The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
The American Spirit Is Alive in Texas
by Peggy Noonan
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What's the Point of Republican Infighting?
by Paul Albaugh: If there was ever a time when Republicans in Washington should be accomplishing a lot, it’s now. Sadly, since the election of Donald Trump and with Republicans holding majorities in both the House and the Senate, much of the president’s agenda is stalled. Republicans have failed to push it through simply because there is so much infighting within the party. No wonder people hate the swamp.
Republicans in Congress are acting more like a fratricidal circus than a political party. At a time when they should be uniting together, advancing a conservative agenda (or at least rolling back some of the last eight years) and working for the people who elected them, the opposite is happening. Thus, virtually nothing is being done, and if something is accomplished it’s usually so full of compromises with Democrats that it doesn’t make a difference.
Trump won the election because people are fed up with the political class in Washington, and Trump promised to take down the establishment. He campaigned on “draining the swamp,” and his strident rhetoric, nationalist sentiments and populist appeal resonated for many. People overall were — and still are — tired of their senators and representatives not doing what they said they would do once they arrived in Washington, and people were — and still are — hoping Trump could change the status quo.
As Rich Lowry writes, “If Republicans didn’t hate their own leaders, Trump never would have won the nomination or become president in the first place.”
Since the election, however, little has changed within the halls of Congress. Specifically, Republicans in Congress who have been there for decades have opposed Trump’s agenda since before he was even elected. They clearly did not get the message that people were tired of the business-as-usual mentality in Washington.
Enter Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. Bannon, who left the White House in August, has returned to Breitbart News and is the executive chairman of the website. Since leaving his post in the Trump administration Bannon has basically re-declared war against Republicans in Congress. During an interview with CBS’s Charlie Rose on “60 Minutes,” Bannon made it very clear that he will be leading an effort to oust those Republicans in Congress who have been an affront to Trump’s agenda.
Bannon accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) of “trying to nullify the 2016 election.” He blames them for failing to repeal and replace liar-nObamaCare and said, “They’re not going to help you unless they are put on notice.” He added, “They’re going to be held accountable if they do not support the president of the United States. Right now, there’s no accountability.”
Bannon has decided to lead an effort to back several primary challengers to incumbent candidates in the upcoming 2018 election.
Bannon also made a bold prediction about the 2020 election, saying that the outcome will depend on which party can best capture the populism that has soared in our country. He argues that if Trump is able to deliver on his populist promises and if Republicans make gains in both the House and the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections, then Trump will win re-election in a landslide.
To be sure, Bannon’s effort could be costly for conservatives, if not for him. He’s a diehard nationalist and, for him, if his primary challengers defeat incumbent Republicans but lose in the general election to Democrats, there’s a sense in which it’s still a win. Why? Because Bannon himself is not the most conservative individual on all matters and, for him, beating entrenched Republicans but losing to Democrats would send a message to the Old Guard GOP members that the populist movement is indeed a force to be reckoned with. And that’s a moneymaker for Breitbart
Bannon’s move could also backfire in a very bad way. If Democrats regain control of Congress, they will no doubt try everything possible to impeach Trump.
In one respect, Bannon’s political calculation looks very appealing to many conservatives. We have been lied to over and over again by Republicans in office who claim to be principled conservatives that, if given control of the House, the Senate and the presidency, would advance a conservative agenda. That has not happened and many people have had enough. There are too many elected Republicans in Washington who claim to be conservative until it comes down to voting — then they end up opposing conservatives.
Of the infighting, Philip Wegmann explains the cost: “Warring against each other while wearing the same uniform, Republicans often obscure their own position. This type of infighting sunk healthcare the first time around and now threatens to torpedo tax reform. It’s brutal and messy and, for now, it occurs mostly behind closed doors.”
So the question facing all Republicans, including Bannon, is this: What’s the point of the infighting? Is it to pass the agenda, or is it little more than vendetta and grandstanding? We don’t know that answer, and it likely differs for the various players. But if the GOP wants to remain in the majority and accomplish something, each Republican will have to answer. ~The Patriot Post
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Shooting His Mouth Off, Pope Francis
Attacks Trump For Helping Illegal Aliens
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ Those of us who have been arguing that Pope Francis is spreading globalist propaganda with no attention paid to actual facts, just received a Papal gift... As in his climate change messages and his support for chaotic immigration based upon open borders, world government and authoritarianism, Bergoglio admitted and otherwise exposed himself as not knowing what he’s talking about. The Pope made comments which indicate irrefutably that he is either pathetically uninformed or engaged in some serious disinformation in the furtherance of his UN-first agenda. The Pope called on President Trump to rethink his decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, arguing that terminating the program was not pro-life. Of course nobody is killed by the enforcement of immigration laws, at least not in America, they’re simply repatriated, so it’s a ludicrous statement on its face...The Pope needs to keep out of politics and stay with religion. https://rickwells.us/pope-francis-trump-illegal-aliens/
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DOJ sides with Joe Arpaio, as groups
ask Ct to declare Pardon unconstitutional
by William A. Jacobson
{legalinsurrection.com} ~ We previously reported on the Court proceedings after President Trump unconditionally pardoned former Sheriff Joe Arpaio after he was found guilty of criminal contempt of court... There was a lot of speculation that the Judge setting an October 4 hearing on Arpaio’s motion to dismiss the case and vacate all prior Orders was a sign the Judge considered the pardon of suspect effectiveness. I explained why the scheduling of a hearing did not warrant such speculation, Overblown hype about Court scheduling oral argument in dismissal of Arpaio conviction:...My-O-my, nothings was mention about liar-nObama's or liar-Clinton's pardoned. http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/09/doj-sides-with-joe-arpaio-as-groups-ask-ct-to-declare-pardon-unconstitutional/.
Laura Ingraham Gets 10 PM Slot At Fox News
by Amber Athey
{dailycaller.com} ~ Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham will get her own primetime show on Fox News this fall, taking over the 10 PM slot on the network... Sources told CNN that Sean Hannity’s show will be moved one hour earlier to 9 PM and “The Five” will be moved back from 9 PM to its original time slot at 5 PM. The changes come after Eric Bolling was released from the network following sexual harassment allegations and his show, “The Specialists,” was cancelled. Ingraham, a former Ronald Reagan speechwriter, hosts her own radio show and is the founder and editor-in-chief of Lifezette.com... http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/11/laura-ingraham-gets-10-pm-slot-at-fox-news/?utm_medium=email.
Kansas City Police Disarm
Armed ‘Antifa’ Communist Rally
by Ian Miles Cheong
{dailycaller.com} ~ Kansas City police ordered the disarmament of armed antifa groups who marched in Washington Square Park this past Saturday... Armed with semi-automatic rifles and ammunition, activists from the Kansas City Revolution Collective, Serve the People, and Progressive Youth Organization rallied within the park to the anti-Sharia group, ACT For America. Dressed in black clothing and red balaclavas, the group carried red flags bearing the communist symbol. The Kansas City Revolutionary Collective calls itself a “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” collective that has posted calls for “self-preservation” against “far-right militias” whom they claim are supported by President Donald Trump... http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/11/kansas-city-police-disarm-armed-antifa-communist-rally/?utm_medium=email.
Gen Kelly Takes Luis Gutierrez
To Woodshed For Disgrace To Uniform Rant
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired back at Luis “the Roach” Gutierrez for comments he made last week, describing the General as a disgrace to his uniform for failing to manipulate law to extend DACA when he is not a lawmaker... liar-nObama wasn’t a lawmaker either but he was a dictator, and as such he was able to implement unconstitutional policies by decree. Gutierrez responded to Kelly’s refusal to take part in a repeat of such an abuse of power with a name-calling tirade, calling Kelly, a Gold Star father, a liar and a disgrace to his uniform. When candidate Trump questioned why Khizr Khan’s wife Ghazala didn’t speak as she stood meekly behind her domineering husband he was rebuked brutally by the propaganda media for weeks. In this instance, a Gold Star parent is attacked and, probably because Kelly is a white man and the offender is a despicable Democrat, and brown, nothing is said... https://rickwells.us/kelly-gutierrez-disgrace-uniform/.
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by Peggy Noonan
{The Patriot Post} ~ Give Texas what it needs. It has endured a disaster without precedent. Washington must move quickly, generously. There should be no “The relief bill must be offset by cuts in federal spending.” There should be no larding it up or loading it down with extraneous measures. This is an emergency.
This is no time to threaten government shutdowns. It’s no time to be dilating on debt ceilings. This is the time to know as never before that everything that holds us together as a nation must be strengthened wherever possible, and whatever sinks us in rancor avoided and shunned.
Give Texas everything it needs, and do it right quick.
Most Americans, including Texans, don’t have more than a few hundred dollars in available savings. Most live close to the edge, paycheck to paycheck. Most homeowners in Houston don’t have flood insurance. When they’re lucky enough to get out of the shelter, they’ll return to houses that are half-ruined — wet, moldy, dank, with no usable furniture — and with kids coming down with colds and stomach ailments from stress or from standing water that holds bacteria and viruses. It will be misery for months. When the trauma is over, there’ll be plenty of time for debate. Do we need to hold more in reserve for national disasters? Do local zoning laws need rethinking? All worthy questions — for later.
There is such a thing as tact. It has to do with a sense of touch — an ability to apprehend another’s position or circumstances, and doing or saying the right thing. There is, believe it or not, such a thing as political tact. It too involves knowing the positions of others, and knowing what time it is.
Politicians, don’t use this disaster to score points or rub your ideology in somebody’s face or make your donors smile by being small, not big.
Now another subject, which ties back to Houston. A lot of people were saying, “You should see that Mattis speech.” A frequent answer was: “I did. I play it over and over.”
Recently, probably in Jordan, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had an impromptu meeting with what looked like a few dozen U.S. troops. Someone taped it. This is what Mr. Mattis said: “Hold the line.”
“For those of you I haven’t met, my name’s Mattis,” he began. “Thanks for being out here, OK? I know at times you wonder if any of us know … but believe me, I know you’re far from home every one of you, I know you could all be going to college you young people, or you could be back on the block. We’re just grateful. …
"The only way this great big experiment you and I call America is gonna survive is if we’ve got tough hombres like you. … We don’t frickin’ scare, that’s the bottom line.
"You’re a great example for our country right now. It’s got some problems — you know it and I know it. It’s got problems that we don’t have in the military. And you just hold the line, my fine young soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines. You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it, of being friendly to one another. That’s what Americans owe to one another — we’re so doggone lucky to be Americans.”
He ended: “I flunked retirement, OK? Only reason I came back was to serve alongside young people like you, who are so selfless and frankly so rambunctious.”
This was the voice of true moral authority, authority earned through personal sacrifice. Speeches like that come only from love.
But it was particularly poignant that Mattis’s speech, with its refrain — “Hold the line” — spread so far and fast.
And so, to selfless and frankly rambunctious Texas:
If you gave just a few minutes to the news, you saw it all — the generosity and courage, the sense of community, of people who really care about each other. You saw the pontoons and air mattresses and bass boats and rowboats and pool floats in which people were rescued. No one knows how many were saved or how many saved them. Every disaster at some point becomes a jumble, and people stopped counting. But surely tens of thousands were saved.
We all saw it, often live, on television and the Internet because of excellent reporters and crews:
A mother with little children was marooned, the water in her home rising dangerously. “I didn’t know who to call. I didn’t know if it was going to be too late.” Suddenly, there were men outside the house coming for her. “It was just an angel,” she said as she wept from the back of their boat.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo honored Steve Perez, the 60-year-old cop who drowned in his patrol car. When Mr. Acevedo spoke to Perez’s widow, she told him she’d begged her husband not to go in but he’d told her, “We’ve got work to do.” The chief told her: You know who he was, if he had to die, he wouldn’t want it to be home in bed, he would have wanted it to be on the job and trying to help. “Because he has that in his DNA,” said Mr. Acevedo.
On one channel they were looking for what they’d heard was a group of abandoned horses being led through the streets by a guy in a jet ski. In Columbia Lakes a local man showed a reporter the homemade barrier he’d built to protect his neighbors in case the levee broke. He wasn’t afraid: “We don’t do drama.”
On Facebook there was the story of the woman who went into labor while the waters quickly rose. Word spread through the apartment complex. Soon a huge, heavy truck made its way to her door. Neighbors formed a human chain to help her out. She got to the hospital and gave birth to a girl.
There were a lot of human chains. And often when they showed people being pulled from houses the families were all ethnicities and races, the whole American mix — black mamas, white papas, mixed kids, an Asian child. On the national level America always sounds like a constant argument over race. On the local level, meantime, everybody has been happily integrating in the most personal possible ways.
The local ABC station caught a young Catholic priest, a French Canadian assigned to a Houston parish, out in a kayak in heavy rain looking for people who could use a Mass. “I guess this is how the Americas were evangelized as well with a canoe,” he said, “and this is a kayak. I hope that can bring a smile to a few people.” Noticing the TV cameras, he said: “I guess we’re live. The Lord is alive, and the Lord is always with us as well.”
And of course there was the Cajun Navy, from Louisiana, performing its own spontaneous Dunkirk. Texas had taken them in after Katrina. Now it was “Sam Houston, we are here.”
We are a great nation. We forget. But what happened in Texas reminded us. It said: My beloved America you’re not a mirage, you’re still here.
If they’d done only that, they’d deserve whatever they need.
They held the line. ~The Patriot Post
The American Spirit Is Alive in Texas
by Peggy Noonan
{The Patriot Post} ~ Give Texas what it needs. It has endured a disaster without precedent. Washington must move quickly, generously. There should be no “The relief bill must be offset by cuts in federal spending.” There should be no larding it up or loading it down with extraneous measures. This is an emergency.
This is no time to threaten government shutdowns. It’s no time to be dilating on debt ceilings. This is the time to know as never before that everything that holds us together as a nation must be strengthened wherever possible, and whatever sinks us in rancor avoided and shunned.
Give Texas everything it needs, and do it right quick.
Most Americans, including Texans, don’t have more than a few hundred dollars in available savings. Most live close to the edge, paycheck to paycheck. Most homeowners in Houston don’t have flood insurance. When they’re lucky enough to get out of the shelter, they’ll return to houses that are half-ruined — wet, moldy, dank, with no usable furniture — and with kids coming down with colds and stomach ailments from stress or from standing water that holds bacteria and viruses. It will be misery for months. When the trauma is over, there’ll be plenty of time for debate. Do we need to hold more in reserve for national disasters? Do local zoning laws need rethinking? All worthy questions — for later.
There is such a thing as tact. It has to do with a sense of touch — an ability to apprehend another’s position or circumstances, and doing or saying the right thing. There is, believe it or not, such a thing as political tact. It too involves knowing the positions of others, and knowing what time it is.
Politicians, don’t use this disaster to score points or rub your ideology in somebody’s face or make your donors smile by being small, not big.
Now another subject, which ties back to Houston. A lot of people were saying, “You should see that Mattis speech.” A frequent answer was: “I did. I play it over and over.”
Recently, probably in Jordan, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had an impromptu meeting with what looked like a few dozen U.S. troops. Someone taped it. This is what Mr. Mattis said: “Hold the line.”
“For those of you I haven’t met, my name’s Mattis,” he began. “Thanks for being out here, OK? I know at times you wonder if any of us know … but believe me, I know you’re far from home every one of you, I know you could all be going to college you young people, or you could be back on the block. We’re just grateful. …
"The only way this great big experiment you and I call America is gonna survive is if we’ve got tough hombres like you. … We don’t frickin’ scare, that’s the bottom line.
"You’re a great example for our country right now. It’s got some problems — you know it and I know it. It’s got problems that we don’t have in the military. And you just hold the line, my fine young soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines. You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it, of being friendly to one another. That’s what Americans owe to one another — we’re so doggone lucky to be Americans.”
He ended: “I flunked retirement, OK? Only reason I came back was to serve alongside young people like you, who are so selfless and frankly so rambunctious.”
This was the voice of true moral authority, authority earned through personal sacrifice. Speeches like that come only from love.
But it was particularly poignant that Mattis’s speech, with its refrain — “Hold the line” — spread so far and fast.
And so, to selfless and frankly rambunctious Texas:
If you gave just a few minutes to the news, you saw it all — the generosity and courage, the sense of community, of people who really care about each other. You saw the pontoons and air mattresses and bass boats and rowboats and pool floats in which people were rescued. No one knows how many were saved or how many saved them. Every disaster at some point becomes a jumble, and people stopped counting. But surely tens of thousands were saved.
We all saw it, often live, on television and the Internet because of excellent reporters and crews:
A mother with little children was marooned, the water in her home rising dangerously. “I didn’t know who to call. I didn’t know if it was going to be too late.” Suddenly, there were men outside the house coming for her. “It was just an angel,” she said as she wept from the back of their boat.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo honored Steve Perez, the 60-year-old cop who drowned in his patrol car. When Mr. Acevedo spoke to Perez’s widow, she told him she’d begged her husband not to go in but he’d told her, “We’ve got work to do.” The chief told her: You know who he was, if he had to die, he wouldn’t want it to be home in bed, he would have wanted it to be on the job and trying to help. “Because he has that in his DNA,” said Mr. Acevedo.
On one channel they were looking for what they’d heard was a group of abandoned horses being led through the streets by a guy in a jet ski. In Columbia Lakes a local man showed a reporter the homemade barrier he’d built to protect his neighbors in case the levee broke. He wasn’t afraid: “We don’t do drama.”
On Facebook there was the story of the woman who went into labor while the waters quickly rose. Word spread through the apartment complex. Soon a huge, heavy truck made its way to her door. Neighbors formed a human chain to help her out. She got to the hospital and gave birth to a girl.
There were a lot of human chains. And often when they showed people being pulled from houses the families were all ethnicities and races, the whole American mix — black mamas, white papas, mixed kids, an Asian child. On the national level America always sounds like a constant argument over race. On the local level, meantime, everybody has been happily integrating in the most personal possible ways.
The local ABC station caught a young Catholic priest, a French Canadian assigned to a Houston parish, out in a kayak in heavy rain looking for people who could use a Mass. “I guess this is how the Americas were evangelized as well with a canoe,” he said, “and this is a kayak. I hope that can bring a smile to a few people.” Noticing the TV cameras, he said: “I guess we’re live. The Lord is alive, and the Lord is always with us as well.”
And of course there was the Cajun Navy, from Louisiana, performing its own spontaneous Dunkirk. Texas had taken them in after Katrina. Now it was “Sam Houston, we are here.”
We are a great nation. We forget. But what happened in Texas reminded us. It said: My beloved America you’re not a mirage, you’re still here.
If they’d done only that, they’d deserve whatever they need.
They held the line. ~The Patriot Post
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