I Hope They Are Not Getting Paid for This

MESSAGE TO RUSSIAN TROLLS AND BOTS: If you’re going to try and hack Americans or influence voters, I strongly suggest you make an effort to translate your correspondence.  Below is one of several comments we received in response to the  December 13 post, “The Putin Principle.” Loosely translated, it is a promotion for casual apparel.

Интернет магазин уникальных футболок. Мы предлагаем Вам только качественные и уникальные товары. На Ваш выбор толстовки, футболки, головные уборы, чехлы, посуда, аксессуары и вещи для интерьера.
Вы с легкостью сможете подобрать рисунок, который Вам нравится или же сделать свой уникальный с помощью конструктора.
Приобретя товр Вы можете воспользоваться услугами доставки на очень выгодных условиях.

Заходи и заказывай:

So if you’re in the market for Russian made t-shirts and don’t mind giving them your contact and credit card information, these are the guys.

Border Security

If ADT can protect my home without surrounding my property with a 30 foot concrete wall and DogWatch, the electronic fence company, can deter my pet from leaving my property without “artistically designed steel slats,” one would think either of these companies would be more than willing to install a 2,000 mile invisible detection system at a fraction of the price of Donald Trump’s vanity wall.

Furthermore, do Trump, Steve Miller, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh really believe an asylum seeker who has traveled 1,505 miles by foot from Guatemala to the Texas border would not walk another 217 from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros where they could board a boat for a 30 minute ride to Port Isabel, Texas?  When refugees learn this is an option, they will also realize it is only 1,227 miles from Guatemala to Matamoros.  Will the Trump 2020 meme become, “We’ll have the best, most beautiful underwater mines along the Texas coast”?

Why Conservatives Should Join the Resistance

When is the media going to stop referring to the 35 percent of Americans who are giving Trump a pass on everything as “Trump’s conservative base?”  It is giving true conservatives a bad name.  Folks like Bill Kristol, Peggy Noonan and George Will should demand print journalists, talk show hosts and panelists stop using the term.  The only descriptor needed is, “Trump’s base.”

The McConnell Rule

Remember when Mitch McConnell blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court.  His justification?  With an upcoming election, the majority leader justified this violation of Article II of the Constitution by declaring, “We should let the people decide.”  Mitch, doesn’t this apply to Trump’s wall.  Trump stumped (or is it Stump trumped?) all over the country saying the 2018 mid-terms was all about border security.  And the voters decided.  By a margin of nine million votes, Americans rejected the Trump agenda.  Mitch, how could you in good conscience ask a lame duck Congress to support a policy that the electorate rejected by one of the largest margins ever in a mid-term election?

Huh?

On Friday morning, Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) said:

There are a lot of us who want to avoid a shutdown.  I’ve been through about five of them in my career. None of them have worked in terms of their intent.

That same afternoon, Roberts voted “Yea” on a procedural measure to consider the House version of a continuing resolution which included $5 billion for Trump’s wall.  The final vote was 47-47 with Mike Pence breaking the tie.  That vote guaranteed a government shutdown.  This Congressional update comes from the “It doesn’t work, but let’s do it anyway” department.

Huh? Part II

On Saturday’s edition of Politics Nation with Al Sharpton, Republican strategist and columnist for the Washington Examiner Jennifer Kerns claimed Americans did not care  federal employees might not get paid over the holidays.

I may sound like the Grinch saying it, but look, the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., did not suffer as the rest of America did in the last 10 years with the Obama recession.

So much for conservative intellectual integrity. Of course, the easiest target is “the Obama recession.”  Unemployment does not fall from over 10 percent to 4.3 percent during a recession.  Equally important, between 2009 and 2012, public employment declined by over 580,000 jobs.  At the same time, private sector employment, helped by the federal bailouts, increased by nearly 2 million jobs.  I don’t remember Ms. Kerns complaining about that.

And this is only one example of the wrongly labeled, “Trump conservative base.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP