THE PRINCE AND THE POTUS
The Prince and the POTUS
Things change. But if change isn’t punctuated by dramatic events, we tend to be slow the grasp its significance.
Consider how differently Americans regarded Germany and Japan in 1961 than in 1945.
The changes in the Middle East in the 16 years since 9/11 are almost as profound as were the changes in Germany and Japan between 1945 and 1961. But because they weren’t ushered in by the atomic bomb, we haven’t paid as much attention to them.
I’ve regarded Saudi Arabia as our most dangerous enemy in the Middle East, because the Saudi royal family financed Wahhabi madrassas and mosques all over the world, Wahhabism/Salafism is the source of Sunni Islamist terror.
Yet, suddenly, that’s all changed now, due to a set of extraordinary circumstances that both a Saudi Prince affectionately known as MbS and a new American President understand and are cooperating on. Here’s the story of the Prince and the POTUS.
Join the forum discussion on this postGARY COHN, SWAMP MONSTER
According to the New York Times (9/12), Gary Cohn, chief economic advisor to President Trump, is to host a meeting in New York with the world’s leading climate and energy ministers next Monday (9/18).
This meeting he has planned with the world’s climate and energy alarmists will no doubt be sold as just another case of oiling the wheels of diplomacy.
It’s not. It’s a deliberate provocation; an act of war; a statement of intent by one of the most vicious alligators in the swamp that no way is that stagnant, slimy, watery domain going to be drained because the living there is so easy that it must never be allowed to end.
That’s because the climate change industry is a $1.5 trillion a year boondoggle arranged for the benefit of dodgy second-rate scientists, rent-seeking corporations, power-crazed technocrats, publicity-hungry anti-capitalist NGOs, and financiers like Gary Cohn.
GERMANY’S HERO IS STILL CHAMBERLAIN
Merkel with her heartthrob
The election of Donald Trump as the 45th American president in November 2016 resulted in a predictable wave of barely concealed anti-American sentiment in the European media and officialdom alike. The reasons are not difficult to understand.
The European Union as the major European political institution is generally left-of-center and much closer ideologically to the Democrat Party elites in the United States than to the Republicans. Further, the European media are closely attuned to the mainstream media in the U.S. and look at the country through pretty much their prism.
What has followed since is more disturbing still because it points to new fault lines that augur ill for the West and Europe in particular. The German Left as represented by foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel has gone as far as demanding the withdrawal of American nuclear weapons from Germany, which in practice means the end of NATO.
Even more serious is Angela Merkel rapidly becoming Putin’s Chamberlain. For the picture of Merkel fawning over Putin above certainly brings to mind the infamous British Prime Minister doing the same with Hitler in 1938:
THE PROBLEM OF PAUL RYAN
Have you ever known someone who was exceptionally smart, very personable and highly accomplished, but was not particularly good at managing a large number of independently minded people? I have. His name is Paul Ryan.
President Trump, who is not as nice as Mr. Ryan but a get-it-done fellow, made a deal with the Democrats, which would have never been necessary if Mr. Ryan and Mr. McConnell had done their jobs.
Students, members of the military, and workers in the private sector are usually penalized, or worse, for not meeting critical deadlines. Why should members of Congress and their leaders get a free pass?
Both Mr. Ryan and Mr. McConnell are too beholden to the traditional way of doing things, unlike their opponents.
THE VIRTUE OF HAPPINESS
Life itself is a defiance of the principle of entropy – the tendency for matter to devolve into chaos and disorder.
Life takes nutrients and the energy of inspiration and creates its own order, its own structure, and its own direction. As human beings, our consciousness allows us to take this process a step further, expanding it into a different dimension: To decide consciously to move in a particular direction; to create, to engage, to love.
So a human life that is happy is not a trivial matter of being lucky, of getting what we want; of pleasant pastimes or the absence of responsibilities or pain.
A human life that is happy is an accomplishment; a triumphant, sometimes even a heroic creation.
To create a life that is truly happy over time takes discipline, passion, and courage. A happy moment can be a matter of luck; a happy life requires virtue.
THIS LAND IS OUR LAND
[As a political satire of Woody Guthrie’s lyrics, is there a patriot folk singer who can put this to music for YouTube?]
This land is our land
This land’s not your land
So get out of our land and go back to your land
This land was made for those here legally.
From California to the New York island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for those here legally.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway: I saw below me that golden valley: This land was made for those here legally.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; And all around me a voice was sounding: This land was made for those here legally.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling, And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting: This land was made for those here legally.
As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for those here legally.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw these people, By the relief office I seen these people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for those here illegally?
Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn back This land was made for those here legally.
This land is our land
This land’s not your land
So get out of our land and go back to your land
From California to the New York island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for those here legally.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/08/17
Jack is still in Eastern Europe, so you’re stuck with me again. He’ll be returning next week.
Coming off Hurricane Harvey, we are now staring down Hurricane Irma (especially those of us here in Florida). It genuinely appears to be a monster storm, so please pray for all those in its path. It has already done a great deal of harm in the Caribbean and the worst is likely yet to come.
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Largely overshadowed in a week dominated by DACA, North Korea and the debt ceiling deal was the President’s speech in North Dakota. But you need to take note. When even the Trump-skeptic Wall Street Journal says “Maybe The Obama Era Really Is Ending”, you know the winds really are changing.
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The left’s response? Just as last week when all of the criticism of Trump’s disaster relief effort focused on the First Lady’s footware, this week, they expressed horror and disgust that the President’s daughter calls him “daddy”.
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Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order is a variation on the Rahm “never let a crisis go to waste” Emanuel’s theme: never miss a chance to exploit a tragedy. And from Katrina (“Bush is a racist who deliberately undermined the dikes to commit genocide against black people”) to Charleston (“All law-abiding citizens must be disarmed because Dylan Roof murdered people needlessly disarmed in a gun-free zone”), Democrats shamelessly exploit tragedy like cows eat grass.
That’s DACA in a nutshell.
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Oh, and by the way: post-DACA announcement, Trump’s approval rating ticked up to 46% for the first time in two months. Take that RINOs.
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And if that’s not enough, then the President pulled the rug out from under RINOs by cutting a debt ceiling deal with the Democrats. And Paul Ryan was just gobsmacked.
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Last week I told you that the left sees Hurricanes Harvey and Irma as punishment for America’s sins against progressivism. This week Jennifer Lawrence doubled down on that, saying the hurricanes are nature’s wrath for electing Donald Trump.
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Sheriff David Clarke got a new job this week, at a pro-Trump Super PAC. Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore is beating Luther Strange by double digits – 52-36 – for the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama: that will make lots of Dem and RINO heads pop.
Here we go with this week's Late Night HFR.. it's worth the wait! 🙂
A GREAT PEOPLE
Cajun Navy in action
We are still a great people. The Cajun Navy and other rescuers during Harvey remind us of that.
But we lack the culture or the politics to reflect that greatness. The noble impulses that lead men to risk their lives in flooding are there. But our society no longer has the vessels to hold and sustain those impulses.
The media doesn't quite know what to make of the rescuers. You can see the itching to return to the stories that it knows and likes. Russia. Trump hit pieces. People punching each other in the street over politics. It swerves at the first sight of a Confederate flag on a rescue boat or Ted Cruz's Sandy vote. It doesn't want to dwell on the best of us. Behavior like that doesn't make sense anymore.
Generations have grown up with leftist protesters as their definition of heroes. Look in a history book and the last 70 years consisted of "heroes" who marched around waving signs until they got everything they wanted. And every day in the news there are more "heroes" marching for illegal aliens, transgender bathrooms, the supremacy of black lives and any other identity politics cause.
But waving a placard to the adulation of the media isn't heroism. Saving lives is.
HOW AND WHY CHINA IS USING NORTH KOREA AGAINST AMERICA
The nuclear c
onfrontation between the US and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday (9/03) with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb.
With North Korea now a direct threat to US cities, the confrontation isn’t about US superpower status in Asia, and the credibility of US deterrence or the capabilities of US military forces in the Pacific. The confrontation is now about the US’s ability to protect the lives of its citizens.
The distinction tells us a number of important things. All of them are alarming. Which brings us to China.
China has been the main beneficiary of North Korea’s conventional and nuclear aggression and brinksmanship. This state of affairs was laid bare in a critical way last month.
TRUMP IS RIGHT, RUBIO SHOULD BE ASHAMED ON NASA
The next head of NASA is likely to be an ex-Navy fighter pilot turned Republican congressman who believes strongly in space exploration but is skeptical about man-made climate change.
What’s not to like about about Trump’s nomination of Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma) for the job of NASA’s administrator?
Everything, if you’re a liberal.
According to New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi, Trump just blew the perfect chance to change his “presidency from the chaotic mess of threats, bitterness and bilious paranoia to one of rationality and reasonableness.”
It would be nice to dismiss Ms. Stasi as merely the deranged frothings of a rent-an-opinion, left-wing columnist who has bizarrely chosen to borrow her surname from that of the secret police in former Communist East Germany. Unfortunately, she’s by no means the exception.
Most liberals think as she does. Indeed, so do quite a few establishment conservatives – like Senator Marco Rubio.