It Was A Very Private Event

Yesterday, the "resistance" called a nationwide general strike to protest President Trump and his actions so far.  Rallies were set for New York, Chicago and other large cities.  Thousands were expected to show up, but the turnout was sparse to say the least.  In Chicago, there were a few dozen protesters, so the event came up only about 98% short of its attendance goal.  In New York, they got over a hundred people to show.  In Manhattan, however, you could get over 100 people to show for any protest.  If they called a protest based upon the selection in the Whole Foods breakfast buffet, you could surely get over 100 people marching in Union Square.  I can hear them chanting now, "Five, six, seven, eight; Whole Foods' buffet was never great!"

The real point here is that essentially no one showed up for the nationwide general strike.  The day before, the "day without immigrants" protest was also mostly a dud.  It did have a slight impact at some restaurants, but otherwise, not much effect was noticed.

Does this mean that the resistance movement is dying out?  Does this mean that the Soros funded groups have stopped paying people to attend protests?  Does this mean that it's just too cold in the middle of winter to get people to turn out?  Who knows?  We will have to wait and see.

My best guess is that after a month of President Trump in office, the idea is one that even the angry left is getting use to.  There haven't been any of the sorts of things that the left predicted coming from Trump.  (To be clear, for the crazed left, everything Trump has done has been an outrage, but that group is tiny.)  Most Americans are just living their lives.

 

Where Were They?

During the Obama presidency, the first family members went on a series of exorbitantly costly vacations.  I remember one vacation when the first lady went to Europe and the government rented three full floors of the hotel at which she was staying in order to keep everyone at least two floors away from her.  The hotel bill alone was in the range of $50,000 per day.  The total cost for the trip was more than one million dollars.  To be clear, that's one million dollars paid for by the taxpayers.  Then there were the trips to Martha's Vineyard in the summer and to Hawaii at Christmas.  Overall, the Obamas spent tens of millions of tax dollars on vacations.

There was almost no coverage of the huge sums being spent on the Obamas and their many trips/vacations.  The cost popped up a few times in some of the conservative media, but even there it got little coverage.  The first family gets full protection and that makes whatever they do expensive.

Today, there are a large number of stories about how expensive it is to guard the Trump family.  The first lady and the President's son Baron are staying in New York until after Baron's school year ends.  As a result, the Secret Service has been guarding them in Manhattan, something that is costly.  The President's children also get protection and, unlike the Obama children, they are old enough to live somewhere else besides the White House.  It's no surprise, therefore, that the day to day costs for the protection of the President and his family have risen.  These higher costs, however, are not the result of vacations or trips by the President.  He has been working non-stop since he took office.  When he left the White House, he went to his house in Florida.  These costs are just the result of the size and location of the Trump family.

So why should the mainstream media make such a fuss about the cost to protect the Trump family?  Do they want Americans to be annoyed that the President and his family have been protected?  This is just another of those idiotic and even deranged attacks by the mainstream media on President Trump.  It is pointless, however. 

This Is Just Crazy

The latest bit of news swirling around General Mike Flynn is a claim that he is being investigated because he was paid to make and appearance and speak at an event in Russia in 2015.  At the time, Flynn was no longer in the army and he had not yet taken any role either in the Trump campaign or with the federal government.  He made an appearance at a dinner in Moscow and sat for a long interview together with the former foreign minister of the Soviet Union.  Flynn said all along that he was paid for the appearance by his speakers' bureau.  Now, supposedly, there is a push to see who exactly paid for the appearance.  The claim is that the news organization that ostensibly paid has close ties to the Russian government.

Think about that.  Flynn is not in office and goes to speak in Russia.  He gets paid something like $50,000 for a multi-day appearance that includes a long interview.  The media and the Democrats are still going crazy about this.

Now remember that Hillary Clinton's husband Bill got something like seven million dollars to give speeches and that the cash came directly from foreign governments in some cases.  This happened while Clinton actually was Secretary of State.  The media and the Democrats said "nothing to see here; it's no big deal."

Flynn was out of office, a retired general with no real prospects of future power.  Bill Clinton was married to the sitting Secretary of State.  Needless to say, Bill Clinton also had much more confidential and classified information that Flynn ever had.  So when a foreign government directly paid the Clintons millions for speeches, it obviously was much more clearly wrong than when a news organization paid Flynn.

But here we still are.  This is just crazy.

Scott Pruitt Confirmed for EPA

Despite the Democrats' endless slowdown, Scott Pruitt was just confirmed as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Pruitt had the support of 53 senators.  This is just the latest loss by Schumer and the Democrats in confirmation votes.

Pruitt first deserves our congratulations.  He has a lot to accomplish.  Of all the federal agencies that have been out of control, the EPA is right up there vying for first place on the list.  Just think what the EPA has done in the last eight years:

1.  The EPA managed to pollute an entire river out west with deadly chemicals by sheer incompetence in carrying out some work.  Had this been done by a private company, there is no doubt that people would have gone to prison or, at least, paid major fines.  The EPA, however, did not even punish any of its employees for causing this major disaster.

2.  The EPA put out a regulation that put in place rules for all of the "waters of the United States."  To be clear, if there was a thunderstorm which left a puddle in a farm pasture, the EPA rules applied to it.  In other words, the EPA tried to grab control of land use all across the country in the guise of ending water pollution.  Areas that have always been under state and local control were taken by the EPA and subjected to a one-size-fits-all national set of rules.  Just this regulation imposed millions upon millions of costs on all sorts of Americans with no discernible benefit.

3.  The EPA promoted global warming fears but never sought to get a valid scientific basis for that supposed phenomenon.  The problem right now is that the atmospheric readings of temperatures show that for the last 18 years, there has been a pause in temperature increases.  Given that these same years have been the worst years ever for carbon emissions, there should have been major increases in temperature if global warming theory is correct.  Indeed, the pause in the rise in temperatures has conclusively proved that all the models on which global warming theory is based are wrong.  EPA has not sought to get further scientific evidence to determine the validity of the basic theory.  Instead, it has tried to cover up the true facts and to proceed by just attacking those who want to look further into the basic science.

4.  The EPA has issued regulation after regulation that ignored the economic impact of its rules on millions of Americans.  Nearly all Americans subscribe to the view that the environment should be protected, but most people think that we cannot go overboard.  In other words, it is not acceptable to destroy the livelihood of thousands or hundreds of thousands of American families for either no improvement in the environment or one which has, at most, a marginal impact on our world.  EPA never takes that impact into consideration -- and it ought to do so.

There's more, but this should make clear just what a difficult job Pruitt will have.  He is moving in to head an agency that is at once hostile to any attempt to rein it in so that it serves the interests of the American people rather than the liberal environmental crazies who seem to oppose everything these days.

The Tradition Continues

Back in the 1980s, President Reagan started delivering a weekly address on the radio.  These were short speeches of no more than a few minutes in length.  Reagan was a natural on the radio, and his speeches became a very effective communications tool.  Presidents after Reagan kept up the practice.  At the end of each week, there would be a three or four minute statement from the president that went out over the radio and then over the internet.  I just watched the latest of these speeches given by President Trump.  He talked about what the White House actually did this week.  There was no discussion of the media or the Democrats.  There was no politics in the message (aside from the fact that everything the President does is somewhat political.)  It was just a short explanation of the job killing regulations that were swept aside during the last week, the work to promote women entrepreneurs undertaken in conjunction with Canada and the meeting with Israel's prime minister Netanyahu.  These statements are rarely big news, and today's is no exception.  Still, it is well worth watching them on the internet; there is lots to learn there.

More Fake News -- The National Guard To Round Up Illegal Aliens

Did you see the news reports from the AP that the Department of Homeland Security is planning to use 100,000 national guard troops to round up illegal aliens in 11 states?  It's total garbage, but it is all over the place.

I'm not sure if the entire story is fabricated or if there really is a memo written by a low level staffer at DHS to propose this plan.  Remember, Homeland Security is tasked with coming up with a plan to carry out the increased border security and the removal of illegal aliens who have criminal records or who are members of gangs.  The Department also has to plan for future possibilities.  If the memo really exists, then it was written by someone as a possible way to proceed.  That's a lot different than an actual memo written after a decision to follow this plan.  Here's the key points:

1.  The White House says that any such memo is not a White House document.  That means that if it exists, it was not generated by the White House.

2.  The White House also said today that there is no plan to use national guard troops to round up illegal aliens.

3.  The Department of Homeland Security said that none of the leadership of the department had seen any such memo and repeated that there was no plan to use the national guard to round up illegal aliens.

4.  The AP makes a big deal of the supposed fact that the name of the Secretary of DHS, General Kelly, appears on the memo.  Since any such memo would be released in his name, having his name at the top of the memo doesn't indicate that he approved or even saw the memo.  Obviously, before any such plan was put into action it would have to be approved within the Department and then by the President.

5.  None of the governors of the 11 states supposedly involved have been contacted with regard to using the national guard troops for their states to implement this supposed plan.  The guard cannot be used without the approval of those governors.

So what do we really have?  There may be a memo that somebody wrote to propose using the national guard in this way.  No one in authority took part in the drafting, or approved the plan.  There is lots of proof that no one is making any effort to implement such a plan.  On top of that, the White House says there is no plan to use national guard troops.  In other words, the claims in the original reports are just more fake news.

Now before we get the screamers who shout that the very existence of a draft plan means that the Trump administration means to use it, let me remind you all of something important.  The government makes contingency plans for all kinds of things, most of which never come to pass.  Right now, there are surely plans in the Pentagon as to how to carry out the invasion of Canada.  We surely also have plans about how to launch a nuclear war against China.  That does not mean that the invasion/war is about to happen or even that anyone is pushing for that to happen. 

The AP should be ashamed of itself for publishing such an incendiary story which it well knows is nothing real.  The other media that picked up the story and ran with it should likewise be ashamed.  Of course, those in the media do not see the shame.  That, in a nutshell, is why most people don't trust the media anymore.

Two State Reality

Two days ago, President Trump said at a press conference with the Israeli prime minister that the USA would support a two state solution or a one state solution or indeed any solution that was agreeable to the parties to the conflict, namely Israel and the Palestinians.  The mainstream media portrayed this as an abandonment of a decades old bit of American foreign policy; the USA and Trump had abandoned the so called two state solution.  Obviously, those who wrote this did not bother to listen to what President Trump actually had to say.  The USA is not against a two state solution.  Instead, the USA is now in favor of letting the parties find whatever agreement they can to end the conflict instead of attempting to tell the parties what they ought to do.

Yesterday, Ambassador Nikki Haley said at the UN that the USA still supports a two state solution.  There was an immediate outcry from some that her statement was at odds with what the President had said the previous day.  Morons like the senator from my own state, Chris Murphy, ran to argue that this was an inconsistency in American foreign policy.  As usual, Murphy didn't seem to understand the situation.  If he doesn't understand, it is just further proof that he really is not intelligent enough to be a senator.  On the other hand, if he does understand, then he is intentionally misleading the public and that should disqualify him from being a senator.

Haley's statement in no way contradicts what the President said the day before.  America still thinks that a two state solution would be best.  That remains our position as it has been for decades.  Nevertheless, we recognize that a peace deal has to be one to which both sides agree.  President Trump has made clear that the USA will accept any deal that the parties negotiate whether or not it includes a two state solution. 

Someone should explain all this to senator Murphy.