Saturday, March 18, 2017

op ed review 3/19



THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Biggest Untold Story Under Trump: The Surge In Optimism After 8 Years Of  'Hope-n-Change'

President Trump’s budget proposal this week would shake the federal government to its core if enacted, culling back numerous programs and expediting a historic contraction of the federal workforce. This would be the first time the government has executed cuts of this magnitude — and all at once — since the drawdown following World War II.
They may need to hear from you. Less than two months in, Republicans have emerged as one of the biggest obstacles to Trump's young administration, imperiling his early efforts to pass his agenda and make good on some of his biggest campaign promises.

President Donald Trump’s budget director told reporters Thursday the White House was no longer spending money on climate change research because it’s a “waste of your money.”
President Trump Tells T-Rex:   Cut U.N. Funding by 50%…
President Trump proposes to zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS)?  Liberals howl, but even this CPB board member says it’s time, in the Washington Post no less: “Public broadcasting shouldn’t get a handout from taxpayers anymore”

Judge Napolitano says that British Intelligence provided Obama admin with surveillance data on Trump Tower phone conversations. "Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command," Napolitano said. "He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice." Instead, Napolitano said, Obama used GCHQ, a British intelligence and security organization that has 24-7 access to the NSA database. "There's no American fingerprints on this," Napolitano said. "What happened to the guy who ordered this? Resigned three days after Donald Trump was inaugurated."

Obama moles told to do as much damage as possible before they leave White House staff.
The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act,
President Trump´s budget director says the Obama administration was "manipulating" jobs data  to make the unemployment rate "look smaller than it actually was."

A group of leading senators is calling on newly installed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to immediately launch an investigation into efforts by the OBAMA administration to sway foreign elections by sending taxpayer funds to "extreme and sometimes violent political activists" that promote leftist causes.

The U.S. Justice Department is developing plans to temporarily reassign immigration judges from around the country to 12 cities to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants who have been charged with crime

The Internal Revenue Service granted an "After School Satan Club" their tax exempt status. The approval process took only 10 days. The satanic club was started by a Mass. based non-profit organization that operates the Satanic Temple of Seattle. The director founded the club at Point Defiance Elementary in Tacoma, Wash. The Point Defiance Elementary Satanic club is run by adults that have been cleared by the "Executive Ministry" of the Seattle Satanic Temple.

In one of the most ruthless opinions issued of fellow panel judges, five judges from across the political spectrum in the Ninth Circuit went out of their way to remind everybody just how embarrassingly bad the prior Ninth Circuit stay panel decision was on Trump’s travel ban.

The main plaintiff in the Hawaii case blocking President Trump’s revised temporary travel ban is an Imam with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Nearly 500 jurisdictions are now sanctuary cities, according to a group that’s tracked the issue for more than a decade, and who said there’s been a massive surge in the number of places trying to thwart federal immigration agents since President Trump’s election.
New App for Illegal Aliens Enables Them to Call for Help When Caught

NYT Eats Crow After Trump Tax Return Proves Major Story Wrong, “undermined the left´s speculation that he was a tax dodge.”
Trump paid higher tax rate (25%) than MSNBC COMCAST (24%), Obama (19%), Bernie Sanders (13%)
Actually it was much higher than 25%.  If ABC analyzed Trump’s return the same way as Obama’s, reporters would have taken Trump’s “taxes paid” and divided it by “Adjusted Gross Income.” This would have yielded an effective tax rate of 79 percent.

Donald Trump owes his presidency to then-campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, claims White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon. Bannon believes Conway’s “relentless advocacy” for Trump after the infamous “Access Hollywood” scandal before last November’s general election carried the now-president over the finish line.

Students Denounced As Racist For Wearing US Flag Colors
___________________________________________________________________

COLUMN OF THE WEEK
“More Reagan than Reagan?: Donald Trump follows through on one of Ronald Reagan's failed promises”  3/16

President Donald Trump made good on a long-time conservative goal in his first proposed budget Thursday morning, targeting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities for complete elimination.
Trump’s budget would zero out the $445 million budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a relatively small source of funding for programming and broadcast operations on public TV stations and NPR radio stations nationwide, per the Washington Post.

The budget would also eliminate the budgets for both national endowments, which stood at $148 million each in 2016, as well as $230 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which supports libraries and museums. Additional cuts would affect two tourist mainstays in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art.  One can practically hear the liberal shrieking from across the ocean. President Trump hasn't even been in office for 60 days and he's already proven to be better than the most lionized conservative president the Republicans have ever had.

It should be informative to see which Congressional Republicans cuck on this, just as they've tried to cuck on Obamacare. It is becoming increasingly clear that they never actually intended to do anything they promised since 1980. It is also becoming obvious that anything is on the table. He may well abolish the Department of Education too.

It's amusing to see the opposition media ping-pong from complaining about how the Wall will cost too much with claiming that $971 million is just a tiny drop in the bucket so there is no reason to cut it. But that's $971 million more that can go towards the Wall and making America great again.

Now let's see him eliminate Hollywood's tax exemptions, as Glenn Reynolds has repeatedly suggested.
____________________________________________________________________

OTHER COLUMNS
“President Trump’s assertion that his phones at Trump Tower were tapped last year has been treated as hilarious — and in some circles as beyond contempt. But I can vouch for the fact that extracurricular surveillance does occur, regardless of whether it is officially approved. I was wiretapped in 2011 after taking a phone call in my congressional office from a foreign leader.”
           -former Democrat Rep. Dennis Kucinich

“I think there’s a difference between not supporting an order on policy grounds and finding it unconstitutional. I do not think [Trump’s travel ban is] unconstitutional. I do think the Supreme Court will uphold it even if [Neil] Gorsuch is not yet on the Supreme Court.”
           -Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz
_____________________________________________________________________

LEFTIST WATCH
Harvard going Orwell, protecting students from conservative websites
_____________________________________________________________________

GLOBALONEY
Global Warming In One Easy Lesson   Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT. MIT’s web site suggests his scientific eminence. “Calls to limit carbon dioxide emissions are even less persuasive today than 25 years ago. Future research should focus on dispassionate, high-quality climate science, not on efforts to prop up an increasingly frayed narrative of “carbon pollution.” Until scientific research is unfettered from the constraints of the policy-driven UNFCCC, the research community will fail in its obligation to the public that pays the bills.”
___________________________________________________________________

ARTICLES
Conrad Black:  The ignominious collapse of the Democratic claims and insinuations that Donald Trump was improperly connected to the Russian government has de-escalated the Democrats’ campaign against the president — from a frenzied assault seeking impeachment and removal for a cause to be named later, to guerrilla war. Russian collusion has vanished down the same deep hole as the charges of sexism, racism, and a will to autocracy.

Legal analysis:  Losing is Contagious: Inconsistent Conservatism Leads to Crushing Consistency on Courts

“I Had Dinner With the Afghan Ambassador.  What He Said About the Differences Between Trump, Obama Is Stunning”

Newt:   ObamaCare repeal bill Republicans presented this week is an important, first step toward achieving a next generation health care system in America.
___________________________________________________________________

WISE WORDS
“One single object … [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation.”
                 -Thomas Jefferson

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home