Smoke is clearing and the lines are being drawn. First Sessions is in, then he’s out, then back in again. Democrats quickly supported Trump’s nominee, FBI Director Christopher Wray. Yet, Trump is always about to be “finished this time”, oops, wait, not this time, but “next time for sure”. The DOJ is going after the press to crackdown on leakers, or well, not quite exactly. Greenspan finally figured out how to have an opinion on the economy, or maybe not; it was just “irrational exuberance”, again. Would he be surprised if the market cracked? No. Would he be surprised if the market didn’t crack for a while? No. The stories change, or not, all depending on the day of the week.
Sheriff Joe could be in trouble for profiling illegals before he caught them, but expect a pardon from Trump if Joe Arpaio only detained illegal immigrants. A pardon for Sheriff Joe could even lead to renewed popular support for mild profiling as a way of “softening” security screening in many venues, not just with immigration, but also with airport security and others. If Joe Arpaio hit his mark, there is no way the Trump administration would turn a blind eye.
The feds and the States are clashing over procedures. Democratic-controlled States are learning to assert “States rights”, a position usually reserved for Conservatives. Still sanctuary cities aren’t as easy to pull off as they once were.
New Chief of Staff Kelly is laying down the law, implementing procedures that should be expected in any White House. Reince Priebus not having implemented such rules restricting Oval Office access begs questions about Republican Party infighting, that as RNC Chairman he may have caught a contagious “smile and ignore the chaos” bug.
The economy is up, for now. Bible studies are starting at the White House. Hannity is making a “Christian” movie. MSNBC is pounding Fox News in ratings. Apple gave in to China’s demands to remove VPN support apps; some think this will have “capitulation” backlash and hurt Apple’s business in its second-largest market to the US. Maryland is thinking about letting non-citizens vote in local elections, but not national or State. Then, there’s the transgender issue…
Trump never said the US military would not protect transgenders; he said, mostly, that they were too burdensome to do the protecting. People oppose Trump’s decision, arguing it is a violation of their “rights”. Usually people who serve their countries in uniform seek to lay down their rights to preserve the rights of others. Transgenders will still be protected by the US Armed Services, along with everyone else on the shores of America. The US situation is certainly better than in Thailand, where all transgenders are expected to appear for military draft physical exams. Perhaps transgenders could start the “trans-corps”, as minorities overlooked for military service in the past have. But, putting anything high-maintenance in the military isn’t an option for lean-steam Trump. If transgenders force the issue, they could alienate themselves further and lose ground.
Xi Jingping told his military the same thing China has been telling its people for decades: The world needs us, our military, our might, and our expansion, otherwise there can be no peace. This proves a static ethic. From this perspective, China wants the US to remain calm and not take action in North Korea.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s president wants the US to wait while he negotiates with the North for safety in the US. South Korean people want much the same thing Filipinos want: non-dependence. South Korea’s president, South Korea’s people, and China all want the US to “get out”. Interestingly, they share this sentiment with North Korea.
The world is full of political ideologies that claim half of one thing and do half of another. The best chance at victory is to simply stay home and do good work there. In that, the South Korean people stand the greatest chance of victory. Yet, the United States stands the greatest chance of taking action for two reasons: the US is being threatened more than any other and the US is willing to take action more than any other. If the US takes out the North, they can leave and the South Koreans will get what they want. But, things rarely happen as they should.
Only two things are foreseeable: conflict and Korean unification. All the rest is conjecture.
Donald Trump, Jr. was asked by the Russians to look at information that could indite the Clintons. He agreed, contacted some peers, met and listened, then decided it was a dead end. The New York Times made the first disclosure about this information, but not their source of the information.
There is no crime here so far, at least not among Trump parties. Listening once is always good. Yet, opposition claims that Trump received “contributions” AKA “money”, that Trump initiated in reaching out to the Russians, that Trump covered-up this meeting, and that “listening once” surmounts to “collusion”.
Many people in America do seem to think that hearing someone out is “collusion”, which is part of why so few Americans listen to each other.
Many political candidates do receive money illegally, questions come up in surplus regarding the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign contributions.
Many politicians have tried to cover up their meetings, memos, and communiqués in the past, even deleting them when those communiqués and memos are under a subpoena.
It’s all normal behavior—for some people’s value system, but not everyone’s.
Many questions arise about how the New York Times obtained information that hadn’t been released concerning a family under FBI surveillance. Perhaps, since the FBI was watching, they might know who told the New York Times, but maybe not if they can’t get their iPhones to work.
More questions come up about the Russian lawyer and why she was allowed in by the DOJ during Obama years after she was flatly turned-down for a visa. Involvement in the bickering between Obama and Putin come up, her lobbying for Russian objectives in Congress. It smells of Obama-style “organizing”—creating chaos that interrupts his goals while he asks for more power to achieve those goals he interrupts, which failed in the end for Obamacare—or did it? Regardless, at the end of the Russianewsgategate scandal remains the question of ties to Russia, but not Trump’s as much as Obama’s.
According to legal opinions, the specific accusations against Trump about the meeting with Russians so far look false. The concerned activities are not illegal. And, both the concerned activities and the thus-far-false accusations have happened with other political figures who were not pursued as Trump is.
Why is there such imbalance of attention?
While the very suffix “-gate” and many other statements have compared this scandal to Nixon’s Watergate cover-up, one fundamental difference remains: Nixon’s wrongdoing happened under his great power as sitting president as he sought dirt to fight political opponents during an election. Though this happened during an election, and it concerned attempts to uncover dirt between political opponents, Trump wasn’t the sitting president with the greater power, someone else was and that someone else’s use of that greater power is also being called into question. Another difference from Nixon’s Watergate is that it is too late for that someone else to resign and thereby receive a full pardon from his successor.
Perhaps that is why such unbalanced attention focuses on Trump instead of the more fitting Nixonian counterpart. But, we don’t know why this is happening. Wagons are circling. And, whenever the wagons circle, it’s not a good sign of the times.
There is no point in pursuing a dead end. The Trump dissent from the far Left, therefore, does not think it’s a dead end. They seem to hold that some sort of information exchanged happened between Trump and the Russians that was not disclosed. That’s the most sense to make of it all. But, that further illustrates how the Right and Left of America think differently. The Left doesn’t understand the Right’s value system: Listen to everyone once, be fair to enemies, don’t do anything dishonest in the process. In the mind of the far Left, dishonesty and power go together by definition and listening before having an opinion isn’t even a consideration. The far Right doesn’t understand how the far Left doesn’t understand that. Each side of America looks down and shakes its head over the actions the other.
There may be no conspiracy against Trump. This may be happening because a few powerful people in mass media and politics normally drop a few words, hit at a few ideas, and a candidate fails as if on cue. Those methods failed on Trump and those powerful few don’t know how to handle their first-time failure. Young Democratic voters latch on to these fruitless efforts because they also don’t know how to deal with their first-time election defeat.
This situation is dangerous for the nation, not because Trump has done anything wrong, but because shining the spotlight on fruitless pursuits is distracting the nation from the long-lasting laws Trump already has progress with.
Obama had the House and Senate, but lost them. His signature health care law was as such that he himself suspended enforcing it, the opposing party won six elections on a campaign to “repeal and replace”, and that “repeal and replace” is under way. He issued many executive orders which were thrown to the wind the day he left office. And, most importantly, he failed on the primary pro-government argument of the American Left: building roads and bridges. Obama didn’t build and maintain the roads and bridges; Trump is building and maintaining them instead. In fact, Trump is doing everything Obama didn’t.
But, the nation isn’t watching what Trump does. Trump has zero accountability from the press or the public on his work as president. Instead, all of Trump’s opposition are chasing imaginary ghosts in the closet, monsters under the bed, and using convincing fake rhetoric to talk about it. God forbid Trump, as president, actually do anything that’s genuinely wrong—no one would notice.
Democratic Senators Feinstein, Franken, and others plan to vote for Trump’s nominee for FBI Director. Their reasons included that he will follow the Constitution, not serve the will of the President, and follow due process. Feinstein did not mention when she changed her position since the last time she voted on nominees. But, that change is finally coming.
Donald Trump Tweeting himself is important. It’s more important that Jame’s Comey writing classified information in his personal memos, more important than cutting the environmental red tape holding back pollution, more important than DeVos re-making 1965 education law, more important than Dodd-Frank regulations being scrapped, even more important than Obamacare about to bite the dust!
In fact, Trump’s Tweet about himself is more important than a young man’s privacy, than his dignity—it’s even more important than CNN’s own credibility with the public.
America’s new president is anything but a fool. He knows exactly where to throw a scrap of meat to the dogs, how big it should be, exactly how long it will take for them to scramble for it. He is the master of the spotlight, whether his own spotlight or shining a spotlight on someone else to blind them from what he is doing.
And, he is doing a lot.
He has made massive rollbacks in Obama-era rules. This is arguably one of Obama’s biggest failings—that Obama left everything he worked for so easy to undo. He made rules with the stroke of a pen, Trump undid them with the stroke of a pen. But under Trump, Betsy DeVos is exploring fundamental legislative changes to education—and that’s just the beginning.
The Trump administration is pushing legislation that rarely gets mentioned in light of top titles—military, tax… Obamacare… While Republicans are fighting amongst each other over the optics of disagreeing with Obamacare, other laws are getting passed without any scrutiny from the media. And, it’s all thanks to pop culture’s obsession with everything that doesn’t matter. Pop culture got Trump elected and pop culture will get his policies passed.
Obama’s legacy is being undone because he didn’t work. He didn’t work with Congress to get laws that would outlast a Republican majority. He spent too much time golfing. He gave too many long-winded speeches and didn’t produce enough hard-earned, well-manufactured product. Compared to Trump, Obama was lazy. That’s why Trump is getting his way: work.
No attack can harm a man who works. No media smear can hurt him. It’s not that all press is good press all the time. Rather, all press is good press for those who work.
Right and wrong, for both better and worse, we are entering an era dominated by people who work.
Since when was WWE considered violence? Perhaps CNN has rightly earned the slur “Fraud News” AKA “FNN” since the scripted, choreographed events from “World Wrestling” TV programming are now taken as legitimate “violence”. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press condemned Trump’s “violence”, but not WWE’s.
So, this is our world today, where “World Wrestling” is for real. WWE, renamed from WWF, is taken seriously by by the RCFP, and CNN is renamed FNN by the POTUS. How dare he! Someone call the Rock and get revenge!
Ironically, the mod video Trump Tweeted is from Trump himself pretending to beat up his billionaire buddy, WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon, in a head-shave dare. In the match on WrestleMania, the official wrestlers beat up the referees as the two referees beat up each other; Trump won the dare and the WWE Chairman got his head shaved by one of the wrestlers and, of course, Donald Trump. They even used shaving cream and “Bic-ed it“.
Holman Jenkins, Jr. and Rush Limbaugh weighed in on Russianewsgategate this week. The developing theory thus far is that the Russians made a rouse by rousing that there was a rouse; accordingly and as if on cue, the at-the-time internationally viewed-as-pansy White House, along with at-the-time and on-record tech illiterate FBI Director Comey, took the bait and ran to “-itch slap” the Russians. So, that was the “Russian hack”—a rumor made by the Russians that there was a Russian hack made paranoid powers self-destruct. As Staples™ said, “That was easy.”
The “rouse rouse” tactic was also employed by Talleyrand and Fouché to bring down the paranoid French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. They simply started a rumor that they were plotting against the emperor and that was all there was to it. Napoleon freaked-out and did himself in, just as did the previous White House administration, with a little “encouragement” from the Russians and WWE Hall of Fame Superstar Donald J. Trump.
Believe it, many people take WWE videos seriously. This week, the press joined those “serious” WWE fans and took Trump’s video seriously. Since CNN and WWE are now considered equally “serious”, we ought consider Special Prosecutor Former FBI Director Robert Mueller as the referee who took over and then got his lights knocked out in the ring after the other referee, Former FBI Director James Comey, got his lights knocked out in the ring in a replay match, only this time, CNN gets its head shaved. And, just as before, Trump is piling on the shaving cream.
Now, serious questions remain about the appointment of a special prosecutor. It was a rouse rouse. What’s the point? So the developing theory goes, the only purpose of a special prosecutor is to help Russianewsgategate cover its WWE-sized fanny. While Limbaugh and Jenkins theorize that Mueller will come up with his own version of a “magic bullet theory” so that the imploding Washington establishment can evacuate the building they set afire, that won’t be all, folks; expect more.
Mark these words: A lieutenant/deputy -sized head will roll and that head will be just as innocent as it is painted, bribed, and blackmailed to look guilty, all to save the cause. That’s how the choreography works, after all. Believe it, many people will believe it.
Once the United States people decide what they think about Otto Warmbier’s death, the results will make more headlines in the Asias than in the Americas. The news won’t let it rest because the people won’t let it rest either. Americans will blame the Kim Dynasty and China, whose funding allowed the Dynasty to not shrivel up on its own.
Dennis Rodman and his crew have sought good-faith diplomacy with the Kim Dynasty. US officials commented previously that if Rodman leaves for North Korea again he might not be allowed back in the US. Of course, human rights advocates have lots to say on the issues; this time they want Rodman booted from the Hall of Fame. Otto’s father denies that Rodman made any difference and called involvement a “distraction”. Mr. Warmbier said of failed attempts prior to Trump’s intervention that, “the results speak for themselves.” South Korea’s president seems to stand with Dennis Rodman, more or less, that diplomacy is such a strong possibility that it needs to remain our first choice. Many people in the US take the same view, but probably not quite most. Support for military action is a strong part of the logistic calculation.
Then, there are the race baiting comments from a professor and a Huffington Post article. As if that wasn’t enough, the group responsible for spying on Donald Trump before the election is stalling a Congressional inquiry. Obama’s legacy is beyond jeopardy, yet he still holds unshaken loyalists with such blind dogma that it typifies a cult following. The same can be said of Trump, except that the “Russian Hack” won’t be Trump’s undoing; the Obama cult doesn’t see this.
The media still pushes the hopeless “Russian Hack” conspiracy theory, not with any hope of impeachment, but to enrage the Obama cult and give them enough rationalization to carry on. Americans angry about Otto will rise up and shut down the oppression in Northern Korea, but at home they will be accused of “White supremacy”, clash with the Obama cult, and violence will increase in some American cities for a time.
Meanwhile, with the continued distractions from the media, Trump will continue with his goals. The country is on a road to better times. American energy supply is on the rise. Clean energy is less and less expensive. Trump pulled out of the non-binding agreement made in Paris—even though European nations also treated their part of the NATO treaty as de facto “non-binding”. Globalists are having conniptions. It will be very interesting and telling to see what the actual pollution in the US turns out to be in the following years. As with Otto’s release, those results will also speak for themselves.
