The Paralysis of the Presidency
It seems to me that we have reached the point where the nation, and therefore Congress, is so divided that they’re like two guys standing in the middle of a suspension bridge swaying high above a rocky chasm.
It seems to me that we have reached the point where the nation, and therefore Congress, is so divided that they’re like two guys standing in the middle of a suspension bridge swaying high above a rocky chasm. Neither of them wants to let the other fellow pass. Neither is willing to back up, to concede even an inch.
I came to this conclusion after analyzing the last 10 years of political activity in our nation’s capital. During the eight years of his administration, the only major piece of legislation that Obama could get passed, even during the two years the Democrats had a super majority, was the Affordable Care Act.
Even his other big ticket item, handing $150 billion over to the Iranian mullahs was a dirty deed he pulled off with, as he put it, his pen and his phone. Even the nutsy Democrats didn’t want their fingerprints on such a treaty.
Over the past two years, the only legislative victory scored by Trump was the tax cut bill. His other accomplishments, such as opening the oil pipelines, moving our embassy to Jerusalem and cutting regulations, were things he was able to do through executive actions.
The only reason he was able to seat two conservative justices on the Supreme Court was because he didn’t have to involve the House. It only required the Senate to carry Gorsuch and Kavanaugh across the finish line.
But when it came to abolishing the Affordable Care Act or pushing to have a wall erected, he was predictably deserted by House and Senate Republicans.
That’s why, unless you were a federal employee who wasn’t collecting his or her paycheck, there appeared to be so little difference between the government being shut down and the government being open for business.
It appears that a stepping stone to success in the Democratic Party is to lose an election. Stacey Abrams, who lost her gubernatorial election in Georgia last November, despite being backed by the Obamas and Oprah Winfrey, was selected to give her party’s rebuttal to President Trump’s State of the Union Address.
In the meantime, Robert Francis “Beto” O'Rourke, who spent $70 million on his Senate race and still got his butt kicked by Ted Cruz, is considered running neck and neck with Kamala Harris, ahead of the 4,000 other Democrats who are also eager to take on Trump in 2020.
I don’t quite get why the Democrats are so crazy about these two losers. But I have to admit I, too, have a soft spot for them. But that’s because it’s the Party’s winning candidates I abhor.
Kamala Harris, whom I look upon as the feminine Barack Obama — which is to say, the slightly more effeminate Barack Obama — argues that ICE agents are no different from the night riding, cross-burning, Klan members who terrified and murdered black southerners in the bad old days.
That would be putrid enough. What makes it worse is that 20,000 Americans applauded when she said it, when anyone with even half a brain would recognize that those enforcing our federal immigration laws are in no way even slightly similar to lynch mobs.
In fact, if an equation is to be made to America in the 1860s, the closest parallel I can come up with is comparing mayors and governors of sanctuary cities and states to those promoting secession from the Union. But whereas a case can be made that the Confederacy had a constitutional basis for standing up to the federal government, no rational person can possibly justify endangering American citizens on behalf of criminals who have no business being within our borders.
It’s fascinating that a black woman, such as Sen. Harris, feels entitled to demean white Americans who simply object to having their nation invaded by predominantly brown mobs — but have no problem being friends and neighbors with American citizens who happen to be Hispanic — bigots and racists.
If Democrats want to see real life bigots, they need only look in the mirror.
Speaking of racism, Tom Brokaw made the mistake of saying something sensible on TV; namely, that Hispanics in the U.S. should make every effort to assimilate and to be certain that they and their kids learn to speak and read English.
On the face of it, that is such an obvious statement, you wonder why he felt called upon to say it. But, of course, Brokaw spent decades at the news anchor desk for NBC, so he got used to stating the obvious in those sombre tones that all network anchors learn to master during their time at the Cronkite Academy of Clichés and Ponderous Mutterings.
As one would suspect, for breaking ranks with his former colleagues, the usual suspects trashed Brokaw as a racist, a catchall term that stupid people have learned to apply to anyone who disagrees with them. Or, in other words, dares to speak the truth.
Fortunately, Brokaw is no longer on salary at NBC. Otherwise, he would have been fired. Honesty, after all, is now reason enough for the Left to call for your head on a spike.
In fact, I was all set to spring to Brokaw’s defense, but he took my legs right out from under me by apologizing as soon as the virtue-signaling attacks began.
Which is why I wish the coward had still been employed, just so he could have felt the axe hit his neck.
What makes the Leftists’ attack on Trump ring so hollow when it comes to the fraudulent Russian collusion claims is that if they really believed them, they would want to see Hillary Clinton grilled on a spit. After all, she famously pushed the re-set button with her Russian counterpart; she and her husband accepted bribes from the Russians; she used a personal server while transmitting national security material on her electronic devices; and she handed over 25% of our uranium deposits to Russian oligarchs. And, finally, she and her cohorts in the DNC paid millions of dollars for the updated version of the fictional best seller known as the Russian dossier.
I’ve never been a fan of Roger Stone, who strikes me as just another of those pilot fish who accompany political sharks, feasting off the remains that stick between their teeth. For sharks who can’t brush after every meal, the little fish serve as dental floss. And so long as they do their jobs right, the sharks don’t eat them.
But even I was outraged when Robert Mueller and his henchman at the FBI, Christopher Wray, conducted an early morning raid at Stone’s home in Fort Lauderdale that involved 29 heavily armed agents, two armored vehicles and a helicopter, which, as Tucker Carlson pointed out, was more men and fire power than the Navy Seals employed in the Pakistan raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout.
I have occasionally complained to friends that one of the annoyances of writing commentaries is that I have to memorize the spelling of certain names. Along the way, they have included the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, not to be confused — God forbid! — with his successor, the Ayatollah Khamenei; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Recep Erdogan; and, more recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It doesn’t help when James Coulter further confuses the issue by sending me an email suggesting that a more appropriate name would be Alexandria Occasionally Coherent.
As I gaze around at the political landscape, I find myself more and more agreeing with the environmental activist Edward Abbey, with whom I generally disagreed, when he stated: “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government.”
I’ll close with a line that’s gone viral on the Internet, and which, unlike most of the items that go viral these days, is both true and amusing: “Someday soon, we old folks will use cursive writing as a secret code.”
