Trump is going head on against judges. So far, the judges are keeping their power, which is a good precedent. It’s too bad that Senator Feinstein didn’t object to overuse of executive power a few years ago, but her reversal is both welcome and typical of a politician. The resistance will give more power to Trump’s base and he will gain sympathy for his cause. The “see I told you so” speeches and headlines are coming.
Californians are getting serious about seceding from the Union. If California left it would not be abandoning the US, but its sister State, New York. Without Los Angeles and Manhattan, Trump would have had the popular vote as well, even with Hillary keeping her estimated 800k illegal voters. Keeping some things separate has always been a goal of the United States since its founding. Californians should, however, be thankful that they are asking to leave the United States rather than asking to leave Mexico.
Senate Republicans have claimed that they can’t repeal Obamacare because the employee they can fire at any time, the Parliamentarian, says that Obamacare can’t be repealed the same way it was passed. VP Mike Pence can overrule the Parliamentarian without firing him. These are the same Republicans who said that they couldn’t change Obamacare without the presidency and that their fellow Republican, Trump, would never win the presidency. Now that they have what they said they needed that they said they couldn’t get, they say they can’t do what they said they would do if they got it. Whenever Republicans whine about what they can’t do, they always get more power. The best interpretation is that Republicans are hoping to inch toward a 60 vote Supermajority in 2019. Again, the trend is for slowness to stir sympathy to the cause. May Heaven help the United States if any political party ever gets a Supermajority in the Senate while having control of the White House.
The term “unemployment” has as honest of a definition as the lawyer-defined word “natural” on a box of cookies. The media has finally discovered that there are six ways to track “unemployment”, specifically U1-U6. U3 has been used recently and most famously during the Obama years when the claim was that “unemployment was low”, without emphasizing the qualification “U3”. The U3 figure only considers people who were looking for jobs while U6 considers all Americans without a job—a definition more likely associated with “national unemployment”. Congratulations to those in the media who have finally discovered the six degrees of unemployment figures.
The hashtag #Calexit would be #Texit if the election had gone the other way. California and Texas already did secede once. Of course Washington would do something to stop it, we wouldn’t be dealing with Obama anymore. Secession is now on the table for real, thank you Californians. It’s only a matter of time. These are bad days for globalism.
Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon will be great in the White House. Trump is the man who led and starred one of NBC’s most profitable shows, The Apprentice. He knows who to hire. This man, accused of being a woman-hating, homophobic racist has already hired KellyAnne Connway, Peter Thiel, and Dr. Ben Carson. The Anti-Trumpist retort is that they are examples of Trump operating in “rare form”.
Are the protesters in as much danger of Trump as they protest to being? Will Trump retaliate against NBC and other venomous enemies with an onslaught of IRS audits and the like? Historically, no because Trump is not a Democrat.
“Experts” in other countries, disparaged Democrat voters, members from the four corners of Congress, and media talking heads from the four corners of the moon—even Fox News Sunday and debate host extraordinaire Christopher Wallace—did not predict the 2016 US election outcome; Pacific Daily Times Editor in Chief and writer-narrator of this editorial, Jesse Steele, did in early February. The most widely-known prediction of Trump’s victory before Jesse Steele’s was from Richard Nixon’s wife, though Mrs. Nixon didn’t make a map.
A few polls got it right. Khali at Trafalgar polling found a way to get the truth from “shy” Trumpist Conservatives who think they can’t tell the truth to pollsters: “Who is your neighbor voting for?” It’s interesting how we tend to think that our neighbors think how we think.
In their ever-shifting opinions and speculations about Trump, so-called “experts” of 20/20 hindsight who park their pedestals among aftermath should cite their more accurate election maps published before February. As usual, if you read it here, you read it here first, at Pacific Daily Times.
The divide in America is between the archetypal city mice and country mice. The country mice need land to make things in factories and grow food on farms; the city mice manage the market’s business on less and more costly land, all the while consuming the fat of the land they rarely visit. Like a saddle and a horse, a saddle helps, but bareback is an option while a saddle ridden on the fence goes nowhere.
The two are naturally polarized and out of touch with each other; they have formed political right and left extremes. The country mice want production and renaissance while the city mice want fashion and manners. Being a “moderate” in the city-country conflict surmounts to mixing coffee with orange juice at breakfast—both are great, but they need different cups.
As for the controversy of the electoral college, it resurfaces in every presidential election as if it has just surfaced for the first time: It’s a newbie voter’s topic. The basic purpose is, in the event of a very close margin of city mice v country mice, the country mice will win because the country can’t function without the rural backbone. This is why a State gets just two extra votes just for being a State, and all that comes with it. This is why Alaska contributed 3 Republican votes, not just 1, and Hawaii and New Hampshire contributed each 4 Democrat votes, not just 2. That said, there have been no certified reports on how much of Clinton’s 260k vote lead came from illegal voting. We do know that Democrats openly object to measures that prevent illegal voting while moderate Republicans claim to oppose illegal voting, with little or no action to back up that claim. The policies, both actual and claimed, of both Democrats and Republicans brought the vote to what it was.
Pro-Lifers should be glad abortion will likely end. That was the biggest and most lasting direct result of this election, which many people have not realized, yet if ever. Perhaps Religious Right Conservative Christian Anti-Trumpist lamenters could learn a thing or two about gratitude from Liberal Democratic Anti-Trumpist protesters. Trump has managed to inspire shared hashtags for these Conservatives and Liberals. They might actually talk to each other now. That could be a longer-lasting, less direct result of this election. The way has been paved for The People’s Party.
The massive protests against Trump are the result of the country’s public education policies since the 1990’s. Students are given a trophy for showing up and recognition of winners and losers in sports is outright persecuted. Nannying and sissifying young people left the generation of first-time voters ill-prepared to deal with loss. While neither Conservative nor Liberal youth have had much experience training them to deal with the emotions of “losing” something, Conservative parents were more likely to prepare them at home for the things that school neglected. If nothing else, Conservative first-time voters had their first eight years of voting to learn to deal with loss; the Democrats did not.
There would have been protests of some kind either way. These protests are more of a “nasty” nature, involving destruction of private property with little legislative result. Had the election gone the other way, riots would have been replaced with larger, more peaceful, and yet more effective protests. Secession petitions would have been legitimate enough to provoke Congress, involve the Supreme Court, and surely military action, citing Clinton corruption and excess executive orders that Trump promised to undo. This election was somewhat of a “deal”: Get back inside the Constitutional boundaries or rip it up; the electors chose to get back inside the lines, for now. California and Texas will secede eventually, but that will require the “don’t get mad, get busy” action of sobriety and will happen only after elections and wars yet to come.
Contrary to some opinions floating around the “media-osphere”, there actually is a Constitutional basis for secession, though not stated directly. The Federal government is obligated to repel invasion, according to original Article IV. If the US is ever invaded, State secession will be as Constitutional as it is inevitable. The topic California brought up implies a warning to US enemies: Invading the United States at home would not be an act of war against one country, but against fifty. While secession is coming, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. The president elect still has not taken office, the electoral college has not voted, and the results of many States have not yet been certified by their election authorities. While some things are foreseeable from the vantage point of history, history informs foresight while the two remain separate.
The earthquakes had the final and poetic word after “US election week”: Both sides of the Pacific were shocked and shaken, and, more poetically, the shock in Christchurch started a tsunami.
