For the second time this week we have seen a huge uproar over a false story. Someone with a fake twitter account released a video that appeared to show a high school student wearing a MAGA hat getting in the face of a Native American beating a drum. Denunciations of the high school students came rapidly. This included many in the media, some Hollywood types and even their school and the mayor of the town. Hollywood producer Jack Morrissey thought the kids should go “screaming, hats first into a woodchipper”. Presumably he meant it as a joke but I don’t see the humor in it.
A fuller video showed the students were innocent victims. Some, included Morrissey, apologized. Most kept quiet. I just read a column in which the writer basically said this was OK since a MAGA hat is a symbol of racism. I think Hillary Clinton got the ball rolling in 2016. Personal attacks are nothing new in presidential campaigns but usually they aren’t directed at voters. She is most famous for her “basket of deplorables” comment but that was not the only one. Is wrong to hate people because of their gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. It is also wrong to hate them because of who they vote for. Neither party has a monopoly on hate. Certainly, President Trump has made many hateful comments that were best left unsaid. However, I have never heard a Republican talk about throwing Democratic kids into a woodchipper.
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This week’s winner is Areva Martin, a legal analyst for CNN. She was a guest on a SiriusXM radio show. The host said he felt his experience played a bigger role in getting jobs than his race. She responded “that’s a whole other long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing, that people of color don’t have the privilege of”’. There was just one problem. The host was black.
It seems to me that you are not doing someone a favor when you tell them they can’t get ahead because of the color of their skin and everything bad thing that happens to them is somebody else’s fault. Yesterday we saw an example of what is wrong with today’s journalism. A story appeared on the internet that President Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie when testifying before Congress. The news media was in a feeding frenzy. Despite not having any corroboration, the three networks spent nearly half an hour in total on it. CNN used a form of the word impeach 82 times. Not to be outdone, MSNBC used it 97 times. By 8:00 PM their fun was over when a spokesperson from the Mueller investigation said it was untrue.
Someone should have taken a couple of minutes to think this through. Let’s suppose the story is true. President Trump would have made sure that there were no witnesses or documentation. The idea that Congress would impeach, let alone convict, a president solely on the word of a convicted felon and notorious liar is ridiculous. Now that they have had their fun and are moving on to other stories. They fail to realize that they hurt themselves, not Trump. They just gave him some fake news that he can use against them. The partial shutdown will soon be a month old. 800,000 government employees are either furloughed or forced to work without pay. Many who work for government contractors are also without work. Untold millions are affected in various ways. Every day there are more and more problems. Yet this idiotic shutdown continues.
Everyone is pointing fingers but two people are to blame: President Trump and Speaker Pelosi. Trump dreamed this up during the midterm campaign. He made the election all about himself and the wall. That may please the cheering crowds but didn’t play well in the suburbs. As a result, a lot of Republican congressmen lost their seats. Ostensibly it is all about the wall. It’s really about throwing red meat to the base. The amount in dispute is only a small fraction of what the wall would cost. He took responsibility for the shutdown but is now trying to shift the blame. Enter Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. They saw this as a political opportunity and have refused to negotiate. They are not against the wall. In fact, they have voted for barriers in the past. They see it as a wedge issue to accuse Trump and the Republicans of racism. Now it is getting downright silly. She tried to take his State of the Union television away. He wouldn’t let her use a military jet to fly to Afghanistan. She accused the White House of leaking her travel plans. Despite their differences, they have a lot in common. They are both septuagenarians. They both have massive egos. They both don’t give a damn about the damage they are causing. The real question is whether we will stand up and demand an end to the shutdown or follow them like lemmings to the sea. President Trump has some people working really hard for his reelection. They just don’t know it. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio sat down for an interview with CNN. Apparently, he doesn’t believe the Democratic Party has moved far enough left. He said “There is still a lot of moderate voices in the party that did not learn the lessons of 2016 and are not listening to what people need in this country.”
I think he was the one who didn’t learn the lessons of 2016 or 2018. Hillary Clinton’s ideology had nothing to do with her defeat. She was a lousy candidate, ran an abysmal campaign and the Left deserted her. Ideology did make a difference in the 2018 House races. President Trump made himself and the wall the main issues while moderate Democrats responded to the concerns of the electorate. It is a simple matter of mathematics. Of the fifteen Pacific states and Atlantic states from Virginia north, she won all but one (Alaska). She only won six of the remaining thirty-five. You don’t find a lot of socialists in the states she needed to win. Right now, analyzing the 2020 presidential election looks pretty easy. It is doubtful that Trump will change at all. If the Democrats nominate a good candidate with widespread support, they will be back in the White House. Otherwise, Trump will serve a second term. Some people believe that there are millions of potential voters who stay away from the polls because no candidate is extreme enough for them. Each party tried that once. Barry Goldwater won six states in 1964 and George McGovern only won one in 1972. Now that the holiday spirit is out of my system, it’s time to look at this week’s idiot of the week.
This one comes from a surprising source: Kevin Hasset, Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. He was trying to explain why the shutdown is good for the furloughed workers. He said that many would have taken time off over the holidays but are now able to save their vacation days. Evidently unemployment is just the thing people need to really enjoy the holidays. Our political divide has led some to believe that all that matters is putting their policies in effect. To them the Constitution is an impediment. President Obama flouted it repeatedly. Now there are judges that pay no attention to it. They have ruled that Obama could do DACA by executive order but President Trump couldn’t cancel it. They also ruled that he lost the authority to ban immigration from certain countries because of campaign statements.
Trump has threatened to fund the wall by declaring a state of emergency. The idea that a president can then do any damn thing he pleases is totally at odds with our democratic traditions. Republicans often talk about their love for the Constitution and a strict interpretation of it. We are barely hearing a peep from them. He has spent his entire life running his business like a feudal lord. That attitude doesn’t work in the world’s greatest democracy. We are a country of laws, not men. Keeping our democracy strong is far more important than any policy or any president. People should speak against it regardless of their view on the wall. There has been talk of raising the tax rates to 70-80% to help pay for the Green New Deal. The problem is that there aren’t enough rich people to even make a down payment on their socialist utopia.
One thing I find interesting is their justification for people only keeping a small portion of what they earn. In his famous “You Didn’t Build That” speech, President Obama the real reason for a business’s success is what the government did by building roads, etc. The more popular opinion is that they are evil people (unless they are Democrats) who made their money by stealing it. The real question is whether or not it’s a good idea. The problem is that the Far Left doesn’t understand incentive. They assume that no matter what government does to them, the rich won’t change what they are doing. It is in everyone’s best interest that they invest their money in ways that grow the economy and add jobs. I believe that the combined state and federal rate should not exceed 50%. If it does, then saving money on taxes is more profitable than earning more income. That is bad for the economy. We are all better off if Congress makes decisions that aren’t based on hatred of the targeted group. Unfortunately, I don’t see any signs in that direction. Earlier this week conservative columnist Mark Thiessen listed the ten best things President Trump did in 2018. Now he has listed the ten worst.
What I found interesting was not the items themselves but the nature of the offenses. Only three related to policy; pulling out of Syria, reducing troops in Afghanistan and separating families at the border. The other seven all related to behavior. Politicians do not need to be boring, bland and politically correct. There is nothing wrong with being outspoken. Look at Harry Truman. Everyone, especially a president, should think before they act and not insist on doing whatever feels good at the moment regardless of the circumstances. If he could learn to do that it would benefit the country, the Republican Party and, most of all, himself. The government shutdown is strictly about politics. President Trump set things in motion by insisting on funding for the wall. He knows it’s a hot button issue for his base. He talked about shutting down the government during the campaign. He even took responsibility for it. He was willing to compromise on amount but refused to budge on funding the wall.
Democrats believe they have him trapped. They won’t allow a penny to go to the wall. Each side is digging in deeper. Trump talked about extending the shutdown for years. This makes it harder for either side to try to resolve the situation. Hundreds of thousands of government workers are currently out of work. So are countless people employed by government contractors. This affects businesses that these people support. Millions of ordinary Americans are being inconvenienced. They are all innocent pawns in this ridiculous game of chicken. As is often the case, both sides are focused solely on the political battle and don’t care about the collateral damage they are causing. We deserve better. |
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