Bret Stephens analyzes why Trump has Democrats confused and back on their heels.His point is Trump is unorthodox and running on Presidential plan B instead of Plan A. Consequently, "...the real threat of the Trump presidency isn’t an economic or political catastrophe. It’s moral and institutional corrosion — the debasement of our discourse and the fracturing of our civic bonds."
Stephen's analysis is interesting .
Where I suggest he is off base is that the response, on the part of the intellectual elites of which he is one, have made their own contribution to what Bret finds distasteful about Trump. By linking Trump to Hitler, by calling him a racist radical Democrats have replaced reason with anger and hate. They fail to understand their behaviour is akin to a red flag and Trump' is a bull who enjoys goring his enemies.
Radical progressives have made their own contribution to that of which they complain. I submit Jane Fonda's outburst as my evidence (See 1 below.)
Image 10-31-18 at 6.49 AM.jpeg
This is what intimidation is all about: Kavanaugh to skip traditional walk down Supreme Court steps over security concerns.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You can't make this stuff up.
As with lawyer Welch in the McCarthy hearings sometimes a quiet force, like that of Sen Grassley, can be effective.(See 2 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Saturday,I watched my friend, Bernie Marcus, express his thoughts on the Neil Cavuto show. He talked about the reduction in red tape which contributed to our economy exploding. He discussed the insanity of a caravan of 7000 "invading" our nation and what a disaster the election of a Democrat take over of The House would cause because nothing would get done.
Bernie get's my memos. I do not know what influence my thinking has on him because we think alike. He did encourage an audience here to read my memos and said that would be all they needed to keep abreast of major events.
Bernie also has family in Canada and discussed the health care issues between our two countries and blamed McCain's obstinate position for Trump's inability to end Obamacare and replace it with something else.
Marcus did give Democrats credit for having one of the best propaganda machines in politics.
Following Bernie was a rational Democrat Congressman from Missouri, named Emanuel Cleaver. The man is a handsome black minister by profession. His message was thoughtful, rational, healing and needs to be heeded by all in government.
He ended by saying if we cannot come together, America will go into decline. Rep.Cleaver was a breath of fresh air.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It would be a Titanic shame if this election turned on hate versus success but I suspect that is where we are heading.
The critical issue progressives always ignore is that wants do have a real cost.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No one is likely to read the commentary posted below. It is long, it is complex and one can argue splits hairs. That said it also is very relevant to the matter of Birthright Citizenship and has a bearing on whether the issue is as progressives would have you believe it is - what's new? (See 3 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
Why Aren’t Democrats Walking Away With the Midterms?
Democrats miss Trump’s political gifts and the real threat he represents.
The night Donald Trump was elected was supposed to be, for most liberals and a few conservatives, the beginning of the end of the world. The economy would surely implode. The U.S. would probably blunder into a catastrophic war. The new American president would be blackmailed into conducting foreign policy as Putin’s poodle.
None of that has happened — not yet, at any rate. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported the fastest rate of annual wage hikes in almost a decade, depriving Democrats of one of their few strong arguments about the true state of the economy. Unemployment is at its lowest rate since Vince Lombardi coached his last game in December 1969. The North American Free Trade Agreement has been saved with minor modifications and a new name.
Oh, and: The Islamic State is largely defeated. Tehran has not restarted its nuclear programs despite America’s withdrawal from the Iran deal. U.S. sanctions on Russia are still in place. Democrats badly damaged their chances of taking the Senate with their over-reaching and polarizing crusade to stop Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. What more could Trump ask for?
In normal presidencies, good news, along with your opponents’ mistakes, is good politics. It’s your Topic A. In normal presidencies, the politics of cultural anxiety, social division or ethnic scaremongering — that is, of proposing the end of birthright citizenship and demonizing elite media and militarizing the U.S. border — is Plan B. It’s what you turn to first when you don’t have enough to say for yourself otherwise.
But that’s not how the Trump presidency rolls. In this campaign, fear is what’s on the Republican menu. Peace and prosperity? Mere side dishes.
The mystery of Donald Trump is what impels him to overturn the usual rules. Is it a dark sort of cunning or simple defects of character? Because the president’s critics tend to be educated and educated people tend to think that the only kind of smarts worth having is the kind they possess — superior powers of articulation combined with deep stores of knowledge — those critics generally assume the latter. He’s a bigot. He’s a con artist. His followers are dumb. They got lucky last time. They won’t be so lucky again.
Maybe this is even right. But as Trump’s presidency moves forward, it’s no longer smart to think it’s right. There’s more than one type of intelligence. Trump’s is feral. It strikes fast. It knows where to sink the fang into the vein.
This has been Trump’s consistent strength from the moment he entered the Republican race until the second he got wind of the migrant caravan. Yes, his administration doesn’t even have an ambassador in Honduras, and if the U.S. has any kind of coherent Central American policy it would be news to me. Also, the idea of deploying thousands of U.S. troops to repel and even fire on the caravan is repellent, fascistic and probably unlawful.
Still, several thousand people are pushing their way to the U.S. border with the idea that they will find a way to push their way through it. If they do, tens or even hundreds of thousands more will surely follow. It’s perfectly reasonable for fair-minded voters to wonder how the U.S. will vet and then absorb even a fraction of them (though I think we easily can), and what doing so will mean for our wider immigration system.
To which the Democratic response is — what, exactly?
If it’s “compassion,” it’s a non-answer. If it’s to abolish ICE, it’s a dereliction of responsibility for governance. If it’s to open the border, it is an honest form of political suicide. If it’s more trade and foreign aid for Central America, that’s a solution for the too-long term.
The truth is that there is no easy fix to the challenge of the caravan, which is why Trump was so clever to make the issue his own and Democrats have been so remiss in letting him have it. The secret of Trump’s politics is to mix fear and confidence — the threat of disaster and the promise of protection — like salt and sugar, simultaneously stimulating and satisfying an insatiable appetite. It’s how all demagogues work.
I have written previously that the real threat of the Trump presidency isn’t economic or political catastrophe. It’s moral and institutional corrosion — the debasement of our discourse and the fracturing of our civic bonds. Democrats should be walking away with the midterms. That they are not is because they have consistently underestimated the president’s political gifts, while missing the deeper threat his presidency represents.
There’s a lesson here worth heeding. Our economic GDP may be booming, but our moral GDP is in recession. The tragedy of Pittsburgh illustrates, among other things, that the president cannot unite us, even in our grief. Whatever happens on Tuesday, Democrats will only win in 2020 if they find a candidate who can.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) Kavanaugh Accuser ADMITS to Lying
By AAN Staff
Kavanaugh, confirmed to the high court on Oct. 6, was infamously accused by multiple women of sexual assault and misconduct before the confirmation.
Judy Munro-Leighton, according to Grassley’s office, “alleged that Justice Kavanaugh and a friend had raped her ‘several times each’ in the backseat of a car.”
Those accusations were made via a "Jane Doe" letter provided to Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat and committee member, Grassley’s office wrote.
Upon further investigation, however, inconsistencies in the story emerged.
Committee investigators quickly determined Ms. Munro-Leighton is a committed left-wing activist, is decades older than Judge Kavanaugh, and has always lived several hundred miles away from him.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)Birthright Citizenship: A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the 14th Amendment
By Hans von Spakovsky
Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues-including civil
rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and
government reform-as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's
Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the
think tank's Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research.
<http://www.heritage.org/about
What's the citizenship status of the children of illegal aliens? That
question has spurred quite a debate over the 14th Amendment lately, with the
news that several states-including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Oklahoma, Georgia,
and South Carolina-may launch efforts to deny automatic citizenship to such
children.
Critics claim that anyone born in the United States is automatically a U.S.
citizen, even if their parents are here illegally. But that ignores the text
and legislative history of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 to
extend citizenship to freed slaves and their children.
The 14th Amendment doesn't say that all persons born in the U.S. are
citizens. It says that "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United
States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are citizens. That second,
critical, conditional phrase is conveniently ignored or misinterpreted by
advocates of "birthright" citizenship.
Critics erroneously believe that anyone present in the United States has
"subjected" himself "to the jurisdiction" of the United States, which would
extend citizenship to the children of tourists, diplomats, and illegal
aliens alike.
But that is not what that qualifying phrase means. Its original meaning
refers to the political allegiance of an individual and the jurisdiction
that a foreign government has over that individual.
The fact that a tourist or illegal alien is subject to our laws and our
courts if they violate our laws does not place them within the political
"jurisdiction" of the United States as that phrase was defined by the
framers of the 14th Amendment.
This amendment's language was derived from the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which
provided that "[a]ll persons born in the United States, and not subject to
any foreign power" would be considered citizens.
Sen. Lyman Trumbull, a key figure in the adoption of the 14th Amendment,
said that "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. included not owing
allegiance to any other country.
As John Eastman, former dean of the Chapman School of Law, has said, many do
not seem to understand "the distinction between partial, territorial
jurisdiction, which subjects all who are present within the territory of a
sovereign to the jurisdiction of that sovereign's laws, and complete
political jurisdiction, which requires allegiance to the sovereign as well."
In the famous Slaughter-House cases of 1872, the Supreme Court stated that
this qualifying phrase was intended to exclude "children of ministers,
consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United
States." This was confirmed in 1884 in another case, Elk vs. Wilkins, when
citizenship was denied to an American Indian because he "owed immediate
allegiance to" his tribe and not the United States.
American Indians and their children did not become citizens until Congress
passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. There would have been no need to
pass such legislation if the 14th Amendment extended citizenship to every
person born in America, no matter what the circumstances of their birth, and
no matter who their parents are.
Even in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case most often cited by "birthright"
supporters due to its overbroad language, the court only held that a child
born of lawful, permanent residents was a U.S. citizen. That is a far cry
from saying that a child born of individuals who are here illegally must be
considered a U.S. citizen.
Of course, the judges in that case were strongly influenced by the fact that
there were discriminatory laws in place at that time that restricted Chinese
immigration, a situation that does not exist today.
The court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment as extending to the
children of legal, noncitizens was incorrect, according to the text and
legislative history of the amendment. But even under that holding,
citizenship was not extended to the children of illegal aliens-only
permanent, legal residents.
It is just plain wrong to claim that the children born of parents
temporarily in the country as students or tourists are automatically U.S.
citizens: They do not meet the 14th Amendment's jurisdictional allegiance
obligations. They are, in fact, subject to the political jurisdiction (and
allegiance) of the country of their parents. The same applies to the
children of illegal aliens because children born in the United States to
foreign citizens are citizens of their parents' home country.
Federal law offers them no help either. U.S. immigration law (8 U.S.C. §
1401) simply repeats the language of the 14th Amendment, including the
phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
The State Department has erroneously interpreted that statute to provide
passports to anyone born in the United States, regardless of whether their
parents are here illegally and regardless of whether the applicant meets the
requirement of being "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. Accordingly,
birthright citizenship has been implemented by executive fiat, not because
it is required by federal law or the Constitution.
We are only one of a very small number of countries that provides birthright
citizenship, and we do so based not upon the requirements of federal law or
the Constitution, but based upon an erroneous executive interpretation.
Congress should clarify the law according to the original meaning of the
14th Amendment and reverse this practice
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment