Here are my observations on items in the news.

THE SENATE PASSED the tax bill yesterday, but a process error required the Senate and the House to vote again. As I was putting this blog post to bed last night, the Senate was scheduled to work late into the night. The bill is still expected to go to the president for signature before the end of the week.

I CONTINUE TO BE CONFOUNDED by the left’s disgusting anti-Trump statements as the president concludes a productive first year in office. Commenting on the anti-Trump texts between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the pompous Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) shamelessly remarked, “(They) did not say anything about Donald Trump that the majority of Americans weren’t also thinking,” without giving a thought to the fact that they, unlike that majority of Americans, were in a position to block his success in office, and communicated thoughts on doing so.

It was Strzok who helped Hillary Clinton evade an indictment over her mishandling of e-mails on her private server by helping draft James Comey’s statement exonerating her. He was undoubtedly involved in the shady surveillance of Trump team members, like Michael Flynn and others.

MAKING IT UP – Another liberal, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), insists that rumors abound in Washington DC, aka “the swamp,” that President Trump intends to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller after Congress departs for the holidays at the end of the week. The president has stated that he has no intention of making such an outrageous move.

REFLECTING ON THE PRESIDENT’S RATINGS – In my December 10, 2016 post, “Ignore President Trump’s approval/disapproval ratings,” I reminded you that those opinions are the result of the continuous negative press coverage focused on the president.

The Media Research Center reported on December 13, 2017 that coverage of President Trump has been 91 percent negative in the last three months. Using Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, Democrats use a willing media to “pick the target (Trump), freeze it, and polarize it.”

Said another way:

“There’s no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals, (but there) will always be the ‘man on the street.’ Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth is unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.” – Joseph Goebbels

Even Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan seems to have been taken in by liberal approval/disapproval propaganda. “Mr. Trump’s political malpractice has been to fail, since his election, to increase his popularity and thus his power,” she wrote.

SO, AFTER BEING BOMBARDED WITH NEGATIVITY, is it any wonder that “Joe six-pack” will respond negatively to a poll asking him if he approves of the president’s decisions? I’ll say it again – ignore the presidential approval/disapproval ratings.

TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY – That’s the familiar complaint by Democrats, and even while they, too, will get a tax break, keep in mind that the top 10 percent of earners paid 71 percent of federal income taxes in 2016. The top 20 percent spend more than the bottom 60 percent, according to MacroMavens, reminding us that consumer spending is two thirds of the economy.

CHRIS EDWARDS OF THE CATO INSITUTE says middle-income earners get a higher percentage cut than the wealthy, and James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal reports that “Even the liberals at the Joint Committee on Taxation have admitted that over the course of the next decade the plan would generate big tax reductions for middle-income taxpayers.”

THE STOCK MARKET HITS NEW HIGHS as optimism is peaking over the Republican tax reform/tax cut legislation soon to be signed by the president. Many middle-class families are among the approximately 48 percent of Americans invested in the market, many through 401k plans.

EVEN CNBC’S FRED IMBERT WAS HIGH ON THE ECONOMY, noting that the Dow Jones industrial average is now up more than 5,000 points in a year. CNBC’s economic survey found “for the first time in a least 11 years, more than half of the respondents to the survey rated the economy as good or excellent.”

LITHIUM BATTERY MAKER EnerBlu Inc. has announced it will relocate out of California, where costs are becoming burdensome, to invest $372 million and create 875 full-time jobs in the eastern Kentucky area of the Appalachian region, where the coal industry has been in decline.

ILLINOIS A BIG LOSER – The state has lost a record $4.9 billion in adjusted gross income to other states – Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Kentucky – in the 2015 tax year, up from $3.4 billion the prior year as a result of migrants leaving for those states. On top of that, the state’s economy has been stagnant since 2012.

“I could never conceive of leaving Illinois,” wrote Robert Dyer in a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal Monday, but that’s what he did, saying “the major reason was to escape the sheer idiocy of Illinois politics. To my former neighbors, I say there is hope once you cross the border.”

YET THE ILLINOIS DEMOCRAT LEGISLATURE recently overrode GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner’s tax-hike veto, and predict they will defeat him next year and raise taxes again. Don’t you just love the liberal mentality?

THOSE DEMOCRAT MASOCHISTS – Residents in Democrat-controlled states, already reeling from high property taxes – New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California – more than a dozen in all, will soon be forking over funds for poor countries to address climate change. Unhappy with President Trump’s decision to pull out of the costly Paris accord, the states have formed an alliance committed to reducing emissions in line with the accord, which aims to halt the rise in global temperatures.

MAYOR GREG STANTON of Phoenix the sanctuary city, joined a group of wacko mayors at a recent meeting of mayors in Chicago in signing a pledge (non-binding, by the way) to reduce emissions as set forth in the Paris accord. He claims the president’s decision to back out of the accord “has been damaging to the United States’ reputation worldwide and has the potential to hurt the American economy.” I’ll remember that economic prediction when Stanton seeks his next elective office.