Trump’s State of the Union- How Dare He…?!?

Trump’s State of the Union – How Dare He…?!?

How dare the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, deliver the State of the Union address last night, to a joint session of Congress on live television…?!? After all, wasn’t it Hillary Clinton who was supposed to be delivering that speech…?!?

How dare President Trump talk about the members of our armed forces, emergency responders, those Americans who put themselves in harm’s way, to come to the aid of their countrymen, here at home and across the seas…?!? After all, pointing out all they do to protect us is nothing more than a ploy to distract us from the Mueller investigation…

How dare he call upon our legislators, both Democrat and Republican, to set aside their partisan differences and seek common ground to deliver for the American people they are elected to serve…?!? Doesn’t he know we are a divided country, incapable of joining together for the greater good…?

How dare this man tout the accomplishments of his first year in office, creating 2.4 million new jobs, 200,000 of these in manufacturing, alone, achieving historical low unemployment figures for blacks and Hispanics, and touting record highs in the stock market which enrich everyone’s 401k plans, retirement pensions and college savings accounts…?!? Doesn’t he know that rescinding thousands and thousands of regulations, cutting business and personal income taxes, and eliminating ObamaCare’s individual mandates only amount to tax cuts for the rich…?!?

How dare he tell the American people to believe in themselves, believe in America, and tell them that they can dream anything, be anything and achieve anything…?!? Surely, he knows that nothing of the sort can be accomplished, without Democrats regaining control of both houses of Congress, and then telling the people how they must think and how they shall live their lives, because Americans are unable to think for themselves…

How dare President Trump evoke patriotism, how dare he mention the motto “In God, We Trust,” how dare he say we should stand for the National Anthem or place our hands over our hearts when we say the Pledge of Allegiance…?!? Doesn’t he realize that doing so is an assault on the First Amendment and that he is marginalizing those who don’t believe in these things?

How dare he call for lowering the prices of prescription and generic drugs, how dare he call for speeding up FDA approvals for revolutionary new treatments, and allowing terminal patients to avail themselves of potential life-saving treatments…?!? Doesn’t he realize that the people have no right to treat their medical conditions without government regulation and approvals…?!?

How dare the president talk about the pursuit of fair and reciprocal trade deals, protect American workers and American intellectual property…?!? Doesn’t he understand that Americans are supposed to prop up other countries, even at the expense of ourselves and our jobs…?!?

How dare he talk about clean coal and energy independence when he knows that dependence upon foreign oil is what keeps potentates in power and energy prices high, and that keeping coal mines closed in states like Kentucky and West Virginia supports the import of foreign coal from countries who don’t have to abide by the Paris climate accords for the next thirteen years…?!?

How dare he call for shortening the timetables for building roads and improving infrastructure…?!?   Doesn’t he realize that thousands of bureaucrats depend upon these notoriously slow approval processes for their very livelihoods…?!?

How dare the president speak of securing our borders against illegal entry, doing away with lottery visas and chain migration, just so he can provide a path towards citizenship to 1.8 million illegal immigrants and their children…?!? Doesn’t he realize that there should actually be no borders, and that people have the right to come to this country unimpeded and avail themselves of American largesse, without any restrictions, just so they can become registered Democrat voters and ensure the perpetual primacy of that party?

How dare he call upon both parties to work together on bringing our immigration laws into the realities of the 21st century, and how dare he say that Americans are dreamers, too…?!? Doesn’t the president understand that immigration reform can only happen when Republicans are called racist xenophobes, and doesn’t he understand that only children of illegal aliens are allowed to dream…?!?

How dare the president speak of annihilating ISIS, when his predecessor promised us we would have to live with the reality of Islamic terrorism, how dare he keep the Guantanamo detention facility open when his predecessor promised to close that facility, and how dare he decry rogue regimes around the world, especially North Korea, who are bent on achieving the capability to land a nuclear weapon here in the United States…?!? Doesn’t he realize that they, too, have the right to pursue their own dreams of destroying America, and doesn’t he know that every country in the world deserves American financial support, regardless of whether or not they are allies…?!?

How dare he recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel…?!? Doesn’t he know that doing so is offensive to those nations who seek to destroy Israel, and doesn’t he know that doing so is counter-productive to a peace process that has failed to achieve a two-state solution for the past forty years…?!?

How dare the President of the United States refer to the Capitol dome as a monument to the American people, when they should otherwise see the Capitol dome as a monument to the politicians we elect…?!?…

…and how dare the president tell Americans that it is they, the American people, who are making America great, again, when all that it does is to co-opt a cheap campaign slogan and attempt to bring the country together…?!? Doesn’t his horrible man realize that keeping the people divided against each other, and using these divisions to retain partisan political power is in the best traditions of our country…?!?…

The nerve of this guy !

-Drew Nickell, 31 January 2018

© 2018 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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Trump’s First State of the Union- to View or Not to View

Trump’s First State of the Union- to View or Not to View

On the eve of President Donald Trump’s very first State of the Union speech before a joint session of congress, it is worth recognizing the very real state of disunion that exits within, and outside, that same congress. This disunion is the inevitable biproduct of the intentional divisiveness which has been put forth by all, Democrats and Republicans, alike, who were opposed to his candidacy and are opposed to his presidency. The forces united in their resistance to his presidency are the very audience to whom his speech will be delivered, much akin to Daniel going into the den of lions who are licking their chops at the thought of feasting upon their human visitor.

Many of the same Democrat House and Senate members who boycotted his inauguration a year ago, have already indicated that this boycott will be continued tomorrow night. Had Republicans so boycotted an inauguration or a State of the Union speech by Barack Obama, screams of racism would have surely saturated the airwaves, but it’s perfectly tolerable for Democrats to do so against Trump. Look no further than this for the obvious hypocrisy that is undeniable, for when it comes to what the media feeds all of us, what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander.

The wide gulf which now exists within the nation itself- that being the direct result of the divisiveness promoted by his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama- is the same nation now beset with division to whom Donald Trump is tasked with communicating his vision for the coming year, and beyond. As surely as Trump’s supporters will be tuned in to listen to his remarks, so it is equally certain that voters opposed to his presidency will not be tuning in to listen to the speech. Nevertheless, these same “non-viewers” will have plenty to say about the speech, beginning Wednesday morning, ranting and raving about the president’s speech being racist, sexist, misogynist, non-inclusive, blah, blah, blah. This will all be based solely on the rantings and ravings of Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Rachel Maddow and Steven Colbert, who themselves have already pre-ordained their narrative, completely devoid of anything actually contained in the president’s speech.

So how does anyone, much less a President of the United States, work with or speak to anyone so invested in their hatred of Trump, that they won’t even listen to that same president as he addresses the nation?

Better yet, how can any congressman or senator who shows his opposition to this president by not showing up to hear him speak, expect any cooperation from this same president, on substantive issues requiring their attention by the voters who elected them in the first place?

Donald Trump is just smart enough to ignore his naysayers and opponents, and will instead pursue his agenda with reckless abandon, as he has since taking office. That is the real secret behind his successful first year in office, but don’t expect the media to talk about this fact. Just as with his tweets which they disdain so much, the President bypasses the media’s coverage of his presidency as though it were an irrelevant irritant, much like a camper swatting away gnats who buzz in front of his eyes.

If Donald Trump is as bad as his opponents have made him out to be, one would think that these “no-shows” would want to be even be more attentive to what the president has to say about his agenda if, for no other reason, to seek out a strategy to oppose that agenda.

Then again, since their opposition to Trump is fomented and affirmed by a biased media set on destroying his presidency, why bother with something like honest and informed debate, when all you have to do is chant, “Impeach 45…Impeach 45…?”

…and we are paying these people to represent us?

-Drew Nickell, 29 January 2018

© 2018 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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To John Kerry, re 2020…a Sign of Things to Come

To John Kerry, re 2020…a Sign of Things to Come

Regarding the news that former Secretary of State John Kerry is not only undermining President Trump with the Palestinians, but is also mulling a run for the White House in 2020, this is an actual street sign (I’m not making this up) in Virginia Beach…

…I’d say quite prescient, wouldn’t you?

-Drew Nickell
26 January 2017

http://www.drewnickell.com/

The FBI’s Secret Society (and why this should worry all of us)

The FBI’s “Secret Society” (and why this should worry all of us)

Yesterday’s news reports that a substantial and crucial number of text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok, and his paramour Lisa Page- messages exchanged between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017 (the very day Robert Mueller assumed control named of the investigation into alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign)- have suddenly disappeared, provides even further evidence of corruption within the senior levels of the FBI and the Justice Department. Reluctance on the part of that same Justice Department, to comply with multiple House oversight committee requests for all documents related to this same investigation, further suggests the scope of this corruption, slowly emerging for all to see.

This corruption permeates top levels of the NSA, the CIA and cabinet level appointees of the Barack Obama administration, as it has become ever clearer that FISA warrants to spy on private citizens associated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign were based upon GPS-Fusion dossiers, paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Further, hundreds of these same associates within the Trump campaign, caught up in these illegally-obtained FISA warrants, were unmasked by senior level cabinet members of the Obama administration, including UN Ambassador Susan Power.

Peter Strzok, who was the lead investigator into Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of a private server, and who was also in charge of the FBI’s investigation into alleged collusion of Russia and the Trump campaign, and his extra-marital lover, a trial attorney assigned to Robert Mueller’s investigation, Lisa Page, had already gained notoriety for messages they exchanged in August of 2016, where they discussed the need of an “insurance policy” to destroy the Trump presidency in the unlikely event that he would defeat Hillary Clinton in the fall campaign.

Then, on the day after the 2016 election, in one of several text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page, it was revealed that a “secret society,” one whose intent was to bring down the presidency of Donald Trump, was created and which included several pro-Clinton, anti-Trump members of the Mueller investigative team, along with others associated with the decision to clear Hillary Clinton of criminal charges two months before the July, 2016 announcement by former FBI Director James Comey.

Comey’s announcement, which essentially let Clinton off the hook, was written in May of 2016, and based on a decision to exonerate Clinton by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in coordination with Comey and the Clinton investigative team. As it turns out, it was Strzok who changed the incriminating wording of “gross negligence” to “extreme carelessness,” all done at the behest of his superiors and to the benefit of Mrs. Clinton. To suggest that all of this “fix” was not under the auspices of President Obama is highly problematic, given the broad extent of what was required to exonerate Clinton from facing espionage and other charges related to her use of a private server and her release of classified documents to non-authorized personnel, like Huma Abedin.

According to Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) someone associated with this “secret society” has now come forward and corroborated the existence of the society, and that they held meetings outside the offices of the FBI and the Justice Department- meetings convened to discuss how they might be able to drive the current president from office.

Then there is the four-page memorandum from Devon Nunes, (R-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which summarizes his committee’s findings that there is hard evidence that bias on the part of anti-Trump agents within the FBI, and which may also include several senior-level members of the Obama administration, is what prompted the entire investigation into Trump, in the first place. Republican House and Senate members outside the committee who have read this memorandum say that, once the public has seen its contents, all will be shocked to learn just how high up this corruption reaches into the Obama administration. Interestingly, Democrats who sit on this same committee are vehemently opposed to the public release of this memorandum, for fear of its ramifications, while other Democrats in both houses allege that the document is only a means to divert attention away from the Mueller investigation.

Regardless of one’s position on President Donald Trump- love him or hate him- the idea of FBI and Justice Department interference into a presidential election, and attempts to overturn the results of this election, should be disturbing at very least. The fact that powerful, senior-level officials within the FBI, the Justice Department, the CIA and the NSA, during the Obama administration, all participated in the illegal surveillance of Donald Trump and his associates, speak of a scandal much more serious than Watergate, and much wider than any in the history of the United States. The suggestion of the existence of a “secret society” designed to take down a sitting president of the United States, should send shivers down the spine of every American, that there is something so rotten in our nation’s capital, the very survival of representative democracy hangs in the balance of the whispers and designs of a very evil element within the deep state.

Not even Donald Trump could have imagined just how deep and murky the “swamp” that is Washington, D.C. really is…and little wonder why he is viewed as such a threat to the status quo of a corrupt government so entrenched in treachery and deceit.

-Drew Nickell, 24 January 2018

© 2018 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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A Way Out of the Shutdown- Permanently

A Way Out of the Shutdown- Permanently

Entering the first week, of the fourth shutdown of the U. S. government, thanks to arcane Senate rules regarding budgetary reconciliation, the time has come to change Senate rules on all matters budgetary and otherwise. The fact that a small cabal of egomaniacs in the United States Senate, led by Chuck Schumer (D-NY) can continue to collect their ill-earned pay, while members of the military and others who provide critical services which protect life and property must report to work with no promise of pay, is outrageous enough.

Yet, historically, such an abomination is only made possible by the 1974 Robert Byrd (D-WV) rule, which requires a sixty-vote threshold to approve any legislation whose effects of increasing the federal deficit last more than a decade. Since any legislation passed by Congress has such potential implications which last that long, it is no wonder that a budget has not been passed in recent memory, and that the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Tax Reform and Jobs Act have to expire in ten years. In fact, our government has only been funded by a series of continuing resolutions since April, 2009- that’s almost nine years without an approved budget signed by the President of the United States, encompassing the entire administration of Barack Obama, as well as Donald Trump’s first year in office.

There is nothing in the United States Constitution providing for a filibuster. In fact, when the framers of the United States Constitution provided for bicameral legislature in Article I of that document, the only terms that permit a filibuster in the Senate are in a vague reference to Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 which stipulates that each house of Congress can establish its own rules for procedure. Given that this provision only stipulates a 2/3 voting requirement in order to expel a member of the Senate, it is a pretty flimsy allowance for the Senate to create what is known as Senate Rule XXII, which provides for a 60-vote threshold to evoke cloture, forcing the end to debate and move towards an actual vote.

Even there, it is something of a stretch to say that this rule allows for a filibuster, per se. Yet, it is a matter of record that use of a filibuster in the Senate is the accidental and unintended stepchild of an 1806 Senate resolution that the “previous question” rule adopted in 1789, which allowed for simple majority votes to end debate and force votes, should be scrapped due to the fact that it had only been used once in those seventeen years, and was therefore deemed redundant. Because the Senate created no other means to end debate, filibusters then became theoretically possible.

So, the notorious filibuster which has been used to do everything from blocking cabinet appointments, to evading budgetary responsibilities through the use of continuing resolutions, to outright shutting down the government for lack of a sixty-vote threshold, is all based on a theory that was the result of the lack of foresight in an effort to achieve the opposite.

Such a discombobulation that could only be understood by those addicted to their own sense of self-importance, the insane, or both.

The Senate can change these rules, as long as senators unwed themselves from blind adherence to tradition at the cost of doing the people’s business. They can easily approve a budget or, for that matter, any legislation with a simple, 51-vote majority, if they so choose. Or, are they so irrevocably married to a forty-four-year-old rule, put into place by a West Virginia Democrat senator, one Robert Byrd, who was once was an active recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan?

Don’t hold your breath.

-Drew Nickell, 22 January 2018

© 2018 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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Shutdown and Out- The Finger of Blame

Shutdown and Out- The Finger of Blame

Well it didn’t take quite a year in Donald Trump’s presidency (a few hours shy of his first year, to be precise) for Democrats to force a shutdown of the government, just to make a point that, in the final analysis, is oh-so pointless.

Republicans, who are always so-so willing to make accommodations to their…ahem…“friends across the aisle,” ended up giving concessions to everything that Democrats wanted: six-year continued funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (S-CHIP), a delay in some of the taxes associated with ObamaCare, continued funding for a host of programs largely supported by Democrats, etc. The continuing resolution, offered by Republicans and passed in the House with even some Democrat support to avert a government shutdown, actually contained no language to which a single Democrat objected. Yet, even then, the Chuck Schumer (D-NY) led Democrat caucus couldn’t resist the opportunity to point fingers at Republicans, and stick a finger in the eye of the president.

After all, Democrats are seething mad at this point.

Having failed up until now to prove Trump/Russia collusion, having failed to block the Supreme Court appointment of Neil Gorsuch, having failed to block passage of the most sweeping tax reform bill in four decades, and having failed to keep the Trump administration from killing the unpopular individual mandate in ObamaCare, the Democrats are desperate. They just can’t seem to get the public to agree with much of the mainstream media that Donald Trump is mentally unfit for office, or that he is a racist, or that he is a misogynist sexist beast of a man who hates women, so they had to do something!

Force a government shutdown via filibuster in the hopes that Republicans in general, and President Donald J. Trump, specifically, will get the blame for the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. that is a government shutdown. After all, don’t Republicans always get the blame for shutting down the government? What’s changed?

As a matter of fact, only one thing has changed with regards to such proceedings.

Unlike the oh-so-gentlemanly, go-along-with, get-along-with, don’t rock-the-boat and try-not-to-be-offensive mainstream, moderate Republicans of old, who lacked the spine to fight back against Democrat demagoguery, the G.O.P. is now led by an in-your-face, no-holds-barred, street-fighter of a president who has the “cajones” to call a spade a spade, and single-handedly fight back against the coalition “government,” consisting of Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans, deep-state apparatchiks permeated throughout the federal government, and the mainstream media. The fact of the matter is that Republicans, real Republicans, finally have a leader worthy of the term, who isn’t going to lay down and play possum while Democrats roll over them with the same-old, same-old tactics of yesteryear. Republicans can win the argument over Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, if only they will follow their leader in the White House, and not backslide into their viscous and vacillating ways of days gone past.

Even though five Democrats in the Senate, mindful that their 2018 re-election is up for grabs in states which heavily voted for Trump in 2016, sided with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and supported the continuing resolution to avert a shutdown, there were enough anti-Trump Republicans in the Senate, like Mike Lee (R-UT), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Rand Paul (R-KY), and no-shows like Thad Cochran (R-MS) and the notorious anti-Trump John McCain (R-AZ) to make sure that Trump gets his “come-uppance.” These Republican rattlesnakes prove that, in the two thousand years since Julius Caesar was stabbed in back at the hands of Roman senators, not much has changed in the grand scheme of things.

The Senate is where great legislation dies a thousand deaths, after all, and their own “shutdown” would benefit us all, but wishful thinking is not going to bring a sense of sanity back to Washington, if such a sense ever existed there in the first place.

If “stupi-cidal” (combination of stupid and suicidal) Republicans, like Lindsay Graham and company, can keep their pie-holes shut long enough, and allow the Republican president to take the lead in messaging this shutdown as “the Schumer Shutdown,” as it truly is, then the finger pointed by the Senate Minority Leader from New York will land squarely in the reflection of his own mirror.

They just need to grow a spine and get past the excesses of their own egos. Otherwise, it is they who will be shut down and out by the Schumer Shutdown.

-Drew Nickell, 20 January 2018

© 2018 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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Strategy Revealed- the Democrats’ Platform for the 2018 Election

Strategy Revealed- the Democrats’ Platform for the 2018 Election

Looking ahead nine months, practically all of the mainstream media predict a Democrat takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives in this fall’s 2018 mid-term election, as if the balloting has already taken place. They base this prognostication, in part, on historic trends that the party out of power, with regards to the presidency, averages a 25-seat swing in past mid-term elections. With the present balance of power in the House of 239 Republicans and 193 Democrats (3 seats are vacant), and assuming that this average swing holds sway in House elections, this would render a balance of a slim Democrat majority, beginning in 2019, of at least 218 Democrats to 214 Republicans, not counting the three vacancies. Given the number of Republicans in the House, including several GOP committee chairmen who have decided not to run for reelection, prospects would indeed tend to favor the Democrats later this fall…

…that is, except for one thing…the lack of a winning strategy, based on policy.

In past mid-term elections, the party out of power coalesced around a single winning stratagem. In 1994, Republicans flipped the House based upon House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” which entailed a number of reforms promised by Republicans with regards to fiscal policy, and procedural changes to budgetary voting. In 2006, opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, united Democrats and enabled the return of Democrats to majorities in both houses. In 2010, opposition to ObamaCare rendered a return to a Republican majority in the House.

Hence, in each case, a winning strategy, based on policy, paved the way for a change in House leadership.

Looking ahead to the 2018 election, what could possibly be a winning strategy, based on policy, for Democrats?

Opposition to border control? Not likely. Most Americans believe in strict border controls to combat the flow of illegal aliens into the United States. Despite attempts by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rein in President Donald Trump’s desire to restrict immigration from countries which cannot ascertain the identity of their own emigres, most Americans believe that the president’s policies designed to make Americans safer are sound, and reject the idea of open borders and unvetted immigrants coming into the United States.

Opposition to the 2017 Tax Reform and Jobs Act? Get real. With lower taxes on corporations, small businesses and most middle-class taxpayers- including the elimination of the unpopular individual mandate in ObamaCare- the number of businesses awarding bonuses to their employees, as well as the meteoric rise in the stock market which benefits everyone with a 401K retirement portfolio, will fend off any criticism from Democrats united in their opposition to this legislation.

Alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign? Except for wishful thinking on the part of anti-Trump politicians in both parties, and much of the mainstream media, most Americans believe that the fantasy of Russian collusion is just that- a fantasy proffered to rationalize just how Hillary Clinton lost an election that she was supposed to win. Her own popularity, which has now sunk below that of the president, is hardly a cause around which to structure a winning campaign.

With the economy booming and unemployment sinking, with more money in the pockets of everyday Americans, what’s a Democrat to do?

Simple- make Donald Trump out to be a bad person, and convince the American people that if they return to power, they will impeach the president of the United States. Simply stated, they hope that all of the animus they foment against the president, with help from large sections of the media and even idiotic anti-Trump Republicans like John McCain (R-AZ) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), will be enough to sweep Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) back into her former role as Speaker of the House. The only problem is that, absent of “high crimes and misdemeanors” as outlined in the Constitution, they cannot impeach a sitting president just because they don’t like him.

Even if they were able to win back the majority in the House, and pass a bill of impeachment, the fact remains that two-thirds of the Senate- 67 senators, would have to vote to convict the president- something that has never been done in the history of the United States. Simply stated, there are not enough stupid Republicans in the U.S. Senate to make that remotely possible- even if the Senate flips along with the House in the 2018 election. Assuming that the Senate does flip- highly unlikely, given the particular third of the Senate seats up for grabs this fall, most agree that the numbers favor Republicans retaining their slim majority.

Despite all of the outcry against Donald Trump, most Americans prefer his policies to that of his predecessor and, along with a robust economy, the last thing Americans would want is a dysfunctional government with a legislature tripping up the president at every turn.

In essence, a strategy of ridding the country of one Donald Trump may be popular with the Democrats’ base, but it won’t be enough to convince voters that such a drastic change, based in sheer hatred of Donald Trump, is desirable enough to give control of the House back to the Democrats…

…but what about the polls which suggest a 12-point edge favoring Democrats over Republicans? Yeah, those same polls once told us that Trump’s election was impossible, while history decided otherwise.

So, while the Democrats and their anti-Trump allies in the media wager all of their marbles on getting rid of Donald Trump, it is those same Democrats and partisan pundits who will end up losing all their marbles, on a losing strategy based in nothing more that sheer hate…

…and that is how Republicans will retain majorities in both houses of congress, as long as they are smart enough not to buy into the conventional wisdom that suggests otherwise.

 

-Drew Nickell, 18 January 2018

© 2018 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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A Not-so-False Alarm

A Not-so-False Alarm

No one, who was not in the Hawaiian Islands yesterday morning, January 13th, can begin to imagine what went through the minds of Hawaiians and their visitors alike, when they received an alert that a ballistic missile was headed their way, to seek shelter, and that this was not a drill. The twenty minutes it would take, from launch, for such a missile launched from North Korea to hit Hawaii leaves little time for end-of-life thinking, even though such thoughts are no doubt pervasive into a public mindset that is also struck with the ultimate fear of imminent doom. The fact that such an attack has grown from the “possible” to the “not-quite-so-unlikely” is enough for all of us to be concerned about, thanks to a Korean despot bent on striking fear throughout the world. Given that, the false warning of an imminent missile strike takes on a whole new level of sobriety and awareness which most of us have not considered for almost an entire generation’s life span.

An accidental push of the wrong button in Hawaii’s state-run Emergency Alert System, and the very painful agony of tens of minutes in the time it took to adequately notify the public that the alarm was false and accidental, can only be measured in the heavy heartbeats of thousands who thought that this was how their lives would end- suddenly, randomly, finally.

We can all thank Divine Providence that this was no missile attack, yet such a false alarm should, on retrospection, alarm us all in recognizing the inadequacies of our preparedness to deal with such an attack. In Hawaii, for instance, there are no fallout shelters- not one, so the advisory to seek shelter might only protect one from the blast’s shockwaves, but not the post-detonation’s effects from radioactive fallout. Surely electrical power would be rendered asunder, meaning that water service would cease, along with anything else that might otherwise be of critical use in post-attack recovery.

We don’t like to think about it but the fact is that no city, large or small, nor any town of significant size, has any provision in the way of fallout shelter. For the past fifty years, the concept of mutually assured destruction, M.A.D., rendered the “unthinkable” unlikely enough not to have to worry about such preparations, and other demands on the public purse made the construction and maintenance of fallout shelters impractical. Even the secret critical continuation of government facility, now known as “Project Greek Island,” was decommissioned in 1992 when knowledge of “the bunker,” as it had come to be called, became public in a Washington Post article by Ted Gulp that same year.

Yet, the missiles and bombs capable of nuclear annihilation haven’t gone anywhere- they are just waiting for a mad-man to come along and light the torch of thermonuclear war. With Kim Jong Un on the threshold of intercontinental attack capability, that is to say, against the U.S., his are the poisoned pills made possible by the ditherings of Donald Trump’s predecessors who, fearing for the worst, did nothing to stop the inevitable from eventually occurring. We are now at that threshold, like it or not.

While the hate-filled left in Washington, New York and Hollywood (i.e. Jamie Leigh Curtis) will no doubt find some excuse to blame Donald Trump for yesterday’s false alarm in Hawaii, they do so despite the fact that the alarm was originated by a state-run facility, and not any facility within the federal government. Had the attack been real, these same hate-filled “lefties” would no doubt blame it on Trump, regardless, and while their psychopathic rants do nothing to quell the unease we should all feel about Kim, the fact remains that we all face the very real threat of nuclear weapons in those wrong hands.

As the president is forced to deal with what is taking place on the Korean peninsula, as well as other potential hotspots in Iran and elsewhere, perhaps we all should consider the fact that, despite our unwillingness to consider the “unthinkable,” with regards to nuclear war, we are completely unprepared to deal with such a scenario, as a nation and as a people.

Essentially, a false alarm that should alarm us all.

 

-Drew Nickell, 14 January 2018

© 2018 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

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
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Absence of Honor – Enter the Politician

Absence of Honor – Enter the Politician

It can almost be universally accepted that the lowest form of human beings, when measured in terms of sheer honesty, is the politician. Let’s face it. A politician not only has an arm’s distance relationship with the truth, but lives in a universe where “truth” is defined as whatever is said which serves the purpose of the moment. Without truth, real truth, honor cannot and must not exist.

For instance, in an institution of learning which has an “honor code,” honesty and fealty to the truth is pre-eminent in the purpose and execution of such an honor code. Errant students have long forsaken continued attendance in such schools as the price of adherence to the honor code- a code which is as alien to our nation’s capital as, well, a businessman who enters a political campaign for the first time, only to be elected president of the United States.

Take for instance that man, President Donald J. Trump.

Having met last Tuesday with a bi-partisan group of legislators, and surprising all assembled as well as the media, the president decided to air the first hour of that meeting on camera. He reached out to members of both parties asking them to work together to bring forth a solution to the DACA issue regarding continued status of the so-called “dreamers,” brought into this country by illegal alien parents during the past decade and before. President Trump challenged those gathered, including Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA), along with a smattering of leaders of both parties and houses of Congress, to come up with a bi-partisan solution that included basic tenets of rescinding immigration via lottery, ending “chain” migration, which allows tangential flow of family relatives well beyond the individual selected in such lottery, and financial commitment to enhancing border security- security which includes construction of a wall along parts of the U.S./Mexico border.

Within forty-eight hours, a self-appointed sextet of senators, including Corey Gardiner(R-CO), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Bob Menendez(D-NJ), notable anti-Trump Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), along with Graham and Durbin, requested a “closed-door and confidential” meeting with the president, to discuss a proposal claiming to include all or the four elements which the president laid out. Also present at the meeting were Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA), much to the surprise of the self-appointed six. In short, the proposal they proffered was essentially a sham, which addressed none of these pre-requisites, but was nevertheless brought forth in an attempt to trick the president into approving. When the president recognized the obvious attempt to be flimflammed by the proposal, he bristled at the submission and things got testy between him and the six senators who requested this “closed-door and confidential” meeting.

Almost immediately after the meeting, it was Senator Durbin who said that Trump disparaged Haiti and several African nations, referring to them as “shitholes,” and that the president wondered why we have to take immigrants from those countries, as opposed to Norway whose prime minister Trump had met with, just before. Later, Senator Graham reportedly told his fellow Senator from South Carolina, Tim Scott (R-SC) that Trump made the same reference, and that he “got into the face” of the president regarding the reference. Amazingly, the two senators who were there (Cotton and Perdue) and who were not part of the “gang of six” did not recall such a reference by the president in the first place. Regardless, the die was cast to sabotage further DACA negotiations, under the guise that the president is obviously a “racist,” and the media was oh-so-delighted to jump on that bandwagon. Following a ceremony on Friday where President Trump signed an executive order to change the Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthplace National Landmark into a national park (substantially expanding the Atlanta site), at least one reporter repeatedly shouted, “Mr. President, are you a racist?”

Well, that only goes to show that the only thing lower than a politician on the honor scale is a politicized “journalist,” but we digress…

Regardless of whether or not Trump used the term to describe those nations whose immigration thresholds would have been expanded by the gang of six proposal, the point is that when the president declined to accept the proposal, the “closed-door and confidential” nature of the meeting was betrayed by the very senators who had requested such confidentiality in the first place- in essence, a failure of honor.

Then we have the House Minority Leader and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), referring to five of the six senators as “the five white guys” who should open a hamburger stand in an obvious reference to the east coast Five Guys hamburger restaurant chain… “Five White Guys,” and who is being racist?

All of this took place in the same week that Diane Feinstein (D-CA) leaked the entire closed-door testimony of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, a key figure in the fake Trump dossier which was used by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to surveil the Trump campaign in 2016. Feinstein did this in spite of her pledge to consult her ranking counterpart on the investigative committee, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), before such release. She didn’t keep her word to Grassley and released the full transcript of closed-door testimony, later claiming that it was a head cold which had caused a momentary lapse in her mental faculties.

Wasn’t it just last week that President Trump’s own mental faculties were the ones being called into question by his political opponents?

A good idea would be for the president to air more of these bi-partisan outreach meetings, if for no other reason so that these damnable politicians can go on record for a change.

A better idea would be to record such meetings so that the veracity of claims following such meetings can be substantiated, without the filter of a complicit media bent on the destruction of a U.S. presidency.

The best idea would be to institute a code of honor on the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., but now who is the dreamer?

-Drew Nickell, 13 January 2018

© 2018 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

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

Drew Nickell is back on the Radio, today, January 11th at 1:00 PM, EST

Drew Nickell is back on the Radio, today, January 11th at 1:00, PM, EST

I will be back on the radio once again today, Thursday, January 11th, and filling in for Nora Wahl Firestone on her show at WKQA-AM, Freedom 1110 AM in Hampton Roads, VA. I will be interviewing Steve Gorham, the Executive Director of Climate Science Coalition and author of Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.  If you live outside Hampton Roads, and would like to tune in on the internet, here is a link to that live broadcast :

http://lightningstream.surfernetwork.com/Media/player/view/WKQA-AM_gsl.asp?StreamingServerName=nick11&OnDemandServerName=nick10&targetWidth=1000&targetHeight=800&call=WKQA-AM&od=0

Please note, because I will be interviewing a call-in guest, today, there will be no Facebook podcast because of audio limitations in transmitting a call-in interviewee and his responses to questions during the interview.

-Drew Nickell

11 January 2018

Mentally Unfit- the Last Desperate Act of Trump Derangement

Mentally Unfit – the Last Desperate Act of Trump Derangement

Failing on all counts to rid themselves of the reality of Donald Trump’s presidency, those whose mission from the start to destroy the president have, at long last, reached the point of absolute desperation. Having utterly failed to find impeachable crimes in an absolute fantasy of Russian collusion on the part of the Trump campaign, and having failed to prevent the president from attaining legislative success in congress, we now hear charges from Democrats, their allies in the media, and everyone else who still can’t stand the thought of Donald Trump as president- that the president is mentally and psychologically unfit to serve as president.

So deeply held is their hatred towards the president, so desperate they are to end his presidency, and so enraged with the undeniable success he has had in his first year of office, that they seek to invoke a 25th Amendment proceeding to determine Trump medically unfit to continue as president. Such accusations are coming from all quarters, ranging from Joy Behar and Whoopie Goldberg from “the View,” to tabloid trash journalist Michael Wolff, to news anchors and commentators across media (including even some Fox News anchors and reporters like Shepard Smith, for instance) and from many current and former office holders from the Democrat Party.

They take as gospel truth, outlandish charges from the most dubious, not to mention non-existent, sources that the president of the United States is insane, and that “everyone” around him believes him to be so. In the case of Mr. Wolff’s most recent stab at peddling fiction as fact, the author cites much of his premise on the rantings of a loose cannon- er, loose Bannon, as it were. Yes, this is the same Steve Bannon who, following his firing from the Trump administration, opposed the president’s endorsement of Luther Strange for Alabama’s senate seat and successfully delivered Roy Moore as the nominee, instead. In essence, this so-called “master of conservative credentials” turned a solidly and otherwise guaranteed red senate seat, blue with the election of Doug Jones. Perhaps President Trump was onto something when he gave Bannon his walking papers in August of 2017.

It’s not the first time that a Republican president’s fitness for office has come into question: Dwight Eisenhower following his heart attack, Richard Nixon during Watergate, Ronald Reagan from the very start, regarding his age, and most recently, George W. Bush for his supposed lack of intelligence. That’s what Democrats do when they can’t win, otherwise. They accuse the sitting Republican president of being unfit for office. Yet, such efforts have hit an all-time low in their efforts to unseat Donald Trump.

Ever since Donald Trump launched his candidacy in June of 2015, all of the forces opposed against him have sought to diminish and de-legitimize him- as a candidate for the Republican nomination, as the Republican nominee running against Hillary Clinton, as president-elect and, ultimately, as president. Hillary Clinton basically put forth the idea of Trump’s unfitness in each of the debates in which they both participated.

Now we have the likes of Joy Behar and Whoopie Goldberg proffering diagnoses that the president needs to be institutionalized for tweeting that his nuclear button is bigger than Kim Jong Un’s, as if a bit of bravado which they find offensive is undeniable and clinical proof of what they allege. White House correspondents were quick to jump onto the looney-bin bandwagon, questioning White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as to whether or not the president was mentally fit to serve.

Interestingly enough, such questions were never asked when a former president (Clinton) received fellatio from a 19-year old intern in the Oval Office, or when another former president (Obama) sent pallet loads of cash to an Iranian regime in hopes that it would buy cooperation with these thugs on an arms deal that guaranteed nothing in return.

Then again, the more conservative, not to mention successful, a Republican president is, the more that they are deemed by their political opponents to be unfit for office…pretty slick, right?

The real danger in this type of political play is diametrically tied to the sheer number of people who are ignorant enough to buy into this idea- that the president of the United States is insane and, left in office, will lead us all into our destruction. Such a fiction can run amok over an ill-informed populace and can thus debilitate a functioning government, which seems to be the goal of newspapers and networks, alike.

The last act of desperation by an insane opposition completely deranged at the thought of a Trump presidency…

…and who’s crazy?

-Drew Nickell, 6 January 2018

© 2018 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

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2