The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Under Anesthesia, Everything Was Beautiful
by Peggy Noonan
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A Leaner Government Is 'Easy.' But Is It Possible?
by Michael Swartz: It’s been almost two decades since Americans had a government with a balanced budget, but there are those who dream it’s possible again. Among those dreamers are the budgetary advocates of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), which leads one to ask: Have there ever been citizens for government waste? Yes, and many of them live within the capital Beltway.
by Michael Swartz: It’s been almost two decades since Americans had a government with a balanced budget, but there are those who dream it’s possible again. Among those dreamers are the budgetary advocates of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), which leads one to ask: Have there ever been citizens for government waste? Yes, and many of them live within the capital Beltway. Anyway, the group has once again put out its “Prime Cuts” guide for cutting the fat out of the federal budget. If followed to the letter, the report claims, taxpayers would save $2.3 trillion over five years and have a balanced budget in three, returning us to “a path toward fiscal sanity,” according to CAGW president Tom Schatz. Among those items on CAGW’s hit list are old chestnuts like various agricultural subsidies, the longstanding support of Amtrak, and the liar-Clinton-era COPS program. (Remember 100,000 cops on the streets? What they didn’t tell you was that after the federal money ran out, the locality had to keep the staff on their dime for at least a year.) AmeriCorps is another liar-Clinton program that CAGW would like terminated.
But the group also advocates scrapping earmarks for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and eliminating Community Development Block Grants, along with repealing the Davis-Bacon Act and raising the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security. Good luck finding the congressman with the courage to risk his political life by going against the lobbyists, the bureaucrats and the advocacy groups.
One of the more amusing entities on the CAGW chopping block is the Energy Star program, which is familiar to consumers but is “seriously open to fraud and abuse,” given that a phony gas-powered toaster submitted as a test item was one of many such ersatz items certified by the EPA during a Government Accounting Office audit back in 2010. Once again, this began as a noble intention but has since taken on a life of its own despite the fact that most commonly available appliance and fixture products are Energy Star-rated.
Yet the very existence of such a guide — one that features over 600 items — is a testament to how far down the “deep state” has drilled. While it may seem logical to have programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority, Southeastern Power Administration, or Appalachian Regional Commission eliminated because they’ve served their intended purpose, these programs live on through a “mission creep” that keeps bureaucrats happy and congressmen capable of bringing home the bacon. Thus, we see the timeless truth of Ronald Reagan’s claim that a government program is “the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Despite a new administration that seems more serious about cutting government waste, it’s likely CAGW could simply repackage its book next year and slightly revise the figures to suit. Given they’ve been at this task since 1993, it’s fair to say CAGW is a lonely voice in the swampy wilderness of our nation’s capital.
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/51444
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DOBBS- Americans Won’t Be Rolled By CORRUPT MUELLER, FEDS, SESSIONS, CONGRESS
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ Lou Dobbs says, “Let’s start with these revelations today,” as the latest in the never-ending reasons for why the Mueller witch hunt should be called off... and its participants investigated is added to the “ignore” pile of evidence. Dobbs points out to Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton that Bob Mueller “interviewed Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, who is his boss; he has oversight over Mueller and the special counsel.” And yet, after an interview, Rosenstein doesn’t recuse himself, Mueller just moves ahead. What is going on here?” Fitton describes it as Mueller investigating himself. He points out that “the firing of Comey led to his appointment. Comey’s leaking of information led to his appointment. And Sessions recused himself almost immediately from anything of substance as it relates to liar-Clinton and this whole Russia scandal.”... https://rickwells.us/dobbs-americans-rolled-corrupt-feds/.
Iran Responds To Trump’s UN Speech
By Testing Missile That Can Hit Israel
by Jack Davis
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Washington watchdog out to
uncover draft liar-Hillary indictment
by ALICIA POWE
{wnd.com} ~ liar-Hillary Clinton’s legal fights over her use of a private email server while secretary of state are far from over, with multiple court cases still in progress... But now she has another battle on her hands, as Washington watchdog Judicial Watch is working to make public the details of Whitewater, the decades-old scandal in which she emerged relatively unscathed at the time. Judicial Watch lawyers appeared before a federal appeals court in Washington Friday arguing for the release of draft indictments of liar-Hillary Clinton from the 1990s Whitewater scandal. A ruling is expected later... http://www.wnd.com/2017/09/washington-watchdog-out-to-uncover-draft-hillary-indictment/.
Lawmakers Announce Budget Resolution Deal
by Alice Greene
{punchingbagpost.com} ~ The Senate Budget Committee has announced a budget resolution deal that will pave the way for President Trump’s promised tax reform... Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), a member of the committee, says they have reached a deal that will “give the Finance Committee the headroom needed to write a pro-growth tax plan that reforms the code, causes the economy to surge, and ultimately results in reduced federal budget deficits.” Details are still forthcoming, but the document does promise a tax reduction “over a 10-year period.” Absent from the document was just how much of a tax cut would be allowed, a number that has been a key point of contention among senators... http://punchingbagpost.com/lawmakers-announce-budget-resolution-deal.
Congressman Holds “No American
Citizens Allowed” DACA Secret Meeting
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ A meeting to organize agitators in the Democrat effort for open borders was held on Thursday by Rep Pete Aguilar (D-CA)... It’s the beginning of the next phase, their drive for an amnesty for the segment of the foreign squatter population the politicians have chosen to label as “dreamers,” the foreign-born anchor babies. The patriots at Grindall61 got wind of what was supposed to have been a secret meeting and went for a look themselves. The anti-American forces made many attempts to keep them out, all of which were successfully countered by their arguments and prudent use of video cameras... https://rickwells.us/congressman-no-american-citizens-daca/.
Under Anesthesia, Everything Was Beautiful
{peggynoonan.com} ~ I saw this: The exhausted woman on the shelter cot was surrounded by stressed children when Melania came over, bent down and asked, “How are you doing?” The woman said “Well—hurricane.” She realized who she was talking to and got flustered. “Those are nice shoes,” she said. They were flat ankle-boots, the kind you wear on the street or the park, only of the finest leather. “Thank you,” said Melania. She saw the woman’s soggy sneakers. “What size do you wear?” she asked, “Oh, 9,” said the woman. “They got bigger with the kids.”
Melania took off her boots and put them on the woman’s feet. She did this in a way that was turned away from the press, so they wouldn’t see. The woman’s daughter said, “Mommy, they’re nice.” Melania took from her bag a pair of white sneakers, put them on, and said, “Oh good, these are so comfortable.” They talked some more and Melania left and the mother looked to her kids and said, softly, “These are the first lady’s shoes.”
Donald was with an old woman in a wheelchair. She was spunky and funny and he loved her. She gestured toward his head and said, “It looks nice today.” He said, “I’m having a good hair day.” “Why do you do that?” she asked.
“Well, it’s a habit,” he said. “When I was young I had this thick brown hair that went down my brow like a swoop, and I looked like a Kennedy and it was beautiful. Then it started to get thin and gray, and it made me feel old, and old is weak.”
“Not for me, honey,” she said. “Does it take a long time to do?”
“About 20 minutes. After the shower, I comb, blow-dry, tease it a little, finish the blow-dry, then a lotta spray.”
“Why don’t you not do that?”
“It’s kinda my brand.”
“You got a new brand,” she said. “You’re president. Be normal.” He paused and said: “I was actually thinking of that.”
She told him she used to be a hairdresser. She said she’ll come to the White House and cut his hair. He turned, gestured; an aide ran over. “My beautiful friend here is coming to see me next week with scissors. Arrange it.” He kissed the old woman on the forehead. She gave a wave. “Goodbye, big boy.” The press was surrounding the FEMA guy with the update and missed it.
This happened just before the Mnuchin story got cleared up. The Treasury secretary had not asked for a government plane to take him on his honeymoon. His request got all bollixed up in transmission, but there was a paper trail. It turned out he was waiting at the airport with his new wife when he saw a guy in Army fatigues comforting a young woman in a white and yellow dress. She was crying. Mr. Mnuchin sent over an aide to find out what’s wrong.
The guy in fatigues had literally just flown in from Kabul. He and the woman had just married, in a chapel down the street. They’d been bumped from their honeymoon flight to Bermuda. Mr. Mnuchin said: “Give them my plane. Louise—we’re flying commercial.” They booked seats on the next flight to France and went to duty free, where they bought the best champagne and placed it in her Hermès bag. They wrote a note: “Every soldier on leave deserves a honeymoon, every bride deserves champagne.” The couple discovered the bag on the plush leather seat just as the pilot was saying: “Please be seated and buckle up, we’ve got special clearance.”
Also at this time liar-Hillary Clinton’s book came out and it was transcendent—a book of historical heft, of depth. She was modest. No, humble. And she loves America like you wouldn’t believe.
“I know what you expect, a blame-shifting revenge fest,” she wrote. “But that would be a book of what I’ve come to see as ‘political little-ism’—a book that reduces everything to personalities and polls, operatives and excuses. Smallness is killing us. I have been a major political figure in the late 20th and early 21st century in America. My elective career is over. Here I tell you what I know about the age we’re in, its most crucial challenges, what gets in the way of our meeting them, and how we can get around what gets in the way.”
She was unsparing. She said that after 30 years at the top of American life she knew the biggest, most dangerous shift in our political reality came “when the American people began to detach from those at the top, for the simple reason that they’d come to understand the top had detached from them.” She covered the landscape—wars, political money-grubbing, bad faith, immigration, globalism. “Those at the top,” she wrote, “proceeded as if they were unconcerned with what was being asked of the middle and the bottom. My candidacy got caught in the crossfire—understandably, because I had long been at the top, and many saw me as oblivious.”
Cynics expected she would blame her 2016 loss on the fact that she is a woman. America is sexist, misogynistic—in its dumb way, cannot imagine a woman as president.
“To be candid,” she wrote, “I had that in my first draft.” Sheer honesty left her reckoning with Angela Merkel of Germany, democratically elected and seen since the liar-nObama era as the true leader of the West. “I had to wrestle, too, with the groundbreaking leadership of Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher, of Indira Gandhi and Cory Aquino. America is not more backward than their nations, the engine of its heart is not driven by ugly isms.”
Yes, she noted, women in national life, especially in this technologically and culturally brutalist age, have it harder. Only a fool would say otherwise. But she wondered if there wasn’t something deeper: “Part of the challenge is that voters expect not less from women, but more. They have higher expectations, because deep down they think more of women. It is a compliment, though a difficult one. Golda is the toughest, Indira the most ruthless, Thatcher the most unwavering. They elect a woman when they can tell she’s better than the guys. And not enough saw me as better than the guys. They saw me as one of the guys—one of the leadership class that sank us.”
She didn’t blame sexism for her loss, she said, because she didn’t want to demoralize girls or discourage women. And she didn’t want to scapegoat boys and men: “They have no cultural champion now, no one’s officially on their side, they’re culturally out of style. But they need encouragement too.”
On the book tour she let everyone into her appearances free. America saw her anew. People listened. She was redeemed and appreciated.
It made me feel proud, like there’s hope for our political class.
That is what I saw this week.
I should note—this part is true—that I saw much of it while anesthetized for a minor surgical procedure. For an hour afterward, even knowing it was either a fantasy or a dream, I felt so . . . hopeful. Cheerful. Proud. I give it to you.
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