Here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.
(Courtesy Michael Ramirez)
DUPED AGAIN – It happens every once in a while. I see a headline that attracts me to an article or an op-ed, and I want to read it. It happened again on Sunday, when the headline, “SAY NO TO IOWA AND A SOCIALIST NOMINEE,” (yes, all in caps) appeared on the Viewpoints section of the leftist Arizona Republic.
I was duped again, and I should have known better, as it was written by Jill Lawrence, Commentary Editor, of the leftist USA Today.
She began her piece with an appropriate jab at the screwed-up Iowa caucus. So far so good. Then she goes off into a goofy thought that because Buttigieg, Biden and Klobuchar were holding 54.7 percent of the state-level delegates compared to the 43.7 percent for Sanders and Warren, and writes, “to me that is telling, and to some extent encouraging.” She’s fantasizing.
She expressed disappointment in the fact that all Democrats are being labelled as socialists, as President Trump regularly does.
“I am sorry to say it,” Lawrence writes, as she offers that it’s time for some of the Democrat candidates to get out of the race – Bennet, Gabbard, Patrick, Steyer and Yang.
And with that came the anti-Trump zinger. “Steyer and Yang are business people making their first runs for office. Does that remind you of anyone? After Trump, please, let’s install an actual politician in our top political job,” she declares, saving that for paragraph 15. She got me.
The East Coast elite media just refuse to accept that Trump, the business man – after three years of attacks – has kept his campaign promises and accomplished more than any politician elected to that office – Democrat or Republican. Trump Derangement Syndrome is their Coronavirus.
SPEAKING OF SOCIALISM – Former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh decided to pull out of his challenge race against President Trump after garnering just 348 votes in the Iowa Republican caucus. “I would rather have a socialist in the White House than a dictator,” he told CNN, adding that he planned to try to help any Democrat.
OBLIVIOUS and misinformed are two words I frequently use to describe voters, who shouldn’t be voting. It’s common among university students, who soak up what their left-leaning professors tell them.
“It’s hard to imagine that anyone paying attention to politics was unaware that Pete Buttigieg is gay,” wrote Matt Margolis in PJ Media. “It’s hardly been a secret. TIME magazine even featured Buttigieg and his partner on their cover last year. You’d have to be living under a rock not to know this.”
Yet, an Iowa Democrat was flabbergasted after finding out. “Are you saying he has a same-sex partner?” the caucus goer said. “Are you kidding? Then I don’t want anybody like that in the White House.”
She asked if she could get the vote card back, but it wasn’t known if she was successful, according to Margolis, who wondered if she knew that Joe Biden was the vice president under President Obama.
DEBATE COMMENT – If you take a step back and really think about what they’re saying in this debate it’s fricking bonkers stuff. Like really beyond crazy,” tweeted Josh Holmes @Holmes.Josh
Logan Dobson tweeted @LoganDobson: “It used to be over-the-top parody to say that Democrats want free healthcare for illegal immigrants and felons to be voting from their cells. It’s now a consensus position among their leading presidential candidates.”
RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA is still on the “mind” of Texas Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who said she hoped Iowa Democrats would press the FBI to study Russian involvement in the Iowa caucuses. “I believe that Russia has been engaged in and interfering with a number of our elections dealing with the 2016 election,” she said.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals threw out a lawsuit by more than 200 Democrat members of Congress that alleged President Trump was improperly profiting from his presidency – emoluments – with the determination that they didn’t have a proper basis for suing.
Democrats had sought to argue that the president was violating the Constitution because his private business empire was profiting from foreign governments that sought to patronize his hotels, resorts and other properties to build positive relationships with the president.
GORDON SONDLAND, the ambassador to the European Union, who testified in the House impeachment hearing, wanted to leave his post on his terms, but when the State Department told him that he had been recalled immediately, he responded they would have to fire him, so they did.
A number of Republicans on the House select impeachment committee – Representatives Turner and Ratcliffe – systematically dismantled Sondland’s testimony, much of it based on his “presumptions.”
“Did anyone ever ask you to bribe or extort anyone at any time during your time in the White House?” asked Republican Rep. Devin Nunes to each witness, including Sondland. “No,” they each said without hesitation.
(Courtesy Matt Handlesman)
DURING THE PRESIDENT’S VICTORY LAP on Thursday he thanked the individuals who had his back through everything, especially the impeachment trial. Devin Nunes was applauded by Trump for enduring “tremendous abuse” by the media – the “bad ones, the leakers, the liars, the dirty cops.”
“They wanted to destroy him. They tried. They got close. But he wouldn’t let it happen,” Trump said of Nunes, who took on many powerful people, including the media, to expose the truth about the Russian collusion hoax and the FBI’s FISA abuse, according to a report by Chrissy Clark in The Federalist.
During a later appearance on Laura Ingraham’s Angle on Fox News Channel, Nunes returned the compliment to the president, saying, “The most important thing the president has done, of all the things he’s done are very important, but he’s finally outed the media. The media in this town has been corrupt, and it took somebody like Trump to finally bring them out.”
THOSE NICKNAMES the president has for people isn’t new, and isn’t the first or even the meanest Oval Office occupant to play the name game, according to the Washington Examiner in a reference to Tevi Troy’s book, “Fight House,” in which it states that “More often, nicknames are intended to diminish.”
George W. Bush was famous for them. But it seems “the practice of using nicknames to diminish internal White House opponents appears to have taken off in the John F. Kennedy administration,” according to Troy. “JFK and his allies dismissively referred to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson as ‘Uncle Cornpone and his Little Pork Chop.’” Johnson referred to Bobby Kennedy as ‘Sonny Boy.’
SPEAKING OF NICKNAMES – While the primary purpose of the president’s victory lap on Thursday was to thank those who defended him, he had some choice words, and names, for those who didn’t. The disgraced former FBI Director James Comey was on the receiving end of “sleaze bag,” “scum,” “liar,” and “dirty cop,” when any one of them alone would have sufficed.
Incidentally, the Washington Post, always willing to provide Comey with space for an op-ed, did so again the next day. I won’t cheapen my blog with his thoughts.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT – Maryland-based Alexander Historical Auctions believe the 30 customized black and gold pens used by Nancy Pelosi to sign the articles of impeachment could fetch up to $50,000 each at auction, according to the Washington Examiner.
LAUGH-OF-THE-DAY – Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez embarrassed herself and her alma mater Boston University again when she referred to the “famed economist Milton Keynes” on her Instagram message. I wonder if she understands the differences between the economic theories of Milton Freidman and John Maynard Keynes. I have a feeling she would be in Keynes camp.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
