The best one can hope to do in venturing into 2019 post-America

Again, it's time to revisit the argument that things aren't all that bad, that a nation that has lived through the Civil War, a depression, two world wars, the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and Watergate is resilient enough to withstand the present circumstance. It has its compelling aspects. Those who so posit are not wrong that the United States and the West generally still enjoy unrivaled abundance, convenience, comfort and safety. Anyone reading this has probably had as many square meals a day as he or she has desired for the past year, if not his or her entire lifetime.

But it's an argument based on willful ignorance. Consider these numbers:

Take, for example, race relations. By Gallup poll data, just 45 percent of Americans were worried about race relations either a “great deal” or a “fair amount” in March of 2008. But by March 2015, that number had risen to 55 percent; by March 2016, the number was 62 percent. This was before Trump’s election. Today, the number stands at 64 percent.

On religion, similar numbers emerge. America has become significantly less religious over time; accorsing to ABC News/Washington Post polls, as of 2003, 50 percent of Americans identified themselves as members of a Protestant faith, but by 2017, that number was just 36 percent. The share of Christians overall dropped from 83 percent in 2003 to 72 percent in 2017. The number of religious adults now stands at 21 percent, up from 12 percent in 2003.

How about politically? The seething partisan hatred we’ve now come to expect from American politics didn’t emerge from nowhere thanks to President Trump. Already in 2017, some 64 percent of Democrats tell a Pew Research Survey they have only a few or no Republican friends; 55 percent of Republicans say the same. What’s more, according to data cited by Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler in their book on political division, Prius or Pickup?, partisan hatred for the other party has increased steadily over time among Democrats since 2000, followed by an uptick in hatred from Republicans over time. In 2000, only about 20 percent of both Republicans and Democrats hated the other party; by 2016, those numbers were closer to 50 percent.

Then there's the tone of our discourse. I realize that social media, let alone the more narrow confines of Twitter, are only so reflective of who we are as a people, but in what kind of country does one find tweets like this one about Bre Payton, the Federalist writer who died quite suddenly of swine flu the other day:

No she was cruel and evil, and as a result her death is funny

Or this one:

if you devote your life to gleefully stepping on the necks of marginalized people and then die in a somewhat comical fashion, some people are gonna chuckle at it. sorry that's just the way it goes unfortunately

Then there's Kurt Schlichter's tweet from yesterday:

Kurt Schlichter, a Townhall writer who has appeared on both Fox News and C-SPAN, reacted to the news Saturday night, tweeting, “I don’t care” above a CBS News report on the boy who died Friday.

I don’t care https://t.co/h0PmKAtdff

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 30, 2018

According to a press release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, young Abdullah Hassan was brought to the U.S. by father Ali Hassan earlier this year to be treated for a worsening degenerative brain condition. While the two are American citizens, the child’s mother, Shaima Swileh, is a Yemeni national who was initially stopped from entering the country under President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which targets Yemen.

CAIR eventually became involved in Swileh’s case, and she was granted permission to enter the U.S. on Dec. 18. Days later, her son died at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California.

He's since doubled down.

And you know what? There are those who will want to make CAIR the focus of this particular discussion. Yes, CAIR has shady ties to radical Islam, but that is hardly the point here. 

It takes some real digging to find something that isn't grim, ugly, vapid, banal, and devoid of all flavor, humanity, dignity and common sense on the last day of 2018 in post-America. Hugs from grandkids and random acts of kindness in supermarket parking lots are about all one is going to find. I'm as serious as can be about this. Our politics, our art, our educational system, what's left of our journalism, a plurality of our largest corporations, even much of what remains of post-American formal religion, is barren and cracked, drained of all purpose. 

We are starved for joy. 

To be sure, many of us are up to our eyeballs in amusement. That's another set of conversations that dominates Twitter. Which installment in some cinematic franchise is the best. What some college or professional sports team needs to do to clinch a playoff berth. Where to find the nation's most outrageous bacon burger. 

But real joy? It eludes us.

If one has it, what can be done to safeguard it against what is surely going to be a worsening societal atmosphere in 2019?

It seems to me Paul has the apt instruction on the matter:

Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and having done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth fastened around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness arrayed, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness of the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.17And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

The reason shiny baubles compel our attention so is that they are faint reminders of actual splendor. That which fills us with rich, deep, unshakable contentment is glimpsed enough in the course of our lives, even in desolate times such as these, to seal our conviction that there is something worth going after. The trinkets hint at this, ever so tawdrily.

We'll get no backup on an institutional level, at least to speak of. Even churches are at a loss as to how to impart the worthiness of the quest for joy.

Those so inclined must seek each other out in this atomized society. It's like our first forebears nurturing their sense of community against there backdrop of a Roman Empire in decline.

The other essential element in this is going to be courage. The kind Bre Payton showed when stating plain truths. We can't be afraid of being hated.

2019 is going to be no place for the faint of heart. Dig deep, find your wellspring of God's real joy to see you through. If this message resonates with you, it means you are already enlisted in the cause.

You must go into the new year understanding your charge to be an agent of grace. God be with you.

Just getting out doesn't make the threat from these places go away

Abe Greenwald at Commentary has a piece entitled "Yes, Our Unpopular Wars Are Worth It." He summarizes the argument thusly:

The counter-arguments are too familiar: It’s no business of ours what happens in places like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Small improvements in the security conditions of lawless countries aren’t worth the cost in American blood and treasure.

Those who believe such things also have to believe that the U.S. did the right thing in staying out of Afghanistan for years after the Soviets were driven out and the Taliban offered up the country as an operations base for al-Qaeda. They must think that President Obama was wise to withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 and allow jihadists to reconstitute as ISIS. They’ll presumably stay mute if al-Qaeda, ISIS, or some other group launches an attack on America that’s been planned in one of the countries from which we’re now withdrawing. And surely they’ll not be concerned when the next wave of fleeing refugees hits the West.

David French at NRO spells out the five reasons:

First, there exists a jihadist enemy of our nation and civilization that doesn’t just seek to harm our national interests, it actively seeks to kill as many Americans as possible, as publicly as possible — with the goal of so thoroughly destabilizing and demoralizing our nation that we make room for the emergence of a new jihadist power.

Second, this enemy exists not because of immediate and recent American actions (though it can certainly use some of those actions to recruit new followers) but because of an ancient, potent systematic theology. Never forget that one of the grievances Osama bin Laden listed as justifying his attack on America was the Christian Spanish reconquest of Muslim Spain. That event occurred almost 300 years before the American founding.

Third, while it is difficult to predict any given terrorist attack, this much we can say — when terrorists obtain safe havens, they become dramatically more dangerous. The creation of a safe haven escalates the threat and renders serious attacks a near-inevitability.

Fourth, for reasons too obvious to outline, terrorist safe havens are always in nations and locations that are either hostile to the United States or in a state of fractured chaos. Terrorist cells may operate in places like France, but a true safe haven cannot thrive in functioning, strong allied territory.

Finally — and this is critically important — the national obligation of self-defense is permanent. No functioning government that abdicates its duty to protect its citizens from hostile attack can remain legitimate. Preferably self-defense is maintained by deterrence. But when deterrence fails, a failure to engage the enemy doesn’t bring peace, it enables the enemy to kill your people.

Michael Ledeen at PJ Media offers the wider perspective:

How often have you heard warnings that the withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan will make war more likely? They don’t seem to realize that the war is on, right here and now. Nor do they see that it’s a global war, and that we face a coalition of radical Islamist and radical Leftist regimes, from China and North Korea and Cuba to Russia, Iran, Turkey and Venezuela. Our enemies, who fear and despise freedom, are well aware that this is a big war.

That's why signals such as all this withdrawal talk will have consequences.

 

As 2018 winds down, so does post-American society

There's this guy - and you should watch the video for the full effect:

The video starts with the man dressed in women’s clothing and shoulder-length blond hair for his money back from an employee behind a counter. The man accuses the employee of calling him “sir.”

The employee then calls him “sir,” whether on purpose or out of nervousness is unknown. This throws the man into a fit who then begins screaming obscenities and threatening the employee.
“Motherf**ker – take it outside – you wanna call me sir again, I will show you a f**king sir!”

The employee repeatedly apologizes, but the man continues to be irate, demanding he be given the businesses corporate number.

Before the man leaves, he accuses the clerk of “disrespecting trans people in this store” then threatens to tell “the entire LGBTQ community.” 

Another guy who resents the DNA he was born with has turned his hangup and indignation over not getting it validated into a lucrative turn of events:

Christina Ginther, a biological man who identifies as a woman, won a discrimination lawsuit this week after being rejected from playing on an all-women's Minnesota football team due to safety concerns.

Ginther, who's nearly 6 feet tall and a second-degree black belt in karate, was awarded a total of $20,000 with the legal win: $10,000 in punitive damages and $10,000 for emotional distress.

The 46-year-old claims he was initially welcomed by the Minnesota Vixen football team, which was then part of the Independent Women's Football League (IWFL), during pre-tryout practices in 2016. But when team owner Laura Brown learned that Ginther was actually a biological male, she informed Ginther that biological men were barred from playing in the league due to safety concerns. 

You see, when the team owner told him (in so many words) "league rules; you gotta be an actual woman to play," he felt "violated."

Identity-politics persnickety-ness caused the organizers of this event to cut off their noses to spite their faces:

The Eureka, Calif., Women's March, scheduled for January 19, has been canceled because those participating are "overwhelmingly white."

In a press release, the organizers said, "This decision was made after many conversations between local social-change organizers and supporters of the march."

"Up to this point, the participants have been overwhelmingly white, lacking representation from several perspectives in our community," the group said in a press release. "Instead of pushing forward with crucial voices absent, the organizing team will take time for more outreach. Our goal is that planning will continue and we will be successful in creating an event that will build power and community engagement through connection between women that seek to improve the lives of all in our community."

Because, of course, white women aren't interested in improving "the lives of all in our community." They just want to improve the lives of white women.

Is it possible that these kinds of incidences could be the identity politics phenomenon's jump-the-shark moment? There's a lot of diversity out there - meant both in the sense in which leftists mean it, as well as actual diversity - but just due to the fact that a whole lot of people still procreate, raise the families resulting therefrom, and find normalcy an ever-more welcome refuge in post-America, there just has to be a point at which they say, "That's it. Get out of my face and go back to your weird little enclave."

Alright, time for a post fully focused on immigration

The immediate catalyst:

The illegal immigrant fugitive who was wanted in the murder of a California police officer was taken into custody on Friday after being on the run for more than two days, according to an official, who made the case that the fatal encounter may have been preventable.

Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson announced the arrest of the suspect -- identified as Gustavo Perez Arriaga -- in Bakersfield, about 280 miles southeast of Newman, where Police Cpl. Ronil Singh was gunned down early Wednesday. The arrest was confirmed by the Fresno County and Kern County Sheriff's Offices.

Christianson, whose department has been handling the case, told reporters at a news conference that Arriaga is from Mexico and was in the U.S. illegally after previously crossing the Arizona border. It wasn't clear when that crossing occurred, though.

Christianson said the suspect had been in the country for a number of years and was seeking to cross back over the border before the shooting occurred. 

The suspect had known gang affiliations, as well as two past DUI arrests, Christianson said.

The suspect was stopped by Singh for a DUI investigation before getting into a gunfight with the officer, during which Singh tried to defend himself, Christianson said at a separate news conference Thursday. 

Authorities also said they've arrested two others --  25-year-old Adrian Virgen and 27-year-old Erik Razo Quiroz -- who Christianson said had attempted to mislead investigators in an effort to protect the suspect. The sheriff's office said on Facebook that Arriaga would be charged with homicide. Virgen and Quiroz were arrested and accused of being accessories after the fact to a felony, the post said.

As for whether Singh's death was preventable, Christianson noted that had law enforcement previously been able to report the suspect to Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of his criminal record, the loss of life might never have occurred.

"While we absolutely need to stay focused on Officer Singh’s service and sacrifice, we can’t ignore the fact that this could’ve been preventable," Christianson said. "And under SB54 in California, based on two arrests for DUI and some other active warrants that this criminal has out there, law enforcement would’ve been prevented, prohibited from sharing any information with ICE about this criminal gang member. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not how you protect a community." 

This is what you get when identity politics jackboots ginning up "compassion" among the fair-trade-coffee crowd get municipalities to not cooperate with ICE and other federal-level enforcement agencies.

As I've told readers before, I cover the local-government beat for a company in my city that owns an array of radio stations, as well as a news website. One monthly meeting they have me cover is our local human rights commission.

I recall a meeting, maybe three months ago, at which one guy on the commission spoke up during some kind of discussion to say that there was "palpable concern among the undocumented community" about a shift in federal attitude toward their presence here.

It was all I could do to keep my objective-journalist hat on straight and not point out to the guy that by definition the people you're talking about are not supposed to be here.

Look, at what point do we get to say to Latin America, when can we expect you to reach a sufficient level of political stability and economic opportunity and a basic cultural foundation characterized by actual families, with a father present and involved and an actual marriage certificate somewhere in the home so that there is not this problem in our relations?

This is one of those over-arching issues about which wonky solutions concerning aspects of it are quite a ways down the pike.

The bottom line for now is this: The United States of America is struggling mightily to roll back its own cultural rot and spiritual decay. We can't be taking on mass numbers of people from societies already further down that path. For one thing, one basic tenet we're trying to preserve is the notion of national sovereignty, and that gets further eroded every day.

But when cities and states blatantly act on their utter contempt for that basic tenet, cops and all kinds of other US citizens going about their daily lives get killed by the grotesque weirdos these countries send to us in hordes.

Thursday roundup

Have you seen the ever-grimmer news coming out of Venezuela and wondered, how long can it be until this Maduro regime can't cling to power any longer? Well, a large part of the reason for its staying power is the extent to which Russia is propping it up:

As allies go, Venezuela is a relatively cheap one for Russia. But the potential returns on Moscow’s investment there could be priceless. 

In exchange for modest loans and bailouts over the past decade, Russia now owns significant parts of at least five oil fields in Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest reserves, along with 30 years’ worth of future output from two Caribbean natural-gas fields. 

Venezuela also has signed over 49.9 percent of Citgo, its wholly owned company in the United States — including three Gulf Coast refineries and a countrywide web of pipelines — as collateral to Russia’s state-owned Rosneft oil behemoth for a reported $1.5 billion in desperately needed cash. 

Russian advisers are inside the Venezuelan government, helping direct the course of President Nicolás Maduro’s attempts to bring his failing government back from bankruptcy. They helped orchestrate this year’s introduction of a new digital currency, the “Petro,” to keep oil payments flowing while avoiding U.S. sanctions on the country’s dollar transactions.

Venezuela’s still-formidable defense force, once an exclusively U.S. client, is now equipped with Russian guns, tanks and planes, financed with prepaid oil deliveries to Russian clients. Maduro scoffed last year at President Trump’s public threat to use the U.S. military to bring him down, saying Venezuela, with Russian help, had turned itself into a defensive “fortress.”

Look, the Very Stable Genius's surprise trip to Iraq was replete with his signature grandstanding and has given his shills a ready opportunity to fawn, but the Leftist media in post-America has really outdone itself in childish, petty spin on it.  CNN may have been the worst.

Bookworm on David Hogg getting accepted to Harvard:

 I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Harvard has extended an offer to David Piglet . . . er, David Hogg, the kid who was nowhere near the Parkland School shooting but who leveraged his attendance at that school into a very prominent anti-gun platform. Indeed, in some ways I admire Hogg’s initiative in surfing Leftist obsessions to achieve his own fame, but I don’t admire Hogg or anything he believes in or stands for.

One cannot get around the fact that neither Hogg’s grades nor his test scores would normally have brought him to Harvard’s attention. Moreover, his tweets revealed a young man who is barely literate and extremely ignorant. It is purely his hostility to the Second Amendment (about which he knows nothing) that sees him being invited to an institution that once produced people notable for actual accomplishments, rather than politically correct views.

By contrast, conservative Parkland student Kyle Kashuv, who supports the Second Amendment, shows himself to be informed, witty, literate – and in every way the type of student who would have been a Harvard shoo-in thirty years ago, but this year doesn’t stand a chance. (Incidentally, being Jewish, he wouldn’t have been a Harvard shoo-in 80 or more years ago. Harvard’s had issues for a while.)

Khashoggi came to a grim end that points up Saudi Arabia's capacity for ruthlessness, but this new information will widen your perspective on the situation:

The Washington Post has caused itself a major scandal since it has come to light they and their martyred “reformer” Jamal Khashoggi were publishing anti-Saudi propaganda for Qatar. They tried to bury this in a pre-Christmas Saturday news dump, but that can’t stop the damage this will do to their reputation.

“Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government,” the Post wrote December 21.

The ever-thoughtful David Solway's latest at PJ Media is entitled "Is Poetry Really Dead?"

If anything here is a must-read, it's Jonah Goldberg's latest at NRO:

Nearly all of the controversies that have bedeviled Trump’s administration are the direct result of his character, not his ideology. To be sure, ideology plays a role, amplifying both the intensity of anger from his left-wing critics and the intensity of his transactional defenders. Many of the liberal critics shrieking about the betrayal of the Kurds implicit in Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria would be applauding if a President Clinton had made the same decision. And many of the conservatives celebrating the move would be condemning it.

But Trump’s refusal to listen to advisers, his inability to bite his tongue, his demonization and belittling of senators who vote for his agenda but refuse to keep quiet when he does or says things they disagree with, his rants against the First Amendment, his praise for dictators and insults for allies, his need to create new controversies to eclipse old ones, and his inexhaustible capacity to lie and fabricate history: All of this springs from his character.

Derek Hunter's open letter to Pope Francis. 

 

The official LITD Christmas post

I often start my reflections on how I came to a genuine faith walk with one of my last few sticking points. There were a few, and a perusal of past years' Christmas posts is a good way to see them enumerated and elaborated upon.

You see, I didn't accept any of what I was taught at home or in Sunday school on good-faith reliance on the authority figures in my life. That's just not how I've ever rolled. I suppose some part of it was a demand for empirical proof, although I don't for the most part approach life scientifically. I think it was mainly the authority thing, submitting to a chain that went from "because mom and dad say so" up through "because the dean says so" to "because it is written in the Scriptures." Looking back, I can't see what kind of basis I had to go on for thinking that I could come up with a better set of guidelines for living, but by an early age the rock-and-roll rebel in me held sway. Believe me, there were consequences.

Anyway, one sticking point for me was that there was no discernible difference in human history, in the way our species behaved, between the time before Christ's earthly existence and after it. In fact, the Church founded upon his rock proved just as prone to corruption as any other institution.

So what was the point of his existence?

A way out of our predicament, of our being stuck in the way things seem to be, as I began to hazily intuit, but not yet fully embrace.

But, I then asked myself, what if there is no "predicament"? What if the chaotic fits and starts, the advancements and the setbacks, the acts of nobility and the acts of evil, are all we can expect from this thing called life?

Well, then, there's no point to any of it. None of it has meaning There's not a point to religion, let alone the Judaism from which Christianity sprang. There's no significance when justice occurs, or when mercy occurs. It's just as random as when the opposite occurs, and hopelessness and cruelty hold sway.

But something in the human heart knows better. And certain people throughout time and throughout the world fashioned myths and built shrines and temples to that which they reckoned decreed that a certain kind of order was right and proper.

We can see that the ancient Jews had the most accurate take on this. They listened most closely to what a sovereign universal ruler was revealing to humankind. Hence, the covenant, the Ten Commandments, the way David and other kings very much grew up in public, and the prophecies.

And then - Him. There's never been quite the same take on matters of the spirit and ultimate reality, not even from his Jewish forebears, let alone systems that sprang up in other cultures.

He was like us in every aspect, save one that is all-important: He created us - and, indeed, everything. Here was this guy, walking  around, x number of feet and inches tall, with a certain hair and eye color and pitch of voice. He got hungry and tired. He wept and laughed. He got mad on occasion. But through it all, he knew the end game, because he was the author of it. And he invites us to participate in that endgame with him.

Can we attain his perfect wisdom and mercy? No, but availing ourselves of his grace in spite of our inability to so attain achieves the same effect. We spend eternity free of what besets us during our brief time in this realm. That stuff is over for good.

And, indeed, the more closely people approach him, and the more people who do so, this world can become a better place to live. (Not that we want to get attached to it, though!)

"Look full in his wonderful face," as the song says.

You might as well look. His gaze is actually inescapable. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake.

Just like when Judas kissed him, no matter what we do, he says, "I knew you were going to do that."

But his compassion is as inescapable as his gaze, and your crummy choices in no way diminish how much he wants you in his eternal company.

Look full in his wonderful face. It is the face of God.

Thoughts on watching It's a Wonderful Life for the gazillionth time, but maybe the first time on Christmas Eve

Since we're all as familiar with every scene as we are the sounds of our own voices, I'll cut to what just struck me.
It's the scene where George, at the coaxing of his mother, wanders down the street to casually visit Mary. Things get tense - in some part due to Mary's mother - and in the midst of it, Sam Wainwright calls and gets all ebullient about his business opportunity, and exhorts George to invest in it and says he might have a job for George. Georges starts to shake and grit his teeth and he grabs Mary's shoulders and says, "Now, you listen to me. I don't want in on any ground floors, and I don't wanna get married ever! I wanna do what I wanna do!" And they embrace.

The very next scene is their wedding reception.

Why did he marry her, given what he'd said in his outburst?

Because she was the one woman to whom he could bare his soul.

It occurred to me that in real life, we still put brakes on our willingness to bare our souls. (Actually, later in the movie, George kept a lot to himself.)

In real life, if you bare yourself to anyone - spouse, sibling, best friend, parent, child - there may be issues. The recipient of what you're conveying may have some kind of investment in what you're saying.

But there is one to whom you can bare your soul and there are no issues.

He's heard it all and in fact he's keenly interested in your story. And he'll have nothing but complete understanding for you as you tell it. When you're done, he'll let you know he's crazy about you, that he loves you like he loves no other.  He'll have no issues. Talk away.

And tonight we celebrate his birth. He created each and every one of us, but he still seemed remote to us until that night. He decided we needed to see him as one of us so we could understand who and what he was.

Only once has someone that pure walked among us.

Let him listen to you.

Let him hear you say yes.

Everyone remain calm, says Steve Mnuchin

No doubt he means to soothe rather than rattle with this move, but I'm not sure how effective it is in achieving that aim:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary called top U.S. bankers on Sunday amid an ongoing rout on Wall Street and made plans to convene a group of officials known as the “Plunge Protection Team.”

U.S. stocks have fallen sharply in recent weeks on concerns over slowing economic growth, with the S&P 500 index .SPX on pace for its biggest percentage decline in December since the Great Depression.
“Today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Twitter shortly before financial markets were due to open in Asia. 

U.S. equity index futures dropped late on Sunday as electronic trading resumed to kick off a holiday-shortened week. In early trading, the benchmark S&P 500’s e-mini futures contract ESv1 was off by about a quarter of a percent. 

The Treasury said in a statement that Mnuchin talked with the chief executives of Bank of America (BAC.N), Citi (C.N), Goldman Sachs (GS.N), JP Morgan Chase (JPM.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Wells Fargo (WFC.N).
“The CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending,” the Treasury said.
Mnuchin “also confirmed that they have not experienced any clearance or margin issues and that the markets continue to function properly,” the Treasury said. 

Mnuchin’s calls to the bankers came amid a partial government shutdown that began on Saturday following an impasse in Congress over Trump’s demand for more funds for a wall on the border with Mexico. Financing for about a quarter of federal government programs expired at midnight on Friday and the shutdown could continue to Jan. 3. 

The Treasury said Mnuchin will convene a call on Monday with the president’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which includes Washington’s main stewards of the U.S. financial system and is sometimes referred to as the “Plunge Protection Team.”
The group, which was also convened in 2009 during the latter stage of the financial crisis, includes officials from the Federal Reserve as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Wall Street is also closely following reports that Trump has privately discussed the possibility of firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Mnuchin said on Saturday Trump told him he had “never suggested firing” Powell. 

We're now getting to the juncture that everybody but the throne-sniffers saw coming from the outset of the VSG phenomenon: Can he be gotten to by grownups on a consistent basis, so that the idiots don't have his ear at all? Can we keep the protectionists and the wall-obsessors out of the room?

 

Another Mulvaney diss of the VSG surfaces - and it's a spot-on observation about this wall business

From 2015:

Now, with the president holding the government hostage, as he threatens to shut the government down, if he doesn’t get $5 billion (an arbitrary number that has no research or budgeting plan behind it) for a border wall, another comment from Mick Mulvaney has been unearthed, dating back to August 2015.

This particular comment is in regards to the border, and then-candidate Trump’s views of border protection.

While speaking with a South Carolina radio station, Mulvaney pointed out that just putting some form of barrier at the border wasn’t really a well thought out solution.

"The fence doesn't solve the problem. Is it necessary to have one? Sure. Would it help? Sure. But to just say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish for someone running for president to take that simplistic of [a] view," Mulvaney said on WRHI radio.

"And by the way, the bottom line is the fence doesn't stop anybody who really wants to get across," Mulvaney said at the time, according to CNN.

He’s not wrong.

Real border security has already been mapped out by better men than the reality TV host, if only he could be convinced to listen.

Strategic fencing, more boots on the ground, and aviation assets covering the border, with direct communications with fast responders, who are actually atthe border, not 50 miles back.

I have a feeling that if Trump would present something more reasoned and planned out than just barking about a wall (that Mexico was supposed to pay for, but won’t), he’d have much less of a problem getting it included in funding.

Meanwhile, Mulvaney’s past keeps coming up, and he knows he’s about to be the most miserable person in government.

Indeed. To invest so much in this particular symbol, when it's only one component, and probably not the most effective one, in the effort to reclaim our national sovereignty, is to reveal oneself as a pretty poor tactician.

But it was "the wall" from the get-go, and unless there's some way to break through the Senate's intransigence, the VSG's reelection prospects are taking a significant hit.

You think Ann Coulter is going to shill for him ever again if he can't pull this off?

Just dandy

This:

Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, has resigned in protest over President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, a U.S. official said, joining Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in an administration exodus of experienced national security figures.
Only 11 days ago, McGurk had said it would be “reckless” to consider IS defeated and therefore would be unwise to bring American forces home. McGurk decided to speed up his original plan to leave his post in mid-February.

Look, I've already seen the takes from right of center - at the moment, what any Leftist has to say about all this is of back-burner interest to me - to the effect that we have ill-defined reasons only tangentially related to national interest for remaining in Syria, but they ring hollow. Our Kurdish allies are embittered about this. Iran, Russia and Turkey are grinning slyly. Given the context - North Korea's reversion to its customary belligerence, revved-up threats to Israel on both its northern and southern borders, Russian ships and planes in Venezuela - this does not project an image of strength and readiness.

Mr. McGurk seems to agree.

Friday roundup

Since Colorado baker Jack Phillips won his narrowly-reasoned Supreme Court case, God-hating weirdos have gone to ever more outlandish lengths to pester him:

On June 26, 2017, the day the Supreme Court agreed to hear Phillips' case, Autumn Scardina, a transgender attorney and activist, called Masterpiece Cakeshop and asked Phillips to design a custom cake with a blue exterior and a pink interior to symbolize a transition from male to female. Phillips politely turned Scardina down. "I was stunned," the lawyer risibly claimed in her complaint to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Scardina, of course, didn't accidentally ask the most famous Christian baker in the nation to make a "transition" cake. Scardina is leading a crusade against Phillips. In one call, Scardina allegedly asked for "an image of Satan smoking marijuana." In a written request, members of "the Church of Satan" asked for "a three-tiered white cake" with a "large figure of Satan, licking a 9" black Dildo." "I would like the dildo to be an actual working model, that can be turned on before we unveil the cake," went the request. You can just sense the sanctimonious smugness of people who think this sort of thing is edgy.

Manhattan Institute scholar Chris Pope, writing at NRO, offers some much-needed clear thinking on the subject of preexisting conditions.

Irony of ironies: Planned Parenthood treats its pregnant employees shabbily.

You know what a major factor in the VSG's decision to withdraw troops from Syria was? Turkish president Erdogan telling him in a phone call that Turkish troops were coming across the border to kill Kurds that have been allied with the US. Fox News's Jennifer Griffin says Erdogan "warned US troops to get out of the way."

A few years ago, this John of God charlatan down in Brazil was all the rage among New-Agers. Now he's been charged with hundreds of sex crimes.

 

Bracing candor from General Mattis

His resignation letter is going to prove to have historical significance. One wonders about the timing, the extent to which it expresses thoughts he'd been entertaining for some time, and the extent to which immediate circumstances, namely, the pullout-of-troops-from-Syria announcement, spurred its writing.

Consider this Bloomberg piece from December 9, when Kelly's departure was the latest incident of administration instability, and what the lay of the land looked like at that point:

Mattis, the warrior intellectual in charge of the Pentagon, has worked to get fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization members and Pacific allies to watch what the U.S. does, not what it tweets. Were he to go, too, at a time of escalating trade tensions and frictions between the U.S. and its partners on everything from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to climate change, those most reliant on U.S. support would be shaken.

“His departure definitely wouldn’t be a positive message for us,’’ said retired General Ants Laaneots, who commanded the armed forces of Estonia, one of NATO’s three small Baltic state members, from 2006 to 2011. Mattis, he said, “knows what is happening here and knows there is a Russian threat.”

There’s no immediate indication the defense secretary’s job is in danger. Still, whether his days are numbered is among the big questions doing the rounds at NATO’s shiny-new Brussels headquarters, according to two alliance officials, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. They described Mattis as one of the last remaining Atlanticists in the Trump administration, and the main interlocutor for European allies.

And now he's pulled the trigger.

It's obvious from his letter that he wanted the chasm between his view of America's role in the world and that of the Very Stable Genius to be on very public display. David French at NRO correctly determines the most important line in it, and just what is meant by it:

Again he refers to treating allies with respect. Again he urges clarity in dealing with “malign actors.” The lead sentence of the following paragraph is devastating: “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other matters, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.” (Emphasis added.)

Donald Trump is at a pivotal moment. He can heed General Mattis’s warning — delivered publicly, firmly, and respectfully — or he can continue down his current, reckless path. This letter represents America’s most-respected warrior telling the nation that he does not believe the president sees our enemies clearly, understands the importance of our alliances, or perceives the necessity of American leadership. We should be deeply troubled.

Clearly, General Mattis has had a belly full of the Trump approach to dealing with other people or nations. Trump is the kind of guy who thinks you can savage people with juvenile and baseless nicknames and assertions and still get them on board for "deals," that such meanness is just part of the normal course of doing business. He thinks nothing of going from "little rocket man" to "beautiful letters" (which have less import than he'd like us to think, given North Korea's return to its customary bellicosity.)

Morale is in the toilet at the Pentagon, Brussels bureaucrats have the jitters, and Iran and Turkey emboldened. And what, at this juncture, does Vladimir Putin chime in with?

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a chilling warning Thursday about the rising threat of a nuclear war, putting the blame squarely on the U.S., which he accused of irresponsibly pulling out of arms control treaties.
Speaking at his annual news conference, Putin warned that “it could lead to the destruction of civilization as a whole and maybe even our planet.”

Granted, his reasoning, predicated on the US pulling out of the INF treaty, solely reflects his own perspective, since it is true that the actual reason for withdrawing was Russian cheating, but it nonetheless indicates Putin's current mood.

This entire scenario ought to, as French says, leave us deeply troubled.

The ushering in of an era of unicorns and rainbows with North Korea also seems to have hit a snag

Kim says, "You go first":

North Korea said Thursday it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the United States first removes what Pyongyang called a nuclear threat. The surprisingly blunt statement jars with Seoul's rosier presentation of the North Korean position and could rattle the fragile trilateral diplomacy to defuse a nuclear crisis that last year had many fearing war.

The latest from North Korea comes as the United States and North Korea struggle over the sequencing of the denuclearization that Washington wants and the removal of international sanctions desired by Pyongyang.

The statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency also raises credibility problems for the liberal South Korean government, which has continuously claimed that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is genuinely interested in negotiating away his nuclear weapons as Seoul tries to sustain a positive atmosphere for dialogue.

The North's comments may also be seen as proof of what outside skeptics have long said: that Kim will never voluntarily relinquish an arsenal he sees as a stronger guarantee of survival than whatever security assurances the United States might provide. The statement suggests North Korea will eventually demand the United States withdraw or significantly reduce the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea, a major sticking point in any disarmament deal.

If this really comes across as any kind of a shock to the Moon administration in South Korea, it's more ate-up with the desire to appease than I'd thought.

So Charlie Sykes's tweet really sums up what winning looks like as of late:

Trump’s week so far: caved on Wall, Foundation shut down, Flynn conspiracy collapses; Moscow Project letter surfaces, stock mkt drops, NK says no Nuke deal, Stone indictment looms ... and to change narrative he bugs out of Syria, betrays Kurds, hands huge win to Russia and Iran.

Time for some 5D chess!

 

The Very Stable Genius is looking a lot like a mere mortal this week

It turns out he's no more able to build walls with Mexican money, make the stock market soar without interruption, or achieve lasting peace in the Middle East than the Most Equal Comrade was able to quell the rising of the seas or fundamentally transform America.

Now, Democrats are not to be taken seriously when the subject is national sovereignty, but the ones  in Congress do have a point in their opposition to the wall along the southern border when they say, "Um, you said quit unequivocally that Mexico would pay for it." In fact, the administration is about to send $4.8 billion to Mexico in development aid.

I'll bet Ann Coulter is fit to be tied about right now.

And son-in-law Jared Kushner obviously has the VSG's ear, given that he's now on the criminal justice reform bandwagon,

And the Fed chair isn't intimidated by he of the wispy carrot top:

Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell said 'nothing' will deter independent central bankers from following their economic convictions – after an extraordinary pressure campaign by President Donald Trump failed to stave off a rate hike.

Powell got asked repeatedly Wednesday about Trump's extended public push to hold off on further rate increases – which the Fed's rate committee brushed past as it came out with a 0.25 per cent increase in the Fed's closely-watched lending rate.

And though he didn't go after Trump by name, Powell, who was nominated by the president, proclaimed his independence when asked about the pressure tactics by multiple reporters at a rare press conference.

'Political considerations play no role whatsoever in our discussions or our decisions about monetary policy,' Powell told reporters just minutes after the Fed announced its rate hike. 

And now the stock market is on a downswoop of its roller-coaster gyrations. At this point, all its gains for the year are wiped out.

And folks are starting to discuss the consequences of this sudden announcement of a "full and rapid" withdrawal of US troops from Syria:

 First, it looks like Erdogan’s information operation on the killed Muslim Brotherhood apostle and WaPo opinion writer, Jamal Khashoggi, had its desired effect. You’ll note that no one is talking about this beacon of press freedom in the past week. 

Second, this is a huge win for Iran, for Bashar Assad, and for Vladimir Putin. They have gone from being on their heels strategically to having turfed us out of Syria without lifting a finger.

Iran, now effectively allied with both Turkey and Russia, will be unhindered in its quest to create the so-called Shia Crescent that terminates on the Mediterranean.
Regional partners will see that we are not a reliable ally, particularly when their every existence is at stake. Not only will Erdogan be free to continue with the Turkish policy of ethnic cleansing and re-peopling the area with Turks, it will put Erdogan’s boot on the throat of the cause of Kurdish self-determination. Other people are going to notice.

Russia goes from participating in a conflict that generates enough dead Russians that the Russian government has to hid the funerals to being seen as the regional kingmaker.

So much winning.

Judge Reed O'Connor's ruling on the "A"CA gives us the best opportunity in - well, my lifetime - to put health insurance on a normal-people footing

Braden H. Bousek's PJ Media essay about it is as insightful as you're going to find anywhere.

First, the ruling:

Many Americans checking the news for the first time following the weekend will learn that a federal judge in Texas, in a lawsuit that few were watching, declaredObamacare unconstitutional in its entirety. The question now becomes what happens next, legally and politically.

Judge Reed O’Connor, one of America’s most formidable legal minds, ruled (as predicted) that the individual mandate, originally justified as a tax, could no longer be since the penalty was set at zero. And by the words of Obamacare’s own architects, the individual mandate was essential to the law’s overall success. The whole thing came down along with the mandate.

And now, for some of the dang-I-wish-I'd-said-that insight:

Obamacare was intentionally made clunky and convoluted so as to disguise the true costs from Americans who the law’s author figured were too stupid to recognize the law for what it is – a tax and spend welfare program that would have looked quite at home during the New Deal but for its dishonest packaging.
Employers all across the country who have been hard hit by the "employer mandate" are finding it increasingly difficult to comply. With its hallmark leaden touch, Obamacare forced all large employers across the country and in different industries to provide the health insurance it mandated. As with any closed system, the market suffered.

The rate of the increasing cost of insurance will continue to accelerate as fewer healthy individuals purchase insurance, particularly if only part of the country needs to participate. With people waiting until they need care to buy insurance, the market will be less actuarially sound and the costs will increase further. 

And this insight: The notion that health care - and the means for covering it with insurance - is some kind of overwhelmingly complex web of interconnected factors is a lot of smoke and mirrors:

There’s probably less of a reason why health care isn’t more like the market for phones or cars than people commonly suspect. If you think "health care is just different" from other consumer goods, then check out what’s happened to laser vision eye care over the last decade. Unlike most health care products, it is generally severed from the third party-payer model. With consumers and doctors in charge, laser vision eye care has dramatically gone up in quality and down in cost. In other words, it has behaved unlike other health care products and exactly like a healthy market.

Now, Boucek says, it's time for those in a position to really move the needle to go get 'em:

Many states have incoming governors right now. They have fresh perspective to bring to bear into a debate that had gone stale. In a future when the health insurance market may, for the first time since WWII, not have to orbit around a federal dead star, state lawmakers will be free to innovate like never before. Innovation, consumer choice, and an open market may finally have the opportunity to flourish.

Those states that did not shackle themselves with Medicaid expansion have even greater freedom to experiment. And even those states that remain infatuated with central planning should have the chance to put their schemes into practice. Let us see the results of these competing philosophical models. 

Many thanks to the judge and to the impeccable policy-analysis chops - and ample common sense - of Mr. Boucek.