The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
Backward-Looking 'Progressives'
by Thomas Sowell
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Trump's Day One Agenda
Breaking from past presidents who gave regular press conferences updating the progress of their transition, Donald Trump has maintained a more guarded stance limiting press access. Clearly, Trump, who was quite critical of the press while campaigning, has shown that he will seek to control as much of the message as possible.
In that spirit, Trump released a video yesterday in which he outlined an update on his agenda for his first 100 days in office. In the video, Trump re-iterated his core principle of "putting America first." He then focused on the executive actions he would initiate on his first day in office, such as withdrawing from TPP and negotiating new deals. He also plans to cancel job-killing restrictions on coal and shale, curb regulations, bolster national security and drain the swamp by implementing a five-year lobbying ban on former administration officials.
What was conspicuously absent from the video was any mention of repealing liar-nObamaCare, building a boarder wall and changing the tax code. On the immigration issue, Trump did note that he would authorize the Department of Labor to investigate all abuses of the visa program as a means of protecting the American worker.
Overall, Trump’s focus was positive and action-oriented. He was clearly displaying his business background in targeting many issues that directly deal with the current economic climate in America. However, it was troubling that there was no mention of nominating a Supreme Court justice. For many conservatives, this was the primary justification for voting Trump. While concerning, there is no need for alarm yet as Americans are sure to hear more from Trump in the coming days.
~The Patriot Post
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Trump Should Announce SCOTUS Nominee Now
Donald Trump is in the process of vetting and nominating candidates who will hopefully promote a conservative agenda. As chance has it, the new president's task includes picking a successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia. In fact, selecting Scalia's replacement is rightly considered by many to be the most important decision Trump will make; it's one major reason liar-Hillary Clinton was ultimately dethroned. So when should Trump announce the nominee? Unveiling a decision sooner rather than later would provide both the incoming administration and conservative voters numerous benefits.
That's the case being made by The Wall Street Journal editorial board. "Apart from the national-security and Treasury jobs, the next Justice may be the most important to move on quickly," the editors contend. At minimum, a hasty announcement would give the next administration a crucial head start: "While Mr. Trump won't be inaugurated until Jan. 20, the new Congress convenes in the first week of January. With the continuity from the current to the new Senate, the GOP-led Judiciary Committee could begin vetting Mr. Trump's nominee as soon as it gets the name. A vote could take place soon after the President-elect is sworn in and can formally submit the nomination."
Getting the process underway now will help temper the leftist lower courts. The editors continue, "Numerous cases challenging the liar-nObama Administration's dubious rule-makings are moving through the federal courts, which President liar-nObama has moved sharply left over eight years. The circuit courts of appeal might be inclined to rubber stamp those regulations, which means they would become law in those circuits unless the Supreme Court takes the cases. A 4-4 High Court ruling means the lower-court decision stands. Knowing a new Supreme Court is ready for review could give some lower-court judges pause before they issue rulings likely to be overturned." Moreover, "An early nomination could also get ahead of the game if Mr. Trump's choice runs into confirmation trouble."
But there's another important reason for Trump to nominate someone soon, and it has to do with the fact many conservatives voted for Trump based on his pledge to nominate a justice whose views are commensurate with those of Scalia's. As Mark Alexander wrote last week, "I voted for the presidential candidate who vowed to appoint constitutional constructionists to the Supreme Court — appointments critical to the protection of our Republic and its foundational Rule of Law." Two good options are Diane Sykes and William "Bill" Pryor. Over the last week Trump has recruited good leaders to his cabinet. That's a good start. But Trump also needs to make good on his promise regarding SCOTUS. Choosing an originalist and doing so quickly will show loyalty and bring solace to those who reluctantly took a gamble on him. ~The Patriot Post.
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If the Country is to Heal,
liar-Hillary Clinton Must Be Investigated
by Jennifer Van Laar
{redstate.com} ~ Our country is what needs healing, not liar-Hillary. If her use of a private email server and the quid-pro-quo allegations surrounding the liar-Clinton Foundation are not fully and independently investigated... it will be difficult for the factions in this country to move forward. The people who voted for Trump, who gave him his “surprise” victory, are people who are frustrated that the elites in Washington have ignored them and their needs for decades. They’re tired of the establishment, and even the pundits who were so disconnected that they missed their motivation: Part of the “way of life” the Washington and media elite don’t understand is a belief in the rule of law, and that everyone is – or should be – equal under the law. They’ve felt that the deck was stacked against them, that they had to play by a different set of rules than the privileged elite, and that, while many of them were white, they certainly didn’t enjoy any “privilege.” To these voters, liar-Hillary Clinton embodies everything they detest...
.Amid Anti-globalist Outcry, New Push
to Grant UN Tax Powers
by Alex Newman
{thenewamerican.com} ~ Even as voters worldwide defy the establishment and firmly reject globalism in democratic elections, seemingly tone-deaf globalists are demanding the surrender of vast new powers over taxation and national policy to the United Nations... If the UN is allowed to usurp the draconian powers demanded, freedom, privacy, and prosperity would become history. Among other schemes, UN bureaucrats and establishment voices are calling for an international war on national governments that do not adopt pro-tax and anti-privacy policies demanded by globalists. A UN “expert” even claimed that tax competition among different jurisdictions — a key check on government abuses — was something that needed to be stopped by a newly empowered UN. The United States, in particular, could be in the UN's crosshairs, along with other liberty-minded nations worldwide labeled by the UN as “tax havens” for not extracting as much wealth from productive citizens as the UN's tax-funded legions demand. Following the largely globalist-manufactured “Panama Papers” pseudo-scandal, the UN is at it again... http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/24688-amid-anti-globalist-outcry-new-push-to-grant-un-tax-powers
.Iran, Hamas and the Dance of Death
by Khaled Abu Toameh
by Khaled Abu Toameh
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ The Iranians and Hamas are exploiting the final days of the liar-nObama Administration to restore their relations and pave the way for Tehran to step up its meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians... in particular and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. Emboldened by the nuclear deal framework with the world powers, Iran has already taken the liberty of interfering in the internal affairs of other Arabs, particularly the Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenites and some Gulf countries. It now appears that the liar-nObama Administration's failed policies in the Middle East have increased the Iranians' appetite, such that they are convinced that they can expand their influence to the Palestinians as well...
.New Danger! liar-nObama could put Garland
on Supreme Court Before Christmas
by Ed Straker
by Ed Straker
{conservativebyte.com} ~President liar-nObama could well take place of the Congress holiday recess and make a temporary appointment to the Sumpreme Court? How is that possible, and what can be done to prevent this?... Are the Republican leaders on the Hill making bets that liar-nObama would not do this? This sounds like a big gamble. Last week, I warned that if Congress adjourned for the year too soon, it could open a window to give President liar-nObama a Supreme Court pick. That’s because of a provision of the Constitution that allows the president to make recess appointments that can last two or more years. Now we get word that Congress is planning to adjourn early, which will give liar-nObama an opportunity to appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. This discussion is fairly complex, involving both constitutional and statutory law, so bear with me...
.EPA McCarthy To America, Climate Train
Has Left Station – Don’t Send It Back
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ EPA admanistrator Gina McCarthy announced the departure of the climate train from Hoaxville to Slavetown, with a message to all Americans, don’t miss it... On Monday, in a speech at the National Press Club, McCarthy repeated her typical hysterical lies about science and the future, saying, “Science tells us that there is no bigger threat to American progress and prosperity than the threat of global climate change, and if you take absolutely nothing else from my speech today, take this: the train to a global clean energy future has already left the station. So we have a choice: we can choose to get on board and to actually provide leadership or we can choose to be left behind, to stand stubbornly still.” Mark us down for stubbornly still, Mack. What she described as leadership comes at a high cost, the economic destruction of our nation and oppressive regulations and subsidies. What’s so bad about being left behind when disaster awaits at the end of the line?... http://rickwells.us/epa-mccarthy-america-climate-train-left-station-send-back/
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Backward-Looking 'Progressives'
by Thomas Sowell
{townhall.com} ~ People who call themselves "progressives" claim to be forward-looking, but a remarkable amount of the things they say and do are based on looking backward.
One of the maddening aspects of the thinking, or non-thinking, on the political left is their failure to understand that there is nothing they can do about the past. Whether people on the left are talking about college admissions or criminal justice, or many other decisions, they go on and on about how some people were born with lesser chances in life than other people.
Whoever doubted it? But, once someone who has grown up is being judged by a college admissions committee or by a court of criminal justice, there is nothing that can be done about their childhood. Other institutions can deal with today's children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and should, but the past is irrevocable. Even where there are no economic differences among various families in which children are raised, there are still major differences in the circumstances into which people are born, even within the same family, which affect their chances in later life as adults.
For example, among children of the same parents, raised under the same roof, the first born, as a group, have done better than their later siblings, whether measured by IQ tests or by becoming National Merit Scholarship finalists or by various other achievements.
The only child has also done better, on average, than children who have siblings. The advantage of the first born may well be due to the fact that he or she was an only child for some time, perhaps for several formative years.
By the time people have grown up and apply to college, all that is history. Nothing that a college admissions committee can do will change anything about their childhoods. The only things these committees' decisions can affect are the present and the future. This is not rocket science.
Nevertheless, there are people who urge college admissions committees to let disadvantaged students be admitted with lower test scores or other academic indicators.
Those who say such things seldom even attempt to see what the actual consequences of such policies have been. The prevailing preconceptions -- sometimes called what "everybody knows" -- are sufficient for them.
Factual studies show that admitting students to institutions whose standards they do not meet often leads to needless academic failures, even among students with above average ability, who could have succeeded at other institutions whose standards they do meet.
The most comprehensive of these studies of Americans is the book "Mismatch" by Sander and Taylor. Similar results in other countries are cited in my own book, "Affirmative Action Around the World."
When it comes to criminal justice, there is much the same kind of preoccupation on the left with the past that cannot be changed. Murderers may in some cases have had unhappy childhoods, but there is absolutely nothing that anybody can do to change their childhoods after they are adults.
The most that can be done is to keep murderers from committing more murders, and to deter others from committing murder. People on the left who want to give murderers "another chance" are gambling with the lives of innocent people. That is one of many other examples of the cruel consequences of seemingly compassionate decisions and policies.
Ironically, people on the left who are preoccupied with the presumably unhappy childhoods of murderers, which they can do nothing about, seldom show similar concern about the present and future unhappy childhoods of the orphans of people who have been murdered.
Such inconsistencies are not peculiar to our time, though they seem to be more pervasive today. But the left has been trying, for more than 200 years, to mitigate or eliminate punishments in general, and capital punishment in particular. What is peculiar to our time is the degree to which the views of the left have become laws and policies.
A long overdue backlash against those views has begun in some Western nations, of which the recent election results in the United States are just one symptom. How all this will end is by no means clear. Just as the past cannot be changed, so the future cannot be predicted with certainty.
One of the maddening aspects of the thinking, or non-thinking, on the political left is their failure to understand that there is nothing they can do about the past. Whether people on the left are talking about college admissions or criminal justice, or many other decisions, they go on and on about how some people were born with lesser chances in life than other people.
Whoever doubted it? But, once someone who has grown up is being judged by a college admissions committee or by a court of criminal justice, there is nothing that can be done about their childhood. Other institutions can deal with today's children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and should, but the past is irrevocable. Even where there are no economic differences among various families in which children are raised, there are still major differences in the circumstances into which people are born, even within the same family, which affect their chances in later life as adults.
For example, among children of the same parents, raised under the same roof, the first born, as a group, have done better than their later siblings, whether measured by IQ tests or by becoming National Merit Scholarship finalists or by various other achievements.
The only child has also done better, on average, than children who have siblings. The advantage of the first born may well be due to the fact that he or she was an only child for some time, perhaps for several formative years.
By the time people have grown up and apply to college, all that is history. Nothing that a college admissions committee can do will change anything about their childhoods. The only things these committees' decisions can affect are the present and the future. This is not rocket science.
Nevertheless, there are people who urge college admissions committees to let disadvantaged students be admitted with lower test scores or other academic indicators.
Those who say such things seldom even attempt to see what the actual consequences of such policies have been. The prevailing preconceptions -- sometimes called what "everybody knows" -- are sufficient for them.
Factual studies show that admitting students to institutions whose standards they do not meet often leads to needless academic failures, even among students with above average ability, who could have succeeded at other institutions whose standards they do meet.
The most comprehensive of these studies of Americans is the book "Mismatch" by Sander and Taylor. Similar results in other countries are cited in my own book, "Affirmative Action Around the World."
When it comes to criminal justice, there is much the same kind of preoccupation on the left with the past that cannot be changed. Murderers may in some cases have had unhappy childhoods, but there is absolutely nothing that anybody can do to change their childhoods after they are adults.
The most that can be done is to keep murderers from committing more murders, and to deter others from committing murder. People on the left who want to give murderers "another chance" are gambling with the lives of innocent people. That is one of many other examples of the cruel consequences of seemingly compassionate decisions and policies.
Ironically, people on the left who are preoccupied with the presumably unhappy childhoods of murderers, which they can do nothing about, seldom show similar concern about the present and future unhappy childhoods of the orphans of people who have been murdered.
Such inconsistencies are not peculiar to our time, though they seem to be more pervasive today. But the left has been trying, for more than 200 years, to mitigate or eliminate punishments in general, and capital punishment in particular. What is peculiar to our time is the degree to which the views of the left have become laws and policies.
A long overdue backlash against those views has begun in some Western nations, of which the recent election results in the United States are just one symptom. How all this will end is by no means clear. Just as the past cannot be changed, so the future cannot be predicted with certainty.
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