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repeal Obamacare because the employee they can fire at any time, the Parliamentarian, says that Obamacare can’t be repealed the same way it was passed.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.