugurations Were More Well Attended, But In the End, Who Cares? This is a HUGE Distraction, Which is Exactly What the Media Wants

The Trump Administration needs to get rid of the “Whose Inauguration Was Bigger” issue, and they need to do so now.

President Trump needs to accept that Obama’s inauguration was bigger, because President Obama had access to a portion of the population that didn’t vote for Trump, and he needs to state it publicly.   This is a serious non-issue that is providing ammo to an openly hostile press that is gleefully firing it right back at President Trump and his Administration.

His Press Secretary is seriously damaged and may need to be replaced.  “Alternative facts?”  I think not.   That notion needs to be permanently banned from White House communications and President Trump should set the example.   His press conference statement that he’s not sure that he’ll get along with Russia’s President Putin was open and honest and he needs to be like that all the time.  So does his Press Secretary.

He’s thinking like an entertainer and he needs to shift gears, and fast.  Ratings and turnouts to parties don’t matter.

Trump Has Four Thousand Appointments to Make: They’ve Got a Lot of Work to Do

I wasn’t kidding on my last post when I said that the Trump Administration needs time to get set up before getting entangled in various foreign policy entanglements.  Here is the updated list of appointments, and it’s breathtaking. 

Look at all the ambassadors who need to be named, Senate confirmation hearings scheduled, and votes taken.  

It will be some time before full ambassadors are sent to nations around the world, so it’ll be up to the career diplomats in the State Department to keep things together until that happens.

As for the other positions, hopefully wise choices are made, votes are taken and appointees are able to take up their positions very soon.

Senate Needs to Decline Tillerson and DeVos Nominations and Trump Needs Better Choices: Tillerson Will Tempt China to Take Radical Military Action Before New Administration is Ready and DeVos is Heralding a Failed System

The Senate should reject Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State and Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education.

I know the new President wants his choices confirmed, but I think he’s made a major mistake with Tillerson and another with DeVos.
   
The more that the Senate interviews Tillerson, the more I think he’ll provoke the Chinese into taking precipitous military action in the South China Sea before the new government is ready to take them on in a military confrontation, which China thinks it can win.  (It can’t.)

The new Administration needs time to get on its feet and formulate American foreign policy, and the last thing President Trump needs is another military situation at the beginning of his term.  If Tillerson is going to make statements like “we should deny China access to their man-made islands!” then we should prepare to fight for them.  His lack of foreign policy experience is on full display.

If China uses those island bases to close critical international shipping lanes, that’s different, but egging China on before the Trump Administration is fully set up to deal with an international aggressor?   Not a particularly good idea.

I am encouraged that the Senate is expected to approve his choices for Homeland Security and the Department of Defense either shortly before or after President Trump’s inauguration tomorrow.  That will take care of the noise coming out of CNN and other outlets.

With Betsy DeVos, she’s made one mistake after another, and her results have been less than stellar.  Her Great Lakes Educational Project model is inferior to other private school models and is also inferior to that of many public school districts in the state.   At a time when private schools have been very popular in parts of the state, the state’s overall scores on core subjects have declined, and private school scores have been worse than comparable public schools.

Private school competition to public schools is good ONLY if it shows results, and the DeVos model hasn’t.  If a model is failing, it should not be shared nationally, which is partially why I am opposed to the DeVos nomination.

I’m hoping the Senate rejects  both nominees so that President Trump can pick better candidates.  I have no objections to any of his other nominees so far.

It’s OK for Democratic Lawmakers to Criticize Trump, But When He Responds in Kind, It Isn’t OK? Snowflake Hypocrites Are Their Own Worst Enemy

Georgia Congressman John Lewis took a shot at President-elect Trump on the eve of MLK observances across the country but had the unmitigated gall to act surprised when Trump returned fire, regardless of the timing.

Haven’t we all learned by now that if Trump feels like taking to Twitter at 3am in the morning to comment on something, that’s exactly what he will do?  And that he’ll step (stomp) on toes across the political spectrum to get his two cents (and then some) in?

Lewis deliberately timed his pronouncement so that Trump would come under criticism for firing back during civil rights observances being done prior to Monday.

If Lewis wants to stay away from the inauguration, that’s his choice.  I’m staying away from it too, but for my own reasons which are not political.  The way I’m looking at it, there will already be enough of a cross-section of American society that I feel like I’m already represented there.  And it’s going to be a zoo.

As of this morning, 25 others have joined Congressman Lewis in his boycott.  Good, we won’t have to put up with them crying in public next Friday.

It’s a shame that Congressman Lewis chose to use the MLK weekend to make his political statement.  It’s not unparalleled; Democrats have turned funerals, such as Muhammed Ali’s funeral and Paul Wellstone’s (from Minnesota) funeral, into political rallies.

Then-Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura walked out of the Wellstone funeral and then appointed an independent to Senator Wellstone’s seat instead of a Democrat.    The Democrats then lost big in the state and national elections that happened six days after the Wellstone funeral.

By all means, boycott the inauguration.  They should institute a rule that says a work stoppage in Congress means a paycheck stoppage too, just like it is for everybody else.

News Media Can No Longer Use Three Sources: With the Power That Fake News Now Wields, They Need to Have More Non-Web Sources to Confirm a Story

Throughout 2016, there were many fake news stories that have been directed at our political candidates and others.  Some of the more memorable headlines (I left off some of the more disgusting ones) :

“Russians Have Dirt on President-Elect Trump”

"Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance In Schools Nationwide"

"Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement"

"Trump Offering Free One-Way Tickets to Africa; Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America"

"Florida man dies in meth-lab explosion after lighting farts on fire"

"FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide"

"RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE To Reunite And Release Anti Donald Trump Album"

"Police Find 19 White Female Bodies In Freezers With “Black Lives Matter” Carved Into Skin"

"ISIS Leader Calls for American Muslim Voters to Support Hillary Clinton"

Hillary Clinton In 2013: “I Would Like To See People Like Donald Trump Run For Office; They’re Honest And Can’t Be Bought”

"Woman murders college roommate for sending too many Candy Crush requests"

"Donald Trump Protester Speaks Out: "I Was Paid $3,500 To Protest Trump's Rally"

“Obama passed law for grandparents to get all their grandchildren every weekend”

"President Obama Confirms He Will Refuse To Leave Office If Trump Is Elected"

"Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy – 'We Don’t Like The Blacks Either'"

"Security Detail Tackles Homeless Man On Oscars Red Carpet, Turned Out To Be Rob Zombie"

Pence: “Michelle Obama Is The Most Vulgar First Lady We’ve Ever Had”

“African Billionaire Will Give $1 Million To Anyone Who Wants To Leave America if Donald Trump is Elected President”

“Obama Signs Executive Order Declaring Investigation Into Election Results; Revote Planned For Dec. 19th”

“Graham Says Christians Must Support Trump or Face Death Camps”

“BREAKING Romanian Hacker With Access To Clinton Emails Found Dead In Jail Cell”

“The United States Revokes Scientology's Tax-Exempt Status - ABC News”

“Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Hillary Clinton for President, Releases Statement”

“Trump Claims America Should Never Have Given Canada Its Independence”

-----------------
Many who should know better have been suckered in.  All the news networks, both party candidates, members of the House and Senate, including one from today during the DHS secretary confirmation hearings, have been taken. 

Does anyone remember Rathergate?  The Stephen Glass scandal?  There used to be a time when reporters who used unconfirmed stories (or in the case of Glass, falsified ones) in their reporting were punished.   Brian Williams is still paying the price for his part in embellishing his stories.  

Get it together, news media.

Liberal Meltdown Continues Unabated: Libs Took to Stage at Golden Globes Last Night (As Expected) and Turned It Into a Democratic Pity Party Again

I decided that I wasn’t going to watch the Golden Globes again, as I knew it was going to be a Democratic pity party and liberal meltdown scene again, which it was.   Actors took to the stage and cried about mean Mr. Trump being the president. 

Organizers failed to stem the tide, even with their very expensive participation handouts.  Guess that only works with the college students, not with over-emotional actors who do raise a few valid concerns about Trump’s vicious streak but manage to insult voters at the same time. 

I found in watching the recaps that I focused more on what they said about Trump voters more than what they were actually talking about.  Good job. 

I’m hoping that once Trump takes office he’ll tone it down (a lot) and act presidential, as he’s done in some of his more recent speeches.

Biden Did His Constitutional Duty and Kept Joint Session of Congress On-Track in Verifying Electoral College Results

I was impressed with Vice-President Biden’s presiding over a joint session of Congress to verify the Electoral College votes.

He really stuck to the rules and shut down 15 objections because they were not in order.  Here is the entire session; it’s very interesting.