Personally, I think that Flynn is being railroaded and he copped a plea simply to make it end – unlike certain Clinton people we know, Flynn hasn’t amassed a gigantic fortune over his years of public service and thus can’t afford the massive legal team a drawn-out case would require…and as he’d be tried in DC, where 91% of the people voted for Hillary, even a first-rate legal defense might be unavailing. As there was no Trump/Russia collusion, there’s nothing Flynn can say, even if he wants to, which would in any way compromise the President. Given that Trump has been in the public eye for decades and has never run afoul of criminal law before, I suspect there’s nothing Flynn can say which will cause Trump legal trouble in that direction. He might be able to help Mueller get someone else on a process crime, but that would be about it. Given that one of Mueller’s investigators was revealed to be a pro-Hillary hack, there are grave doubts about the entire investigation. My view remains as it has been: fire Mueller. End this charade.
Our liberal friends are reacting to the Senate passage of the tax bill in the calm, reasonable way we’ve come to expect: America has been killed. Outside of that, there are some things to like, and some things not to like in the bill. Everyone, I think, can find things to delight and dismay in the bill…and such is the way of things when laws have to be enacted on consensus. The basic thrust of it – a reduction in tax rates – is unarguably good. Be better if there were deficit reductions attached, but we also know (“we” as in Conservatives; liberals don’t know this because they refuse to know it) that the spur to economic growth will result in revenues far in excess of those projected, so the long-term effect will be deficit reducing. I’m in favor of the elimination of the SALT deductions – sorry, high-tax-State fellow Americans, but I don’t think it right that low-tax States should essentially subsidize your profligate and almost entirely Democrat-run States. Don’t like it? Vote in some tax-cutting Republicans. Increasing the child-tax credit is generally a good thing, but anyone thinking that tax credits actually help in demographic matters is foolish: Americans aren’t having kids because they’ve lost hope. Restoration of hope will result in a higher birth rate.
Poll says Roy Moore is ahead. Poll says Roy Moore is behind. Polls are bogus. Especially the poll showing Moore behind – supposedly, Donald Trump is approved by 50% of Alabama voters. Just a year ago, Trump got 62% of Alabama’s votes…and I can’t think of a single thing Trump as done which would make Alabama voters sour on him. Still, don’t go with polls…remember, you’re being told to trust “free” information provided in a partisan election. No one provides “free” information in such a setting unless they’ve got an axe to grind, one way or the other. I think that this is what was missed in most polling over the past 50 years: the people providing the polls are not disinterested. And in these days of hyper-partisanship, just less so than before. Personally, I think Moore wins it by about 10 percentage points – but, we’ll see.
The latest Fake News flare up was ABC’s Brian Ross putting out a bogus report on the Flynn plea – asserting that something happened during Trump’s time as a candidate when it actually happened when Trump was President-Elect. The crucial aspect of this is that what Flynn did for President-Elect Trump was not only legal, but fairly routine for a Presidential transition. Ross reported it falsely and it stirred up quite a storm…even tanked the stock market for a bit. Ross is now on suspension. Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has long advised that we should treat MSMers as Democrats with by-lines – I go a little further and advise to treat them like Pravda. The MSM, as it relates to Trump, has not the slightest interest in telling the truth. I can only assume they’ve got their marching orders from the DNC and have been told to just say whatever comes to mind, as long as it works out anti-Trump. This can’t just be error; it can’t just be partisan Democrats getting ahead of themselves – they are telling such stupid and egregious lies that it must be coordinated. Someone on the Democrat side has decided that this will work to Democrats long term benefit. I can only suppose they hope the constant drumbeat will eventually convince Republicans in Congress to abandon Trump. There is something to be said for that…but I think, in the end, too many GOPers in Congress know that crossing Trump is political suicide for themselves. A Corker, Flake or McCain out there doesn’t care…but I also note that Corker and Flake aren’t running for re-election while McCain’s prospect of surviving until his next election is thin. Unless something Earth-shattering comes out about Trump, the Congressional GOP will stick with him…and, meanwhile, the MSM lying all the time will just make it ever more likely that nothing Earth-shattering can come out because even if it did, no one will believe it.
I’ve been saying that Never Trump would move over to Progressivism – and over the past couple days I’ve seen prominent Never Trumpers say the TEA Party was motivated by racial animus against Obama and that the tax reform plan is just a giveaway to the rich. So it goes – and I’m more and more convinced that the reason these people called themselves Conservative is because they didn’t want to be in a party which had working class people as it’s backbone. As the Democrats abandoned the working class, so have they become more acceptable to those we now know as Never Trump. It’s really just all an attitude on their part…and they spoke the words of Conservatism because, from Reagan to Trump, there was no real worry that being Conservative would have you associating with those uncouth, redneck morons. On reflection, this shift was inevitable once the TEA Party got started…once, that is, that common folks who aren’t government dependents started speaking up. Trump merely accelerated the process…and it makes me think that Trump saw what I saw: that there was a chance for the GOP to poach lots of Democrat votes if they’d jettison the Country Club/Chamber of Commerce style Republicanism. Never Trump – and the Democrats – think that they’ll now capture the suburbs and thus return to dominance. What they’re going to find out, however, is that playing well in the ‘burbs is nation-wide political poison. You’ve got to get working folks on your side – most Americans fall into the working stiff category. What I expect to actually happen over the next ten years it that the GOP, now Populist-Conservative, will start to make inroads into working class votes in the cities to go along with their working class votes in the rural areas. Never Trump will join their Progressives and be happy sneering at us…and we’ll be happy they keep losing.
Blogs For Victory 
To hear the Democrat talking heads you’d think Flynn had copped to mass murder. A process crime, ie., lying to the FBI, is about as trivial a federal crime as there is. It’s often a matter of the FBI just wearing a suspect down until he or she gets caught in a contradiction or miss-recollects some trivial fact. The underlying action for which Flynn was investigated, reaching out to the Russian Ambassador during the transition, isn’t illegal.
It’s the Scooter Libby Strategy—-harass a man for something that was not even a crime, knowing all along he didn’t do anything wrong, till you manage to find a statement you can use to wave at the Complicit Agenda Media screeching “LIAR!” and then sentence him for that.
They nearly destroyed Scooter Libby’s life, costing him his career and millions of dollars and his peace of mind, in a wholly political maneuver aimed at his boss, Dick Cheney.
Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.
I can only suppose they hope the constant drumbeat will eventually convince Republicans in Congress to abandon Trump.
And that is the game plan. I have never seen the media and Democrats more fully invested in destroying a Presidency than they are now, to the point of mischaracterizing and downright lying. Dan Rather’s criminal actions against Bush pale in comparison to the concerted effort to destroy Trump. In my opinion, much of the media and many Democrats, namely Maxine Waters, should be considered enemies of the state as they are actively spreading misinformation for the sole purpose of undermining the voters.
Re: Never Trumpers – Bruce Bartlett, previously with the Bush admin. and a complete elitist POS, recently stated that the GOP tax bill amounts to “rape” of the lower class. Please take away his conservative card. In fact, let’s completely disown the Bush’s and their entire orbit of establishment bottom feeders, I am proud to say that I never did vote for Bush 41 and never did like him much, and only voted for 43 because the alternative was unacceptable. Al Gore????
I was in a recent debate with a liberal friend who naturally accuses me of being a bigoted GOP fanatic who supports Roy Moore simply because I am conservative. I think they were a little surprised when I said that “I hate republicans and democrats and want them all gone” …. and this is the movement that so many people don’t understand. Blue collar Democrats and independent Republicans have come together to form the “populist conservative” movement that Trump fostered and is now leading. It is wholly anti establishment, anti incompetence, anti public greed, and 100% American.
I saw Bill Kristol again on MSNBC the other day and thought, “what a fitting place for him to be”. I will trade Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry, and all Never Trumpers, for one Democrat coal miner in West Virginia, The coal miner is a hell of a lot more important to this country than any Never Trumper.
And finally, my liberal friend I was debating with was dismayed when I accused the media of being partisan and working against the country. Their response was that “the media is what keeps this country free” – to which I replied “No, guns keep America free. North Korea has a media”. I will leave their response to your imagination ………
You need to tell your friend that a free press which is objective and merely reports the facts as they exist IS what keeps this country free—but that media which act as propaganda arms of one political ideology, promoting certain agendas while misleading the public, are what lead a nation into tyranny.
PS—there is no such thing as “A” media. “Media” is the plural form of “medium”. Newspapers are a medium. Books are a medium. Radio is a medium. Television is a medium; Movies are a medium. More than one medium are media.
Don’t get mad at me—blame the nuns who not only beat us over the head with grammar but taught us basic Latin as well. It’s a blessing, and a curse.
BTW, I get NR online and think Jonah Goldberg is starting to come around. I’ve actually seen some pieces on that site, by him and others, that acknowledge Trump’s successes and admire them. Sure, they still snipe at his personality a little, but there is a definite thawing. There was recently an article, I think on NR, about the two different Trump presidencies—the real presidency, where he is doing so much that needs to be done and racking up success after success, and the media/internet presidency where he puts his foot in it a little too often. I happen to agree with that assessment.
I don’t know about Kristol. I watch no TV political shows, and don’t remember reading anything by him or Lowry lately. At least Goldberg includes stuff about his dogs.
The Bundy stand-off trial in Las Vegas is providing a real tutorial about federal bureaucratic corruption.
From the article:
However, the BLM did not discipline this man, or hold him responsible in any way. On the contrary, the actually promoted him 5 months later.
The illegal immigrant murderer was acquitted, the BLM government scum was promoted, and an innocent American woman is dead. This story sums up the Democratic party rather well.
It reflects badly on an unaccountable bureaucracy as well, and sadly, that’s a bi-partisan swamp, that needs to be drained clear to the bottom.
Agreed. “Ideological terrorism” at it’s finest.
The BLM is out of control, another example of the expansion of an agency and its assumption of unlegislated power. For the most part, each state is individually administered, so if a state’s administration is doing a good job and staying under the radar of the national bureaucrats there is a chance the agency is doing its job. But when a state administration is deeply corrupt, as we saw in Nevada, the corrupt national bureaucrats get involved and it just gets uglier and uglier, and more and more oppressive.
If we ever want to see a 21st Century example of the jackboot of the American government on the neck of citizens, we need look no farther than the BLM in Nevada.
If Trump wants to win in 2020, he should appoint, sometime in late 2018 or 2019, a commission to look into the alleged ammunition purchases by various bloated government agencies. This would draw attention to those purchases, if they exist, far better than internet reporting has, and would create a sense of outrage and impending danger as citizens start to see the ominous element of unrestrained federal growth.
The BLM, when it does its job, educates ranchers on proper range management, oversees grazing leases to make sure the lessee is not damaging the land, helps with projects like avoiding erosion, and in general manages the land. Duh. As the name clearly states. When this is done properly, with respect for the citizens being served, there is no need for a BLM employee to be armed. It’s not like being a game warden, who is actually a law enforcement officer sometimes in the position of dealing with angry and armed people who are breaking the law. Offenses like overgrazing BLM land are not crimes—they are breaches of contract. There is not only no reason for the BLM to treat lessees like criminals, there is no justification for it—-unless there is a different, underlying, motive, which is likely to be political in nature.
Of course, right now the administration has to deal with the corruption and malfeasance of the FBI and its various obstructions of justice, etc. That may take precedence over housecleaning at the BLM. And I understand that thousands are fleeing the EPA, ahead of anticipated firings.
Good times……….
It is good times – but I’m ever more stunned at the Flynn case: seriously, the guy who let Hillary off is the guy who gets the Trump/Russia thing rolling? Can anyone say “conflict of interest”? I want Mueller fired and a counsel appointed to investigate the FBI…
Every time I see Susan Collins on TV I am embarrassed for the GOP. Is that just me?
Let’s not forget that just 5 short years ago, the media and their subsidiary the Democrat Party, was mocking at, and laughing at, Mitt Romney and the GOP for considering Russia to be our greatest “geo political foe”, so their concern now should be dismissed out of hand. And this fact should be thrown back in their face every day and in every interview.
Here is just a great article over at Daily Caller that reminds us of the real Russia story, and the following excerpt is fantastic. Love the term – “ideological terrorism”
She calls climate change a “good scam” picking winners and losers and making some people very rich while trying to lock up America’s energy market with ideological terrorism.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/02/journalist-obamas-russian-collusion-far-exceeds-trumps-relationship-with-the-country-video/?utm_campaign=thedcmainpage&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social
Not sure what to think of the tax bill, although I do agree with JDGE1 in that the elimination of the Obamacare personal mandate is a good thing, however when I saw headline from the establishment press, I now have to think it’s a good bill:
Economists Say The Trump Tax Plan Will Have Disastrous Consequences
If you follow economic and financial news you know that economists are seldom right, largely because their predictions are based on assumptions, not scientific fact. How many times have you read a report of (fill in the blank – job growth, GDP growth, etc.) that contains the comment, “contrary to most economist’s predictions?” My favorite phrase WRT economists is, “if you laid all the economists in the world end to end they wouldn’t reach a conclusion.”
Intellectual dishonesty at its finest.
I honestly don’t know how they sleep at night.
I don’t think they even care any longer about even approximating truth. They only care about attacking Trump…
This is like the claim that, when a projected budget increase of two million dollars is reduced to a million and half this is really “slashing the budget” of the agency in question.
No, the agency is really getting more than it has been, just not quite as much as it wanted. But the sheeple are too stupid, or too biased, to know the difference. Or to care.
So let me see if I have this right. After a year and half investigation into collusion, the partisan hack Bobby Mueller can only come up with an indictment of Gen. Flynn for conflicting statements made AFTER the election. Yet this story still warrants 3 hour continuous daily coverage on MSNBC Morning Joe, because they are convinced that someone said something, somewhere about someone who did something to someone and that means they colluded with someone else……or something like that. Does anyone still believe that our media has an ounce of integrity?
I don’t think anyone really believes the media have any integrity, except possibly the medium of radio, which tends to be more informative and less in the tank for the left. The print and television media are so thoroughly corrupt they would be laughable, if they were not so dangerous, and they are only dangerous because there are so many who love what they have to see even though they know, deep down, that what they are being fed is tainted.
The Democrats are back to giving thoughtful, objective, and well thought out analysis of the tax reform bill. The following is from Harvard President Larry Summers:
Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Summers: 10,000 Will Die EVERY YEAR Thanks To Tax Reform
Why only 10,000? I think the goal of the bill was to kill 20,000 a year.
I researched the statement and the comments on a couple of the web sites are hysterical. I don’t think anyone, other than the most hard-core rabid Libs, even pretend that any of this makes any sense at all.
What Summers is really saying, and it is not buried very deeply in his comments, is that we have to have a government that decides what is best for people and then has the power to force them to do it.
Remember the good ole days when questioning the validity of a President and blocking his legislation was deemed unpatriotic and obstructionist?
Net Neutrality is a subject to which I have paid next to zero attention. My attitude was, Liberals like it so it’s probably bad. This article from Personal Liberty picks apart the NYT’s endorsement of Net Neutrality and explains the entire issue very well.
Net neutrality is simply government controlled internet, and as we all know when the government gets involved, prices go down and service improves. Right?
It used to be that you were safe in saying that about the only thing the government ran with even modest efficiency was the military. Sadly, the Left has managed to destroy that too.
I worked with a guy whose wife was in the Air Force, and when she was worried about being deployed she got pregnant. He was upfront about why they decided to start their family when they did. I don’t think it is right to have the ability to bail out by using the same gender that got you in in the first place.
How many women have found out that active duty isn’t really a lot of fun and gotten pregnant to get out of it? Every now and then there has been an article about women, particularly women on Navy ships, getting out early (getting ashore early as well) because they are pregnant.
I am absolutely in favor of women serving in the military, but they have to serve in areas where their gender poses no problems. Ditto for civilian jobs—I am fine, for the most part, with female cops, if they can physically handle the dangers without putting other LEO in danger, but not female firefighters. The last thing I would want to see coming up a fire department ladder to help me out of a burning building is a woman who weighs 120 pounds.
I do get info every now and then on the feminization and Liberalization of the military, and it scares the bejeezus out of me. Unless we luck out and find ourselves in combat against a force which also makes its men wear fake pregnancy suits and walk around in high heels so they can “empathize” with women, which demeans masculinity and rewards wimpy political correctness, we will be well and royally screwed.
Just wondering. Considering Democrats new found disgust of abuse towards women – do you think they will ever apologize to Sarah Palin and her family?
No.
Oh, I don’t know, Spook. They may just be busy putting together apologies and reparations to Paula Jones. Gotta line up these abused women in chronological order, you know. It’s the only fair way to do it.
I am honestly stunned at how corrupt and partisan the FBI and the DOJ have become. Sad, sad commentary on our country and the infiltration of Deep State scum:
http://www.dailywire.com/news/24322/mueller-credibility-plunges-trump-probe-imploding-joseph-curl?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=062316-news&utm_campaign=dwbrand
Nancy Pelosi on the GOP tax plan: “No, it is the end of the world. This—Health care, the debate on health care is life-death. This is Armageddon. This is a very big deal. Because you know why? There is really a very hard way to come back from this. They take us further, more deeply, into debt. What can you do but raise taxes?” (emphasis – mine)
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
An important read.
Americans today probably don’t remember, if they ever knew, that for many years Americans were solicited for funds to pay for terrorism in Northern Ireland. It was common for Irish bars, particularly in Boston, to have jars on the bars to collect money to be sent to Northern Ireland to pay for bombs and bullets. The jar labels might not have said that, instead relying on the old refrain “IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN” but it was common knowledge that Americans, especially Irish Americans, were funding terrorism.
Now we have solicitation for money and political support for another brand of terrorism, and we are ignoring it. Of course, now the targets are Christians, Jews, Europeans and especially Americans—but we are still letting it happen.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268617/stop-university-support-terrorists-ten-worst-sara-dogan
Yep – it was another one of those “open secret” kind of things. Word in the family is that both my grandfather and uncle would donate some cash to such things from time to time, and they stopped after the Provos killed Lord Mountbatten. Just a dumb thing to be doing under any circumstances…the whole rationale for Irish resistance ended with the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920’s…Ulster didn’t want to be part of Ireland then, doesn’t want to be part of it, now. But it still took something as monstrous and senseless as the Mountbatten murder to wake some up…others remained asleep for a long while afterwards.
As for me, I’ve never felt any connection to Ireland…my great-great-grandfather moved away from there in about 1849; that’s long enough for the ties to break. Given that, I also am able to see things a bit more clearly and realize that the whole concept of Irish independence was dumb as a box of rocks since Catholic Emancipation in 1829. At that point, all that was needed was continual pressure to right the wrongs. Leaving Great Britain only turned Ireland from a small part of a Great Power into an insignificant island off the coast of Europe.
<a href= Russia has officially been banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics.
I saw that—wonder how the Left will try to spin it.