Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Cohen
- Summit
- Methodists
- Latinos
- Kids
- Polling
- Opioids
- Pastry
- Border
- Cohen. House democrat held three days of hearings with President Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen. The hearings were nicely timed so as to coincide with Trump’s nuclear arms summit with the Norks. Cohen is now represented by Clinton consigliere Lanny Davis, who sat behind him for the entirety of the hearing. Make no mistake, when you see Lanny Davis, think Hillary, who wrote, edited, and orchestrated the entire show. Most important fallout of this was the wanton destruction of 500 years of precedent with Attorney Client Privilege, just to get Trump. I am reminded of the scene from 1960’s A Man for All Seasons when Thomas More defends both the law and the devil. The democrats are about to get themselves yet another Pyrrhic victory.
- Summit. President Trump walked away from a nuclear arms treaty with North Korea last week, keeping both their nuke program and US sanctions in place. It looks like Trump is angling to drive a wedge between the Norks and the ChiComs by pressuring both of them. The summit was intentionally held in Hanoi so as to show Kim Jong Un what would be possible if he decided to join the 21st Century as something other than a Worker’s paradise (/sarc). All the usual suspects blasted the outcome as sheer incompetence, still misidentifying a process with a result. This is not over. It is just another step in an extended process. Kim has to convince his military to go along with him toward whatever future he thinks he wants. We will see if they allow him to go. https://www.npr.org/2019/01/08/683123728/kim-jong-un-goes-to-china
- Methodists. One of the reasons I am a former Methodist was the hard-left move by the United Methodist Church a couple decades ago when they forgot they were a church preaching the Gospel and started dabbling in leftist social causes. Turns out many church members hung around and fought back. Last week, the church voted to toughen prohibitions against same-sex marriage and LGBTQWXYZ clergy at a conference in St Louis specifically held to address the issues. Many progressive churches are likely to end up leaving the denomination. Methodists today are roughly divided between more traditionalists and more liberal churches, the very definition of an impending split. Nobody was happy with the outcome. But what did the left expect when they picked this fight? To win forever? Likely, yes. But the enemy always gets a vote in a fight. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/united-methodists-fracture-lgbt-plan-rejected/583693/
- Latinos. President Trump is working as hard as he can to destroy the democrat party by making inroads into their minority voters – blacks and Latinos. The great race will be between Trump peeling off enough democrat minority voters to overcome massive democrat voting fraud and illegals voting for democrats. Should be quite a battle. We saw an example of this last year when Trump invited Kanye into the WH for an event that had Kanye wearing a MAGA hat and gushing over him on camera. Last week, Politico, the Beltway political rag ran a story about Trump peeling off Latino voters. The first paragraph discussed Trump’s 50% approval among Latinos in January. Polling before the 2016 election found Latinos supporting Trump by only 18%. Their actual vote was 28%, shocking to the swamp given Trump’s incendiary language on immigration and border security, language which it turns out plays well in the Latino community. Trump may very well be on his way to passing Bush’s 2004 40%Latino vote which is starting to worry democrats. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/24/2020-hispanic-voters-donald-trump-225192
- Kids. A recent strategy of the climatistas is to hide their lawyers behind children while filing all manner of lawsuits against the government demanding courts order the government to do what their elected officials refuse to do. These are typically described as the Climate Kids lawsuits and are yet another form of lawfare. Last week a federal judge in PA tossed a lawsuit brought by and environmental organization and two kids against Trump administration relaxation of environmental rules imposed during the O’Bama regime. Clean Air v United States claimed that the Trump administration changes in environmental regs and other “anti-science” decisions violate Constitutional rights and the public trust. The judge laughed at the attempt by the greens to “supervise any actions by the President and his appointees that might touch on the environment.” He then went on to blast US District Judge Ann Aiken, a Clinton judicial appointee in Oregon for her decision in Juliana v United States, that their young plaintiffs had a constitutional right to a livable climate. Aiken was the first US judge to recognize the conditional right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life fundamental to a free and ordered society. The PA federal judge slapped Aiken for contravening or ignoring longstanding judicial authority. He took issue with the notion of what guaranteeing a stable climate would require, calling it “without apparent limit.” He went on to state that the two kids did not have standing, as their claims that climate change was causing their severe allergies failed to directly tie their problems to government actions. He said this was a political dispute best left to the political process. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/22/judge-tosses-kids-climate-case-in-pennsylvania/
- Polling. I am a long-time fan of the notion that the Laws of Physics apply to the political world. The problem with this is that world is non-linear, meaning that there will always be a reaction, though it is rarely equal or opposite in nature. Polling on abortion shifted dramatically as NY, VA, VT and other states are happily and proudly adopting laws that allow them to murder children just before, during and just after they are born. The most recent Marist poll now has Americans as likely to identify as pro-life as pro-choice, tied at 47% apiece. Pro-choice used to lead this split by 17% at 55 – 38%. This change took place in less than a month. Among democrats, the previous pro-life – pro-choice split changed from 20 – 75% a month ago to 34 – 61% today. Perhaps murdering your babies and cheering about it is no longer viewed as a positive lifestyle choice by rank and file democrats. This is the first time since 2009 when as many Americans identified as pro-life as pro-choice. Final interesting number is 80% of Americans support abortion being limited to the first 3 months of pregnancy, a 5% shift upwards in less than a month. Interestingly (and not unexpectedly) the Axios article blames the shift on political machinations of the Trump administration rather than the logical reaction infanticide legislation passed in NY, VT and attempted in VA. https://www.axios.com/abortion-rights-marist-poll-pro-life-pro-choice-7170b431-eb2f-4292-b801-8ed56cf2d056.html
- Opioids. I have been scratching my head about the recently growing opioid crisis. It is especially worrisome when the feds get themselves involved with pain control medicines, pressuring how and when physicians prescribe them to patients. I always get worried when a 60 Minutes episode starts showing up in various drive-by media feeds. This time around was a Feb 24 piece blaming the FDA for igniting the opioid crisis. They make the case that Oxycontin was first approved in 1995 as a powerful treatment intended for only short-term use. The science at the time only supported it as safe and effective for short term use. There was a meeting with the manufacturer and the FDA in 2001 when its use was expanded significantly for use by people with long-term, chronic pain. As usual, CBS was trying to make the case that Big Pharma pressured the poor, innocent government into changing its approval guidelines and in turn created the current epidemic. When they trotted out former Clintonoid FDA Commissioner David Kessler, I knew our goose was cooked. This piece showed up in numerous other venues last week also. So, what did they not talk about? They chose not to talk about the flood of opioids from the Mexican cartels. They did not talk about the flood of fentanyl from China. They did not talk about how the recently imposed pressure on doctors to not prescribe opioids was harming the well-being and lifestyle of countless millions of chronic pain sufferers. They did not talk about the continuing one-size-fits-all approach to drug regulation, control, and approval by the FDA was by definition adding to the overall problem. They didn’t talk about the extended process in approving new drugs as one of the fundamental reasons the Big Guys (the Evil Big Pharma) are the only ones capable of participating in development and approval of new drugs. As usual, CBS crafts their story to get their predetermined conclusion (Big Phama Bad) rather than the real conclusion (Big Government Bad). Final number is that only 1% of new opioid addicts got that way via prescription pain meds. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-epidemic-did-the-fda-ignite-the-crisis-60-minutes/
- Pastry. The free-flowing Orange Man Bad two-minutes hate that passes for political discourse on the left these days targeted President Trump’s pastry chef working at Mar-a-Lago. The reason the chef was targeted was because she posted some QAnon content on her personal social media accounts. This led an enterprising Daily Beast reporter to hunt the chef down, ridicule him (or her) online. Ever the discerning consumers of actual news, the Rolling Stone and MSNBC also picked up the story. The only reason the chef was singled out for this tender, loving media attention is that she works at a Trump property. Had she worked anywhere else, she would have been completely ignored. This is part of the continuing media assault of and eagerness to take down anyone associated with, however remotely with Donald Trump. The Daily Beast released the name, image and work details of the chef to their readers. This is why we are very rightfully coming to hate and despise the media. https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/02/the-daily-beast-goes-after-pastry-chef-at-mar-a-lago-for-thought-crime-because-trump-owns-property/
- Border. As democrats careen ever closer to a permanent embrace of socialism, it is important to pay attention to what is going on in Venezuela, where the Chavitista socialists are clinging to power with increasing desperation. One defining qualities about socialism is the use of Other People’s Money. The other is a kneejerk response to authoritarian force when opposed. It even shows up in budding socialists like AOC who a few weeks ago told critics of her Green New Deal to sit down and shut up if they didn’t have a similar proposal. In Venezuela, Cubans who were long the muscle for the regime have taken to shooting Venezuelans on the border who are desperate for food. Last week’s violence wounded some 300 and left at least 3 dead on the Brazilian border. The Maduro regime is blocking aid to its starving people, like all good little socialists. I expect this violence to escalate as the Cubans and other visiting goon squads defend their lives with increasingly deadly force. I also expect all of these guys to end up dead – Cubans, Iranians, Russians and ChiComs – if they don’t evacuate the country soon. Eventually, the population will not put with this anymore and take appropriate action. After which, the revolution will spill over to Cuba, Nicaragua and other south and central American nations that have been embracing socialism for decades. Socialism does have its efficiencies. It is among the best ways to impoverish an entire nation in the shortest possible time. It is also among the best ways to enrich its leadership and their families to fabulous levels of wealth. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics/after-venezuelan-troops-block-aid-maduro-faces-diplomatic-siege-idUSKCN1QD0LX
More later –
– AG