2018- The Year in Review

2018 passed by with such rapidity that we find ourselves on the precipice of 2019 largely indisposed and vastly unprepared to the prospect of a whole new year. Nevertheless, we recall and recount the major events that comprised the year in passing, as its final seconds tick down:

January- The year began much as it would eventually end, with President Trump battling Democrats, and a few Republicans, over border wall funding as part of a comprehensive deal which would have included provisions for DACA, and other provisions dealing with chain migration and the visa lottery program. Republican failures to get behind this initiative would prove to cost them their majority in the House of Representatives the following November. A false alarm on the Hawaiian Islands alerted residents that an inbound missile, purportedly launched from North Korea, sent emergency officials into panic mode but nevertheless called into question the very system designed to alert us in the event of an actual attack.

February- Revelations that former President Barack Obama “wanted to know everything” that former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his paramour Lisa Page were up to in September of 2016, in their efforts to take down Trump’s campaign sent alarm throughout the halls of Washington, yet by year’s end the texts from Page and Strzok conveniently disappeared while in the custody of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation of the President continued into its second full year. A tragic school shooting in Parkland called into question the wisdom of declaring public schools “gun-free zones” and the fact that the FBI is much more adept at pursuing false claims of Trump/Russian collusion than they are at following up on actual and verifiable leads that a potential school shooter is plotting a deadly agenda to wreak havoc and mayhem.

March- Having been “rolled” by their Democrat counterparts in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell swallows yet another continuing resolution to fund the government through year’s end without securing funding for a border wall on the U.S./Mexico border. The Democrats get all of the funding for their legislative priorities, while House Speaker Paul Ryan and Mitchell convince President Trump that this was a “good deal” for the American people. Trump reluctantly signs off on the continuing resolution, promising there will be no other such deals that do not fund border security. Following OPR recommendations for his termination, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is fired, for having lied to investigators on more than one occasion, regarding his involvement in both the Hillary Clinton e-mail and in the alleged Trump/Russia collusion investigations. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would also get his own walking papers from the President himself, following a contentious year between the two where the Secretary seemed to be at odds with the President’s foreign policy.

April – Attorney/Client privilege fell prey to the ongoing Mueller investigation as Michael Cohen’s offices and home are subjected to an early morning raid by investigators bent on finding anything and everything they can to use to impugn the President and find evidence of a crime which did not exist. Meanwhile, House Republicans sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department for former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, FBI Counsel Lisa Page, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Attorney General Dana Boente, recommending formal investigation into multiple violations of federal statutes in the way that both the Clinton e-mail scandal and the Trump/Russia investigations were handled. The Justice Department, under recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein fail to act on the referral, essentially absolving these eight individuals from further prosecution.

May- President Donald Trump kept a major campaign promise by formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocating the United States Embassy to that city from its former location in Tel Aviv. His actions also fulfilled promises of his predecessors, going back decades, to both recognize and relocate the American embassy to the ancient capital of the Jewish nation. Further evidence of high-level corruption in the Obama administration came to light but, again, the Justice Department under Sessions and Rosenstein fail to act on this evidence, revealing a double-standard within the Department- one for Trump, and the other for Obama and Clinton.

June- Following an episode of her own show where Samantha Bee referred to the President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, as a “feckless *unt,” yet another double-standard on what constitutes acceptable speech is revealed, where any and all such hate speech directed at Trump and his allies is deemed acceptable by a Hollywood elite who would never tolerate such language directed at any Democrat. Predictably, they all fell into line supporting such attacks levied at Trump and his family. Trump delivered a speech to the G-7 Summit in Charlevoix Quebec, coming down on the side of the American worker and rejecting imbalanced trade deals going back decades, which penalized American workers at the behest of post-war emerging economies following the end of World War II. Later that month, Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore and hammered out a preliminary agreement aimed at ratcheting down the rhetoric between both countries while at the same time facilitating the eventual de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

July- Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announced retirement, elicited scores of protests within seconds of the announcement. Trump also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland and was roundly criticized for not having publicly taken the Russian leader to task for alleged interference in the 2016 election. When Putin revealed during a follow-up press conference that Russian interests had donated over $400 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation in order to facilitate the sale of nuclear assets during her tenure as Secretary of State, as well as her presidential campaigns, the news media “buried” this revelation under the aegis that Trump was letting Putin off easy in failing to condemn him at the press conference.

August- At mid-month, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that the Trump administration was revoking the security clearance of ten high-level Obama administration officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe,  former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, former FBI Attorney Lisa Page, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and former Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. The announcement set off a cacophony of protests, made largely by those who would seek to end the Trump presidency any way possible.

September- Senate Confirmation hearings on President Trump’s nomination of U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh devolved into the theater of the absurd, with Democrats taking the hearings to an all-time low. Eleventh-hour allegations that that Kavanaugh once sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford three dozen years before- allegations completely devoid of evidence and witnesses who could corroborate the allegations, threatened to derail the nomination. During her dramatic, albeit self-conflicting testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Democrats ushered in at least three other allegations by women whose claims are ultimately proved to be false. This overreach was largely credited with an expanding Republican caucus in the Senate elections later that fall.

October- The first caravan of Central Americans seeking to illegally enter the United States breached the border of Guatemala and Mexico, as many thousands from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador- primarily young men- begin the long journey through Mexico which eventually ended up in Tijuana, on the Baja California peninsula. Trump’s determination not to let them breach the U.S. Mexican border led to a confrontation with border guards and the would-be trespassers, where tear gas was used to fend off attacks of stone throwers in the month following. Under-reported was the fact that this caravan, and the ones to follow, were and are being facilitated by liberal U.S. attorneys who advocate an open border and oppose the Trump administration’s policies on immigration.

November- House Democrats were successful in flipping forty seats in the House of Representatives, thanks in large measure to the failure of the House Republican leadership under outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan, to pursue President Trump’s agenda on a multitude of legislative fronts, including promised funding for a border wall, which Ryan secretly opposed. While Republicans managed to increase their majority in the Senate, while at the same time ridding itself of NeverTrump/anti-Trump Republicans Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Bob Corker (R-TN) and the late John McCain (R-AZ) who died at the end of August, Trump’s position in the Senate actually improved, as a result of the election. While the media predictably sought to blame Trump for the loss of the House, it became obvious that the loss had far more to do with the feckless leadership on the part of Ryan, than anything that the President had or hadn’t done.

December- Too little and too late, House Republicans summoned the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey concerning false statements he had previously made before House investigative committees. Also sought was testimony from former Attorney General Loretta Lynch concerning her handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation. With House Democrats set to take back control of the House as well as its investigative committees, it is doubtful that further investigation into Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration will proceed into the next biennium, while the quest to find a reason to impeach the President is likely to gain steam in the lower house. The passing of former President George Herbert Walker Bush, seven months following the passing of his wife, Barbara Bush diverted media attention for about a week, while a standoff between President Trump and House and Senate Democrats over border wall funding led to a partial shutdown of 25% of federal government departments and agencies not currently funded for the next year. While the President cancelled his own Christmas and New Year’s celebration plans set for his residence at Mar-a- Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and decided to remain in the White House seeking a resolution to the impasse, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) decided to spend the holidays at a tony Hawaiian resort abiding her time until her party retakes the House on January 3^rd, 2019.

Surely, there were other major events taking place in 2018, but this recounting has caused us to reach for both leftover eggnog and antacids that only such a year can bring about.

May your New Year be blessed with happiness, health and prosperity.

-Drew Nickell, 31 December 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:

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A Visit from Rudy on the Night Before Christmas (with apologies to Clement C. Moore)

‘twas the night before Christmas, when through the White House, not a Comey was stirring- not even that louse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that a real A.G. soon would be there.

Barron was nestled all snug in his bed, while visions of soccer balls bounced in his head. Melania in her kerchief, and Trump in his cap, had just settled down for a long winter’s nap. 

When out from the press corps there rose such a gaggle, Trump sprang from his bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window he flew like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw open the sash.

The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow, gave a luster of midday to reporters below, when what to his wondering eyes should appear, but Chief Justice Roberts with eight SC justices near, and a little old lawyer so lively and tawny, Trump knew in a moment it must be Rudy Giuliani !

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name: 

“Now, Clarence! Now, Stephen! Now, Ruth-ey and Brett!  On, Sammy! Elena! On, Sonya and Neil! To the top of the Court, to the top of Trump’s wall, now, rule away! rule away! rule away, all!”

As fake news before Sarah just will not fly, when she meets with Acosta and he starts to lie, so up to the housetop the justices flew, so full of indictments, and Giuliani, too. And then, in a twinkling, Trump heard in his lobes, the swishing and swashing of justices’ robes. As Trump drew in his head, and was turning around, down the chimney Giuliani came with a bound. 

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with NYC soot; a bunch of indictments he’d flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes, how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth was drawn up with a sneer, as the District of Columbia grew nervous with fear.

The briefcase of leather held tight in his hand, and all it contained spread alarm through the land. He had a big smile with a voice mighty proud, his eyes opened wide when he bellowed out loud. He was dapper and prescient- a right jolly old elf, and Trump laughed when he saw him, in spite of himself.

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave Trump to know he had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and issued indictments to Mueller- that jerk. Laying his finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, and away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight…

“Orange jumpsuits for homies- both Hillary’s and Comey’s!”

-Drew Nickell, 20 December 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

To Wall, or Not to Wall…THAT is the Question…

Take all of the visceral hatred of President Donald Trump by Democrats, and all of the still-middling vacillation of those who were once NeverTrump Republicans, and all of the “go for it” adulation of the President coming from his base, remove all of this from debate between two parties, the central and defining issue facing Congress is whether or not to build a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico.

Building the wall was also the central and defining platform of the President’s 2016 Campaign, and the House of Representatives’ refusal to take up the issue of wall funding under Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), whose opposition to the wall itself- though not much talked about, has nevertheless resulted into Republicans now having to try to do so from minority status. They could still pass a funding bill before the Democrats take over in January, but they won’t largely because Ryan won’t budge on his stubborn refusal to allow such a vote. So much for so-called Republican leadership…small wonder they lost the House.

Earlier this week, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sat down with the President and Vice President Mike Pence for a brief press gaggle before meeting in private. The border wall was brought up in conversation before live television coverage, and the President insisted on border wall funding before signing off on any budget going forward. The two Democrat leaders repeatedly insisted that any such discussions should be off-camera and in private. Trump once again showed his mastery of pinning down his opposition, said that speaking about it in front of the cameras is all about transparency, asking the two leaders whether or not they were in favor of transparency. After repeated reminders by Schumer of Trump’s oft-stated intent to allow a government shutdown, if that is what it takes to secure border wall funding. Trump even offered to “take the mantle” of such a shutdown, reminding the New York senator of his own disastrous attempt to shut down the government over the same issue, earlier this year.

Why Vice President Pence was there in the first place still remains a mystery. Throughout the entire affair, Pence remained in a mannequin-like frozen pose, staring down at a fixed spot without expression…too weird for prime time.

As an issue itself shutting down the government is the last thing Democrat supporters ever want to see happen as they are all about government, everywhere, every time and in everything. Yet, shutting down the government presents no such problems for Trump’s base of support and other conservative voters who view a brief government shutdown with smiling approval.

The other reason for Trump’s insistence on securing border wall funding now is that it may never come up for a floor vote under Speaker Pelosi once she takes the Speaker’s gavel. Two more years is way too long for a President who is determined to construct a wall that will fix the problem of illegal entry, in those areas unpatrolled by border agents.

Democrats are being duplicitous in their offer of $1.8 billion for border security- a vague reference to border-related issues excluding any such funding for any wall- aside from other border alternatives that don’t work. Remember that it was Senate Democrats who universally backed Senator Diane Feinstein’s (D-CA) bill, which would have proscribed any alien arrest within a hundred miles of the U.S. border and essentially creating an open border for all to enter.

If that is their idea of appropriate border security, then Trump is the only obstacle standing in the way of such a horrifying scenario- a scenario a majority of Americans would never wish to abide. Trump’s insistence on building the wall by any means necessary, military or otherwise, may be the only way our border will ever be secured. While Democrats insist that building a wall would do nothing to secure the border and would therefore constitute a spendthrift attempt to preserve Trump’s political promise, the reality of walling off a border suggests otherwise. When Israel finally took the step of building a wall along its 440-mile-long border with the West Bank, terrorist attacks from Palestinians in the West Bank fell seven-fold, and illegal border breaches virtually disappeared-all proving that border walls do in fact, work.

So, casting aside all of the issues surrounding the Trump presidency itself, it all comes down to simply this…

…to build a wall, or not to build a wall…that is the question.

-Drew Nickell, 15 December 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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The Passing of a President

On Friday evening, the final day of November 2018, George H. W. Bush, the forty-first President of the United States and father of George W. Bush, the forty-third President of the United States, died at Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Eight months following the death of his wife, Barbara Bush, the late President joined his wife and his first daughter, Robin, who died as a small child from leukemia in 1953.

Much will be written about the man, his term as president, and the legacy he left behind including that of his own son, who became President eight years after the elder Bush’s term ended in 1993. Praise will be heaped upon him by the mainstream media. Much of this praise will have been duly earned in a long and accomplished career in and out of public service, while much will also be driven by political posturing and ulterior agenda, which is now part and parcel of such reportage.

Born to privilege as the son of U. S. Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush (R-CT) an early advocate of birth control who also served as the first treasurer of Planned Parenthood, George Herbert Walker Bush was the youngest Navy pilot shot down during World War II, while fighting in the Pacific Theater of Operations. Following naval service, Bush returned to Yale where he also captained the school’s baseball team and led that team to the collegiate finals twice- quite an accomplishment for a man who also completed his undergraduate studies in eighteen months. Successful in the oil business for two decades, following college and his marriage to the former Barbara Pierce in 1945, Bush began his own political career in the mid-1960s.

Congressman for two terms, United Nations Ambassador for two years, Chairman of the Republican National Committee during Watergate, Presidential Envoy to the People’s Republic of China for two years, CIA Director for the two years following, and then Vice President under Ronald Reagan for two terms before being elected in his own right as President in 1988, Bush’s political career spanned four decades. Failing to win re-election in 1992, his political career abruptly ended when he lost to Bill Clinton, thanks largely to a third-party presidential run by an old business nemesis, H. Ross Perot, launched with the sole purpose of preventing his re-election.

Bush’s presidency, coming on the heels of a very successful two-term presidency of Ronald Reagan, witnessed the final fall of the Soviet Union and with it, the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well. Bush put together an international coalition to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from an attempt to overthrow and annex Kuwait during the late summer of 1990.  Ultimately successful in defeating the Iraqi forces, but stopping short of invading Iraq following this victory, that decision not to further pursue Saddam Hussein was often cited as the reason for the Iraqi War being launched during his own son’s presidency.

While historians will quibble about the presidency of the elder Bush, and while conservatives will quite rightly call into question the late President’s commitment to conservative causes vis-à-vis Reagan’s commitment to these same causes, there is no doubt that President Bush came to personify the globalist, internationalist aims of the three immediate successors to his presidency, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. This commitment to globalism, and its attendant desire to “nation-build” by imposing American-style democracy on dictatorships overseas, has been largely rejected by the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, which goes a long way to explain why Trump’s candidacy was so opposed by the entire Bush family (not to mention the fact that Trump defeated “Jeb” Bush in the 2016 Republican nomination), and why they continue to oppose Trump’s presidency.

Much of the commentary surrounding the passing of President Bush will center around his willingness to work with political adversaries and seek bi-partisan support for his initiatives. His willingness to break a “read-my-lips-no-new-taxes” pledge made at the Republican National Convention in 1988, cost him the full-throated support of conservative Republicans four years later and ultimately led to the presidency of Bill Clinton. The two men would nevertheless forge a friendship and a kinship, following Clinton’s two terms as President, thus cementing an odd and telling bond that exists between the Bushes and the Clintons to this very day.

It is always sad when any president or former president passes away, regardless of our own personal feelings about their respective presidencies. We ourselves have witnessed the passing of eight of the last fourteen Presidents of the United States (including Herbert Hoover who served well before we were born), and such passings are indeed appropriate times to reflect upon their respective presidencies and the history in which they each played such a crucial part…

…and there is no doubt as to the historical relevance of the late President George Herbert Walker Bush. May he rest in peace.

 

-Drew Nickell, 2 December 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

https://www.amazon.com/Bending-Your-Ear-Collection-Essays/dp/1633932907?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

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