Interesting Items 02/06 –
Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- You’re fired!
- Abbott
- Protests
- Lisa
- Tribes
- Drought
- EO
- You’re fired! President Trump summarily fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates last week hours after she refused to enforce his Executive Order halting immigration from seven failed countries in the Middle East for 120 days (think extreme vetting of refugees). Yates was an O’Bama holdover filling in while senate democrats did their level best to obstruct and delay confirmation of Trump cabinet secretaries. Yates comes straight out of the Holder – Lynch school of leftist activism while on the public dime. She is a known entity within the department. Cynics would conclude that she was simply grandstanding on her way out the front door, building her personal bona fides for her next job in a DC leftist law firm. She was also standing up and taking the bullet as an application for a high level job in the next democrat administration. The media played the event as the second coming of the Nixon midnight massacre when then acting Attorney General Robert Bork fired Nixon Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Thing is, nobody out of the democrat echo chamber that used to call itself the mainstream media cared very much. They have been watching Trump fire people on TV for years and were surprised it took so long to start. Some on the right like Laura Ingraham got into full second guessing mode with the observation that all O’Bama appointees should have been fired on day one. I tend to agree with her point, but don’t mind a public firing a bit as it sends a strong message to every single O’Bama appointee or hire remaining in public service – and there are a lot of them left. The first thing you need to do with the opposition is get its attention. The Yates firing was a nicely delivered 2×4 aimed at the forehead of democrats in Washington DC. We will see if they need another delivery. My guess is yes. This won’t be the last firing. One final observation is the quick response to Yates refusal. Trump didn’t let anyone think about it overnight. He pulled the trigger quickly, forcefully and unequivocally, almost like he and his team expected this to happen. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/30/sally-yates-acting-attorney-general-fired-trump/
- Abbott. Speaking of promised responses to leftist provocation, Texas Governor Greg Abbott cut state funds to Austin after the Travis County Sherriff announced that the city’s jails would no longer honor federal immigration orders and rules. This essentially turns the liberal enclave of Austin into a sanctuary city, something Abbott and the Texas legislature have promised to punish. Abbott blocked $1.5 million in grant money for crime victim services, courts and other law enforcement programs. As Austin is one of the most leftist enclaves in the state of Texas, the Sherriff got a state judge to write a letter to Abbott defending the sheriff. Abbott and the legislature are working on legislation that will allow the State of Texas to ban sanctuary cities, campuses and punish local governments who refuse to arrest and / or detain immigrants illegally in the counties. Travis County (Austin) is not the only county who wants to play this game, as he warned Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez to back down from a policy change on federal immigration detention requests or face financial penalties. This is going to be a lot of fun to watch. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/02/texas-gov-abbott-cuts-funding-to-austin-over-sanctuary-city-policies.html
- Protests. Protests broke out at airports in mostly blue states and cities almost immediately following signature of the EO putting a pause on refugees / immigration from seven Middle Eastern nations. Media coverage painted the protests which tied up air travel for tens of thousands as spontaneous, growing out of nowhere, and grassroots-driven. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Investors Business Daily ran an editorial demonstrating that the protests had been planned and coordinated as far back as November 9 last year. Turning out this number of people on a short notice takes no small amount of logistics. It also means that all the signs were pre-printed and ready for distribution. What we saw at the airports was a preplanned, coordinated battle plan by professional organizers. Yet not a single media outlet reported the protests as preplanned and orchestrated. The other protest, or more properly externally organized riot took place at the birthplace of the Free Speech movement some 50 years ago, Berkeley, where violent rioters shut down a speech by right wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. One of the organizers of this protest was the Alliance for Global Justice which was funded by the ever-reliable George Soros via donations from his Tides Foundation. The US Steel workers also donated to the AGJ along with the city of Tucson. When asked, Tucson claimed that its money were simply a pass-through from a Native American tribe. Corporate donors to this mayhem included Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and Lush Cosmetic. Another major donation came from Hilly’s New World Foundation. AGJ is the fiscal sponsor of Refuse Fascism who hired and trained the rioters and should be responsible for the mayhem. The local government and police stood by and allowed the rioters to destroy private property, destroy storefronts, and commit mayhem on attendees. At least one UCal employee also participated. It is beyond ironic that an organization that calls itself Refuse Fascism go full Kristallnacht in its efforts to shut down free speech. But the left has been doing this for a long, long time. http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/03/look-who-funds-the-group-behind-the-call-to-arms-at-milos-berkeley-event/
- Lisa. Alaska senior Senator Lisa Murkowski went full teacher’s union last week with her announcement to vote against the confirmation of Betsy DeVoss as Secretary of Education. This is not a surprise, as Lisa tends to stray a bit between elections. As long as she concentrates on energy and Alaska issues, she is in her wheelhouse. Otherwise, she is infuriating. Her announcement was coordinated with Susan Collins (RINO, ME). Immediate reaction from the talk shows was that Murkowski and Collins were simply bought off by NEA / AEA campaign donations. If so, she should have voted for DeVoss whose family members donated over $43,000 to her 2016 reelection campaign, more than the teacher’s unions donated. Lisa raises a lot of money and the NEA / AEA money while significant, was not enough to purchase her vote. The senate majority had to do some work keeping the rest of the majority in line. Lisa was incredibly condescending in her comments, accusing DeVoss of knowing nothing about the government schools and wanting to remove education choice from the handicapper community. I always like it when elected officials hide behind the handicappers without asking their parents what they actually think. As a reminder, Lisa was reelected in November with a whopping 44% of the total vote in a state that President Trump won with 51% of the vote. She allowed a last minute candidacy by thrice defeated Joe Miller to siphon off over 29% of the vote. I would say that she does not have a lot of maneuvering room left should she pull another stunt like this. Someone is going to announce a campaign in 2018 or so for her reelection in 2022 and have enough time to put together a statewide campaign. Life is about choices. In this one, Lisa chose poorly. https://www.adn.com/politics/2017/02/01/murkowski-announces-she-will-vote-against-trumps-education-secretary-nominee/
- Tribes. An example of the pushback democrats and their incessant minority group victim mongering is creating was published in The American Conservative last week. The piece was entitled “Creating the White Tribe.” One of my favorite observations about the political wars is that the Laws of Physics apply to the political world. For every action, there is not necessary an opposite and equal reaction. There will be a reaction, but its magnitude and reaction will not be predictable as the political system is a non-linear system. The more we see the professional protesters beating up Trump supporters for being white, the more we see them trashing businesses, going after children, and conducting their Two Minutes Hate routine on people who don’t necessarily agree with them, the more people who previously chose to be non-combatants in the political wars will instead choose a war footing. The article makes the case for the seductive pull of the notion that we are not the fount of evil in this world. The more we get beat up for being and believing who and what we are, the more seductive a tribal view becomes. When the left turns itself into the functional equivalent of the Black Hole or the Dog Pound popular with Raider or Brown’s fans, the rest of us will become Steelers fans and return the favor. I do think the left is trying to trigger an over the top reaction out of the rest of us. What they don’t understand is that once started, that reaction will not stop for a while. But if they want to go tribal, there is an increasing number of us that are preparing to return the favor with a vengeance. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/creating-the-white-tribe/
- Drought. California has been in the throes of what has been called the Great California Drought up until this winter, when it appears to be breaking. The drought is a triple whammy to residents of the state – shutting off water to farmers in the interior, giving the coastal greens their “I told you so” excuse as they point to manmade global warming due to CO2 emissions, and a reminder to the democrat majority in state government that has obstructed every single infrastructure project for roads and water for decades. That obstruction has progressed to the point where there is enough in place to support a population half of what currently resides in California. As the drought progressed over the last several years, it has gotten to the point where there was some very real doubt that it would ever be broken. This winter, with the collapse of La Nina, the jet stream has repositioned itself to pump a lot of moisture over California. And that moisture has refilled the depleted reservoirs and restocked the Sierra Nevada with a significant snow cap. The drought appears to be mostly broken in the part of the state north of San Francisco. The southern part of the state, not so much yet. Residents of California forget the weather extremes the state is capable of. For instance, there was a massive rain event called the Great Flood of 1862 which turned much of California’s Central Valley into an inland sea. And what has happened in the past can most certainly happen again in the future. http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/03/california-drought-first-snow-survey-of-the-year-tuesday-as-big-storms-forecast/
- EO. The hot item of last week was Trump’s Executive Order of a temporary ban of immigrants / refugees from seven Middle Eastern nations which are unable to properly vet their backgrounds. Once signed, the left and their media mouthpieces went completely nuts starting with the preplanned protests at airports mentioned earlier. Soros funded lawyers and Attorneys General from blue states started courtroom shopping for a suitable friendly federal judge. They found at least to who issued temporary restraining orders on the entire EO. One was an O’Bama appointee located in Brooklyn. The other was a Bush 43 (courtesy of Patty Murray) appointee located in Seattle. The thing is that the restricted travel ban is black letter law, which used to matter at least a little bit to the left. If the law no longer applies, then it may be time for the political right to start playing along. http://theduran.com/donald-trumps-executive-order-entry-full-text-analysis/
More later –
– AG