Measuring with the Wrong Ruler- Trump’s First Hundred Days

Not that one might ever see this in the mainstream media, but measuring the first hundred days of the Trump administration is essentially measuring with the wrong ruler.

Ever since the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which began on March 4th, 1933, every elected president since has been measured by the same wrong ruler. Roosevelt was elected to his first term on November 8th, 1932 and, as was the case back then, didn’t take office until March 4th, the following year. In essence, President-elect Roosevelt had a full four months to prepare for his presidency so it is no wonder that his “first hundred days” (whose measurement began five days later on March 9th) was marked with a bevy of bills passed by Congress until the measurement period ended on June 16th, 1933.

Compare that to Donald Trump, who was elected on the same day, November 8th, 2016, eighty-four years later. President-elect Trump had less than two and a half months to prepare for his own presidency. To measure him fairly and arithmetically against Roosevelt would equate to his first hundred days ending on May 9th, not April 29th as the media would otherwise have us believe. Needless to say, what the mainstream media is doing is measuring Trump’s first hundred days with a bogus ruler.

When Roosevelt was elected, the number of Cabinet-level appointees requiring advice and consent from the Senate was ten. FDR’s cabinet was approved by the Senate within the first few weeks of his administration. Compare that to Trump who is required to gain such approval on twenty-four cabinet level appointees and, thanks to obstructionist Democrats led by Charles Schumer (D-NY), has still not seen a complete cabinet emplaced a full four months later.

 
When Roosevelt was elected, Congress didn’t take the vast number of recesses as is the case today, so getting action on legislation was far easier in 1933 than it is in 2017. Roosevelt also had the luxury of having a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in the Senate, and a much larger Democrat majority in the House of Representatives than President Trump enjoys with his Republican caucus. These sheer comparative numbers do not even take into account the stridency and over-the-top partisanship that exists in 2017, as compared to the political discourse that took place in 1933.

Roosevelt enjoyed an even-greater advantage than Donald Trump will ever hope to enjoy- the adoration and support of the mainstream media. No president, with the possible exception of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, has enjoyed as much support and as little scrutiny as did Franklin Roosevelt when his presidency began. Compare that to the hostile and, perhaps, despicable way that Donald Trump and his administration are covered and the comparative difference is as striking as it is blatantly hypocritical.

The mainstream media will drone on and on about what they perceive to be President Trump’s supposed failure in his first hundred days to secure legislative wins in Congress, while minimizing all of the accomplishments of the new president in his executive orders and memoranda, not to mention the successful nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch- a feat no president has ever before accomplished in his first hundred days. The media will also gloss over Trump’s successes on the international front. Not only has Trump accomplished a 180° turn-around from the feckless foreign policy of his immediate predecessor, but has reset the trade policy from that of the last five administrations, combined. While Roosevelt’s international challenges did not begin to surface until his second term, which began in 1937, Trump inherited an absolute mess in the international arena on his first day- one fraught with far more danger than existed back in Roosevelt’s time.

But don’t expect a fair and full accounting of Donald Trump’s first hundred days in office from anyone in the mainstream media because, after all, Trump was the one who denied Hillary Clinton the presidency she so deserved, in the opinion of those who pretend to be objective in their coverage of the White House, and that was something that they will never forgive, for as long as Donald J. Trump is President of the United States.

-Drew Nickell, 27 April 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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Persona Non Grata- What to do about Kim

It’s a club that, truth be told, wants to cut off new membership.

The so-called “nuclear club” of nations who have “the bomb” has grown to the point of over-saturation. That “club” includes charter members – the United States, Russia (nee- Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France and China, all signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which went into force in 1970. Since then, three more nations- nations who are not signatories to the NPT- have budged their way into “the club,” those being India, Pakistan and, most recently in 2006, North Korea.

That late entry into “the club” poses a unique problem, not only for its members but also, and even more so, for its non-nuclear neighbors- Japan and South Korea. It’s not only that Kim Jong-un has a nuclear bomb, nor is it that he is developing missile systems which are capable of delivering the bomb, but rather that he is just crazy enough to actually launch a nuclear attack- both on his neighbors and on the United States forces stationed in those neighboring countries. Worse, he is the only national leader ever to have officially and specifically threatened to attack the United States in its 240-year history. Not even Adolf Hitler nor, for that matter, the Imperial Japanese Empire (who actually attacked the naval and air bases in Pearl Harbor), nor the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, ever actually threatened to attack the United States, but Kim Jong-un has repeatedly threatened to launch a nuclear strike at the United States- something that his father, Kim Jong-Il, nor his grandfather and founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung were ever insane enough to do.

Never mind the fact that his intermediate-range weapon-delivery systems aren’t entirely reliable and that his Inter-continental Ballistic Missile is still in development, Kim Jong-un has said that he intends to launch such an attack against the United States and, through the words of his envoy to the United Nations, Ja Song Nam, who yesterday warned that the United States is acting in such a way to bring about global thermo-nuclear war, is determined to do so, sometime in the not-quite-so-distant future.

That he has been able to proceed towards the capability to realize such a threat is the result of foolish miscalculations on the part of the United States. Heretofore, we have been repeatedly assured by the Chinese that they won’t allow the North Koreans to attain such capability- that and the fact that Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all touted their own would-be success in bringing the North Koreans under control…

…yeah, some control. The millennial, corpulent communist Kim is on the very threshold of tying a nuclear weapon to an intermediate-range ballistic missile, and is not very far away from doing the same thing to an ICBM- one capable of reaching the west coast of the United States’ mainland.

Finally, the United States has indicated that enough is enough. Since Clinton’s “six-party framework” to reign in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions has proved to be nothing but a farce, and Obama’s “strategic patience” was nothing more than an excuse for ignoring the growing threat, President Donald Trump has indicated to the Chinese that he is very prepared and quite willing to launch a preventive strike against the North Koreans, if the Chinese fail to reign in the tubby tyrant who is headed towards annihilation.

Trump’s recent missile attack against the Syrian airbase, from which sarin gas attacks were launched by the Assad regime, and the dropping of a Multiple Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB- also euphemistically called the “Mother of all Bombs”) on ISIS tunnels in eastern Afghanistan, has also sent a clear message to both Iran and North Korea that, while they can hide their nuclear capabilities underground, we can still take them out if we need to, and are not afraid to do so should contingencies arise.

Therein lies the crux, and the passage of time is no friend to anyone- not to us, not to the Iranians, not to the North Koreans, nor to any of the nations in Asia or the Middle East. Doing merely what his predecessors did would only leave President Trump in a position of enabling our enemies, in both Iran and North Korea, to eventually attack the United States with nuclear weapons. The fact that Iran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons and strategic medium- and long-range missiles, despite the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) pushed through by Barack Obama, should surprise no one who lives in the real world. Obama was a fool to push for and sign onto such a deal, because it offers nothing to ensure that Iran won’t become the next member of the nuclear club.

The fact that Kim Jong-un has now become a thorn in the side of his Chinese allies doesn’t help, either. China needs favorable trade agreements with the United States, much more than they need trouble from the little boy who lives next door. There is even some talk now that the Chinese might send in a hit-squad, to enable Kim to join his father and grandfather. After all, it’s far better to eliminate one irrepressible and incorrigible mad man, than to allow him to bring on a disaster of untold proportions. The longer Kim stays in power, the closer the world comes to its nuclear nightmare, and we now have a president who finally sees the world for what it has actually become, rather than the world everyone wishes it was, instead.

We wait and watch.

 

-Drew Nickell, 18 April 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

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The Perfect Strike

With Democrats feverishly and desperately trying to find anything and everything to explain away Hillary Clinton’s defeat last November, they pray that somehow they can prove that Donald Trump was in collusion with the Russian government to deny her the election she supposedly had all locked up…

…and his answer?

Nothing short of responding to Vladimir Putin in a way never even considered under any of the last four administrations- both Bushes’, Clinton’s and Obama’s- much less acted upon. Any thought that Donald Trump was going to appease Russia’s president, has gone the way of fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles. It’s now going to be that much more difficult for Democrats to allege that Trump is merely Putin’s lap dog, eager to do his bidding on the world stage.

Last week’s missile strike on Syria’s Shayrat air base, from which fixed wing aircraft were launched on orders of Bashir al-Assad, on April 4^th and then dropped sarin gas upon civilians in Khan Shaykun, a small town in northwestern Syria, surprised and shocked the watching world. Syria’s gas attack took the lives of over one hundred, many of whom were infants and small children. The barbarity of this attack was enough to prompt President Trump to quickly and ably retaliate with the go-ahead to launch the missiles from two U.S. Navy destroyers- all within seventy-two hours of the gas attack.

Unlike Obama, who would have dithered in response to the use of Syria’s chemical weapons (chemical weapons that they falsely and repeatedly claimed had been disposed of years ago, and as recently as January of this year, by Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, who reasserted this false claim) by submitting position papers of protest to the United Nations, which would have resulted in more meaningless claptrap, and who would have again waited for Congress to grant approval, President Trump would have none of that. He acted- quickly, resolutely and decisively with a perfectly-measured missile strike- one with more meaning than with actual brute force.

For starters, President Trump showed that he is a forceful commander-in-chief who will instantly respond to such situations that may arise, and without hesitancy, delay and advanced notice to our adversaries- something he repeatedly promised during his presidential campaign. Having given Russian military commanders in Syria an hour’s advanced notice of the missile launch, he took the moment to inform visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping during their farewell dinner, of the attack in a deft move to also convey a similar message to the Chinese- that the days of dithering on the part of his predecessor are done. He followed up on this message to the Chinese leader with the deployment of a western-Pacific aircraft carrier group, now headed towards the Korean peninsula, and assured them that the United States is prepared to take military action against North Korea, should the Chinese fail to hem in the provocative actions of North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un. For his own part, the North Korean dictator now has reason to believe that there is an unpredictable, and unintimidated U.S. president who will do that which his predecessors were afraid to do- be willing to launch a strike against his strategic missile launch site- located a mere thirty miles north of South Korea’s capital in Seoul.

Secondly, President Trump has shown his willingness to reposition and refocus his own strategy, based upon contingencies as they arise. During the campaign, and in the years before, it was Trump who indicated that the United States should avoid entanglement in Syria, specifically, and in other Middle Eastern hot spots where U.S. interests are not specifically at risk. Regardless, he has shown that he has a sense of noblesse oblige on the part of the United States to respond at any moment when such “red lines” are crossed and WMDs are visited upon innocent lives. While some purists in the halls of Congress thump their chests about the legality of Trump to launch such strikes without prior congressional approval, many of the anti-Trump forces, in both the Democrat and Republican caucuses, and even a few of the players in the Obama administration, are actually praising Trump for the decisive and effective manner in which he responded to Syria’s assault against their own citizens.

Thirdly, Trump has effectively enabled Vladimir Putin to paint himself into a corner of having to defend the indefensible- including a “rogues’ gallery” of Russia’s own allies- totalitarian states like Syria and Iran, not to mention bad actors like Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. Russia’s return to the Middle East, enabled by the Obama administration’s limp-wristed and ineffective foreign policy following thirty years of Russia’s absence in that region, hinges on their ability to maintain air bases in Syria and a naval presence in the Syrian port of Tartus. In response, both Russia and Iran may rattle their sabers and shake their fists with threats of retaliation against the U.S., but they must also realize that Trump is no fading flower of fecklessness like so many of his predecessors, and that provoking a President Trump might well result in their own undoing.

Essentially, this single, solitary missile strike was perfect- perfect in its scope and its rapidity, and perfect in its precision and effectiveness. That the Trump administration has now left the door open to further action if deemed necessary, just as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sits down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for the first time, also sends a strong message to all of the bad actors in a treacherous world, that the days of American acquiescence have come to an end.

More importantly, the Trump doctrine of “America, First” in its foreign policy not only pursues the greater interests of the United States, first, but also is one that asserts American leadership on the international front- a sense of leadership long-lacking and, now, richly reasserted.

 

-Drew Nickell, 11 April 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

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Unmasking the Real Agenda- the Democrats’ Desire to Destroy America

With every week that passes it becomes clearer and clearer. The Democrats’ desire to destroy America, by fomenting domestic discord and disrupting the further functioning of government, is approaching critical mass. To wit:

• In collusion with their allies in the mainstream media, which reaches into  every network and every newspaper, Democrats are continuing to pursue the false narrative that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian Federation to steal the presidency away from Hillary Clinton. Absolutely no evidence supporting any of these allegations has come forth, and there is no basis for pursuing any further investigation of these claims, other than to stop the Trump administration from pursuing the agenda that the president put forth during the 2016 campaign. None.

 

• There is mounting evidence that the Obama Administration conducted improper and ongoing surveillance of key members of Donald Trump’s campaign and transition teams before, during and after the 2016 presidential election. They did this in a clandestine effort, under the guise of FISA surveillance of foreign officials, in order to gather dirt on the Trump campaign. The fact that nothing of substance was gained from this surveillance is beside the point. The intent of the Obama Administration to use the power of the federal government to interfere with the presidential election and, following the defeat of Hillary Clinton, to disrupt the orderly transition of government in the waning days of the Obama presidency, by virtue of a last-minute executive order to broadly disseminate classified intelligence across a wide array of government officials, lays credence to this intent. The fact that Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, ordered the unmasking of Trump campaign and administrative officials, “incidentally” caught up in the surveillance, was for no reason other than to attempt to cast aspersions on the incoming administration. The fact than Ms. Rice reported directly to the President and his senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett (who has moved into the Washington DC home of President and Mrs. Obama, since Trump’s inauguration) can only indicate that she was operating on the orders of the former president and his senior advisor. It was Susan Rice who was dispatched to the major networks in September 2012, to disseminate the false information that the raid on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was the result of an anti-Islamic video. This information was subsequently proved to be untrue. In a recent interview with PBS reporter Judy Woodruff, Ms. Rice denied any knowledge of the unmasking of American citizens caught up in the surveillance- once again, an abject lie perpetrated to conceal nefarious political shenanigans in the waning days of the Obama Administration. The fact that these developments are not even being reported by large segments of the mainstream media reveals the extent of major media collusion with the Democrat party.

 

• For the first time in history, a politically-motivated threat of filibuster by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his partisan colleagues, to block the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch- a judge who they unanimously approved to sit on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2006- is effectively destroying the advice and consent function of the U.S. Senate, all because these Senate Democrats seek to deny President Trump from making any appointments to the Supreme Court, going forward. Senator Schumer is following in the footsteps of his predecessor Harry Reid, who effectively shut down the efficacy of the U. S. Senate when he was that chamber’s Majority Leader.

 

•  Egregious efforts by liberal judges in U. S. Circuit Courts, to stay various executive orders signed by President Trump, have only begun. Such efforts, based solely upon political and non-judicial reasons, will continue until such time as these judges are either impeached by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, or until such time that the Trump Administration eventually ignores the dictates of these judges, who only seek to promote interference in the functioning of government, as outlined in the United States Constitution. The fact that they are attempting to block President Trump from pursuing actions identical to those of his predecessors, with which they did not interfere, proves their own nefarious and egregious agendas.

Taken separately, each of the preceding points bears witness to symptoms of governmental dysfunction in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency. Taken together, along with the growing discord on college campuses and in the streets of cities across America, they bear witness to the beginning of a second civil war in the United States- one based on ideological differences that can only serve to bring down the most powerful and greatest country the world has ever known.

 

-Drew Nickell, 4 April 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

now available at Amazon

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