AN HONEST POLITICIAN
TRUMP IS NORMAL – SWAMP THINGS ARE NOT
Establishment elitists and NeverTrump fellow travellers got the vapors over what the president said at the NATO conference. Watch above – and smile -- as Trump utters the words that triggered them so.
It’s a bad idea for Germany to buy natural gas from Russia because it makes Germany vulnerable to blackmail, and because what Germany will pay for the gas could finance Russian aggression, the president said. And it’s way past time for the 28 other NATO nations to bear their fair share of the common defense.
In what alternate universe must one dwell to think prodding NATO allies to spend more on defense, and depriving Russia of billions of euros of hard currency helps Putin?
TRUMP’S FOREIGN POLICY IN ONE WORD: RECIPROCITY
Critics of Donald Trump claim there is no rhyme or reason to his foreign policy. But there is – it’s called reciprocity.
Trump tries to force other countries to treat the United States as it treats them. In “Don’t Tread On Me” style, he also warns enemies that any aggressive act will be replied to in kind.
The underlying principle of Trump commercial reciprocity is that the United States is no longer powerful or wealthy enough to alone underwrite the security of the West. It can no longer assume sole enforcement of the rules and protocols of the postwar global order.
This year there have been none of the usual Iranian provocations—frequent during the Obama Administration—of harassing American ships in the Persian Gulf. Apparently, the Iranians now realize that anything they do to an American ship will be replied to with overwhelming force. They can be taught.
GROWING RESISTANCE TO CHINA’S PERFIDY
The hard edges of China’s global soft power projection have been put under the microscope in a June 19 White House document entitled How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World.
The 35-page statement, attributed to White House economic adviser Peter Navarro, accuses the Chinese party-and-state apparatus of using spies, hackers, state-owned enterprises, front companies, as well as ethnic Chinese scholars and students resident in the US to “threaten the technologies and intellectual property of the United States and the world.”
Along with numerous reports in the Western media about PRC efforts to buy cultural and political influence in the US, the EU, and Australia, the White House document speaks to increasing awareness of the hard edges of Chinese soft power projection: namely, gathering intelligence and pilfering IPR (intellectual property rights) so as to speed up China’s transition to a full-fledged superpower.
Espionage, illegal IPR acquisition, and influence peddling have become part and parcel of China’s soft power push. The result has been an unprecedented pushback from Western nations.
HE CHOSE WISELY
It should be embarrassing to some social conservatives that they refuse to see this.
An additional cross President Trump must bear as he battles Democrats, the MSM, the entrenched bureaucracy and the GOPe to make America America again is supporters suffering severe brain fog.
In hindsight, we can see why President Trump chose wisely for Kavanaugh over social conservative favorite Amy Coney Barrett. Here’s why…
CAN WE TALK ABOUT BLACK ABORTION?
As Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination tees up another national debate about “reproductive rights” is it too much to ask that abortion’s impact on the black population be part of the discussion?
When the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, polling showed that blacks were less likely than whites to support abortion.
In the intervening decades, those views shifted. Leaders of black civil-rights organizations today are joined at the hip with abortion-rights proponents such as Planned Parenthood – resulting in the enormous outsize toll that abortion has taken on the black population post-Roe.
In New York City, thousands more black babies are aborted than born alive each year, and the abortion rate among black mothers is more than three times higher than it is for white mothers. Nationally, black women terminate pregnancies at far higher rates than other women as well.
The little discussed flip side of “reproductive freedom” is that among blacks, abortion deaths far exceed those via cancer, violent crime, heart disease, AIDS and accidents.
A LIBERAL LAW PROFESSOR’S CASE FOR BRETT KAVANAUGH
The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice is President Trump’s finest hour, his classiest move.
Last week the President promised to select “someone with impeccable credentials, great intellect, unbiased judgment, and deep reverence for the laws and Constitution of the United States.” In picking Judge Kavanaugh, he has done just that.
In 2016, I strongly supported Hillary Clinton for president as well as President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland. But today, with the exception of the current justices and Judge Garland, it is hard to name anyone with judicial credentials as strong as those of Judge Kavanaugh.
He sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (the most influential circuit court) and commands wide and deep respect among scholars, lawyers and jurists.
Judge Kavanaugh, who is 53, has already helped decide hundreds of cases concerning a broad range of difficult issues. Good appellate judges faithfully follow the Supreme Court; great ones influence and help steer it.
A CONSERVATIVE COURT DECADES IN MAKING FOR DECADES TO COME
“The judge’s job is to interpret the law, not to make the law or make policy. So read the words of the statute as written. Read the text of the Constitution as written, mindful of history and tradition. Don’t make up new constitutional rights that are not in the text of the Constitution. Don’t shy away from enforcing constitutional rights that are in the text of the Constitution.”President Trump’s selection of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court last night (7/09) culminates a three-decade project unparalleled in American history to install a reliable conservative majority on the nation’s highest tribunal, one that could shape the direction of the law for years to come.--Judge Brett Kavanaugh, June 2, 2016
All of the years of vetting and grooming and lobbying and list-making by conservative legal figures frustrated by Republican appointees who drifted to the left arguably has come down to this moment, when they stand on the precipice of appointing a fifth justice who, they hope, will at last establish a bench firmly committed to their principles.
“They’ve been pushing back for 30 years, and, obviously, the announcement tonight is a big step in the right direction,” said Curt Levey, the president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative activist group, who has been working toward this goal full time since 2005. “It’ll be the first time we can really say we have a conservative court, really the first time since the 1930s.”
THE CLUELESS RETARD
Last night (Thursday July 6), President Trump at a rally in Great Falls, Montana, described Maxine Waters as a “low-IQ individual… somewhere in the mid-60s.”
From Human Rights Watch -- Mental Retardation: An Overview:
“Intelligence quotient (I.Q.) tests are designed to measure intellectual functioning. An I.Q. score provides a rough numerical assessment of an individual's present level of mental functioning in comparison with that of others. The vast majority of people in the United States have I.Q.s between 80 and 120, with an I.Q. of 100 considered average.
To be diagnosed as having mental retardation, a person must have an I.Q. below 70-75, i.e. significantly below average. If a person scores below 70 on a properly administered and scored I.Q. test, he or she is in the bottom 2 percent of the American population10 and meets the first condition necessary to be defined as having mental retardation.
Although all persons with mental retardation have significantly impaired mental development, their intellectual level can vary considerably. An estimated 89 percent of all people with retardation have I.Q.s in the 51-70 range. An I.Q. in the 60 to 70 range is approximately the scholastic equivalent to the third grade.”
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/06/18
Jack Wheeler is giving some lucky TTPers a tour of lovely Portugal today, so he asked me to fill in on the HFR.
No really big news broke this holiday week, but there were harbingers of big shoes soon to drop, starting Monday.
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More than 20,000 Americans work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. How many ICE agents do you think will vote for Democrats this year?
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If President Trump were worried about Special Counsel Robert Mueller, would he be planning a summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin?
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President Trump won’t announce his nominee for the Supreme Court until Monday, but the MSM, relying on the usual “anonymous sources,” say the frontrunners are District of Columbia Circuit Court Judge Brian Kavanaugh and 7th Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
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Associate Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools, “the most important unknown person in D.C.,” will leave the Justice Department Monday. It isn’t clear whether he jumped, or was pushed.
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EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned yesterday (7/5). leftists will hang his scalp on their lodgepole, go after other administration officials with renewed vigor.
Reading between the lines of Trump’s tweets, I get the impression there is some substance to leftist charges of ethics abuses. “Within the agency, Scott has done an outstanding job.”
In terms of policy, Acting Director Andrew Wheeler is Pruitt on steroids. So leftist joy may be short lived.
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If you look up “presstitute” in the dictionary, you’ll find a photo of New York Times reporter Ali Watkins, 26.
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