Here are my observations on the news of the day.
DEMOCRATS AND MINORITIES – The party has always been a promoter of Planned Parenthood, an organization that has established the majority of its abortion clinics in minority neighborhoods, where Democrat politicians have long taken the minority vote for granted.
Since 1973, some 15 million black children have been aborted, as Blacks seek abortions at three times the rate of whites. Yet, Democrats continue to fight against cuts of funding to PP. In effect, they are sacrificing future votes for the votes of primarily single Black mothers today.
AN ASIDE ON ABORTIONS – You might be interested in knowing that there have been 60, 069,971 abortions since 1973, according to the National Right to Life Committee. The good news is that there has been a significant reduction in abortions in recent years, and the number of providers has been halved in 2014 from the number providing that service in 1982.
In recent years the party has set its sights on the Hispanic vote. In 2008, Barack Obama promised he would pass a comprehensive immigration bill in his first year.
With control of the House, Senate and the presidency, they failed to introduce and pass immigration legislation. Instead, Obama signed an executive order illegally protecting the so-called DACA “dreamers.”
While candidate Donald Trump did not secure significant numbers of votes in the minority communities in the 2016 election, his emphasis on the economy should have a positive effect on his minority approval rating. In addition to fatter pay checks, his policies have greatly improved the unemployment picture among Blacks and Hispanics. Perhaps they will now take seriously Trump’s “what do you have to lose?” question.
AND NOW THEY HAVE BOXED THEMSELVES IN by demagoguing the president’s plan for the DACAs – those “children” in the shadows – as part of a broader proposal for immigration reform. How will they explain that to those Hispanic voters?
MORE ADVICE FOR THE PRESIDENT – Although the president clearly doesn’t come to me for advice, in my January 25, 2018 post, “Don’t do it, Mr. President,” I suggested that it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to agree to be interviewed by the special counsel.
While reading Andrew C. McCarthy’s piece, “Donald Trump Should Refuse a Mueller Interview,” in the National Review this morning, I noted that he smartly cited the difference between Trump the man going into an interview versus Trump the president. There is a difference.
“A president of the United States should never be the subject of a criminal investigation, and should never be asked to provide testimony or evidence in a criminal investigation, in the absence of two things: solid evidence that a serious crime has been committed and a lack of any alternative means to acquire proof that is essential to the prosecution, McCarthy writes.
“There is a simple reason for this: The awesome responsibilities of the presidency are more significant to the nation than the outcome of any particular criminal case. There is one exception: When there is reasonable cause to believe the president is complicit in a serious criminal offense, and that he has evidence or knowledge that would be admissible and probative.”
McCarthy reminds us that Mueller was appointed despite the absence of grounds to believe a crime had been committed. “’Collusion with Russia’ is not a crime, and there are presently no grounds to believe the president conspired with Putin’s regime to violate any American law.”
You can read McCarthy’s entire thesis in National Review by clicking here.
POLITICAL RETRIBUTION – That’s what the Hillary Clinton holdovers from the Obama administration State Department are crying these days. In a CNN online story by Elise Labott, she reports that employees are charging that they have been placed in career purgatory because of their previous work on Obama policies that are of no interest to the Trump administration. No surprise. Right?
When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made clearing the backlog of Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests a priority, a number of those Clinton-Obama people were assigned to clear the backlog in a “all hands-on deck” effort. The number of outstanding requests has been reduced to about 13,000 from the 22,000 in January 2017. Tillerson wants the backlog cleared by the end of 2018.
A number of the disgruntled employees “have retained attorneys after repeatedly trying unsuccessfully to raise concerns about being assigned to low-level jobs” like handling FOIA requests, according to Labott. Poor babies.
SOME OF THE BEST COMMENTS often come from unexpected sources. During a discussion of the whether the president considered but didn’t fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Tyrus the wrestler who is a regular on the Greg Gutfeld Show, mused about how saying you were going to do something meant the same as actually doing it. He cited examples like, I’m going to fix the car, take out the trash, etc.
PATTING THEMSELVES ON THE BACK – Before the advent of fake news, designed to discredit President Trump, journalism was a fairly honorable profession. We knew that when a journalist wrote something, it was usually properly sourced, with in-depth, corroborated research. Today, we cannot trust the media to delve into an issue beyond a quote. We know that more than 75 percent of those in the media are liberal, and that their writing is dictated by the bias of management.
In Sunday’s edition of The Arizona Republic, and I assume in other papers across the country, the USA Today Network published a full page two-color advertisement with the words, “Journalism Matters” in a giant poster size font. In a “salute to our colleagues,” the ad reads, “We as a society, need investigative journalists more than ever.” The ad tells of how the reporting of the Indianapolis Star helped bring an end to a decades-long cycle of abuse in the sport of gymnastics, and lead to the conviction of Dr. Larry Nassar.
Such a pat on the back wouldn’t have been thought of before the death of true journalism, when self-effacement was the practice.
