Our nation's home made beautiful and elegant..
Meanwhile, the Trump haters criticized Melania for making it beautiful and elegant.
Enjoy A beautiful Christmas in our White House!
Merry Christmas everyone!
https://www.youtube-nocookie.
Has Trump made our government more moral? If so, this article by Klavan, will drive the anti-Trumper's insane.
Trump started slow and off base but he is ending solid. Yes, his out sized personality gets in the way of his accomplishments but I would rather pay attention to what a person does than what they say. Talk is often cheap, accomplishments can be very dear. (See 1 below.)
And
Several other takes on Alabama and Moore with which I mostly agree. (See 1a and 1b below.)
When I look back on 2017, I see the following:
a) We remain a divided nation and I see no end of that for a while.
b) Trump, as I noted previously, began the year in a disorganized fashion because of his inexperience in politics, his inability to surround himself with a staff of D.C professionals, since he knew very few. However,, he did put together a pretty good cabinet.
General Kelly is slowly bringing order to the Oval Office.
c) The sniping from the side was/is contemptible and demonstrates a level of childishness that reflects poorly on Democrats. Their effort to obstruct will come back to bite them and their inability to accept a valid election is despicable.
The Russian Collusion nonsense, the desire to impeach Trump reflects poorly on the "disloyal" opposition and it particularly makes some members of The Black Co-alition look like the dingbats they truly are.
d) The unfinished business is more overwhelming than what has been accomplished, ie what to do about Iran and N Korea, education, a litigious society that costs unnecessary billions and enriches ambulance chasers, a broken military that needs rebuilding etc..
Nevertheless, Trump deserves high marks for gutting costly and insane regulations, turning many agencies back to serving the public rather than attacking their so called "straw" enemies as Obama did with The IRS, The Atty General's Dept., The Immigration Dept among others.
e) The key impact going forward will be Trump's better, saner appointments to our federal courts, rebuilding a broken relationship of trust with key allies like Israel, Saudi Arabia.
f) The elevation of sexual abuse so those with legitimate claims feel more comfortable speaking out but it also opens the door to some downside aspects as well.
g) An investigation by Mueller that has lost credibility because of in house bias by those who believe they can stonewall Congress. and, are, themselves, untouchable.
h) Over all, 2017 was a decent year and reflects a better psychological mood evidence by a strong market while inflation remains low and employment improving.
The question for 2018 is whether anything will be accomplished because it is an election year.
It is insane that government becomes paralyzed because some yahoos want to be re-elected yet, continue to be paid big salaries and receive big perks while doing nothing and/or throwing sand in the government's gears.
This must change but will not until parties place nation above politics.. Would not hold your breath.
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Three Decembers ago, I purchased a low mileage GMC from a local dealer because my son-in-law, who worked all his life until retirement at GM, told me the GMC was a great car.
Shortly after I purchased the car, I noticed the brake squeaked when I depressed it so I took it back to the dealer and they replaced the defective part, which was under warranty, with what must be another defective part, because the brake still intermittently squeaks.
I recently took the car back and was told by the service manager the defective part that replaced the original defective part was out of warranty and I would have to pay for it myself - $870 including labor. I asked him whether GM knew the part was defective and he said they must because they have a lot of squeaky brake problems and therefore, must know the part is defective. I asked him why they were still making this defective part and he had no answer.
I then wrote a very courteous letter to GM's Chairman explaining my problem and thought informing her that GM seems to be engineering a defective part connected to the braking system might be of interest.
Several days later, I received a call from Danielle who is an executive floor customer service person . Naturally I was not home but she left her call back number as well as her direct extension. (GM obviously must get a lot of calls because Danielle's extension had 8 numbers and she also left a service request number that was 11 numbers long.)
Naturally, Danielle was not there when I returned her call but her answering machine said she would return my call within 24 hours. I assume, since she must work 8 hours a day, I would hear from her in three days (3 x 8 is 24.) Eight days have passed and I have yet to receive a call back from Danielle.
If I had purchased an Asian manufactured car, I assume someone from Asia would have already flown over, knocked on my door with a year's supply of Sushi to discuss the issue. Maybe they would not have even engineered and installed the defective part.
Repatriating $4 trillion dollars and lowering the corporate tax rate will not address the issue of slovenly service and defective engineering.
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This is from a dear friend and fellow memo reader regarding de Blasio:
Who Is Warren Wilhelm, Jr.?
Warren Wilhelm, Jr., is aka Bill deBlasio, Mayor of New York City, and a disgraceful fellow who should be run out of the Big Apple on a rail. He skipped out on the funeral of a twelve-year veteran of the NYPD, Miosotis Familia, a mother of three, who was murdered in cold blood while sitting in her police vehicle. And, he also fled from the swearing in ceremony of 438 new NYPD recruits so he could join his fellow anarchists, communists, and socialists to protest the G-20 summit and “stand-up” to President Donald J. Trump.
Bill is also going to be a speaker at a Hamburg Shows Attitude rally.
This guy is the head of the largest “capitalist” city in the United States, the center of the global financial world, and he runs off to oppose capitalism. Why? Well, you don’t have to look far to find the answer. He’s always had socialist/communist leanings.
In 1987, shortly after completing graduate school at Columbia, he was hired to work as a political organizer by the Quixote Center in Maryland. The Quixote Center achieved prominence in its support of the ideals of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s. In 1988, de Blasio traveled with the Quixote Center to Nicaragua for 10 days to help distribute food and medicine during the Nicaraguan Revolution. De Blasio was an ardent supporter of the ruling socialist government, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which the Reagan administration characterized it as "tyrannical" and "Communist."
He later moved to New York where he helped raise funds for the Sandinistas as a volunteer for the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. He worked alongside peace activists, Democrats, Marxists, and anarchists to continue to highlight the cause in Central America after the Sandinistas lost power in 1990.
By the way, Bill also honeymooned in Cuba in violation of the United States' ban on travel to the Caribbean Communist stronghold. Come to think of it, Bernie Sanders honeymooned in Russia, too.
Maybe they will team up for a presidential run in 2020 on the “We Hate America” ticket.
L----
My response to my friend: "That would be a good ticket and should at least get the bar bell vote as dumbbells are popular among that crowd. Me"
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1) Trump Has Made Our Government More Moral
Here is a funny thing about the human mind: when we didn't see something coming, we often can't see it came. There's a good reason for this. Wrong predictions are an indication that there is something off or unrealistic about your worldview. When your predictions are vastly incorrect, you have to choose: will I paper over my mistakes and pretend to myself I was actually right in some way, or will I admit the error and adjust the way I look at life?
People almost never adjust the way they look at life. It would mean risking their sense of their own wisdom and virtue.
This is why so many pundits both on the left and right are completely blind to what happened this year in politics.
Donald Trump — a political neophyte, a New York loudmouth who plays fast and loose with the truth, a massive egotist and a not altogether pleasant human being — has delivered conservatives one of the greatest years in living memory and has made our government more moral in the process. The left and many on the right didn't see it coming because they hate the man. And because they didn't see it coming, they won't see that it's come.
The first assertion is easily proven. After a year of Trump, the economy is in high gear, stocks are up, unemployment is down, energy production is up, business expansion is up and so on; ISIS — which took more than 23,000 square miles of territory after Obama left Iraq and refused to intervene in Syria — is now in control of a Port-o-San and a book of matches; 19 constitutionalist judges have been appointed and 40 more nominated; the biggest regulatory rollback in American history has been launched (boring but yugely important); the rule of law has been re-established at the border; we're out of the absurd and costly Paris Accord; net neutrality, the most cleverly named government power grab ever, is gone; our foreign policy is righted and revitalized; and a mainstream news media that had become little more than the information arm of the Democratic Party is in self-destructive disarray. If the tax bill passes before Christmas, it will cap an unbelievable string of conservative successes.
Now you can tie yourself in knots explaining why none of this is Trump's doing or how it's all just a big accident or the result of cynical motives or whatever. Knock yourself out, cutes. For me, I'll say this. I hated Trump. I thought he'd be a disaster or, at best, a mediocrity. I was wrong. He's done an unbelievably great job so far.
But even more important is my second assertion. Our government is more moral now. How is this possible when Trump has sex with Vladimir Putin disguised as a Russian prostitute, when he kills and eats black people in his spare time, when he hates women and goes into insane temper tantrums fueled by 48 cans of Diet Coke a day? Okay, even leaving Maggie Haberman's fantasy life aside, Trump is not always statesman-like, not always nice to people and not always strictly honest.
But Trump's outsized New York personality and the feeling it evokes in us only obscures what he has done to the government he leads. As Aristotle knew, a thing can only be good if it fulfills its purpose. What is the moral purpose of government? We know the answer because our Founders told us in no uncertain terms.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men..."
That's right. Government does not exist to make us equal, but to treat us equally. It does not exist to make life fair, but to treat us fairly. Most importantly, it exists to secure our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Only in liberty can we treat each other ethically, because only in liberty can we make the choices that are the necessary condition for ethical life.
Trump has made our government more moral by making less of it: fewer regulations, fewer judges who will write law instead of obeying the law, fewer bureaucrats seeking to expand the power of their agencies, less money for the government to spend on itself. He has made government treat us more fairly and equally by ceasing to use the IRS and Justice Department for political ends like silencing enemies and skewing elections.
This is what moral government looks like. And if every male senator in America is grabbing the buttocks of some unsuspecting female while, at the same time, voting for more limited and less corrupt government, the senators are immoral, yes, but the government is more moral. That is why we should never let the leftist press game us with scandal hysteria, but should keep focused on voting in those who will help fulfill government's moral ends.
Trump has delivered conservatives an astoundingly successful year and made the government more moral in the process. You don't have to like him, to salute him. I salute him. Well done.
1a) Don't Despair Over Alabama
By David Limbaugh
Republicans should not be disheartened by Roy Moore's loss in Alabama, because the election had little to do with Doug Jones — and probably even less with Donald Trump or the Republican agenda.
Don't get me wrong. It's quite troubling that the GOP's thin Senate majority just became anorexic, but this election by itself is not a predictor of a Democratic rout in 2018. Republicans could sustain substantial losses, to be sure, but the Alabama election doesn't make that foreseeable.
Roy Moore was a uniquely problematic candidate with more baggage than many Republicans believed they could excuse. Though it is remarkable that a Republican candidate lost in crimson-red Alabama, it is also noteworthy that even with his problems, he came close to winning.
The vast majority of Alabama Republicans did not want to sit home or to vote for Jones, because they understand the magnitude of the stakes before us. Yet enough of them did. Apparently, the fact that he would have doubtlessly voted as a conservative at a time when every single Republican vote is critical wasn't enough to overcome the sexual allegations and other concerns about Moore for these voters.
Also, America's political situation is particularly fluid, and there are too many variables and important events yet to play out for us to reliably forecast the 2018 election results. One savvy politician told me this week that he could see Republicans losing the majority in both houses in 2018 — but he also wouldn't be surprised if they were to actually gain seats if the economy remains strong and Trump's agenda continues apace.
Democrats have more Senate seats to defend in 2018 (26) than Republicans (eight), 10 of which are in states Trump carried in 2016 — five by double digits. Even CNN concedes that the electoral map "still clearly favors Republicans." But like other liberals, they are counting on Trump's supposed unpopularity and soaring passion in the Democratic base to offset any GOP advantages.
Moreover, prudent analysis has to factor in the adage that people vote with their pocketbooks — even young people, the demographic reputed to be least enamored with President Trump. A Bank of America/USA Today Better Money Habits survey conducted before the 2016 election showed that 65 percent of voters ages 18 to 26 would base their votes more on economic policies than on social issues.
Economic indicators are decidedly positive now, and notwithstanding Barack Obama's delusional post-presidential assertion that he deserves the credit for it, it's hard to dispute that Trump deserves the lion's share of credit.
The economy is humming well above 3 percent — a threshold the Obama malaise architects had already written off as no longer attainable. Unemployment is way down, and the stock market is surging significantly above impressive Obama-era levels.
This is real growth, as opposed to the fake growth Obama defeatists were touting when the economy was stagnating at 1 percent. And it can be traced to Trump's actions and the attitude he carried into office, just as Obama's stagnation can be traced to his business-hostile bearing.
Trump is bullish on America, the free market and American business. Entrepreneurs have responded accordingly, as have consumers. (Look at Christmas season sales already this year.) Trump has also been aggressive in rolling back stifling bureaucratic regulations across the board, and no one should underestimate the impact of his decision to back out of the Paris climate accord — or his support of the coal and natural gas industries.
Trump also tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to substantially revise, if not wholly repeal, Obamacare, and he is determined to try again. He and congressional Republicans have done a better job so far with the tax reform bill. Though it is imperfect and not the bill I would craft if I were king, it would meaningfully improve the existing law and is very close to being passed.
If it passes, I believe we'll see even more growth and far more revenues than the experts — the same ones who predicted that our days of 3 percent growth were over — are forecasting.
Yes, things could so south, especially if Trump and Congress are unable to move the tax bill and other major items of legislation before the 2018 elections, but I'm feeling upbeat.
My main concern is chaos within the Republican Party. The angst toward Trump among many Republicans is palpable, and unfortunately, a disproportionate number of these opponents are influential in the media.
I understand the naysayers' disapproval of Trump's style and various other complaints. But I don't understand why they won't acknowledge the positive developments that are occurring during his presidency — even if they have too much pride to give him credit for them. I get (and sometimes share) their distaste for his tweets, but it's baffling that they won't concede that on policy, at least, he has been far different from — and almost entirely better than — what they gloomily warned he would be.
He's not governing like a so-called populist nationalist, and he certainly hasn't advocated liberal policies as many feared. No matter what you think of Trump personally, he is advancing a largely conservative agenda.
Unlike some of Trump's perpetual critics, I don't worry that Trump is going to usher in an era of alt-right dystopia or that the country is going to descend into Bannonism — whatever that means. The critics shouldn't fear that Trump will forever taint the conservative movement or that America will descend into darkness.
America was descending into darkness under Obama's eight years, and that process would have accelerated into warp speed had Hillary Clinton been elected. So could we please lighten up and support the president when he's advancing salutary policies, which is often, and go into 2018 with a spirit of warranted optimism?
David Limbaugh is a writer, author, and attorney. His latest book is, "The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament." Read more reports from David Limbaugh — Click Here Now.
1b)Alabama Teaches America a Lesson
All of us need to sober up, think about the long term, and be aware of the impression we’re making.
By Peggy Noonan
In 2018, we have to do better, all of us. We need to improve. In the area of politics this means, in part: sober up, think about the long term, be aware of the impression you’re making, of what people will infer from your statements and actions. So much hinges on the coming year—who is in Congress and what they think they were sent there to do, the results of the Mueller investigation. If the latter finds crimes and the former goes Democratic there will be moves for impeachment in 2019. There will be international crises as always, but 2018 may produce one of unprecedented historical gravity in nuked-up North Korea.
This is a dead-serious time, and we keep forgetting it because the times have been serious so long.
It might help if all public actors, from leaders and investigators to journalists and voters, made a simple vow to make it a little better, not a little worse. The other night a dinner partner marveled at the expensive new fitness monitor he wears on his wrist. I wish there were an Ethical Fitbit that could report at the end of each day that you’d taken 12,304 constructive steps, some uphill, or 3,297 destructive ones, and appropriate action is warranted.
There is inspiration in the Alabama outcome. To see it in terms of the parties or Steve Bannon is to see it small. The headline to me: American political standards made a comeback. Roy Moore’s loss was not a setback for the GOP; it was a setback for freakishness. It was an assertion of prudential judgment by the electorate, and came as a relief. A friend landed at JFK on an international flight on election night. As the plane taxied to the gate, the pilot came on the PA and announced that Doug Jones was in the lead. The entire plane, back to front, burst into applause. “A big broad nerve was hit in this thing,” said the friend, an American and political conservative. He meant not only here but around the world.
Thirty-three states have U.S. Senate races next year. Primary voters should absorb what happened to Alabama Republicans after they picked Mr. Moore. They took it right in the face. They misjudged their neighbors. They were full of themselves. They rejected the sure victories offered by other contestants and chose a man whom others easily detected as not well-meaning. They weren’t practical or constructive and they didn’t think about the long term. They didn’t, for instance, take into account that there were independents in the state whose support could be gained with the fielding of a more serious Republican.
And now they’ve lost it all. Voters in coming primaries should observe and absorb. There is something we have been saying in this space for almost a decade, since the Sarah Palin experience. Something happened when she ran. Suddenly to seem real and authentic some Republican candidates thought they had to be polar and extreme. They had to show umbrage, signal resentment, wave guns. But these are not indications of authenticity. They are a sign voters are being played, probably by a grifter. When a candidate is equable and experienced it is not a sign of cynicism and not evidence that he is “establishment.” It’s a sign he can maybe do a good job—and win. Conservatives who are real conservatives don’t ape the social-justice left and make politics a daily freak show. They keep their cool, argue their case, build broad appeal and become, in this way, politically deadly.
Which gets us as always to President Trump. The Alabama number that should scare him was in the exit polls. In 2016 Mr. Trump won the state with 62% of the vote, to Hillary Clinton’s 34%. Tuesday night the exits had him at 48% approve, 48% disapprove. And this within a national context of good economic news.
Mr. Trump’s political malpractice has been to fail, since his election, to increase his popularity and thus his power. He has a core but it remains a core. He could have broadened his position with a personal air of stability and moderation, and with policies that were soft-populist. He has failed to do so, primarily due to his self-indulgence—his tendency to heat things up when he should cool them down; his tendency always to make the situation a little worse, not a little better. His tweets, his immaturity, his screwball resentments and self-pity alienate and offend.
Trumpism led by a competent or talented Trump would have been powerful and pertinent to the moment. It would have reoriented the Republican Party in terms of understanding that its own base was increasingly populist, yet also ideologically moderate. That new understanding hasn’t developed.
The great and fateful question now, the one to which we may well get an answer in 2018, is: Can this man lead through a crisis? That is the question that has to be on your mind when you think about North Korea. Can he be credible, persuasive; will Americans feel they can follow him? Will the West? No one looks forward to finding the answers to these questions.
As to his foes in the other party, the biggest silence in American political life is not from the Republicans, who can’t stop arguing. It is from the Democrats when they are asked what they stand for. What economic policy do they want? What is the plan, the arrangement they hope to institute? What philosophy are they trying to put in place? What in terms of foreign policy do they want?
Domestically the only thing they’re clear on is identity politics. Who’s going to unite or find the place of common ground between the rising left and the older middle? What program can accomplish that?
Donald Trump has been a great gift to the Democrats. Opposition to him is the one thing that keeps them united. But he won’t be there forever—they’ll try to see to that!—and when he’s gone, the squirrels will really begin to fly.
Finally the FBI, the Justice Department and the special counsel look dinged right now. Those who support serious probes to answer big questions and thus support the Russia investigations, as I do, hope whatever findings come from the special counsel are and can be treated with respect. To earn it the investigators must appear every day to be clean as a hound’s tooth. Is that how it’s looking? Or are critics getting ammunition?
Snotty, partisan text messages between FBI investigators, including one in which an agent said he could “smell” the Trump supporters at Walmart, expressed anti-Trump biases. Government employees have a right to political opinions, but the FBI, Justice Department and special counsel should be running a tighter ship. During the Clinton-Lewinsky wars, the left went after Independent Counsel Ken Starr, sliming him as surrounded by Republican operatives. It did him, and America, no good.
We are a divided country. The special counsel’s findings could prove momentous. Everyone involved should sober up, think about the long term, and be aware of the impression they’re making.
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