Saturday, November 26, 2016

op ed review 11/27



THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Call it the Trump bull market: stocks smash record highs for all four indexes.

Donald Trump’s popularity is rising in the days since his election.
A majority of people in the U.S. said they believe that President-elect Donald Trump will do a very or fairly good job as president, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday.
A just-released poll shows that Donald Trump’s campaign-trail immigration and labor policies have overwhelming public support, and strong opposition from only one-sixth of voters.

President-elect Trump added three well-known D.C. outsiders to major posts in his growing administration: Gov. Nikki Haley, ambassador to the United Nations, Michigan´s Betsy DeVos — a strong proponent of school choice — as his secretary of education. And former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, possibly Secretary of HUD.
National Review:  Donald Trump has chosen conservative reformer Betsy DeVos to be his education secretary. A better choice would be hard to find.
´Out of touch´: Teachers unions slam Trump´s education secretary
Teacher unions smarting after many members vote for Trump
“Obama Team In Despair Over Flynn Pick”

Fidel Castro is dead.  Cuban-Americans fill Miami streets to cheer Fidel Castro’s death.

Arkansas Dem switches parties, hands GOP a supermajority in state house of representatives.

Migrants surge north, hoping to reach USA before Trump inauguration...
Illegals flood in before Trump closes border:  1500 per day.
Haitian illegal immigrants are pouring into the U.S. at a rate of some 3,000 a month, blazing new paths and exploiting special policies and lax Obama administration enforcement to gain a foothold in the country, according to a secret government intelligence assessment.
Sessions may prosecute 'sanctuary cities'...

President Elect Donald Trump Working to Retain Carrier Jobs in Indiana…

Resentful liberals across the country are thankful that Thanksgiving is an opportunity to insult relatives who may have voted for President-elect Donald Trump. A slew of liberals in the news and entertainment world offer guides for like-minded lefties on what to do when forced to break bread with their supposedly “racist,” “bigoted,” and “misogynistic” relatives.
NY Times columnist: Trump presidency is ´obscene´
Politico editor resigns after publishing home addresses of alt-right icon Richard Spencer, and advocating ‘Baseball Bat’ attacks.
Democrats are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they lost the presidential election. Now they are threatening to kill Republican electors unless they switch allegiance and vote for Hillary Clinton when the electoral college meets on December 19.

“Trump Slams Media Elite, Face to Face.”    The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing-down. . . . Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful, dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ ”
Example:   a CNN scrolling banner on Monday:  “Alt-Right Founder Questions if Jews are People'...”

“Before There Was Bork, There Was Sessions”  It all began with Jeff Sessions from Alabama. Even before they coined a term for it — Borking — they did it to Jeff Sessions, a decent man with a stellar legal reputation as a fearless and tough but fair federal prosecutor down South

Cops fear copycat attacks across the U.S. after a FIFTH officer is shot in three days

French Thatcherite Upends 2017 Race Pledging to Shrink the State...

Why would one of the Marine Corps' biggest heroes be uninvited from the Marine Corps Ball in Afghanistan?  Because he’s been vocally critical of the Obama administration on a number of issues.

Gen. Keane on Defeating ISIS: Obama Never Asked Military for a Plan to Get That Done

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COLUMN OF THE WEEK
9 Things to be Thankful For About the Election
Laura Hollis  11/24
As unconventional, contentious and divisive as this election as been, there are nevertheless things one can find to be thankful for. Here a just a few.
1. Much of the national press has been exposed for the frauds that they are. Yes, that is actually something to be grateful for. We depend upon the press in a free society to keep those in power honest. It is deeply dangerous, therefore, to have a press that covers up for the government. And it is even more dangerous when that is the case and few know it. Thanks to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, what many of us suspected was revealed to be true: Certain members of the press have been de facto activists for the Democratic Party for years. With their credibility in tatters, they are joining the call for a crackdown on "fake news." They can start with themselves.
2. We're having conversations about the Constitution. It's hard to overstate the importance of this as an opportunity for small-government conservatives. Now that President Obama is leaving office and President-elect Trump is taking the reins, Democrats are questioning the wisdom of the Executive Branch trampling on the legislative prerogative of Congress. Good. This is an issue that needs to be front and center.
3. Remember "diversity"? Yeah, that. Things are turned on their ear at the moment. The left is furious that 62 million people don't agree with them. And despite all their efforts to paint this as an election about disaffected, rural, white, uneducated males, the truth is much more complicated. The fact is that there is a great deal of disagreement about the direction of the country, and many people, regardless of gender, orientation, ethnicity, religion or race wanted something other than what the Democrats were offering. That's also why the two third-party candidates got as much national attention as they did. This, too, is called "diversity." Relatedly ...
4. This is what a big tent looks like. Love him or hate him, Donald Trump proved that big chunks of the American electorate are legitimately up for grabs. "Reagan Democrats" are still a thing. Women don't necessarily vote for other women. African Americans are not a monolithic voting bloc. Hispanic Americans are not terrified by enforcement of our immigration laws. The candidate that actually goes and speaks to Americans, instead of assuming their loyalty or denouncing them as cretins might have a chance to win their support. This, again, is a powerful opportunity for conservative candidates.
5. We still live in a free society, where political disagreements are resolved peacefully at the ballot box. Yes, the post-election fallout has been bitter and rancorous, but these are wars of words, not guns. In fact, it is precisely when feelings and opinions are as strong as they have been that the resilience and endurance of the national institutions are tested. Ours give us good reason to be proud. (And should give us pause about changing them.)
6. We also live in one of the world's most prosperous societies. It doesn't have to be a holiday; walk into your local grocery store and look at the bounty that thousands of farms and businesses, large and small, provide for us every single day. We are truly blessed, and we need to thank all those who make this possible. And that means recognizing that ...
7. The overwhelming majority of Americans are good people. Including those who voted for the other candidate. We depend upon each other for education, medicine, transportation, food, clothing, shelter and more. Does the political perspective of your paramedic really matter? Look  at all the places across the world where disagreements routinely devolve into violence, or even all-out war. Now, consider someone you know whose political viewpoints drive you craziest, and ask yourself: Would you pull that person out of a burning building? Would you pull their children out of a burning building? Of course you would. So keep your perspective.
8. It's over. That means we don't have to deal with another presidential election for four more years. Thank God.
And most importantly ...
9. Chances are there is at least one person in your life who loves you. Find them, call them, text them, email them, go visit them or invite them to visit you. Put disagreements aside. Life is too short. Let them know you're thankful that they're in your life. Happy Thanksgiving!


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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“One family canceled Thanksgiving dinner so they wouldn’t have to be with pro-Trump relatives. Another family canceled a Christmas reunion for the same reason. One couple changed the date of their wedding so that a pro-Trump relative wouldn’t be able to attend. Another couple chose to get married in Italy — a place too distant for their relatives to travel to. These are just a few of the ruptures that have followed the election of Donald Trump, as reported by The New York Times. Are we a deeply divided nation? Maybe. But if we are divided the cause of that division comes squarely from the left, not the right. In virtually every case, the people who are canceling reunions and refusing to talk to their friends and family members are Hillary supporters. The Times reported not a single instance of a Trump voter shun. What’s the cause of all this? I think it is identity politics. … Identity politics works on some voters. I have heard stories of women who break down crying at the mere mention of the election results. Are they crying because NAFTA may be renegotiated? Or the pipeline may be built? Of course not. If elections are about identity, then elections are about you in a very personal way. If the other candidate wins, you have been personally rejected. I would probably cry too if I were naïve enough to believe all that.”
           -John Goodman
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GLOBALONEY
Scott and Shackleton logbooks prove Antarctic sea ice is not shrinking 100 years after expeditions

Tokyo has first November snow in 54 years...
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LEFTIST WATCH
New York Times “Seems To” Utilize Professional Alinsky Rule – Division, Isolation and Marginalization… if you are in opposition to now President-Elect Trump, the target for your approach is to conquer by dividing that base of support(ers). Enter the Alinsky professional model with Trump’s visit and today’s New York Times headline: “Donald Trump Seems to Retreat on Some Promises“.
The Left wants to drive wedges between Trump and his base by spinning anything he says as “retreating from campaign promises.” But expressing nuance and avoiding confrontation with determined foes who buy ink by the barrel is not retreating..”

The left really hates Breitbart:  “Breitbart isn’t ‘just a publication.’ It’s a pestilence.”

Students at the prestigious University of Massachusetts, Amherst, are participating in a week-long “sh*t-in” demonstration, occupying restrooms in an administrative building to demand more gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.

Students at Loyola University Maryland were recently pressured to abort plans for an “America”-themed party over concerns they might “oppress” others.

Pope Francis grieves, prays for atheist revolutionary Castro.
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ISLAM
“The jailed architect of 9/11 revealed that al Qaeda´s plan to kill the United States was not through military attacks but immigration and "outbreeding nonmuslims" who would use the legal system to install Sharia law, according to a blockbuster new book.”
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ARTICLES
The left is trying to come to grips with its utter rejection, and its response to Donald Trump will be to fall back on an endless series of freakoutrages – hyperbolic, unhinged, hack media-fueled spasms of faux moral panic every time he dares do anything. Appoint someone to a job? Freak out – it’s an outrage! Go to dinner? Freak out – it’s an outrage! Actually keep promises made to the voters? Freak out – it’s an outrage! But it isn’t going to work.

New York Times is trying to prep anti-Trump activists with effective tools.  Conservatives can learn from these tips too:  “Here’s Why You Should Call, Not Email, Your Legislators”
Clever set of tools for effective activist organization, let’s steal this:
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
List of 32 times the establishment media and pollsters assured America that Donald Trump can’t win.

Creepy new website shows how you can be monitored.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

op ed review 11/20



THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Trump ‘landing parties’ descend on  Justice, State, Defense Departments this week.

Republicans added to their historic 2014 gains in the nation’s state legislatures with the addition of five state House chambers and two state Senate chambers in last week’s election, while Democratic control was reduced to levels not seen since the Civil War.

Rumors of Hillary Clinton Screaming Obscenities and Throwing Objects in Election Night Meltdown

America great again:  dollar hits 14 year high

New Attorney General Jeff Sessions is Democrats' worst nightmare.

Liberals try to paint Sessions as a racist, but in Alabama, he desegregated schools and destroyed the KKK.

Rule Change Pushed By Harry Reid Could Allow Trump To Get All Of His Appointments Confirmed

Alan Dershowitz Defends Steve Bannon: ‘Not Legitimate To Call Somebody An Anti-Semite Because You Disagree With Their Policies’

Donald Trump expected to slash Nasa´s climate change budget in favor of sending humans back to the moon—and beyond.

Queen Elizabeth will invite U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for a state visit to Britain next year to try to cement close ties between the two countries,

A majority of Americans say they are now more confident in President-elect Donald Trump after last Tuesday’s election, with respondents largely divided based on whether they supported Mr. Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Fifty-one percent said they are “more confident” in Mr. Trump, compared to 40 percent who said less confident and 9 percent who said there was no difference or they didn’t have an opinion.

DONALD Trump has already drafted plans on how he can build a wall along the border with Mexico and bring about tougher immigration controls for Muslims.

The latest controversy to go down with Starbucks might just cause a spike in sales across the country. Protesters are ordering their coffee using the name ´Trump´ so baristas will have to shout the last name of the president-elect when their drink is ready. The protest is allegedly against people ´discriminating against Republicans´ and was started by Trump supporter and actor Scott Baio, according to Yahoo News.

Racing against the clock, Obama sets new record for regulations, 527 pages in just one day...

Twitter suspended a number of accounts associated with the “alt-right” movement, the same day the social media service said it would crack down on hate speech.

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COLUMN OF THE WEEK
Victor Davis Hansen  11/15
Carpe Diem Mr. Trump

While we speak, a jealous age will have fled. Seize the day! Trust as little as you can in tomorrow. The Latin poet Horace’s advice of carpe diem— to seize the day and not worry about tomorrow — should be Trump’s transitional guide. The attacks on Trump won’t even wait until he takes office; they begin now, well apart from rioting in the streets. And they will continue to be of several types. Of the personal sort, expect more “investigative” reporting and “speaking truth to power” op-eds about his tax returns, his supposed theft of the election, his purported instigation of turbulence and mayhem, his locker-room talks about women, his business conflicts of interests in office, Trump University, and so on….

The nexus of attack will not be a dramatic scandalous revelation — it will be intended to induce bleeding from a thousand tiny nicks and cuts, all designed to reduce his moral authority and thus his ability to ratchet back the progressive decade. Another trope, as we are now witnessing, will be of the hysterical policy brand: Trump will cook the planet, put y’all back in chains, conduct war on women, traumatize students, destroy dreamers — all the boilerplate extremism designed to put Trump on the defensive so that he will settle for half an agenda and “reach out” to cement his respectability as a “listener” before the court of D.C. fixtures, the campuses, the foundations, the think tanks, the media, the social circles of Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

The Siren strategy of the Left will also be to point out that his future is already destabilizing America — Trump must therefore reach out right now to the “disaffected” in the streets who are “hurting.” Thereby, he will “heal” the nation, if only he backs off from “right-wing” and “extremist” ideas of selling coal overseas or building a wall and taxing billions of dollars in remittance from illegal aliens to pay for it. In extremis, the Left will call on its Never Trump counterparts of like class to convince Trump to play by the accustomed Washington rules of decorum and judicious discourse. In carrot-and-stick fashion, they might even begin to talk of Trump’s “surprising flexibility” or his “unexpected reasonableness” in hopes of watering down his agenda and leaving him addicted to more backhanded praises from the cultural elite. Also expect to hear in the next 90 days that the idea of executive orders (of the Obama type) are in retrospect dangerous to the republic and destabilizing. Filibusters will again become essential, and as hallowed a Senate tradition as Harry Reid’s nuclear option will now be denounced as disruptive and nihilistic.

We will hear that the Supreme Court, after some rethinking, actually works just fine with eight justices for a while. Court nominations will be smeared as extremists and nuts. Frequent Trump press conferences with plenty of back and forth will be demanded as essential to the republic, as will be interviews with opposition networks such as MSNBC or CNN…... If need be, Trump will be trashed as a golf-course junkie, decked out in bright-colored leisure clothes befitting his plutocratic and detached status.

Adamant Never Trumpers on the right will suddenly offer all sorts of unsolicited advice to go slowly and bring into the administration failed candidates who opposed Trump, hoping that Trump in time can become their John McCain or Mitt Romney. The “correct” and culturally respectable conservative position is now to have been actively opposed to the monstrous Trump, then to become pleasantly surprised at the win that was supposedly impossible and certainly unwelcomed, then to expand on the rare and unheard-of possibilities of the unexpected conservative moment, and finally (and reluctantly) to offer a list of appointments and agendas that demonstrate a willingness to descend to advise the uncouth and the inexperienced and thereby to save them from themselves.

So amid this strange jubilation, the shelf life of the Trump populist moment is really quite limited. There are even now, suddenly, calls for magnanimity of the sort quite foreign to Obama in 2009 (“elections have consequences,” “I won”) that should be summarily dismissed.

Churchillian magnanimity is impossible without victory first. Putting thousands of coal miners back to work is a good first priority; expressing some sympathy for the concerns of the defeated Left that does not believe in “clean coal” is an understandable but post facto gesture. Building a wall and immediately deporting aliens convicted of crimes are necessities; suggesting that in some cases this could be temporarily hurtful to some is magnanimity. If in the first 100 days Trump can push through tax reform, deregulation, Keystone, clean coal, new leases for fracking and horizontal drilling on federal lands, an end to the crony-capitalist Solyndra-like subsidies, a cut-off of federal aid to sanctuary cities, support for school vouchers, the wall, deportations of those illegal aliens who committed crimes or have no work history, plans to rebuild the military, a freeze on federal hiring, trade renegotiations — then surprising things will follow.

Success in getting these initiatives passed will be proof of strong-horse leadership. And even Trump’s critics will for a while defer to his power, both in private admiration that he did what they could not, and in public out of fear that he might do even more — and, again oddly enough, also in mordant curiosity about whether the Trump agenda might in fact jump-start America…

In any natural disaster, Trump should arrive in mediis rebus and wade into the mud, with suit and tie; anything less will be a Katrina crime against the other. Visit the inner city as often as possible; the African-American community is ready for political change predicated on authentic economic concern and action. If Trump can craft policies that see economic growth exceed 3–4 percent and bring back jobs, he will win over 40 percent of blacks and 50 percent of Hispanics, redefining the electoral map, and replacing Obama’s divisive racial pandering with commonalities of class that trump racial differences.

The Democratic establishment hates him because he won over their fleeing working classes and took too high a number of minorities; the Republican elite hates him, too, because by becoming heterodox, he could make them somewhat irrelevant — even as he helps them electorally. So Trump should phrase all policy agendas in terms of helping the working classes of all backgrounds, and he should oppose leftist pushback on grounds that progressive elites are the selfish ones who want to extend their own WikiLeaks values, privilege, and boutique green agendas that have proved so destructive to ordinary people.

Trump should forgive the Never Trumpers but not quite forget their distaste for him. If he is successful and popular, some will bring their formidable powers of support to his shared agenda, as we are already witnessing. But when his popularity dips below 40 percent (and it will at times), and he tweets out politically incorrect exasperations, many will revert to form, reminding us why they opposed his apostate candidacy in the first place. But for now, all conservative-minded are giddy at the very idea of a conservative court, Congress, presidency, state legislatures and governorships, and federal appointees. They are even offering advice about their preferences for cabinet appointments, without much worry that had Trump’s conservative critics been successful, we would now be witnessing a Democratic Senate, a liberal Supreme Court for the next 30 years, and eight years of Obamism squared.


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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“When voters practice their faith, it hurts the liberal cause. Now, imagine an unmarried 22-year-old, who lives in a city, works part-time making $20,000 per year, and has not gone to a religious service in four years. How would that person be likely to vote? Suppose, then, this same person gets married, starts working full-time and overtime, earns more than $50,000 per year, buys a home in the suburbs, and regularly attends religious services with the spouse and children. How would this person be likely to vote then? But what if this person followed another path? They married and then divorced, decided it was not worth it working full-time, went on food stamps and never went to church. The ultimate question is not how a person will vote, but what will give them a fulfilling life. It is not what persons will hold political office in United States of America, but what values will keep us free and prosperous. The same values that made this nation great can unite this nation again. They are family, faith, hard work and the desire to live a long and good life without government standing in your way.”
       -Terrence Jeffrey

“Appropriately enough, the new virtue signals of tantrum-throwing young leftists stirring up trouble are safety pins — to show ‘solidarity’ with groups supposedly endangered by Donald Trump. Safety pins are also handy — for holding up the government-manufactured diapers in which too many overgrown dependents are swaddled.”
         -Michelle Malkin
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LEFTIST WATCH
New York’s Most Liberal Congressman Lays Out Roadmap for ‘How We Resist Trump’

Millions are petitioning the Electoral College to make Hillary Clinton president here´s why that probably won´t happen.

Democrats Call for Boycott on Black-Owned Business After Chef Caters Trump Event
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ARTICLES
´The Data Doesn´t Lie´: Trump´s Digital Guru Explains How They Won the Election

Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars

The myth of Hillary Clinton’s competence

The Obama Coalition Falls Apart

The mainstream media (MSM) are right. There is a political party today that has racism as a core value and is working incessantly to keep blacks down. It´s the Democratic Party.
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
New York Times grudgingly made this map:  “Two Americas”, Clinton 15%, Trump 85%
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WISE WORDS
“The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.”
               -Thomas Jefferson