Writing over at The Spectator, Roger Kimball enumerates a number of the successes that Donald Trump has had these first two years, despite the uphill battle he’s had with the Democrats which includes, of course, the mainstream media.
He concludes the list by saying in part;
All sorts of things might happen to intervene against Donald Trump’s reelection.
Roger Kimball
But what we have just witnessed is perhaps the most stunningly successful first two years of any administration in history.
Well, yeah, probably.
Still, such measurements of success and failure, particularly in the political world, are relative measurements.
Frankly I find Trump’s success of these last two years to be a measurement of the quality of the administration before him. Perhaps more correctly, the lack of quality of the administration before him. Put another way, while Trump is not my ideal conservative, Trump is relatively successful these last two years to the precise degree that he has gone conservative, and to the precise degree that his predecessors have not.
Mind, when I speak of conservatism I’m not talking about Bill Kristol, and his questionably funded magazine. I am certainly not talking about the John McCain wing of the Republican Party, nor for that matter am I talking about the establishment of either party. Notice that these have been struggling mightily to limit the success of the current president. One gets the decided impression that Roger is not talking about them, either. Indeed at the risk of being perceived as speaking for Roger on this, it’s my thought he agrees with me in thinking none of these can be considered any stripe of conservative at all.
That being said, it’s certainly hard to argue with Roger in that the level of Trump’s success these last two years makes his re-election more of a lock sure bet than a lot of people would like to think. The reason being is it only serves in that relative sense to expose their own failures and that of the policies that they espouse.
Which, in turn, is precisely why the Democrats, and the establishment GOP can’t seem to get this impeachment movement out from under their fingernails. If Democrats… And the establishment GOP are forced to argue in the forthcoming election based on how well their policies work, they know they’ll never get anywhere.
(Fun fact: , Did you know that every single Republican president since Eisenhower has faced and impeachment attempt from the Democrats? It’s not like this is anything new.)
Will Trump win in a landslide in 2020? It certainly looks that way from here, and I suppose time will tell. If that’s the outcome, I can certainly live with it. And more importantly, the country can as well.
Over at The Lid
Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson agrees with President Trump that ‘We are truly in a crisis‘ at the southern border.
“A little bit of context here. When I was in office in Kirstjen Nielsen’s job, at her desk, I’d get to work around 6:30 in the morning, and there would be my intelligence book sitting on my desk, the PDB, and also the apprehension numbers from the day before,” Johnson said during his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
…“My staff would tell you if it was under 1,000 apprehension the day before, that was a relatively good number, and if it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number, and I was going to be in a bad mood the whole day.”
“On Tuesday there were 4,000 apprehensions. I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I can’t imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. So, we are truly in a crisis,” he continued.
I fully anticipate Mr. Johnson to be reported as having committed suicide very shortly.
A short while ago I had somebody who I used to respect ask me if why I didn’t tap “reputable” (his word) news sources. Of course, the New York Times was supposedly one of these “reputable” news sources.
The author of this Sunday’s New York Times magazine cover story about the campaign to boycott, divest, and sanction the state of Israel works for an organization whose major donor, Qatar, is also the largest state funder of the terrorist group Hamas. Other significant donors to the author’s organization, the International Crisis Group, are leading supporters of the anti-Semitic boycott movement the author describes in his piece.
The publication of the article, “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics,” represents another salvo in the New York Times‘ continuing promotion of anti-Israel writers and views.
In this as in most other things, the New York Times has become an advocacy rag, having nothing whatsoever to do with objective journalism.
Thing is, as the last two years of outright lies from the supposedly “reputable” press has shown us, the New York Times is hardly alone. The real story of collusion is not Trump and Russia but CNN, MSNBC The New York Times and the Democrats.
More…
in spite of, or perhaps because of all the negativity coming from the left the economy continues to go great guns.
American consumers regained their mojo in March, pushing the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment up to 98.4 from February’s 93.8.
Economists had expected the final read to match the preliminary reading for March of 97.8.
And in case you’re going to make the argument that it was only the rich that saw games? Nothing could be further from the truth.
The March gain was entirely due to households with incomes in the bottom two-thirds of the income distribution, according to the survey’s chief economist Richard Curtin.
Sentiment among households in the top third of incomes fell slightly.
“Middle and lower income households more frequently reported income gains than last month, although income gains were still widespread among upper income households. Indeed, the last time a larger proportion of households reported income gains was in 1966,” Curtin said.
Now of course there are people on the left who will question why I’m quoting this from Breitbart. The answer is rather simple. The supposedly reputable mainstream media won’t report this.
Doesn’t anybody wonder why?
A few short hits:
# I see Rahm Emanuel has changed from blaming Jusse Smollet for his actions to blaming President Trump. Apparently, Rahm Emanuel got a peek at his suicide note.
# Meanwhile, Smollet, for his part, is still trying to send the two Nigerian guys he paid to beat him up, to jail… for beating him up.. or something.
# If Adam Schiff has evidence that there was collusion or some kind of criminal activity between Trump and his people and Russia as he is currently loudly claiming, and he hasn’t given it to Congress and he hasn’t given it to the Mueller investigation, hasn’t turned it over to the FBI, doesn’t that constitute obstruction of justice?
# I am thoroughly amazed that crows are not on the endangered species list, given the number of them that Democrats have been having to eat lately.
# When are we going to recognize that so-called anti- discrimination policies are in fact pro- discrimination policies?
And let’s consider another question while we’re at it. Will muslim-owned businesses be excluded? When’s the last time you saw a Christian’s throwing homosexuals from rooftops? So what kind of a message is really being sent, here?
Ponder this quick stab from inside an article from Austin Bay
Yet on July 13, 2017 then-House Minority Leader — now Speaker — Nancy Pelosi claimed “this week we saw cold hard evidence” that the Trump family colluded with Russia to assault American democracy.” Replay the video. Treason against America was her implied but carefully unspoken damnation.
Ah, but this month — days before Mueller informed DOJ that Trump did not commit a crime — Pelosi whimpered that Trump’s “just not worth” impeaching.
That’s more than a retreat. In retrospect, Pelosi’s outlandish 2017 rhetoric promoted a corrosive falsehood so beyond partisan political sparring it became odious narrative warfare damaging U.S. political integrity and institutional stability.
Now, Austin was barking up a slightly different tree than what I’m pointing out here, and I would urge you to go and read his article in total to get his angle on this.
That being said however, it strikes me that even before the Mueller report was even released we saw Nancy Pelosi backing off of it, faster than someone who’s just discovered what Rocky Mountain oysters are.
Nancy Pelosi
The question is, why? How would she know to do that?
While it’s true that the Democrats other than Pelosi and then playing the expectation minimization game for several days, her sudden turn around must have been selected G- forces on her that no mere human could withstand.
So it comes down to this:
She would know that she had to do that, only by one of two ways;
# She received inside information on the report from one of Mueller’s team of Democrats.
# She knew long ago that the report was going to produce nothing.
Either way doesn’t look very good for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, Pelosi in particular. She knew she had to back down because she’d overplayed her hand. Seems to be crucial to understand the answer to the question; “Where did she get that information?”
Nice to be able to source from Monica Crowley again at The Washington Times:
What they have done — explaining the 2016 election results with the malicious Trump-Russia collusion lie — goes way beyond sore loser syndrome.
It was, in fact, an attempted coup to remove the duly-elected president by weaponizing some of the most fearsome arms of the U.S. government. And the conspirators enjoyed an invaluable, constant assist from their media wingmen.
Monica Crowley
The entire Russia conspiracy, orchestrated by high-ranking figures in the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton campaign and broader leftist network, was designed to undermine and then destroy the crass interloper who posed an immediate existential threat to all of them. They had to crush him before he could crush them.
It was also designed to provide maximum distraction away from their potential crimes. A multi-year special counsel investigation of a sitting president for something that never happened would grant the actual plotters enough time to cover their tracks and run out the clock on various statutes of limitations so they could escape prosecution.
As I said earlier today, this stuff needs to be exposed repeatedly investigated, prosecuted, its perpetrators convicted and jailed, for long periods of time.
Now.
Whatever else Karl Rove may be, he is a huge player in establishment Washington. It is not surprising that he should stand up and speak against anything that threatens establishment Washington.
The thing is, because of his love for establishment Washington, he failed to recognize in the 2016 election that the rank-and-file GOP has more than had enough of establishment Washington.
Or, perhaps, wanted to downplay that anger, making his own reality if you will, in an effort to hold on to what power and influence he had within establishment Washington. much the same way as the Democrats have been making their own reality for the last 2 years.
He’s still doing it, and frankly I’ve run out of patience with him.
Limbaugh, meanwhile, has the situation correctly identified.
RUSH: So, I see that Karl Rove is out today with his column in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that Trump just move on now.
Rush Limbaugh
Don’t focus on the origins of the investigation, don’t waste time trying to find out what happened here, because that’s only gonna tick off swing voters. Now, I know that Karl Rove is a walking genius, indisputable. But I have to tell you I cannot tell you how much I disagree with this. These people need to be identified. They need to be investigated.
What they did needs to be reported over and over and over again until every American understands it, and there’s no reason Trump should just now move on and ignore this. Because the Democrats aren’t. Have you heard the latest? The latest is the New York Times. Folks, these people aren’t giving anything up! They’re still gonna try to prove that the Russians interfered in this election. They’re still gonna prove this report is bogus. They’re still gonna carry this stupid water pail, because it’s all they’ve got.
That’s exactly correct. There is no reason whatsoever to let the Democrats up off the mat that they’ve pinned themselves to.
Investigations, arrests and convictions should follow, because the actions of the Democrats and of the press that pushed this nonsense forward deserve every bit of it. The dishonesty of the Democrat Party should be a centerpiece of the Trump re-election effort.
Before you read this, I’d like you to take in the post I put up yesterday about Mike Ledeen’s article.
Pay particular attention to the attack on Flynn, coming from the intelligence community that Flynn bypassed. Which would include John Brennan.
Observe:
The operation against Flynn provided the model for the anti-Trump assault. When the “collusion with Russia” allegations drove Flynn out of office, the intel officials realized the same methods could prevail against the president. That effort has apparently ended with Mueller’s rejection of the “collusion” allegations.
John Brennan
With that, and the other reading that I’ve been doing in the last 48 hours I have become more convinced John Brennan the former CIA director and supposedly former Communist Party of America member, is directly responsible for the Russian collusion mess.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) dropped a bombshell tweet yesterday.
Citing a “high-level source,” Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul charged in a bombshell Twitter post late Wednesday that anti-Trump ex-CIA Director John Brennan “insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier” be included in a classified intelligence community report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections — a decision that ultimately lent credibility to the dossier and may have played a key role in fomenting unfounded fears of Russia collusion for two years.
So in other words, Brennan provided the “news hook” the media was waiting for so they could talk about the dossier and humiliate and damage Trump. Brennan gave it to them. No surprise here, Brennan was the ring leader of this entire operation.
Although the decision to brief Trump on the dossier and the intelligence community’s reliance on it, then-FBI Direct James Comey would later testify, was ostensibly intended to make Trump aware of potential blackmail risks, the unexplained and nearly immediate leak of the meeting legitimized the dossier’s significance and prompted a cascade of unfounded media-driven theories about what purportedly compromising information the Russian government may have on the president.
Brennan needs to face justice for his action.
Yeah, no kidding.
The CIA was originally envisioned as a method of defending and expanding the influence of capitalism, and guarding against communism worldwide. How in the world we managed to put a CIA director in place that was/is a member of the Communist Party or at the very least has socialist sympathies, defies all logic.
…Unless unless you are Barack Hussein Obama, I guess.
In any event, it’s time to put a full-scale investigation forward on John Brennan and his activities in The Russiagate hoax.
Liz shield over at PJM this morning:
I cannot wait for this day. FNC host Sean Hannity aired an interview with the president last night and Trump referenced the questionable FISA.
“I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release,” Trump said, adding that he wanted to declassify documents in 2018 but was told by his lawyers not to do it during the Mueller investigation.
“One of the reasons that my lawyers didn’t want me to do it, they said if I do it, they will call it a form of obstruction, so they will say, oh, you released these documents so we would make all of this information transparent,” Trump said of his lawyers advice, declaring, “But at the right time, we will be absolutely releasing it. I did the right thing by not doing it so far.”
Now that the Democrats care about transparency, it’s time to actually betransparent. How these clowns can claim that separate and distinct from the salacious and unverified dossier they had credible evidence that Trump camp was conspiring with the RUSSIANS, is beyond me. But let’s do this, let’s see what the evidence is because they have spent hours defending the basis for their snoop operation.
Absolutely. And if you look closely you may notice that the link I’ve been calling for this for those reasons and more for
some time now.
This is the day I’ve been waiting for for 2 years and longer. Let’s get it done. Release the report in total now.
It’s amazing, and frankly, agonizing, what’s happened to people that I used to have respect for, that since the 2016 election have gone completely round the bend.
I’m hearing rumors that disgraced creepypornlawyer Michael Avenatti is requesting that his case be tried in Chicago.
The Mueller report, such as we understand it at the moment, renders every single show that Rachel Maddow has done for the last 2 years, nothing more than fantasy. So the question now is, why does Rachel Maddow still have a job?
I mean, sure she’s upset, but what does she have anymore, but gnawing at the broken bones of old plots that she’s been telling us were Stone Cold fact because she wished they were true?
She can’t even go back to the militant feminist nonsense of “white men are the problem”, after so many years of trying to look like one.
I hear that Limbaugh has been saying we shouldn’t be celebrating the findings of the Mueller investigation. There wasn’t anything, after all, for them to find. And the fact is, I’m not, really.
What I am celebrating is the self-immolation of the liars in the left-wing press such as Maddow and the Democrats who’ve been playing this nonsense up for the last two years. Their comeuppance has finally arrived.
And look, it’s not just her, of course. In fact here’s a list of 50 such morons who deserve to have their pink slips delivered to them, as one would serve a subpoena.
I will point out to you that the people that are gnawing at their old bones right now, saying that we should wait until the full report is out, are the same ones who commanded that we believe Trump was a traitor to the country and was working with the Russians. They demanded we believe that, regardless that there weren’t any findings yet.
They did so for over 2 years, serving up what they wished was true as Stone Cold fact every night of the week. Every blessed one of them seem extremely annoyed that anyone, particularly somebody that was investigating it with all the might of the government behind it, would conclude otherwise.
Ponder that for a moment. They are annoyed because the president isn’t a traitor…
You see, the problem is that Mueller was on a fact-finding mission. Democrats have a tendency to ignore facts when they don’t run their way.
To that point, Charlie Kirk says it well.
I’m not sure I buy the headline of Mike Ledeen’s article;
Make No Mistake: The Mueller Investigation Was All About Flynn
As a matter of fact the headline seems to go well beyond the scope of the article itself.
That said, however, it seems to me he raises an interesting point when he suggests is that the attempted throttling of Flynn was the genesis of the idea of what eventually became the Mueller investigation.
General Mike Flynn
Flynn was never popular with the intelligence community because of the way he routinely bypassed them. His reasoning was certainly simple enough… being the same reason that anyone would bypass a bureaucracy… slow, unresponsive, and usually coming up with the wrong answers.
So there were many high-ranking intelligence officials who were out to get Flynn. You can see them at work long before there was a hint of Russiagate, when the target was not yet Donald Trump. But then things got worse for the IC, when Flynn was named to head DIA. By then, the FBI was fully engaged in the anti-Flynn campaign, paying people like Stefan Halper to surveil Flynn’s behavior in Great Britain. This produced the fanciful accusation (impossible, for anyone who knew the general) that Flynn had flirted with a good-looking Russian historian. This may have been the start of the “collusion” allegations.
After Flynn was driven out of his post at DIA, things got even more threatening to the intelligence officials, as he became a prime advisor to candidate Trump and, early in the campaign, other Republicans. After the 2016 elections, the IC officials went all-out to keep him out of the White House, sometimes resorting to spreading ridiculous stories. President Obama warned Trump not to appoint Flynn as national security advisor, and Susan Rice actually warned the president-elect that Flynn might be in violation of the Logan Act, for which nobody has ever been prosecuted, and hence blackmailable by the Russians. Meanwhile, the Bureau had opened a counterintelligence investigation of Flynn’s activities. His digital communications were monitored, “unmasked” at the request of Obama officials, and leaked to friendly journalists.
The operation against Flynn provided the model for the anti-Trump assault. When the “collusion with Russia” allegations drove Flynn out of office, the intel officials realized the same methods could prevail against the president. That effort has apparently ended with Mueller’s rejection of the “collusion” allegations.
This is actually a fairly reasonable surmise.. and from it Ledeen has a wonderful suggestion:
The accusations against Flynn were fanciful from the outset, and need to be undone. If justice is to prevail for this distinguished officer, he should be pardoned at once, and then the president has the opportunity for a positive step: create a high-powered commission to investigate the many sins of the intelligence community. Flynn’s plan to audit their budgets—no such appraisal has been carried out since World War II—was worthy and important. The president should make General Flynn the chair of that committee, to restore his good name and give intelligence the kind of serious evaluation we badly need.
I fully agree that this is something the President should seriously consider.
Victory Girls this morning:
One of the things that those of us who are cynical cranks knew beyond onotological certitude is that the release of the Mueller Report initial findings by Attorney General Bill Barr would mean absolutely diddly squat to the vast Democrat Media Industrial Complex. The spinning up of the Trump Derangement Syndrome is the only result that was possible. Anyone who thought the Dems would accept the Mueller Report finding needs to put her unicorn in the stable and leave Fairyland.
The heaving bosoms waiting for the Report were all convinced that Donald Trump colluded with Russia, obstructed justice and killed several paraplegic kittens. Trump is guilty, guilty, guilty. No other outcome was acceptable. Even though only a few completely deranged Dems would say the “I” word, the impeachment of Donald J. Trump was the only endgame. They all new it to the bottom of their gnarly feet. The goal was to teach all of us “Deplorables” a lesson. Stay quiet and let our betters “RULE” us.
The problem of course, is that Mueller went on a fact-finding mission. The left and the establishment GOP who have forever been trying to take Trump down, are unmoved by facts.
