Die Hard Dems Harass Trump Transition

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Nov 2016

Senator Elizabeth Fauxcahontas (D-MA) and Representative Elijah (Herring Oil) Cummings (D-MD) learned nothing from the results of the Nov 8^th election.  This odd couple co-signed a letter together requesting the Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office to conduct a review of the presidential transition.  And given how short a time frame in which the transition will be completed, they want the CG to move with un-governmental haste.  The point of this is to try to disrupt the transition by embroiling it in an audit before it is complete.  The further purpose is to cause pain to President-Elect Trump for the crime of winning the election and exposing how weak the belief in progressivism really is in America.

This letter is founded upon “false news.”  News that the transition is in “disarray,” “chaotic,” and Trump involved in “conflicts of interest,” are claimed as the basis of the need for the investigation, and all claims are footnoted to stories from Trump-hating journalists in the MSM.  Fauxcahontas and Herring Oil go so far as to say, “Mr. Trump’s apparent conflicts of interest – and his behavior during the campaign and after his election – raise questions about the use of taxpayer funds during the transition, and about the decisions made during the transition that will affect federal government policies under the Trump Administration.

The Senator and the Congressman demand that a bureaucrat intervene in the political transition of the constitutional republic on the grounds of Mr. Trump’s behavior in order to change the direction of the policies he will pursue as President.  In the immediate aftermath of the election.  Who said, “Let every vote count?”  What is the point of voting at all if the decision can be marred or overturned by the actions of an obscure bureaucrat acting beyond his authority?  (Since the expenditure is not complete, and at this point has not exceeded its budgeted limit, there is no cause for a review.)

Senator Fauxcahontas is a harridan of the first order.  Her standard speaking style is high-castigation.  Like most extreme progressives, her cause is her shield from sin and, consequently, she knows no shame of hypocrisy.  The Senator is known as Fauxcahontas because she deceived Harvard University about her ancestry – she claimed to be 1/32 Cherokee Indian – and on the basis of being a “native American” Harvard hired her as faculty.  She is suspected of practicing law without a licence in the state of Massachusetts to supplement her faculty pay, and somehow managed to become a 1 percenter in income during the years she stoutly defended the illegal sit-in of Wall Street.  Her deception only came to light as a result of her running for public office.

Representative Herring Oil gained a great deal of moral authority during the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s.  Since then, he has expended that moral capital defending the indefensible in the cause of partisan Democrat politics.  In his position as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee and the House Select Committee on Benghazi , he spent his time and remaining moral capital defending Hillary Clinton, undermining the legitimacy of the investigations, and stopping justice from being done.  It eventually got done, but at the hands of the electorate, not the Congress.  The Congressman got the nickname “Herring Oil” during the campaign when, at an opportune moment, he was covered in Red Herring Oil and tossed under the campaign bus in order to distract the press hounds from following the trail of Hillary’s latest scandal.

What makes this pairing odd is that Representative Oil is not famous for being progressive.  He is an extreme partisan Democrat party man and civil rights totem, but bathroom etiquette is not high on his list of priorities.  Fauxcahontas, on the other hand, is an extreme adherent of the cause – whatever it happens to be – and is only incidentally Democrat.  They seem to have little in common.  I can see Fauxcahontas doing anything to harass Donald Trump, but I see no reason for Herring Oil to degrade his reputation any further by signing on to this loser of a letter.  Fauxcahontas is a hater, and causing pain to those she hates gives her pleasure.  I don’t see what Herring Oil gets out of this.

Most of America is in the mood for conciliation.  I sense that most Americans are glad the campaign is over, they like the overtures the President-Elect is making to those who opposed him during the campaign, and they want President Trump to be successful.  This letter proves that there are corners of the Democrat Party that want more conflict and will resort to underhandedness in order to cause Trump to fail.

Even now, progressives are harassing Trump electors in the Electoral College to get them to be faithless in their votes.  Green Party candidate Jill Stein raised more money to hold a recount in Wisconsin than she raised during the campaign.  She was not close in Wisconsin, and neither was Hillary, and Michigan just declared for Trump, enlarging his unconquerable majority even more.  What is the point of these pointless challenges, when they cause nothing but pain and fail to advance the cause of national conciliation?

The response to war is war.  The new Congress is going to have its hands full with Trump’s legislative agenda and new appointments.  Not only are all the cabinet officers in need of Senate confirmation, but so will be the new Supreme Court justice.  There is will be legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, to start building the wall, to fix immigration, to pass a sensible infrastructure bill, and to reform the tax code, just to mention a few.  The chances to obstruct the new Administration while its political capital is great are highest during this period.

The House has the rules of procedure that will enable the majority to drive the new President’s legislative agenda forward quickly.  The problem lies in the Senate, and the filibuster is the name of the problem.  When it was convenient, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) used the so-called nuclear option to defeat the filibuster and gain appointments for Barack Obama, and he then went on to declare the nuclear option legitimate only for those occasions when he used it.  The current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is a traditionalist, and it would cause him a lot of pain to widen the breach in Senate protocol caused by Reid.  Nevertheless, McConnell needs to steel himself for the inevitable.  It would gain him no satisfaction to realize the pain he would cause in the Democrats to see their obstructionism turned against them by a means they employed first.  But war can only be beaten down by war, and war against fanatics will not end until the life is beaten out of them.

We will see whether Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) is as concerned with Senate protocol as McConnell is – I doubt it- but the devastation in his caucus may bother him more than it would Fauxcahontas.  Fauxcahontas has no investment in the party as Schumer does, and I’m quite certain that she would be as grimly satisfied at the devastation of the Senate Democrats in the wake of widespread nuclear warfare as Hitler was at the devastation of the Germany that failed him.  It will be up the Schumer to bring her to heel.

There are still Democrats who want war.  I understand the desire and the need for reconciliation, and those two aims might be met if an example were made of those who still pursue war.

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Trump trumps hate

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Nov 2016

Among blessings America celebrates this Thanksgiving Day, one of them has to be their release from the political thrall of the House of Clinton.   The media remains full of hysteria over the remarkable and unexpected victory of Donald Trump at the election. 

Something yet to be noticed is that no one seems to be lamenting the defeat of Hillary Clinton.  For the media and the progressive movement in the United States, Hillary was a mere totem, a fill-in-the-blank candidate representing progressivism, and it is the rejection of progressivism that all the hysteria is about.

For reasons I cannot fathom, Bill Clinton became a hero of the Democrat party.  His ego and his wife’s greed conspired to turn the Democrat party into a vehicle for the satisfaction of both their needs.  Hillary’s evident track to become president one day enabled Bill to remain politically relevant, and both of them to make tons of money shaking down those seeking to buy favors or merely to be seen in close proximity to power.  The Democrat party turned itself into the machinery for the triumph of progressivism and – what seemed the same thing – triumph for the House of Clinton.

The American electorate sickened of progressivism during the malign presidency of Barack Obama, and change from the era of hope and change was in the air in 2016.  Hillary represented boilerplate progressivism, but she also carried with her “more baggage than Delta Airlines,” as one wag put it.  Her utter corruption, her mendacity, her trio of email scandals: of her private server, of the hacking of the DNC, and then of John Podesta; and the legal problems she was having eventually brought her low.  Now, the House of Clinton lies at the mercy of President Donald J. Trump.

Among the other casualties of the defeat of the House of Clinton was progressivism and its bastard offspring, political correctness.  The credibility of the media was destroyed by the election result, as practically all the MSM deemed Trump unworthy and unacceptable. The big media ran pieces every day deploring Trump in some way, and they were cheerleaders for Hillary Clinton.  The American people told the media they were all wrong.

One of the slogans of the Democrat/Progressive/Hillary campaign was “Love trumps hate.”  This was supposed to be a clever riff on Trump’s name, but this shallow piece of thought exposed how empty-headed its chanters were.  In the first place, the slogan was employed with a malice and hate entirely at odds with the idea of love.  In the second, the slogan shows that, while it thinks of itself as secular Christianity, progressivism does not understand what Christian love truly is.  The chanters of the slogan proved to be the real haters themselves.  And this is becoming all the more manifest as President-Elect Trump tries to reconcile the nation.  Trump is reaching out to political opponents both inside and outside the Republican Party, and while the Republicans have been receptive, those outside the party are absolute rejectionists of his overtures.  Their hate closes their minds to the potential for conciliation.

The media are having a hard time reconciling themselves to Trump’s victory.  At a closed-door meeting with the leading lights of the media - senior executives of news divisions and news readers themselves - Trump reputedly laid into them.  He purportedly said to Jeff Zucker, head of the Clinton News Network (with Wolf Blitzer in attendance), that his network was full of liars and that he ought to be ashamed of himself.  Trump also met with the New York Times for a discussion partly on the record and partly off.  If the media is going to regain credibility with the American electorate, as they must if they expect to fulfill their traditional role (that they abandoned for the eight years of the Obama presidency), then there are going to have to be firings at the major networks and major newspapers.

That message has yet to sink in.  We are still getting stories slanted against Trump.  We get Wolf Blitzer and others in the MSM fretting worrisomely about the alleged endorsement of Trump by the KKK, and the insufficient number of times that Trump has rejected it and denounced the Klan.  For the media, Trump is supposed to be a dog who barks upon command.  We get stories fretting about the human things he does, like meet with his family, and meet with business acquaintances who want their picture taken with their recently elected friend.  We get stories fretting about Trump’s business empire and all the conflicts of interest that could be created, forgetting that they didn’t report on how the Clinton Foundation worked.

This morning on the CNBC website, we get a story headlined, “Trump releases video at odds with his combative post-election tone.”  The use of “at-odds” conveys hypocrisy; if it had been written “Trump releases conciliatory video” it would have portrayed accurately the Trump was trying to be nice, not that he was acting hypocritically.

Over at CNN, we get headlines like these, “Clinton’s popular vote lead grows to 2 million,” and “Trump aide mocks vote challenge” The media hate continues.  The story on the popular vote lead seeks to de-legitimize Trump’s victory, and the word ‘mocks’ is used incorrectly; but it conveys indignity in the people around Trump.

I’ve seen stories on Fox that fret over Trump’s alleged preference for aged white males over women and minorities in cabinet selections.  This sort of identity politics is characteristic of the progressivism that was rejected at the polls.  I don’t think of Dr. Ben Carson as the “black” representative in Trump’s cabinet, or Mitt Romney as the Mormon representative, or Betsy DeVos as the female representative.  It takes time to gain experience, and the outstanding characteristic of these and other people Trump has talked to is their personal attainments gained over a lifetime of experience.  Youth and inexperience gets you a Ben Rhodes or a Van Jones.  Trump is surrounding himself with a team of winners, not rivals or radicals as the left tries to portray.

Barack Obama dismissed General James Mattis with disgrace from the military, and it is entirely fitting that Trump bring Mattis back as Secretary of Defense.  Mattis’ experience did not comport with what Obama thought should be reality, and having been through the fire Mattis will cure the Defense Department of Obamaism.

There will be no honeymoon period between the media and Donald Trump.  We can expect stories in the MSM to be slanted against Trump.  Everything he says and does will be turned to undermine his presidency.  The hate will continue.   Trump has already shown that he will bypass the media using social media to get his real message and intent out.

Trump’s victory was one over hate.  The basket of deplorables rose up against those who held them in contempt.  Trump owes his victory entirely to the people because everyone but the people were against him during the campaign.  Trump trumped the campaign of hate against him and the people who support him.

Progressivism has not learned its lesson, for to learn it is for progressivism to die.  We can expect the progressive campaign of hatred for Trump to continue.  But so long as Trump fulfills his promises and maintains his contact with the people, the campaign of hate will only separate the media from the people, and hopefully then the media from paid advertising.

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Rule 8

Vincent J. Curtis

21 Nov 2016

Number 8 of Saul D. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals reads , “Keep the pressure on.  Never let up.”  Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance.  As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.  (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

Barack Obama is an acolyte of Saul D. Alinsky, having trained at his school of social organization.  He is an acolyte of ACORN, a now -defunct Alinskyite organization for which he served as legal counsel.  He is a disciple of Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers, and racist reverend Jeremiah (God damned Amerika!) Wright, in whose pews he sat for twenty years allegedly without hearing or learning anything.  Progressives across America have been violently protesting the election of Donald Trump to succeed Obama as President of the United States, and when invited by the press to tell his people to stifle and give the new man a chance, Obama replied with advice for his fellow- travelers “not to stay silent.”

We have the cast of the Broadway play “Hamilton” presuming to lecture the Vice-President-Elect Mike Pence from the stage.  The actors have been immersed in the history of the American revolution and have learned nothing about the need for civil discourse in public affairs.

Senator Charles Schumer (N-NY) will become the new minority leader in the Senate in the next session of congress with the retirement of the execrable Harry Reid (D-NV).  Schumer promises fierce resistance to the judicial and cabinet appointments of the incoming administration.  In particular, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is going to receive his second dose of “borking.”

Thirty years ago, President Ronald Reagan nominated Alabama Attorney-General Jeff Sessions to a Federal judgeship, an appointment that requires Senate confirmation.  Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Joe Bite-me (D-Neptune) run the Senate judiciary committee at the time.  Kennedy and Bite-me developed the technique which came to be known as “borking” on Jeff Sessions.  Entirely false and scurrilous accusations were made against the nominee, a cloud of suspicion was created, and the nomination was scuttled on the basis of suspicion.  Sessions’ nomination was a small affair, but when the same method was employed later in the year against Reagan’s nominee for the Supreme Court Robert Bork, it became known as ‘borking.”

The people of Alabama knew Sessions better than the news media in Washington, D.C. and they elected him repeatedly to the U.S. Senate to serve alongside such ornaments as Senator Kennedy and Senator Bite-me.  At his last election, Senator Sessions was elected unopposed.

Now that Sessions has been selected to serve as President Donald Trump’s Attorney-General, Chuck Schumer is promising a bruising nomination battle, founded upon the scurrilous falsehoods leveled against Sessions thirty years ago.  Schumer is not as progressive as Barack Obama, but Schumer is nevertheless a vicious partisan.  During the nomination hearings of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, I witnessed Schumer saying that he had “not yet made up his mind” about how he was going to vote on the nomination, and I saw Schumer’s nose grow an inch there and then.  As expected, Schumer voted against the nomination.  One can only hope that since Schumer has openly declared that he is going to engage in scurrilous, partisan mud-slinging to block the Sessions appointment, that Republican Senators apply the lessons they’ve learned and play smash-mouth politics themselves.  No parliamentary maneuver is too low to defeat Senator Schumer’s campaign.

Then there is the media.  Since I do not watch the Clinton News Network or MSNBC, I get my news primarily from Fox.  Juan Williams is Fox’s view into the liberal-progressivist mind, and he too is making entirely worrisome noises about the Trump Administration.  On the Nov 20^th edition of Fox News Sunday, Williams said this about retired Lt-Gen Michael Flynn, the incoming National Security Adviser and retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency:

“I think the question really is about the appointments and the appointment process. So you have people who I would say don't fit into exactly a team of rivals, but to many people a team of radicals. A team of radicals in terms of, what are these people representing? Flynn, Mike Flynn, I don't think he could be confirmed, but so he's getting the -- the national security advisor job. …. And the way that he left there and questions about his management style and about sharing information and what some in the intelligence community call "Flynn facts," which is facts that don't comport with what others in the intelligence community believe to be true. Colin Powell writing in the WikiLeaks leak that he thought he was unhinged. I think this tells you this -- it would be very difficult….Well, I think when you think about someone like Flynn, Americans, … are concerned when you look at his ties to Russia, his ties to Vladimir Putin. When they think about his ties to Turkey –“

At this point, panelist and Trump supporter Laura Ingraham interrupted:

INGRAHAM: What are they, Juan? What are you talking about?

WILLIAMS: Well, remember, he went --

INGRAHAM: Are you just throwing out --

INGRAHAM: Yes. OK. Well, there was a lot said by Juan. But you said team of radicals. This is the kind of stuff that has turned people against Washington, D.C. And these type -- this -- these types of lines against true patriots, who sacrificed for their country, who are beloved among the men and women in the military, who actually do the heavy lifting for all of us. Mattis, General Mattis, is one of the most beloved Marines of the last 50 years. General Flynn is considered one of the pre-eminent intelligence experts of our age. So to throw out these lines, a team of radicals, that serves nobody's interest. If you have a substantive disagreement with their approach to fighting terror or their approach to intelligence, that's fine. But these blithe comments, I think, have poisoned political discussion in this country, and I think it's exactly why people despise this city.”

Exactly right.  Mike Flynn is a thirty-year career intelligence officer who rose to the highest ranks and responsibilities of his profession.  His security clearance is so high it would give Juan Williams a nose-bleed.  Yet the insight into liberal thinking is suggesting that Flynn would sell-out America to Russia or Turkey, for what?  A dinner?

It used to be that Americans selling-out America was a noble thing to liberals.  And Russia used to be a favored liberal and progressive place during the days of the old Soviet Union.  Now, when it’s convenient, the liberal is now saying that selling-out is bad, and that a conservative patriot highly, highly trusted and vetted by the U.S government was going to do it.

Progressives never give in.  That is why they deserve no quarter from the Republicans, or from Trump.  Incivility breeds incivility.  Incivility can only be smashed by incivility.

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Rule 5 and Rule 11

Vincent J. Curtis

17 Nov 2016

Rule 5 of Saul D. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals reads, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”  There is no defense.  It’s irrational.  It’s infuriating.  It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

Rule 11 reads, “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”  Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.

Since the election of Donald Trump certain cities in America have been beset by rioting, or “demonstrations” and “protests” in the delicate language of a media that believes in the same cause as the rioters.

Let’s apply Rule 11.  Okay, rioters what do you propose?  Do you want the results of the election overturned?  Are you trying to force Trump to adopt a progressivist political line – the line of Barack Obama that was so decisively rejected at the election?  What is the point of all this property destruction?  The short answer is that you don't have an alternative, constructive or otherwise.

There is no chance of Trump bowing to your demands, rioters.  He got elected because most of the country despise what you do, and have little use for what you stand for.  Your protests confirm that Trump’s election was the right thing to do.  Trump’s election is the repudiation of you, you losers and cry-babies.

That last line broached onto Rule 5, ridicule.  Poor losers and cry-babies, that’s what they are.  They’ve had their turn, and now it’s somebody else’s, and they can’t tolerate that.

It’s almost fun to watch liberals in the media speak of “fear” (I’m thinking of you, Juan).  I know that “fear” is disingenuous, it’s a way of asking for their way anyhow despite the election results.  But if they truly are fearful, then they deserve the pain they suffer.  They’re being stupid, and being stupid deserves punishment.  Tell me you’re afraid; I’m enjoying it, but try to be more convincing when you say it because I hate being lied to my face.  Lying to people’s faces was a strong motivator to vote against Hillary, Obama, and everything those two stood for – like Obamacare, that was passed on a lie.  Adolescents are better at lying to get their way then they are.  The rioters and MSM are too old to be adolescents, even as they try to recreate the skills they once possessed at a younger age.

Don’t tell me you’re suffering when you’re not.  That’s another example of the PC lie that just got repudiated.  Grow-up you cry-babies, you infants; we’re on to you.  It’s not working any more.

Rule 5 is great.  Highly satisfying to use.

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The Execrable Harry Reid: Good Riddance

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Nov 2016

In a previous posting headlined, “Why Hillary is so Polarizing” I wrote about the need for pluralism and tolerance, civility and decency in the public life of a peaceful society.  The characteristics were essential to a peaceful, orderly society.

In America,  there is Harry Reid (D-NV), the Senate Minority Leader and leader of the Democrats in the Senate since 2007.  With his long service at the head of the Senate Democrats, there is no doubt that he represents a dominant faction within the Democrat party.  He is not civil.  He is not tolerant, or accepting of plurality.

From his perch at the head of the Senate Democrats, with the civil protection of that body around him, Reid has lied on the floor of the Senate to advance his political causes.  In particular, he lied about the tax returns of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and this conduced to the re-election of Democrat President Barack Obama.  Afterwards, when confronted with his lie, Reid, amused, said, “Well, he didn’t win, did he.”

The toxic Harry Reid has had no small part in the viciousness, the partisanship, and the gridlock in Washington, D.C. since his election to the Senate in 2001.  His rapid elevation to Whip and then to Leader was rapid, indicating his high popularity among his fellow Democrats.  They selected him because of his viciousness and ruthlessness towards his political enemies.

Reid is not a poor man.  He started out poor, but the rise in the Reid fortune has been dated by Rush Limbaugh from the time Reid became the Chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission.  Reid says he was a pretty good young lawyer, and intimated he got his wealth through his private legal work, which is pretty good when you’ve only worked in the private sector for a couple of years.  The rest of the time, by Limbaugh’s account, was spent in some government job or other.

About two years ago Reid was viciously beaten in his home over the Christmas break.  He reappeared in Washington bruised and with dark sunglasses covering a blackened eye that stayed blackened for months.  Reid lost the sight of that eye.  Reid said his injuries were due to an accident with exercise equipment at home, but he didn’t sue the equipment company for negligence until questions started getting asked, and he hasn’t pursued the case.  What happened is that thugs Reid knew came to collect on a debt, most likely a political debt.  In retirement, and unable to pay any more political debts, Reid is going to hunker down in a bunker somewhere and await the grim reaper.

But before his final departure, Reid had to pump his last load of bile into the public domain.  Trying to hold on to his partisan credentials, Reid said this of Donald Trump in the aftermath of Trump’s surprising election as president:

Harry Reid:

“The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America. White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear...”

“African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans [..] children waking up in the middle of the night crying, terrified that Trump will take their parents away.”

“We as a nation must find a way to move forward without consigning those who Trump has threatened to the shadows. Their fear is entirely rational, because Donald Trump has talked openly about doing terrible things to them.”

“If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate.”

A sign of Reid failing hold on Senate Democrats is that Joe Manchin (D-WV) dared to publicly rebuke his leader Reid as follows:

Joe Manchin:

“Senator Harry Reid's statement today attacking President-elect Trump is wrong! It is an absolute embarrassment to the Senate as an institution, our Democratic party, and the nation.

As difficult as it is for anyone to lose an election, the American people have spoken and Donald Trump is our President-elect. Senator Reid’s words needlessly feed the very divisiveness that is tearing this country apart.

Now, more than ever, it is time for us all to come together as Americans. We must as Secretary Clinton and President Obama so graciously said, have an open mind and give President-elect Trump the chance to lead."

"Unfortunately, there are some who forget that at times like these it is wrong to put party and politics above our country.”

It is satisfying that Harry Reid lived to see everything he worked for destroyed and repudiated by the American people.  During his uncivil leadership, the Democrat party sunk to its lowest ebb in political fortune since the 1870s.  He will disappear from the scene unloved and unlamented.  He will live in fear of retribution by his business associates for the rest of his miserable life.

Until the Democrat party purges itself of the vicious partisanship championed by Reid and others in the party, it deserves to sink even lower in the public estimation.  Civility and decency needs to return to American public life, and intolerance of pluralism needs to disappear.  The Harry Reid character needs to be purged from the Democrat party.

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Hang Him for Headlines

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Nov 2016

It used to be the left that thought it had a monopoly on subversive satire.  The left could make scurrilous attacks on figures of the right, make fun of its political opponents, and it was the right that was supposed to take the vicious attacks silently.  Even accept it as humorous, sometimes.  It would be contrary to the left’s right of free speech to try to hold the left accountable for all the scurrilous things they said.

Breitbart News put the shoe on the other foot, and now we are seeing what humorless turds there are on the left.

In the face of right-wing satire, the left get all passive-aggressive.  They get their feelings hurt and offended.  They try their usual bullying tactics to get the right to stop the return fire.  They feign fear.  They try to shut down the right of free speech of their opponents.  And when all else fails, they resort to violence.

Steve Bannon has been named as President-Elect Donald Trump’s senior political advisor.  Bannon had been the editor of Breitbart News after the unfortunate and early death of conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart.  Other people who have held similar positions as the one to which Bannon was named include Karl Rove, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett.  The left are pulling their political stunts and organizing a fear campaign over the Bannon appointment in an effort to cripple Trump’s budding Administration.  They see in Bannon a formidable and tactically adroit political opponent.

Courtesy of CNN, here are some of the headlines from Breitbart News that are offered as proof of Bannon’s unfitness for office (where have we heard that before?) and reason why the left are so afraid of his appointment:

'The solution to online 'harassment' is simple: Women should log off' (Sensible advice for anyone, I’d say.)

'Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew'  (Imagine if this original member of the #NeverTrump movement had been Catholic, like John Podesta, instead?  Not a problem being a renegade Catholic; and John Podesta is a fallen away Catholic BTW.)

'Trannies whine about hilarious Bruce Jenner billboard'   CNN Explains:  “A December 2015 article criticized a campaign to take down a billboard mocking Caitlyn Jenner after she went public with her transition last year. "Transsexuals have forced a company in New Zealand to take down a billboard poking fun at Bruce Jenner and his man-parts," the article said.”  (This is beautiful stuff for conservatives to make fun of because all the contradictions of political correctness are on display.)

'Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy'  CNN explains: “A December 2015 article made a case against birth control.”  Funny!

'Suck it up buttercups: Dangerous Faggot Tour returns to colleges in September'   CNN explains: “a show headlined by Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos”  (who is openly gay BTW.)  Milo has been banned from certain college campuses because his outrageous act offends so many on the left.  This is funny!

'Hoist it high and proud: The Confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage  CNN explains: 'Those who initiated identity politics are attempting to obliterate the Southern identity,”  (After a murderous rampage by a jackass, the left exploited this opportunity to destroy symbols of the old confederacy.)

"Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?"  This was the headline on a story intended to publicize another campus debate featuring Breitbarts’ own Milo Yiannopoulos.

'Gay rights have made us dumber, it's time to get back in the closet'   CNN explains: “A June 2015 article by Yiannopoulos, who is openly gay, argued in favor of "forcing gays back into the closet." "I find it depressing that my fellow fags have stopped breeding," Yiannopoulos wrote.”  (I can’t but laugh at that one.)

'Science proves it: Fat-shaming works'  Now that’s funny!

"There's no hiring bias against women in tech, they just suck at interviews"  CNN explains: A July article suggested that research revealed "women might just suck at job interviews."

These headlines, once they are understood as subversive, right-wing satire, are obviously funny.  They poke fun at the shibboleths of the left, and they drive the left crazy.  That makes them even more satisfying.

On the crime of being subversive, anti-left, satirical, and above all funny as hell, I find Steve Bannon guilty as charged and sentence him to four years as Trump’s senior political advisor.

On the count of the left being a steaming pile of humorless turds, I find them guilty as charged and sentence them to four more years of Breitbart News.

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Media Still Have Learned Nothing

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Nov 2016

Media which got everything wrong will now tell you all the things that will happen as a result of the thing they said wouldn't happen.

Alan Dershwitz: “The One Thing Trump Will Do if He’s Smart.”

Bill Walen:  Four Takeaways from Trump’s Decision to Make Reince Priebus His Chief of Staff.

News Item: “Priebus’s first role is defending colleague Bannon from accusations of racism, hate.”

Howard Kurtz: Media Buzz: “Can President Trump deliver on his promises?”

News Item:  “President-Elect Trump Willing to Keep Parts of Obamacare”

News Item:  Trump Admits “There Could Be Some Fencing.”

News Item: “How Donald Trump Blew Up the Bond Market, and Changed Everyone’s Views on Interest Rates.”

News Item:  “Trump faces backlash over appointing Steve Bannon as top aide, a choice critics say will empower white nationalists.”

News Item:  “In first test, Trump makes big mistake”

News Item:  “Reid Plans to keep up anti-Trump barrage.”

Analysis:  “How Donald Trump won and almost all of us missed it.”  (Speak for yourself, ABC)

News Item: “Cracks are already starting to show between Donald Trump and Republicans.”

News Item: “Trump’s Transition Team is just now learning what a president does.”

The above is a selection of news items and opinion pieces I picked off the web this morning.  The opening statement says it all and, with it in mind, reading the headlines of the various stores and opinion pieces makes the authors seem ridiculous.  Why media would bother themselves with what critics say so soon after the election is not baffling.  It is a sign of desperation, an attempt to seem relevant, and effort to redeem themselves.

I don’t know why Donald Trump is giving the main stream media the time of day.  Yet, he did an interview for the Wall Street Journal and the CBS news program “60 Minutes.”  The media have advised Trump to hire Kelly Ayotte (of all people!) to run the Department of Defense, as a means of demonstrating an outreach to the disaffected parts of the Republican Party.  Stupid!  The media learned nothing.  Has it not occurred to them, that the outreach should start from the other side?  Let’s hear Kelly Ayotte grovel a bit and admit she’s the one who made the mistake concerning Trump.

The media commentariat have also been on Trump’s case concerning his renewed use of Twitter.

So far as Twitter is concerned, Trump praised its valuable use during the campaign, and said he planned to keep using it as president to get his message out directly to the people.  We would not have known of the congratulations offered Trump by Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney unless Trump had tweeted those facts, and media reported on the tweets not the underlying story.

The media have a vested interest in separating Trump from his followers.  I expect news stories fretting and worrying about Trump’s abandonment of the Special Prosecutor for Hillary, about the Wall, about repealing and replacing Obamacare, about his use of insiders for his transition team and cabinet when he promised to “drain the swamp” and so forth.

For my part, I am not going to pay attention to media reports that seem to create problems for Trump.  I’m going to let Trump take office, and hold any criticism for six months, giving the man time to get his feet under him and begin to move on his program.

The Affordable Care Act is going to get repealed.  Repeal is psychologically necessary for Republicans.  Critics will try to portray the replacement that keep some parts of Obamacare as a mean-spirited repeal in name only, like retaining the same bung-hole and replacing the drum around it.  I expect insurance for those with pre-existing conditions will find a place in the replacement, but the individual mandate will be gone.  Medicare is going to have to be fixed, and I hope to see tort-reform as part of the insurance package.

I expect that by March, 2017, Hillary’s fate will be determined, at least insofar as the emails are concerned.  The pay-for-play business of the Clinton Foundation is an entirely separate matter, and she is not cleared of that.  I pay no attention to Trump’s soothing words at the moment concerning Hillary.  He is committed to nothing, and there will be the problem of equal justice for all if he lets Hillary's known email crimes go uninvestigated.

I would like to see Trump nominate Ted Cruz as Justice Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court.  Cruz is not on Trump’s original list, but who would be a more Scalia-like justice?  Regardless, Trump is not going to let us down on that score.

When it gets around to the media covering Trump, I’m going to subscribe to his Twitter feed and ignore the failed main stream media.  I can judge for myself.

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Trump Wins, Obama People Riot

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Nov 2016

Donald Trump won an unexpected and decisive victory for president on Nov 8^th.  It took a day for the results to sink in, for organizers to organize, and then for the riots to begin.  Yesterday was the fourth day in a row in which rioting at the results of the election took place.  These riots occur at night, when rioters are less easily identified; and they occur in cities that are bastions of progressivism: New York, Chicago, and cities along the west coast.

On Monday, Nov 7^th, news media were still taunting the Trump campaign about whether or not he would accept the results of the election.  The media were fussing about “a peaceful transfer of power.”  The media taunted Trump about his claims of the “rigged system.”

And this continued until about 9:00 p.m. election night, when it became clear that the exit polls were wrong and that Trump was going to win the election.  The shoe got put on the other foot, and look what happened.  Progressives - Obama’s people, Bernie’s people, Hillary’s supporters - began to riot – after they got organized.  So much for emotion; what we have here is calculation.

The media, ever carrying water for Obama, gave the riots heavy coverage, and they wondered what Trump was going to do to calm the waters.  What concessions could be extracted from him in his moment of triumph by these bullying crybabies?

Trump has so far remained silent.  Calls have come out from the Trump side for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to say something.  But so far, silence.

Rule No. 6 of Saul D. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals reads, “A good tactic is one your people will enjoy.”  They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more.  They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.  Rule No. 7 reads, “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”  Rule No. 8 reads, “Keep the pressure on.  Never let up.”

The reason why progressives opted for rioting is that this is a tactic their people enjoy.  We saw it for ourselves starting with the rioting in Ferguson, MO.  Black Lives Matter is a movement built upon rioting and violent confrontation.  Rioting, destruction of private property, and looting went on long after any emotion of anger had expired.  Rioting continued because it became a fun way for progressives so inclined to bay at the moon.  They could feel good about themselves making a moral exhibition of themselves.

The reason Obama has so far resisted calls for him to say something is that he does not want to appear powerless before his mob.  If he calls for calm and he is ignored, then he looks weak and devoid of followers.  In addition, his erstwhile followers may turn upon him, accusing him of being a traitor to the movement.  None of this looks good for his legacy.

Rule 7, and sheer exhaustion will ensure that rioting eventually ceases.  This is the moment when Obama may come out calling for an end to the “protests” and “demonstrations,” that is, fecklessly once it is over.

Rule 8 ensures that dedicated progressives are not going to give up.  They are going to continue progressivist bullying in an effort to deflect Trump from fulfilling his campaign pledges.  They will have plenty of supporters in the media, who are progressive to the core.

The people protesting Trump’s triumph are unworthy of democracy.  They are unworthy of the blessings of America.  They lack the fundamental civility necessary for a peaceful democracy.

Van Jones is a commentator at the Clinton News Network, an admitted communist, and former member of the Obama Administration.  He is also a black racist.  Jones ascribed Trump’s victory to “whitelash.”  To Jones’s mind, it’s okay for 85 % of the black electorate to vote for Hillary Clinton, but when 60 % of white voters vote for Donald Trump instead of Hillary, that’s a sign of racism.

Jones is a moral idiot.  Jones looks and seems intelligent from time to time, but he can’t reason his way out of a paper bag.  And he doesn’t want to, for his mind is too poisoned by hate.

He complained about the fear Trump’s election engendered.  Well, so what!!  Let the fearful suffer the pain of their fear – a condign punishment for being stupid.  For thinking they can bully people with their passive-aggressive tactics.

So it is with progressivism everywhere.  Progressivism is a secular religion, and if you disagree with a progressive, that makes you immoral and unworthy of consideration or civil treatment.  Bullying is standard practice with progressivism.

Really, lack of civility is what is most offensive about the rioting.  Hillary lost fair and square; and rioting against Trump, who did nothing but win, is simply an attack on democracy itself - on the constitutional republic itself.

The media are tempted to hang the continued rioting on Trump.  He would be wise to say nothing until he assumes office, and even then to let his actions speak for him.

The following quote appeared earlier this week on Mark Steyn’s website:

“Media which got everything wrong will now tell you all the things that will happen as a result of the thing they said wouldn't happen.”

It is worth absorbing this insight.  As the media try to hang rioting, or offer anything else on Trump, it will be example of the above observation.

The media never learn, and they can never by humbled.

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Trump’s Triumph

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Nov 2016

Early this morning, Donald Trump was confirmed elected as the next president of the United States.  Trump, who has never held elective office or military command, pulled off the greatest surprise and electoral feat seen in a generation.  He did it despite all his flaws, by becoming the champion of those whom his opponent, Hillary Clinton, described as “deplorable, irredeemable, and not American.”  Those people would be the “factory workers, veterans, cops, the kitchen help, farmers, people who make trains run, pick up trash, and keep the country moving” in the words of New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin.

America has had its Brexit moment.  Trump the underdog led the “forgotten masses” to triumph.  In that respect, Michael Moore got it right.  Trump’s victory was their revenge for the contempt in which they have been held by the political elites for decades.  The basket of deplorables were fully aware of Trump’s flaws, and didn’t care.  His pugnaciousness, his disrespect of political correctness, his humanness, and his choice of enemies as well as his flaws made him even more desirable as a vessel for their discontent than some plain vanilla conservative nominee would have been.

Trump’s sheer bigness as a personality in American life and his great wealth enabled him to withstand the concerted attacks of “the fraudulent hucksters of the national liberal media” and political establishmentarians.  Trump owes his success only to the support he received from the voters.  Nobody owns Trump, except for the American electorate.

For his part, Trump put aside all political rancor in his moment of triumph.  “Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division…To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people….I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans…I’m reaching out to you…so that we can work together and unify our great country.”  Trump has been saying this for months, and it was Trump, not Hillary Clinton, who actually stood for ‘Stronger Together.’

Trump continued, “[O]urs was not a campaign but rather an incredible and great movement, made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their family.  It is a movement of Americans…who want and expect our government to serve the people – and serve the people it will…..The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”

More than Hillary Clinton lost the election.  Progressivism and its bastard child, political correctness, lost.  Big media lost.

Progressivism is the belief in rule by experts, and no one is more expert than the shapers of public opinion, the big media.  The New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, and CNN (the Clinton News Network), abandoned all pretence of objectivity and fairness during the campaign.  The dirty pool they played redounded against them.  They heaped their contempt not just on Trump, but on those who supported him.  The unprofessional media assault on their champion hardened their hearts, and Trump supporters turned out by the tens of thousands to cheer him at his campaign rallies.  After eight years of progressivism under Barack Obama, a large segment of the electorate yearned for change, and Trump promised to smash every convention Washington held dear.

Big changes are coming, and these changes are for the better.  From a small beginning, Donald Trump built a business worth billions.  He developed over the course of his career a perspective and a skill set unlike anything seen in America.  He has admirable goals, and he knows how to achieve them.  His first goal was the most improbable, to be elected President – and that happened.  Trump beat every professional politician in sight on his first try.  He demonstrated something never before seen.

Trump’s goals are worthy of America and its people.  They are great goals: to make America great again, to fix America’s inner cities, rebuild her infrastructure, put millions of people back to work, take care of America’s veterans, restore respect for law and order, to put the Supreme Court back onto its proper path of adjudicating law, not making it; and igniting a great economic revival.

With great goals as his aim, and with the political skills he has so unexpectedly proven, the next for years will be great years of reform and revival for America.

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Hillary’s Collapse

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Nov 2016

Today is Election Day in the United States.  The LA Times Daily Tracking poll has Trump up by three, while the IBD daily tracking has Trump up by 2.  All the other polls lag in time and report the history of last week.  Three weeks ago everybody forecast that Trump’s campaign was doomed, and now he is poised for victory.

Hillary will run up her national vote in states like California, Oregon, and Washington. Cities like New York, Philadelphia, Alexandria, Pittsburgh, and a few others will provide her with wide margins of victory that the hinterlands of those cities will have to overcome to provide Trump his margin of victory.  Battleground states like North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire look like Trump victories, while Democrat strongholds Michigan and Pennsylvania have become closely contested.  Trump may well win either the popular vote or the Electoral College.

Hillary’s collapse in the waning weeks of the campaign began the moment people thought she was poised for victory and started to contemplate what a Clinton presidency might be like.  In the midst of this disturbing thought, FBI Director James Comey announced the discovery of another trove of Clinton emails on the laptop of disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner.  People then realized that it might not be over.

Hillary’s felonious handling of emails might come back to bite her as president.  Meanwhile, the cascade of leaked emails from WikiLeaks poured into the coverage of the campaign.  The corruption of the Clinton Foundation was laid bare.  The arrogance and contempt of the Clinton team towards outsiders and even among themselves became public knowledge.  The unsavory sale of favors by Hillary while Secretary of State in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation or for money to Bill directly became impossible to hide.  Whatever campaign message Hillary had became buried under this avalanche of new scandals.  A tide had turned.  Hillary was reduced to a totem, immobile and representing nothing new and potentially nothing but trouble.

Trump, meanwhile, recovered.  He pounded on the theme of the American people having to rise up to deliver justice themselves, of themselves having to destroy a corrupt and rigged system.  His message resonated.

During his speech to the Democrat National Convention in July, President Obama spoke of people having to help “carry Hillary across the finish line.”  I remarked at the time that it spoke poorly of the candidate, and would indeed be necessary.  The last five days of the campaign have shown it to be the prophesy expected.  Hillary’s rallies have had to count on Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Bruce Springstein, Lady Gaga, and others as headliners to attract people.  Hillary makes her appearance at the end, as incongruous as if the Phillie Phanatic waddled on stage after an act featuring Beyoncé wiggling.  President Obama, Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Vice President Bite-me have hit the campaign trail trying to drum up support among minorities for Hillary’s dead-in-the-water campaign.

Meanwhile, Trump by himself has been drawing between 10,000 and 30,000 people at his rallies.  Getting 10,000 people together in New Hampshire in November is no mean feat.  Even rural Virginia was amazingly mobilized by a recent Trump rally.  Trump has momentum, and he has the determination of large numbers of people behind him.

We will learn later tonight if Hillary banked enough votes in early voting to stave off her final collapse at the end of the campaign.

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Maid in America

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Nov 2016

The stock markets on Wall Street are booming today on the news that FBI Director James Comey declared that Hillary Clinton would not be charged with a felony following the discovery of another trove of emails last week.  The joy in the media is palpable.  Investors evidently believe that Hillary’s election is now assured, and Wall Street looks forward to the governance of she who accepted so much Wall Street cash both before and during the campaign.

The statement by Director Comey was that the review of 650,000 emails found on the laptop of disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner, some 10,000 of which were archived emails between Huma Abedin, Weiner’s estranged wife, and Hillary Clinton, determined him not to change his conclusion of July, 2016 in respect of Secretary Clinton.  Most took this cryptic statement to mean that Hillary is in the clear, and they may be right.  If she is elected president.

The fact is that a trove of emails classified at birth (whether marked or not) were discovered at an entirely unexpected place: the laptop of someone not related at all to the Clinton State Department.  Since Hillary Clinton accepted responsibility for the care and custody of the communications sent to her and from her, this duplicate set of emails represents yet another consequence of her setting up a private email server system, through which passed highly classified secrets of the United States government.  This is another breach of the duty of care she owed to America as Secretary of State, and is a direct consequence of her decisions.

Huma Abedin may not be in the clear.  She told the FBI that she had turned over all the devices that contained her emails.  This discovery proves that statement was false.  Both Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton deserve to lose their security clearances over this unexpected discovery alone, but Clinton’s election as president would make that latter event impossible.

Additional evidence of Hillary’s casual disregard of security protocols was revealed on the weekend by the New York Post. The Post reported that while secretary of state, “Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government emails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, emails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material.  In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive emails that she may hold the secrets to emailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment she used.  Clinton entrusted far more than the care of her DC residence, known as Whitehaven, to Santos. She expected the Filipino immigrant to handle state secrets…Clinton would first receive highly sensitive emails from top aides at the State Department and then request that they, in turn, forward the messages and any attached documents to Santos to print out for her at the home.  Among other things, Clinton requested that Santos print out drafts of her speeches, confidential memos and “call sheets” — background information and talking points prepared for the secretary of state in advance of a phone call with a foreign head of state.”

“Pls ask Marina to print for me in am,” Clinton emailed top aide Huma Abedin regarding a redacted 2011 message marked sensitive but unclassified.  In a classified 2012 email dealing with the new president of Malawi, another Clinton aide, Monica Hanley, advised Clinton, “We can ask Marina to print this.”  “Revisions to the Iran points” was the subject line of a classified April 2012 email to Clinton from Hanley.  In it, the text reads, “Marina is trying to print for you.”

Both classified emails were marked “confidential,” the tier below “secret” or “top secret.”

Santos also had access to a highly secure room called an SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) that diplomatic security agents set up at Whitehaven, according to FBI notes from an interview with Abedin.  From within the SCIF, Santos — who had no clearance — “collected documents from the secure facsimile machine for Clinton,” the FBI notes revealed.  Just how sensitive were the papers Santos presumably handled? The FBI noted Clinton periodically received the Presidential Daily Brief — a top-secret document prepared by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies — via the secure fax.

A 2012 “sensitive” but unclassified email from Hanley to Clinton refers to a fax the staff wanted Clinton “to see before your Netanyahu mtg. Marina will grab for you.”  Yet it appears Clinton was never asked by the FBI in its yearlong investigation to turn over the iMac that Santos used to receive the emails, or the printer she used to print out the documents, or the printouts themselves.”

Marina Santos is a poor Filipino immigrant who is responsible for cleaning Hillary’s Washington, D.C. residence, “White Haven” (vice “White House”).  Hillary used her as a go-fer.  Printing out emails was too demeaning to ask of Huma Abedin, and so Huma was instructed to ask Marina to do it.

Marina’s access to a SCIF is mind-blowing.  What is the point of a SCIF if unsecured cleaning staff can go in, unsupervised, at any time?  A Presidential Daily Brief is born classified at the Top Secret level, and Hillary’s cleaning lady was tasked with printing out the faxed copy and collating it.

Hillary’s high-handed attitude towards inconvenient protocols is consistent with her “above-the-law” attitude.  Testing how this attitude would work in a president would be a dangerous experiment to embark upon.  Hillary Clinton as president is a constitutional crisis waiting to happen.

All this and much else could be avoided were Donald Trump elected president.

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