See Bhutan # 3 below.)
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Should Democrats win the November election will they seek to heal the divide their intransigence and obstinate actions have caused? (See 1 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I supported Phil Gramm when he sought the Republican nomination. He attended my former prep school, is bright and a solid economist. He also understands why government does more harm than good.(See 2 and 2a below.)
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Bhutan 3. Travelogue from my friends. (See 3 below.)
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Oh to have a wishbone attached to a backbone.(See 4 below.)
And now Susan Collins is being targeted by Democrats. Yes, Susan Collins, the same Rino Republican who has actually been , politically, more of a friend to Democrats.
She made a brilliant speech, voted her conscience, saved Kananaugh and now the long knives are out for her as Democrats seek to knock her off with someone who has proven to be both a liar and incompetent, ie. Susan Rice.
Frankly, I would not even think of throwing Ms Rice at a departing wedded couple.
Liberals Targeting Collins is…Well, an Interesting Strategy
When you think logically, is there any kind of Republican better for Democrats than a Susan Collins Republican is? Read in browser »+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The disappearance of the Saudi reporter, who also worked for WAPO, could eventually turn into a destabilizing international event for two reasons.
First, our ties to The Saudis are historical and close and should their new young titular ruler have engaged in a murderous event it would put tremendous strain on the Administration and our Saudi relationship.
Second, Democrats will try and connect Trump's previous business connections to his alleged reticence to jump the gun and accuse The Saudis. because it is claimed Trump is reluctant to attack tyrannical leadership, ie. Putin, etc.
After their Kavanaugh defeat, Democrats are ready to intensify their attacks on Trump knowing he is vulnerable in the like-ability area.
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Dick
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1) Democrats, Don’t Succumb to Retribution
The deepening rift between America’s two parties will heal only if one takes the lead.
By William A. Gaston
During the past week, I have heard the phrase “civil war” more than at any other time since 1968. Though few are predicting outright violence, more and more sober observers fear that our national divisions are too deep to be bridged by politics as usual.
Let me be clear: I believe that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision in 2016 to block a hearing for Judge Merrick Garland was an unprincipled exercise of raw power. Mr. McConnell achieved his long-held aim—a conservative majority on the Supreme Court—at the cost of deepening partisan divisions and dragging the court even further into the political fray.
Sen. McConnell is not a political neophyte. He must have anticipated the collateral damage his strategy would inflict on our politics and institutions. He proceeded anyway, an act for which history won’t judge him kindly.
The temptation to respond in kind is almost irresistible. This is why my party, the Democratic Party, must ask itself some hard questions.
If they regain control of the House, should their first order of business be to reopen the Kavanaugh debate? Should they launch a new investigation and, if new evidence surfaces, move to impeach him? If this strategy falls short, should they seek to do what FDR tried and failed to do when a conservative Supreme Court hobbled the New Deal—namely, expand the number of justices?
These are not easy questions, because there is sometimes a case for a strategy of deliberately exacerbating divisions and raising the stakes.
In a speech delivered 160 years ago in Springfield, Ill., the Republican Party’s Senate candidate famously declared, quoting the Gospel of Matthew: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. This government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”
Less well remembered is the political claim that formed the body of this speech. Abraham Lincoln argued in detail that there was an organized conspiracy to make it legally impossible to prevent the spread of slavery, backed by President James Buchanan, Chief Justice Roger Taney and Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s Democratic rival for the Senate seat. The progress of their conspiracy had produced an emergency to which the opponents of slavery were compelled to respond.In a speech delivered 160 years ago in Springfield, Ill., the Republican Party’s Senate candidate famously declared, quoting the Gospel of Matthew: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. This government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”
The antislavery response couldn't be simply an effort to restore the status quo. The assumption that slave and free states could coexist indefinitely in the same country could no longer be maintained. If the U.S. didn’t commit itself to the proposition that slavery must come to an end, the cause of free government would be forever lost.
Republican Party operatives considered the speech too radical and argued that it contributed to Lincoln’s defeat at the hands of Douglas. Lincoln’s closest friend, legal partner William Herndon, agreed. But it laid the foundation for Lincoln’s selection as the Republican presidential candidate in 1860—and for the greatest presidency in U.S. history.
And yet a strategy of division entails consequences that are hard to predict and even harder to control.
On his first day in office, President Lincoln sought to reassure the South that he had no intention of interfering with the institution of slavery where it already existed. It is not exactly surprising that most Southerners didn’t believe him; he had insisted that slave and free states couldn't indefinitely coexist. If opponents of slavery were not only to block its spread into new states but also to set it on the “course of ultimate extinction,” as Lincoln had insisted in Springfield, why should slaveholders trust the legal and constitutional niceties to which the new president devoted the bulk of his inaugural address?
In vain did Lincoln plead in his peroration: “We must not be enemies.” The two sides had become enemies, divided by clashing principles that seemed to brook no compromise. And the war came, a war so terrible that only eradicating the sin of slavery could possibly justify it.
Are the matters that divide Americans today so momentous as to warrant a strategy of unending tit-for-tat escalation into the political equivalent (at least) of civil war?
In an op-ed in Tuesday’s New York Times, David Marcus, a writer at the Federalist, urges fellow conservatives to end the epidemic of “gloating” that broke out after Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation and adopt instead a “muted and conciliatory” tone. The legitimacy of U.S. institutions and the ability of Americans to talk to one another is at risk, he rightly insists.
In the same vein, if Democrats regain control of one or both houses of Congress in 2018, they should defend our democratic institutions while showing the American people they are capable of governing on a basis broader than partisanship. If they don’t, our descent into ungovernability will continue, and even a victory in 2020 may prove hollow.
‘The War on Poverty is not a struggle simply to support people,” declared President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. “It is an effort to allow them to develop and use their capacities.” During the 20 years before the War on Poverty was funded, the portion of the nation living in poverty had dropped to 14.7% from 32.1%. Since 1966, the first year with a significant increase in antipoverty spending, the poverty rate reported by the Census Bureau has been virtually unchanged.
Last year a United Nations investigator using census data found “shocking” evidence that 40 million Americans live in “squalor and deprivation,” in a country where “tax cuts will fuel a global race to the bottom.” He continued: “The criminal justice system is effectively a system for keeping the poor in poverty,” and reported that “the demonizing of taxation means that legislatures effectively refuse to levy taxes.”
If that doesn’t sound like the country you live in, that’s because it isn’t. The Census Bureau counts as poor all people in families with incomes lower than the established income thresholds for their respective family size and composition. The thresholds, first set in 1963, are based on a multiple of the cost of a budget for adequately nutritious food, adjusted for inflation. While the Census Bureau reports that in 2016 some 12.7% of Americans lived in poverty, it is impossible to reconcile this poverty rate, which has remained virtually unchanged over the last 50 years, with the fact that total inflation-adjusted government-transfer payments to low-income families have risen steadily. Transfers targeted to low-income families increased in real dollars from an average of $3,070 per person in 1965 to $34,093 in 2016.
Even these numbers significantly understate transfer payments to low-income families since they exclude Medicare and Social Security, which provide large subsidies to low-income retirees. Compared with what they pay in Social Security taxes, the lowest quintile of earners can receive as much as 10 times the lifetime benefits received by the highest quintile of earners and three times as much as the middle quintile.
PHOTO: DAVID KLEIN
The measured poverty rate has remained virtually unchanged only because the Census Bureau doesn’t count most of the transfer payments created since the declaration of the War on Poverty. The bureau measures poverty using what it calls “money income,” which includes earned income and some transfer payments such as Social Security and unemployment insurance. But it excludes food stamps, Medicaid, the portion of Medicare going to low-income families, Children’s Health Insurance, the refundable portion of the earned-income tax credit, at least 87 other means-tested federal payments to individuals, and most means-tested state payments. If government counted these missing $1.5 trillion in annual transfer payments, the poverty rate would be less than 3%.
The 3% poverty rate determined by counting more of the government transfers to low-income families is virtually identical to the number economists Bruce Meyer and James Sullivan found in a 2016 study, which measured actual consumption by poor families. The number also reconciles the current disparity between the low income levels used by the Census Bureau to define poverty and studies such as the Department of Energy Residential Consumption Survey, which find consistently rising spending among poor families on cars, home electronics, cable, household appliances, smartphones and living space. The 3% poverty rate would fall even further if it accounted for transfers within families, some $500 billion of private charitable giving, and the multibillion-dollar informal economy, where income is unreported.
Transfer payments essentially have eliminated poverty in America. Transfers now constitute 84.2% of the disposable income of the poorest quintile of American households and 57.8% of the disposable income of lower-middle-income households. These payments also make up 27.5% of America’s total disposable income.
The stated goal of the War on Poverty is not just to raise living standards, but also to make America’s poor more self-sufficient and to bring them into the mainstream of the economy. In that effort the war has been an abject failure, increasing dependency and largely severing the bottom fifth of earners from the rewards and responsibilities of work.
In 1965, before funds were appropriated for War on Poverty programs, all five income quintiles had more families in which at least one person worked than families in which the head of household was of prime working age. So broadly based was the work ethic that the lowest income quintile had only 5.4% more families with working-age heads and no one working than did the middle quintile. The lower-middle quintile actually had proportionately fewer families where no one worked than did the middle quintile.
The expanding availability of antipoverty transfers has devastated the work effort of poor and lower-middle income families. By 1975 the lowest-earning fifth of families had 24.8% more families with a prime-work age head and no one working than did their middle-income peers. By 2015 this differential had risen to 37.1%. And by that same year, even families in the lower-middle income quintile headed by working-age persons were almost 6% more likely to have no one working than a similar family in the middle-income quintile.
Even these numbers understate the decline in work among low-income Americans that has accompanied the War on Poverty. Compared with the low-income quintile, the lower-middle quintile today has three times as many families with two or more workers, and the middle quintile has five times as many. The trend illustrates how the War on Poverty produced an unprecedented decline in work effort among those who received benefits.
The massive reduction in material poverty that government transfers have allowed has come at a considerable underappreciated cost. The War on Poverty has increased dependency and failed in its primary effort to bring poor people into the mainstream of America’s economy and communal life. Government programs replaced deprivation with idleness, stifling human flourishing. It happened just as President Franklin Roosevelt said it would: “The lessons of history,” he said in 1935, “show conclusively that continued dependency upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.”
—Mr. Gramm is a former Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Mr. Early served twice as assistant commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is president of Vital Few LLC. Bob Ekelund and Mike Solon contributed to this article.
2a) Diamon and Silk
They've got tricks, lies, big donors and Hollywood elites all coming out to mislead voters and silence people like us who work to get out THE TRUTH. Democrats want to hold us back like always, but Richard, that's why we didn't just walk away from the Democrat plantation we RAN LIKE HELL!!
And there's no way we're turning back now! We're done letting liberals dismantle this country. We're the new kind of Republican -- Trump Republicans -- and the liberals better get ready cause we're ready to fight to help Conservatives -- folks who will have our President's back -- win these midterm elections!
Richard, we see the liberal playbook this year.
These Dummycrats have made it clear they'll stop at nothing to push their lying liberal agenda on WE THE PEOPLE. Even if it means destroying the reputation of a respectable man with despicable lies. Today it's Kavanaugh, tomorrow it could be your brother, your father, your husband, or your son.
They think if they play dirty like this, we'll back down. But now is not the time to BACK DOWN, it's time to THROW DOWN. While these elites are forming their protests in the streets, we need to form a protest in line at the polls to vote these people out of office. Will you chip in now to help us get the word out in these last critical days?
2a) Diamon and Silk
The countdown to Election Day is on and the Liberal Left is going after Conservatives with everything they've got. Just look at what happened these last weeks with our newest Supreme Court Justice - Brett Kavanaugh!
They've got tricks, lies, big donors and Hollywood elites all coming out to mislead voters and silence people like us who work to get out THE TRUTH. Democrats want to hold us back like always, but Richard, that's why we didn't just walk away from the Democrat plantation we RAN LIKE HELL!!
And there's no way we're turning back now! We're done letting liberals dismantle this country. We're the new kind of Republican -- Trump Republicans -- and the liberals better get ready cause we're ready to fight to help Conservatives -- folks who will have our President's back -- win these midterm elections!
These Dummycrats have made it clear they'll stop at nothing to push their lying liberal agenda on WE THE PEOPLE. Even if it means destroying the reputation of a respectable man with despicable lies. Today it's Kavanaugh, tomorrow it could be your brother, your father, your husband, or your son.
They think if they play dirty like this, we'll back down. But now is not the time to BACK DOWN, it's time to THROW DOWN. While these elites are forming their protests in the streets, we need to form a protest in line at the polls to vote these people out of office. Will you chip in now to help us get the word out in these last critical days?
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3) Bhutan 3
We arrived in Thimphu, a city of about 100,000 sitting in the Raidak River valley, which runs north and south between two mountain ranges. While the surrounding hills range in height from 6,562–12,467 feet, the city itself has an altitude range between 7,375 feet and 8,688 feet. Because the weather pattern comes from the southwest, most of the rainfall is on the western side of the mountains, making Thimphu’s climate relatively dry and temperate. Snowfall in the winter is light, and temperatures average above freezing. In the summer, it rarely goes above 80 degrees. There is a wet season from mid-June to September, which can cause the river to flood.
We
only had an hour before Ugyen and Jazzy were going to pick us up again, so we
didn’t lie down, lest we might fall asleep.
I decided to try the shower.
First, I turned on the tub faucet to let the water get hot. While I was standing there, the faucet fell
off and the water spewed out all over me
and the floor. I shut it off, put the
faucet back on, and turned on the shower for my drizzly shower. Then I discovered that, not only had the
water spewed all over, the tub had also leaked, and the towel I had placed
conveniently, with great forethought, next to the tub, was totally soaked, as
was the bath mat. That meant there was
only one bath towel left for the two of us.
Well, after almost 40 years of marriage, I guess we can share a towel --
as long as I get to use it first.
3) Bhutan 3
We arrived in Thimphu, a city of about 100,000 sitting in the Raidak River valley, which runs north and south between two mountain ranges. While the surrounding hills range in height from 6,562–12,467 feet, the city itself has an altitude range between 7,375 feet and 8,688 feet. Because the weather pattern comes from the southwest, most of the rainfall is on the western side of the mountains, making Thimphu’s climate relatively dry and temperate. Snowfall in the winter is light, and temperatures average above freezing. In the summer, it rarely goes above 80 degrees. There is a wet season from mid-June to September, which can cause the river to flood.
Before 1960, Thimphu
consisted of a group of hamlets scattered across the valley. In 1885, a battle was held at what is now
the Changlimithang sports ground in Thimphu. The decisive victory opened the
way for Ugyen Wangchuck, the first King of Bhutan, to virtually control the whole
country. Under the Wangchu Dynasty, the country has
enjoyed peace and progress under successive reformist monarchs.
·
The third king, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, reformed the old
pseudo-feudal systems by abolishing serfdom, redistributing land, and reforming
taxation. He also introduced many executive, legislative, and judiciary
reforms. Reforms continued, and in 1952 the decision was made to shift the
capital from the ancient capital of Punakha to
Thimphu.
·
The fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, opened the country for
development and India provided the needed impetus in this process with
financial and other forms of assistance. This king, who had established the
National Assembly in 1953, handed over all executive powers to a council of
ministers elected by the people in 1998. He introduced a system of voting no confidence in the king, which
empowered the parliament to remove the monarch. In 2005, the fourth king
announced his decision to hand over the reins of his kingdom to his son Prince
Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk.
Bhutan did not become
a member of the United
Nations until 1971. The
presence of diplomatic missions and international funding organizations in
Thimphu resulted in rapid expansion of Thimphu as a metropolis. Here is a photo
of the city from Wikipedia.
Our
first stop was for lunch. Ugyen took us
to a place on the second floor of a modern grocery store. Jim got way-laid by the array of World Cup
Coca-Cola cans in the display case, but he finally found us upstairs, sitting
on the balcony outside. This was NOT a
buffet! Jim and I split a very
respectable pizza and Ugyen had the national dish of chili and cheese.
After
lunch, we went to see an archery competition, which was quite interesting. Archery is the national sport of Bhutan, and
they do a version of it that is much more difficult that the version you see in
the Olympics. Their field is twice the
length of a football field, and the target is 18” across. They use composite bows that look very deadly
and hi-tech. Each team takes turns, and
each archer gets two shots. Some of
these guys actually hit the target, which was just amazing to me. I could barely see it from the other
end. Ugyen has a bow and is interested
in archery, but doesn’t compete at the level we were watching.
Next,
we went to the local market. Since it
was Monday, only about half of the stalls were open, but it was still
interesting. Jim loves these places for
photos of people, but this one didn’t offer a lot of opportunities, since it
was such a quiet day. I did buy a
certain type of tea I had read about in the DrakAir magazine. It’s made from what I thought was a type of mushroom.
This particular version has cardamom in it, as well, for better flavor. I found out later that it is not a
mushroom. It is a weird caterpillar that
lives underground and grows grass out of its head! Come on!
It grows grass out of its head?!? They find it by looking for the rare type of
grass, I guess. Anyway, these little
guys are well disguised in the tea bags, all ground up, and the tea is supposed
to have great medicinal qualities. We’ll
see. Do I sound smarter yet?
Along
the way, we stopped at a large stupa, set in a lovely park, National Memorial
Chhorten. This had a side area, full of prayer wheels, and covered like a shed,
where old folks could come every day to sit and pray and chat and be with other
people. The grounds are beautiful, and
the stupa is large and imposing. A great
number of people were doing their 108 rounds, spinning individual prayer
wheels, using prayer beads, and chanting.
Next
was a trip to see the Takins. A Takin,
dear reader, is an animal with the body of a cow and the head of a goat, and it
is the national animal of Bhutan. They
are native to the mountains, but they have a few in a reserve in Thimphu, along
with a few deer, birds, and monkeys. To
us, the Takins looked like small buffalo with subtle striping. A couple of years ago, someone fed them
infected feed and most of them died, so these few are very precious. They aren’t cute or cuddly, and they
absolutely refused to pose for a photo.
Ugyen
wanted to secretly test us out on a walk prior to our attempting the climb to
Tiger’s Nest, so we drove to the entrance to a biking/hiking trail nearby. This was an unfair test, because we didn’t
have on our hiking boots and it was the end of a long day, but we climbed,
huffing and puffing, the hill in front of us, and then walked through the woods
for a while on a nice, level path. Ugyen
said the King likes to bike here, but we didn’t see him. Anyway, after 20 minutes or so, Old
Grumpypants wanted to know where we were headed. The answer was that there was a little,
ancient monastery about ½ hour walk from where we were standing. Nope.
Not going. Let’s turn
around. So back we went to the car,
having failed the test and sending off alarm signals in Ugyen’s head about
Wednesday.
Worn
out from our test, we now went to check in to The Hotel Osel. This is a new hotel, sitting in a
construction zone. There is a large
building under construction across the street, and shanties to the right. From our room, we had a beautiful view if we
looked above the shanties. (See the
photos). The street approaching the
hotel was one-way and basically a dirt road.
Very dusty and bumpy with rocks.
The hotel, however, was a lovely oasis in this chaos.
Our
room was modern and large, with a huge bathroom. Every room we’ve had so far has had a large
flat-screen TV and a rainhead shower. I
hate those showerheads. They always
mount them about ten feet up, and there is no way to get wet without getting
your hair all wet. They never have any
force, so it’s like standing in a drizzle.
Why did they get so popular? My
apologies to those of you who have them in your homes. Please don’t invite me over to take a shower.
We
only had an hour before Ugyen and Jazzy were going to pick us up again, so we
didn’t lie down, lest we might fall asleep.
I decided to try the shower.
First, I turned on the tub faucet to let the water get hot. While I was standing there, the faucet fell
off and the water spewed out all over me
and the floor. I shut it off, put the
faucet back on, and turned on the shower for my drizzly shower. Then I discovered that, not only had the
water spewed all over, the tub had also leaked, and the towel I had placed
conveniently, with great forethought, next to the tub, was totally soaked, as
was the bath mat. That meant there was
only one bath towel left for the two of us.
Well, after almost 40 years of marriage, I guess we can share a towel --
as long as I get to use it first.
At
5:30 p.m. the main tourist attraction in Thimphu opens to tourists. This is the Thimphu Dzong, which sits next to
the palace. The palace is quite modest,
actually, at least what one can see through the fence and trees. Anyway, the Dzong is home to the government,
a very large temple, and another set of large courtyards. It was getting dark, and photos weren’t
allowed in much of it anyway, but we got a few.
This
is one of the largest and most ornate temples, with many worshippers. After we had been there for a few minutes, we
were told that the monks would soon be coming in to pray, so we would have to
leave or stand back and be quiet. The
lama started to rhythmically beat the floor with a long stick, and the monks
quickly began to enter. They sat, cross
legged, on long red, embroidered cushions on the floor, arranged in rows facing
each other. These monks ranged in age
from probably 40 down to about 6 years old.
There must be some old ones, but maybe they aren’t required at
prayers. One young boy in front of us
was handed a fistful of red strings by an elder, and he was using them to count
the chants. After about 10 minutes of
hearing the chants, we decided to make our exit.
Back
to the hotel for a buffet dinner and early to bed.
The
next morning, after a disappointing buffet breakfast, Ugyen and Jazzy picked us
up and we headed to one of the world’s largest Buddhas. The largest one is in China, but this one is
in the top few, and it is worth seeing. It sits high on a hillside, looking south
toward India. A large courtyard faces
the Buddha, surrounded by gold-covered statues of gods and goddesses. Inside, there is a beautiful temple, with
1,000 small Buddha statues along the walls.
These temples are not decorated the way you would do your own home
(well, most of you, anyway) but they have surpassed gaudy and developed a style
that works – brightly colored, lots of murals and flowers and busy-ness
everywhere. There was a throne for the
king and another for the highest lama, or abbot, as Ugyen referred to him. Since those men were not present, photos of
them were placed on the thrones, in golden frames.
Our
next destination was the Postage Stamp Museum.
Unfortunately, Ugyen only thought we would want to see the shop in this
museum, and not the actual museum. At
the shop, you can buy postage stamps with your photo on them. Cool, but not too practical unless you are
planning to send out a lot of postcards from Bhutan. (Remember postcards?) So, once we failed to buy these stamps, we
were back in the car.
Lunch
was at a spot only a guide would know about – upstairs in the back of a
building. There is a certain sameness to
all of these buffets. Good, small-grain
rice, several vegetable dishes, some fried and some stewed, then one or two
dishes with meat that is not very good. This one had chicken that tasted good
but was very bony. The chickens must be
fed the same way the cows and dogs are – they are all just a pile of bones with
no meat on them. It’s easy to be a
vegetarian in this country.
Now,
what has been completely missing from this trip so far? Hmmm?
Can’t you guess? SHOPPING! Ugyen finally decided to feed my shopping
cravings. He took us first to a school
that trains artists as wood carvers, painters, sculptors, and
seamstresses. (Is there a male version
of that word? There were males in the
class – what are they called?
Seamsters?) Nothing tickled our
fancies there, so on we went to a weaving studio.
The
Bhutanese have been fine weavers for centuries, making beautiful fabrics for
their native attire and festivals. The
choices here were endless, but I managed to narrow it down to one item that had
to come home with me -- a beautiful, large wrap with bright purple and gold
threads.
Not
content for us to have only one package, Ugyen suggested an art gallery next
door. This was home to 20 or so current
Bhutanese artists. The one who owned the
shop was there, and he was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. So humble and kind, and talented. We were the only people in the shop at the
time, so we had his full attention. As
it turned out, Jim selected a painting of his to hang in Mandy’s Veranda, our
new rental house in Savannah. It is a
painting of prayer flags on a hill. It
will be perfect there. Just as we were
completing our purchase, a whole van-full of happy tourists arrived, so our
timing had been perfect.
That
reminds me that tourism is quite tightly controlled in Bhutan. There are no tour busses. The largest van we have seen holds about 20
people. Sometimes a group will have two
smaller vans. Many people travel as we
are, with a private guide. Americans are
charged $65 per day per person to visit here, on top of the cost of hotels and
food. Our fee was waived because we were
using an Bhutanese guide. The country is
very eco-sensitive, and does not want massive construction or tourism to spoil
their way of life.
Sorry
this got so long, but I wanted to get through everything but Tiger’s Nest in
this chapter.
I
didn’t link you to a slide show this time, because I learned that you don’t see
the titles of the photos that way. With
this link, you may proceed at your own speed.
M------
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4) Trump Delivers GOP an Early
Christmas Present: A Backbone
If there is one word — one defining, all-encompassing word — that has summed up the state of the Republican Party for years (if not decades), it’s “spineless.” Whether the issue has been illegal immigration, the budget, standing up to Planned Parenthood, or even the wildly unpopular and disastrous Obamacare, Republican “leaders” have tucked their collective tails between their legs rather than stand up and fight. But something remarkable seems to be in the air, and there’s no doubt that the change in resolve has been brought about by Donald J. Trump.
Remember all the rhetoric concerning Obamacare? Analysts said it would fail. Obama officials even admitted they lied about terms. No, you can’t keep your own doctor. No, you can’t keep your own plan. No, prices will not be lower. Republican legislators said they would repeal it. They voted to repeal it. Oh, but wait. Barack Obama was still president, and the Republican votes were simply a side show next to Mr. Obama’s veto. When Donald Trump first came on the scene, he said he would sign legislation repealing Obamacare, but the GOP couldn’t get it done. They showed their complete lack of fortitude and rolled over.
That’s just one example of many, many other issues. Some in the GOP thought resisting Mr. Trump was the way to go. Others simply want to be part of the establishment of a Democratic and Republican ruling class that doesn’t want to rock the boat or stir up the ire of the “deep state.” Still, there were other House and Senate Republicans that I believe want to do the right thing, except that they have the skeleton of a jellyfish.
Thankfully, Mr. Trump is not a jellyfish, and from the beginning he has taken on the media and its endless “fake news” stories. He has delivered on every single policy initiative that he can. Taxes are lower. Regulations are fewer. The Islamic State (ISIS) is being decimated. The economy is up, up, up. Oh, and unemployment is down, down, down. The unemployment rate is at its lowest in nearly 50 years, and Hispanic unemployment is at its lowest rate ever. All of these successes add up. Each gives Republicans a little bit of cover to speak out. Each success also reveals those Republicans who have no business being in the GOP.
With all those policy achievements, the greatest of all (so far) has been Mr. Trump’s picks for the U.S. Supreme Court and his steadfast support of his nominees. His pick of Neil Gorsuch came without much of a fight. After all, it was a conservative for a conservative (Antonin Scalia). Brett Kavanaugh was a different story. The left feared he was the one who would fundamentally change the balance of the court, perhaps for a generation, and those on the left decided to fight.
Heroes emerged in the form of Republican legislators such as Sens. Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins. Despite the unprecedented attacks by the Democrats and left-wing activists on the newly seated Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the GOP transformed into a united bloc (minus Sen. Lisa Murkowski) thanks to a backbone supplied by Mr. Trump.
No one stood out bigger or brighter than Sen. Lindsey Graham. When he first emerged on the scene, many thought he would be a solid conservative from a solid conservative state. As time went on, he seemed to be cut more from the Bush wing than the Reagan wing. But when he spoke at the Kavanaugh hearing in which Brett Kavanaugh himself spoke passionately regarding the baseless allegations against him, Mr. Graham took on the role of titan. Was there any conservative watching the hearing who didn’t stand up and cheer when Mr. Graham delivered his admonishment of the Democrats and their “seek and destroy” tactics?
Polls now show that the Democrats’ so-called “enthusiasm advantage” going into the midterm elections has evaporated. Republicans are energized, and what could have been a lackluster election or one where Democrats gained some substantial ground, now has the potential to be a gain for Republicans. Imagine what could be accomplished with just a few more true conservatives in Washington.
The president has delivered on his promises. He has given us an environment where people are working, and spending and businesses are booming. Those results alone should have been enough for Republican legislators to start acting like real Republicans. However, it was Mr. Trump’s determination to fight for Brett Kavanaugh that gave Republican Party members (at least some of them) the backbones that they needed.
In order to move this agenda forward, the GOP cannot be the party of jellyfish. Mr. Trump has supplied the backbone. Now, the American people will find out which Republican Party members are the true squishes and which ones are now willing to fight for conservative principles.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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