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President Donald Trumps words have been horrid, from liberals standpoint.

But three weeks in, things arent so bad in lib-land. Republicans are in disarray on repealing the Affordable Care Act, which citizens increasingly like, and President Trump says the GOP now may not have a bill until 2018. Courts are toying with Trumps Justice Department over his grandstanding emergency ban on people from countries that have never sent the U.S. an adult terrorist. Stuff he has done approving oil pipelines, ordering more study of a regulation designed to keep financial advisers from ripping off clients is mostly talk.

By mid-February 2009, Barack Obama was within days of passing a major tax cut, was restructuring General Motors, galvanizing clean-energy and digital-medicine industries through the stimulus, and was well underway on financial-services reform. By mid-2010, all that, plus Obamacare, was law.

So should Democrats calm down? Yes and no. Yes, because Trumps not getting much of anywhere on issues that matter most. But, really, no.

No, because keeping the heat on has pushed Trumps disapproval rating to 54% in Gallup surveys. In other surveys by Quinnipiac University, voters said Trump is wrong on repeal of Obamacare, refugees, climate change, even his beloved Mexican-border wall.

And no, because heat makes Trump obsess over minutiae and make unforced errors, like wasting three of his first four of his first 100 days in office debating the size of his inaugural crowd and spending days going on about appellate-court judges he says politicize immigration. Thats rich, coming from one who publicly said Muslim ban so many times not even Rudy Giuliani denied his intent.

Read: Appeals court upholds suspension of Trumps immigrant ban

Keeping heat on plays to the presidents lack of discipline and makes him do kid-with-ADHD things like griping about his daughters clothing line getting dropped by Nordstrom a tweet the president launched Wednesday when he was supposed to be in an intelligence briefing. Nordstrom shares rose 4% JWN, -1.21% , in a shock to everyone who doesnt read MarketWatch: We pointed out weeks ago that markets are learning to blow Trump off.

For liberals, a distracted Donald is a weak Donald, who did nothing important Wednesday and signed some empty executive orders Thursday. He was too busy claiming a political rival lied about Trumps own Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, throwing the president under the bus, only to have his own staff confirm Gorsuchs comments.

Liberals should hope Trump spending four years throwing meat to 35% of voters who think the Keystone XL pipeline is a jobs program (35 full-time jobs once up and running!), coal mining is the industry of the future, and Uhmurkas hidin in fear from refugees who are Obamas Muslim cousins innyway.

And, Australia!

Liberals will always have Australia.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is dealing with pressure from both President Donald Trump and Democrats over issues including trade, infrastructure spending and the controversial Trump travel ban. WSJ's Gerald F. Seib outlines how Sen. Schumer can navigate this tricky terrain over the next four years. Photo: AP

For Trump to do damage a Democratic president cant easily undo in 2021, hed need enough self-discipline to craft a sensible replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Ted Cruz scored rhetorical points about subsidized health care remaining expensive in a debate with Bernie Sanders this week but wait for the price of unsubsidized insurance the GOP thinks can replace it, all so people earning $250,000 a year and up can get a less-than-1% tax cut.

Trump said Thursday hell have a phenomenal tax announcement in a few weeks, but coming from him that could mean anything. And the next shiny butterfly may yet distract him.

For Trump to do real damage, hed cut corporate taxes in some way that doesnt add as much as $17,000 to imported-car prices, as a study from auto-industry researchers Baum and Associates projects. That plan would also boost prices for cheap Wal-Mart clothing, not to mention Ivankas classy Chinese-made duds.

Or hed figure out how to gut Dodd-Frank financial reforms without making it an obvious sap to Goldman Sachs. Then hope no less-savvy Goldman wannabe goes belly-up by 2020.

Instead, Mr. President, liberals demand you propose things that are obviously bonkers. Send marshals (or, troops!) to Chicago to help cut a murder rate lower than in the 1990s. Send more troops to Mexico to hunt bad hombres. Have your attorney general fight nonexistent voter fraud. Comp Japans Prime Minister at Mar-a-Lago! Better, charge him rack rate, like the WWII loser Japan is.

That way, you can spend time on these things, not gutting health-insurance markets or divvying up Syria with your new bruh Vladimir Putin.

And theyd like you to tweet all day long. Especially during intelligence briefings. About Nordstrom, or judges throwing your plans out faster than you can stack the Supreme Court.

Or the National Park Services coverup of photos proving your inaugural crowd was bigger than President Obamas, but got lost and went to Area 51.

I checked with Sen. Elizabeth Warren you know, Pocahontas? and she swears this would be splendid, much like telling Frances president you want a refund on NATO defense spending, which you already did.

I explained that its nuts. I warned her!

Nevertheless, she persisted.

Read more from the original source:
Opinion: Should liberals calm down about President Trump? - MarketWatch

To the Editor:

After reading the Letters to the Editor over the past few weeks, it is clear the mental health problems in this country are far greater than I suspected.

A couple that stand out include the man who wrote his own obituary. He talks about how we have destroyed the planet and he longs for the days of moderate and predictable weather. Dude, where have you been living the last 81 years? Did you ever take a history class where they talked about the Dust Bowl, plagues of locust, and other catastrophic weather events that have occurred throughout history? The world was never "San Diego like" with sunny skies and 70 degree temps for 300 days a year.

Next was the woman who said old, white, GOP men would come and take away her right to have an abortion. She talked about all of the high-risk pregnancies that occur and how those women will now die. Talk about spreading "fake news" around the county!

Finally, you have all of the "Trump Derangement Syndrome" folks protesting and terrorizing the nation. It is clear that liberals in this country have come unglued and we must do something about it for the sake of the nation.

I implore President Donald Trump to de-fund Planned Parenthood to stop the murder of infants and the selling of baby parts. The money saved can be used to buy antidepressants that will be free for all the poor souls who cannot survive in our new "America First" world.

Jamie Diamond

Woodstock

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Liberals unglued - Northwest Herald

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I'm a conservative. But sometimes wonder if I could describe myself as a member of the political left.

After all, I am animated by the same moral instinct that leftists endlessly and loudly profess: the belief that a society's moral worth is measured by how it treats its weakest, neediest, and most marginalized members. Like them, I am outraged by all the ways in which our society screws over the little guy. These convictions are born of my Christian faith and are anchored deep in my mind and heart.

But it's those same moral convictions that too often make me angry at the political left as it currently exists in the West, and make it impossible for me to call myself a leftist. Perhaps nothing exemplifies this better than the debate around the confirmation of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her stance on school choice.

School choice is not a fantasy of right-wing ideologues. For parents of means, it is a reality. They are able to either pay for private schools or move to districts with high-quality public schools. What school choice advocates like DeVos want is simply for poor children to have the same opportunities afforded to those parents who are better off. Opportunities that, by the way, many liberal parents happily exercise for themselves.

What's so wrong with the public school system as it is? Well, a lot.

Large, centralized, bureaucratic, top-down systems are impervious to change, innovation, institutional learning, and adaptability. They are particularly disadvantaged when it comes to being responsive to the needs of those they are supposed to serve as opposed to those of the insiders who man them. A public school classroom is not some platonic ideal of learning. It was born out of a very specific time and place, the late 19th century, when the elite ideal was the industrial assembly line. The way schools are designed today is based on these old ideas, which are rooted in shoddy philosophy and pseudo-science that has long been outdated.

Consider this: If a 19th century school teacher walked into a contemporary classroom, she would feel right at home, and could start teaching with minimal adaptation. Meanwhile, if a 19th century surgeon walked into a contemporary operating room, he would be utterly out of place, and if he wanted to perform a surgery, he would have to go through years of unlearning and relearning. This simple analogy should have us running around with our hair on fire every single day from sunrise to sundown in a state of collective fury.

Why haven't schools changed? In so many spheres of human endeavor medicine, business, the military, and academia new scientific discoveries, new organizational paradigms, and technological change have brought evolution and transformation. Innovation and efficiency comes about through a complicated trial-and-error process, one which is most effective the more decentralized it is, exactly the kind of process that large, top-down, centralized, bureaucratic organizations are most impervious to.

This issue is personal for me. As I was growing up, my family had economic ups and downs, and I experienced the worst as well as the best of what the school system in an advanced First World country had to offer. I had an unconventional learning style, which meant I did not do well in traditional public schools, and it was only because my parents eventually had enough money to put me in private schools that I eventually made something of myself academically. There is no doubt in my mind that if I had I not been afforded these opportunities, I would have become a teenage dropout.

I have personally witnessed the destruction that a top-down, one-size-fits-all, bureaucratic system can wreak on the lives of children who have the gall to be a square peg in a round hole, or have underprivileged parents, or both. There are so many kids with tremendous gifts whose lives will never reach their full potential because the public school system lets them down.

I broke out, and did well for myself. Now my own daughter goes to an alternative private school where she thrives to an astonishing degree, even as public school parents around me are in various states of dismay and panic. Every time I drop my daughter off or pick her up from school or go to a PTA meeting, I utter a silent prayer of thanks for this incredible luck and joy, right before my heart breaks at the thought of the parents who do not have the same privilege.

And then, if I'm in a sour mood, my thoughts go to the progressives who would sanctimoniously explain that, because I am a conservative, and I support school choice, I am somehow an advocate for cruelty or disregard for the poor. But it is they who are the members and agents of a political coalition whose goal is the sustainment of a system that actively destroys underprivileged children's lives.

Maybe you disagree, and that's fine. But for all that is beautiful, spare me your sanctimony. My cause is holy, and yours stinks to high heaven.

View post:
Liberals are wrong to gang up on Betsy DeVos - The Week Magazine

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Continued here:
'Disgrace to the Black Race': Sen. Tim Scott Illustrates How Liberals Show Tolerance - CNSNews.com

The Democratic Party has gone off the rails. We are now seeing serious (apparently) contemplation of a military coup as the solution to the Donald Trump crisis. And it isnt just comedians either, although liberals seem to get their news largely from comedians these days. The liberal Foreign Policy features an essay by Georgetown law professor and former senior advisor at the U.S. State Department Rosa Brooks, on how to get rid of President Trump before 2020. Because a four-year term is too long to wait.

I think Foreign Policy pretends to be a serious publication; it currently features a special offer subscription rate billed as a response to the war on truth. But Ms. Brookss essay isnt serious, it is just another howl of anguish from the Left.

How, exactly, are liberals going to get rid of our president without waiting until the next election? To her credit, Brooks doesnt advocate assassination. She notes the possibility of impeachment, but admits that cant happen until the Democrats take over Congress, no sooner than 2018. Thats too late! Plan B is the 25th Amendment, which, among other things, provides for a transition in power if the president should become disabled:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Brooks hypothesizes that Mike Pence and a majority of President Trumps cabinet might certify that Trump is disabledby reason of insanity, apparentlyand install Pence as Acting President. I guess it truly is morning in America, if liberals are fantasizing about having Mike Pence as president.

This brings us to the ultimate solution: a military coup!

The fourth possibility is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders. *** The prospect of American military leaders responding to a presidential order with open defiance is frightening but so, too, is the prospect of military obedience to an insane order. After all, military officers swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not the president. For the first time in my life, I can imagine plausible scenarios in which senior military officials might simply tell the president: No, sir. Were not doing that, to thunderous applause from the New York Times editorial board.

Several things are funny about this. To name just a few: 1) If military leaders had any desire to mount a coup against a president, it would have been Barack Obama, not Donald Trump. 2) Liberals who yearn for generals to seize power with guns say they are the ones who are against fascism. 3) The idea that applause from the New York Times editorial board is somehow a relevant factor in a world where the Army is staging a coup is a wonderful illustration of the American Lefts distance from reality.

It is easy to laugh at the current hysteria in the Democratic Party, and, perhaps, it is a moral duty to do so. But we are learning something very ugly about liberals. All that talk about democracy? Forget it. Their interest is in power, period. I seriously think they would throw us conservatives in jail if they had the opportunity. The Democratic Party, as currently constituted, must never achieve power again.

Via Donald Sensing.

More here:
I'm So Old, I Remember When Liberals Opposed Military Coups - Power Line (blog)