The politically incorrect but factually accurate statement by President Donald J. Trump about the demonstration in Charlottesville where a woman was killed is, according to many Trump deniers, the straw that broke the camel’s back.
How many times are we going to hear this? Remember when Trump’s statement about Sen. John McCain was the one that was going to cost him the primary. And when the video of Trump talking with Billy Bush was going to cause him to drop out of the race and have Vice President Mike Pence run for president?
The Trump deniers were wrong those times and all the others, and they are wrong again. Trump didn’t say what he was supposed to say, which was to denounce the white supremacists and agree with the mainstream media that the antifa people who came to fight with the white supremacists were doing the right thing.
Trump is not politically correct, which is one of the big reasons he got elected. The mainstream media went ballistic over Trump’s statement, but then again they go ballistic over statements Trump makes all the time.
The white supremacists are deplorable and sick people, but the anarchists who have been wreaking havoc in the streets for the past couple of years aren’t much better.
The blame for Charlottesville should be placed on the city leadership that didn’t allow the police to maintain order.
Whenever a situation like that is allowed to get out of hand, someone often goes too far. In this case it was a man who, recent reports indicate, had mental health issues. He decided, evidently on his own, that beating on people wasn’t enough and used his car as a deadly weapon.
I have seen no indication that he was acting under orders from anyone. The evidence so far is that he was acting on his own and he decided to ramp up the violence by using his car.
The white supremacists came ready for a fight, but so did the opposition. For the rest of them, beating on each other was enough.
The protestors can be denounced for their views but can’t be held responsible for what one man did unless a connection is found.
However, if the police had been allowed to do their job and had kept the two groups separate, there should have been no violence.
Even white supremacists have the right to free speech, but no one in this country has the right to attack someone for what they are saying, no matter how vile the statement is.
It appears that the political leadership in Charlottesville was complicit in the attack on the white supremacists and allowed the entire situation to get out of hand.
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The mainstream media and the Democrats have been making statements that logically don’t make any sense but have been repeated so many times that many people believe them.
The white supremacists claim to be conservatives and Trump supporters and the mainstream media have made the illogical leap that because white supremacists are conservatives that conservatives are white supremacists. And because white supremacists support Trump therefore Trump is a white supremacist.
It doesn’t make any sense. It’s like saying that there is a Carolina Panther fan who is a murderer, and you are a Carolina Panther fan, therefore you are a murderer.
Or ISIS terrorists like CNN, therefore CNN supports ISIS terrorists.
It’s so illogical that it’s hard to imagine anyone believes it, but they do.
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In November 2016, the American voters elected Trump president and elected Republican majorities in both the US House and Senate.
People wanted a change and that’s what people do when they want change. When they don’t want change they reelect the party that is in power.
Trump got the message, but unfortunately for this country the Republicans elected to Congress did not. For some strange reason the Republicans running Congress, like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan, didn’t get the message. The message they got, since they were both reelected, was that their constituents wanted them to continue to do exactly what they had been doing, which is nothing.
It’s bizarre. The Republicans are going to raise the debt ceiling again. Government spending has not been reduced, nor is there a plan in place that will lead to future reductions in government spending, which means in another couple of months the debt ceiling will have to be raised again, just like it was regularly during the eight years of the Obama administration when the national debt went from $10 trillion to over $19 trillion.
If the Republicans don’t do something, at the end of Trump’s first term the national debt will be $25 trillion, and if he is reelected it will probably be $30 trillion when he leaves office.
The only thing that the Republicans have done that is the least bit conservative is to approve the appointment of a conservative Supreme Court justice. Almost everything else they have done, which is not much, could have been done with Barack Obama as president.
It’s hard to see how the Republicans think they are going to hang on to their majorities in the House and Senate in 2018, except, simply because of the seats that are up, they have a good chance of hanging on. If North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis was up for reelection this fall, I think he would have real difficulty getting Trump supporters to go out and vote for him. I don’t think they’d vote for the Democrat, but if Tillis won the primary, I think they just wouldn’t vote in the Senate election. Fortunately for Tillis, he isn’t up for reelection until 2020.
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What we’re finding out with the presidency of Trump is what happens when we have a third-party president.
Trump, of course, ran as a Republican but he didn’t have the support of the Republican Party establishment. He still doesn’t have that support and evidently never will.
The Republican establishment is willing to abdicate power in order to stick it to Trump. Most of the time politicians will lie, cheat and steal for power, but in this case the Republicans in Washington would rather give up power rather than work with Trump.
And it isn’t only the professional politicians. Many conservative organizations refused to support Trump when he was a candidate and refuse to support him now that he is in power.
Some so-called conservatives even argue that the country would have been better off with Hillary Clinton as president. It’s a little difficult to even imagine how someone can call themselves a conservative and say the country would be better off under President Hillary Clinton.
The Republican establishment is intent on making certain that Trump is not a successful president and therefore won’t be reelected, and it is willing to go down with the ship – meaning that, in order to keep Trump from being president, the Republican establishment is willing to give up control of Congress.
But the silver lining in that cloud is that the Republican establishment did everything in its power to keep Trump from being president in 2016 and failed miserably. It would be so rich if the Republican establishment lost control of Congress and Trump was reelected in three years.
It would be like falling on your sword to avoid paying for your sins and wounding yourself with a horribly painful wound but still being alive to pay the piper.
Where there is life there is hope, and it is always possible that the Republicans will come back from their vacation determined to rule the country, which means working with rather than against the president. It isn’t likely, but it could happen. It is possible that some leader will step forward in the House or Senate who will have actual leadership skills and abilities.
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It may be too early to give him credit, but it appears White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has stopped the constant leaks from the Trump White House. At least the White House has gone a couple of weeks without any major leaks. No transcripts of conversations with foreign heads of state. No private communications available only to the intelligence community.
It may turn out that getting Reince Priebus out of the White House was the smartest move Trump has made.
What would be a true miracle is if Kelly can convince the Republicans in Congress to get off their duffs and do something.
It appears that Trump is going to be forced to govern like Obama did – not by passing legislation but by executive order.
It’s amazing that the good economic news since Trump won the election doesn’t get more play. If the economic news was bad you can rest assured that the mainstream media would be talking nonstop about the economy. But the economic news is good and getting better.
Trump through executive orders has greatly reduced the regulations instituted by Obama by executive order. The stock market has hit record highs and some economists predict that the growth in the gross domestic product will top 3 percent, something that didn’t happen during the eight years that Obama was president.
Despite what the mainstream media reported about the economy during the Obama administration, the economy never recovered from the 2008 recession. Obama cannot be blamed for the recession but he is responsible for the lack of recovery. The government can’t raise taxes and vastly increase regulations on business and expect economic recovery.
Trump knows business and he knows what it takes for businesses to make a profit. Although the Democrats seem to believe that making a profit is evil, with the notable exception of Goldman Sachs, Trump knows that for the economy to work to benefit the working and middle class, companies have to be able to make a profit, and not just make a profit but be able to retain the money that they make.
Trump has done a remarkable job in his 200 days in office to bring the economy back from the longest period of economic doldrums in the history of the country. Eight years was enough time for Obama to severely damage private enterprise in this country but was not enough time for Obama and his policies to destroy the capitalist system.
And this is something the folks in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans should be worried about: If the economy is doing well, presidents almost always get reelected. Everything else aside, if Trump can keep the economy ticking along he has a great chance of serving a second term in the White House.
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Not only is Majority Leader McConnell not popular in the White House, he isn’t popular in his home state of Kentucky. A recent poll showed that McConnell had an approval rating of 18 percent.
It appears that the only people in the entire country who think McConnell is doing a good job as majority leader are his fellow senators. It seems unlikely, but perhaps a few Republican senators will wake up and realize they need a leader who wants to lead, not McConnell, who is either unable or unwilling to lead.
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An article in The New York Times supporting Senate Majority Leader McConnell and attacking Trump is politically fascinating. It proves the old adage, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The NYT has no love for Republicans or Republican policies, but The NYT also hates Trump with a passion that causes it to forget journalistic ethics and mix their hatred right in there with the facts. After the 2016 election, The NYT admitted that it had done this and said it would stop. It hasn’t.
Here’s an interesting passage from the story: “When it comes to the Senate, there’s an Article 5 understanding: An attack against one is an attack against all,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who has found himself in Mr. Trump’s sights many times, invoking the NATO alliance’s mutual defense doctrine.”
This is what has been evident but never stated so openly in the past. The first loyalty of Republican senators is not to their constituents, but to each other.
The Senate has become a club of mostly old white men who see supporting each other as their chief goal. They are circling the wagons against Trump because Trump is trying to do what the American people who elected him president want him to do, and the Republican senators are mainly concerned with supporting each other and making sure that they all get reelected so that they can enjoy the cushy jobs that they have.
The NYT manages to blame Trump for the fact that the Senate under McConnell has been unable and unwilling to pass any major legislation, even repealing Obamacare, which they all promised to repeal when they were running for office. They voted to repeal it in the past when they knew that the repeal would be vetoed by Obama. Now that their actions have real consequences, the Republicans in the Senate have been unable to do anything of note with the exception of approving the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The Senate has an incredible record of doing nothing and has spent an inordinate amount of its time investigating their own Republican president.
Trump can’t win this battle in Washington, but he can win it if he continues to go to the American people who voted for him and enlists their continued support.
The Republican senators number one goal is to get reelected. If Trump can enlist the efforts of those who support him to put even a couple of senators in jeopardy next year, the Senate may be forced to change its tune, but it will be a long bloody fight and the American people may become so disenchanted with the Republicans in Congress that they will turn to the Democrats.
From Trump’s point of view, if the Republicans won’t cooperate with him, what difference does it make whether the Senate is led by Republicans or Democrats? He’s going to have to fight them tooth and nail for anything he hopes to achieve.
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The mainstream media continue their all-out assault on Trump and are, as Trump says, using fake news to do it.
A recent report on National Public Radio said that Trump had not built the border wall as he promised during his campaign.
Of course that is true, but it is also true that massive construction projects, whether they are built by the private sector or the government, take time to get started. There is work being done on the border wall, but it is preliminary work. First a decision has to be made on what kind of wall to build, which is what is happening now. Once that decision is made, the engineering process starts. It is a multi-billion dollar undertaking and it won’t be built in a day. Trump didn’t say that if he were elected, a wall on the Mexican border would magically appear on Jan. 20. What he said repeatedly is that a wall would be built. It seems that the news media wants to ignore the verb “to build.” The word itself indicates that the process will take time.
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Trump’s speech on Afghanistan made sense to me. Trump did what many politicians have trouble doing – he admitted he was wrong and changed his stance.
When campaigning, Trump said he was in favor of pulling out of Afghanistan. After he’s been in charge of the war there for a few years, he may decide his original instincts were right.
The military will be relieved that the rules of engagement will be relaxed. I was told by one soldier who served in Afghanistan that they might have the Taliban shooting at them all day from behind a rock outcropping, then, at the end of the day, the shooters would put their guns down, walk out from behind the rock in full view of the American soldiers they had been exchanging fire with, and the American soldiers couldn’t shoot at them because they didn’t have a gun in their hands. It sounds insane, but I have yet to meet someone who fought in Afghanistan who thought the rules of engagement made sense.
Obama, of course, didn’t hold himself to the same standard as he held US soldiers who were risking their lives. From the safety of the White House, Obama ordered drone strikes on terrorists who were not shooting at anyone; in some cases they were driving down the road or sitting in a house.
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The mainstream media like to report that Trump, without experience as an elected official, doesn’t understand how the government works. But I’ve yet to see a comparison with Obama, who also lacked experience governing, although he had served as an elected official.
Obama’s stimulus package, for instance, was to provide money to unfunded government shovel-ready projects. What Obama evidently didn’t know was that unfunded shovel-ready projects don’t exist because they aren’t shovel ready until they are a funded. Then there was “Fast and Furious,” where the plan was to provide guns to the gangs in Mexico and then track the guns. It was an utter and complete failure. The only outcome of Fast and Furious was that some of the gangs in Mexico were better armed – not the outcome that the Obama administration was seeking.
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A second US Naval ship in a couple of months has inexplicably had a collision with a commercial ship. The first accident was suspicious, but the second is an indication that something is going on other than just bad luck.
The most likely explanation seems to be a hack of some part of the naval navigation and communication system. I doubt if the American people will be told what’s going on for years, if ever. But with all the navigational equipment on naval ships, the idea that one person could fall asleep at the wheel and sail right into the path of an oil tanker is not believable.
