Here are my observations and opinions on my selected news of the day.
(Courtesy scoopnest.com)
AIR FORCE ANNIVERSARY – I would be remiss if I didn’t commemorate the anniversary of the United States Air Force, officially formed on September 18, 1947, after flying as the Army Air Corps for years.
I proudly served in the Air Force for eight years, where I gained insight in the concept of peace through strength, while gratefully developing my career as a writer and public affairs professional.
NEGATING NADLER – You may recall that prior to the midterms, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, with knowledge that he would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee with a Democrat takeover of the House, threatened to proceed with presidential impeachment hearings.
Despite an exhaustive investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Nadler is proceeding with hearings to impeach that, I believe, is part of a vendetta that Nadler has harbored against Donald Trump in New York prior to his election. And he knows that the votes for the president’s impeachment are not there.
Nadler’s incompetence was on display Tuesday during the hearing of Corey Lewandowski that began three hours late, and turned into a circus soon after the drop of his gavel.
STILL AT IT – Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters, appearing Sunday on MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” responding to host Joy Reid’s question about the possibility of the impeachment of the president, said, “Absolutely,” while continuing to say, “He’s destructive. He’s aligned with our enemies in Russia and cozying up to North Korea.”
TRUMP NOT LOSING SUPPORT – Despite the imagination of Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, President Trump is not losing support of his movement following.
Noonan seems to believe that the president’s support is weakening; that his supporters are falling for the media’s constant drumbeat of “chaos in the White House.”
She obviously hasn’t met Libby DePiero, Saundra Kiczenski, Randal Thom, Kevin Steele, Jon French, Becky Gee, Barbara Bienkowski, Dale Ranney, and Ken and Cynthia Barten, who are among those who travel from one Trump rally to another. Some have attended more than 50 Trump rallies, according to Michael C. Bender, who chronicled their travels in a recent Wall Street Journal feature.
De Piero, a 64-year-old retiree, drove more than a thousand miles from Connecticut to Indiana, and 700 miles to Cincinnati. Kiczenski, a 40-year-old Walmart worker from Michigan, has attended 29 rallies. April Owens, a 49-year-old financial manager in Kingsport, Tennessee, has been to 11 rallies.
Many are living from paycheck to paycheck, but Steele attends rallies with $120,000 from an inheritance.
Michael Telesca, a middle-school teacher, compared his rally experience in Greenville, North Carolina to a Bruce Springsteen concert.
The Barten’s monthly contribute $5.00 automatically to the Trump campaign from an Air Force veteran’s disability check. “We’re not rich by any means, Ms. Barten said, “But I’ll tell you what: When we’re rich in our hearts with our country and our president, we’re richer than anybody.”
SLOWER GROWTH hasn’t eroded Trump support, according to Aaron Zitner and Ann Dante Chinni, writing in the Wall Street Journal last weekend on the blue-collar Midwest from Pennsylvania to Michigan.
“If people who voted for him have had a change of heart, they’re not disclosing it,” said Jane Walsh Waitkus, a Democrat.J. Vassello, a 43-year-old heating and air-conditioning worker, said he was ready to leave the ranks of non-voters and cast a ballot for Trump. “I think someone of his nature had to be put in his position – it gave the U.S. a little twist – an unconventional twist,” he remarked.
“FARMERS AREN’T GOING TO ABANDON TRUMP over the trade war,” wrote Willis L. Krumholz in The Federalist, referring to the media’s effort to signal the loss of support of the president among farmers. “They (the media) don’t give a hoot about farmers, they are just looking for any way possible to hurt the president,” he said, noting that their published big drop in soybean prices was in 2014, not 2018.
Farmers and auto workers are anxious, no doubt, while the new NAFTA awaits Congressional approval and a deal with China is pending, but they continue to support the president’s efforts.
Noonan and her friends on the left, who continue to believe Trump is losing the supporters of his MAGA movement, do so at the risk of experiencing a repeat of 2016 in 2020.
Not only do they feel a special relationship with the president, they recognize that the pack of leftist Democrat candidates are offering a trip back to the days of the horse and buggy.
OBSERVING THE TRUMP PHENOMENON – Slavoj Zizek, writing in Spectator USA, notes that “followers of Trump do not act ‘irrationally’ … they are quite rational in their own terms: they vote for Trump because in the ‘patriotic’ vision he is selling around, he also addresses their ordinary everyday problems – guaranteeing them safety, a permanent job, et cetera.”
Once asked to write a book psychoanalyzing the president, Zizek said, “the only thing to psychoanalyze is the irrational stupidity of the left-liberal reactions to it, the stupidity which make it more and more probable that Trump will be re-elected.”
MEANWHILE, CONSUMER CONFIDENCE remains high and if Americans are getting worried about the economy, reports Justin Lahart of the Wall Street Journal, it sure isn’t showing up in stores. Retail sales rose 0.4 percent in August and is on a pace to grow at a 3.7 percent annual rate in the third quarter.
FINALLY, ANWAR TO OPEN for drilling. I’ve been reporting about the drilling potential of the Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for seven years, admittedly a lone voice, so when I saw the Wall Street Journal headline Friday, “U.S. Clears a Path for Drilling in Arctic,” I was delighted.
(Courtesy fossweb.com)
Forty years after Congress selected the area for potential energy development, now, with the backing of Alaskan officials, the Trump administration is making good on it.
Democrats, with the help of wacko environmentalists, warned of the damage drilling would do to this “pristine wilderness.” They would paint a picture of herds of Caribou and other wildlife roaming vast areas with acres and acres of green trees while most of it is made up of marshes and ugly tundra.
Of course, that was not true and isn’t today. Drilling will take place at the northern tip of the area without spoiling the area. Thanks to advances in drilling technology, just 0.01 percent of the refuge’s 19 million (yes, million) acres will be used for drilling pads, processing plants and roads.
A ban has been placed on areas along the biggest rivers and protects the Caribou calving areas. The refuge occupies a tiny area of the vast state of Alaska.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
