Continetti throws a huge bucket of ice cold water on Dems & media attempting to oppose Obamacare repeal & SCOTUS
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) January 6, 2017
https://t.co/TkBJdJHsS1
Democrats have been in power for so long that they’ve forgotten how to oppose. Their party has been on a roll since 2005 when the botched Social Security reform, the slow bleed of the Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina sent the Bush administration into a tailspin. The Democrats won the Congress the following year and the White House two years after that. And while they lost the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, Democrats still had the advantage of retaining the White House, a president seemingly immune from criticism, the courts, the bureaucracy, and large portions of the media. The correlation of forces in Washington has weighed heavily in favor of the Democrats for a decade.Excellent. Just outstanding analysis.
No longer. The election of Donald Trump has brought unified Republican government to Washington and overturned our understanding of how politics works. Or at least it should have done so. The Democrats seem not to understand how to deal with Trump and the massive change he is about to bring to the nation’s capital. During the general election they fell for the idea that Trump can be defeated by conventional means, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in negative television advertising and relying on political consultants beholden to whatever line Politico was selling on a given day. This strategy failed Trump’s Republican primary opponents, but Democrats figured that was simply because the GOP was filled with deplorables. It was a rationalization that would cost them.
Republicans control the House, the Senate, 34 governor’s mansions, and 4,100 seats in state legislatures. But Democrats act like they run Washington. Nancy Pelosi’s speech to the 115th House of Representatives was a long-winded recitation of the same liberal agenda that has brought her party to its current low. Give her points for consistency I guess. Chuck Schumer is just being delusional.
Smarting from the failed nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, the Senate minority leader pledged to oppose Donald Trump’s nominee weeks before inauguration day. “If they don’t appoint somebody good,” he said on MSNBC, “we’re going to oppose them tooth and nail.” That would “absolutely” include keeping the seat held by the late Antonin Scalia empty, he said. “We are not going to make it easy for them to pick a Supreme Court justice.”
I suppose it’s too much to expect a graduate of Harvard Law School to grasp the difference between majority and minority. Mitch McConnell was able to block Garland’s appointment because the Republicans controlled the Senate. The Democrats do not. And McConnell was able to hold his caucus together because he was on solid historical ground. Lyndon Johnson’s nomination of Abe Fortas as chief justice failed in the election year 1968, and the so-called “Biden Rule” of 1992 stipulated no Supreme Court replacements during the last year of a presidency. Schumer himself, in a 2007 speech, expanded the waiting period to the final 18 months of a president’s term. Now, despite a record of calling on the Senate to confirm the president’s nominees—as long as the president is a Democrat—Schumer has adopted the strategy of no Supreme Court confirmations at all. How does he think President Trump will respond? By caving?
*****
Yes, the first duty of the opposition is to oppose. And I don’t expect the Democrats to roll over for Trump. But I am surprised by their hysterics, and by their race to see who can be the most obnoxious to the new president. They seem to have been caught off guard, to say the least, by their situation. Take for example their willingness to stand on a podium beside a sign that reads, “Make America Sick Again.” By embracing this message, such as it is, the Democrats associated not Trump but themselves with illness. Who on earth thought that was a good idea?
It takes time to adjust. The Democrats may be counting on inertia and the media to slow the Republicans down and force them into a defensive crouch. Worked in the past. But here’s the thing about Trump: He doesn’t play defense.
Obama Calls Facebook Torture Video 'Despicable', But Optimistic About Race Relations In U.S. https://t.co/2nqdutelde— CBS Chicago (@cbschicago) January 5, 2017
However, the president remains hopeful about the future.Actually, public opinion polling consistently finds that race relations have deteriorated during the Obama regime. Indeed, a majority of white Americans say race relations have gotten worse over the past eight years, according to a report at Gallup last August, "In U.S., Obama Effect on Racial Matters Falls Short of Hopes":
“I take these things very seriously.”
“The good news is that the next generation that’s coming behind us … have smarter, better, more thoughtful attitudes about race.
“I think the overall trajectory of race relations in this country is actually very positive. It doesn’t mean that all racial problems have gone away. It means that we have the capacity to get better.”
Americans' optimism about the effects that Obama's election and presidency would have on race relations has ... declined significantly since he was elected in November 2008. At that time, 70% of Americans expected race relations in the U.S. to get better, while only 10% believed relations would get worse. Now, more say that race relations have gotten worse as a result of his presidency (46%) than say they have gotten better (29%).A Pew report last June found Americans only slightly less pessimistic about race relations, with fully one third of whites saying race relations have deteriorated, with another 24 percent saying Obama tried but failed to improve relations between the races during his administration. See, "On Views of Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites Are Worlds Apart."
Whites, by more than a 2-to-1 margin, now say race relations are worse rather than better. Blacks are more charitable in their evaluation of the effect of Obama's presidency on U.S. race relations, but they are divided on whether things are better or worse. Both blacks' and whites' opinions are more pessimistic than they were in October 2009, nine months into Obama's presidency...
Sixty-nine percent of Americans say race relations are generally bad, one of the highest levels of discord since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles during the Rodney King case, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.There's been saturation coverage of the Chicago black thug Facebook beating and torture all day, and so expect new polling on race to be at least as bad as last July, when the Dallas police officers were massacred by a Black Lives Matter supporter.
The poll, conducted from Friday, the day after the killing of five Dallas police officers, until Tuesday, found that six in 10 Americans say race relations were growing worse, up from 38 percent a year ago.
Racial discontent is at its highest point in the Obama presidency and at the same level as after the riots touched off by the 1992 acquittal of Los Angeles police officers charged in Mr. King’s beating.
Relations between black Americans and the police have become so brittle that more than half of black people say they were not surprised by the attack that killed five police officers and wounded nine others in Dallas last week. Nearly half of white Americans say that they, too, were unsurprised by the episode, the survey found...
President Obama acknowledged Tuesday that voters may have elected Donald Trump in part out of “natural desires for change,” but he batted down the idea that American voters gave an “outright rejection of my worldview.”More.
Hours after arriving in Greece to begin his final foreign tour as president, Obama tried to explain the American election, allowing elliptically for the first time that Trump’s election might have been a repudiation of his own presidency.
Presidential elections, Obama said, can turn on personalities as well as campaigns. Sometimes there are “natural desires for change when you have an incumbent who’s been there for eight years,” Obama said.
Still, “a pretty healthy majority of the American people agree” with his vision, Obama said, even though they did not elect Democrat Hillary Clinton on her promise to continue it.
“Sometimes people just feel as if we want to try something to see if we can shake things up, and that, I suspect, was a significant phenomenon,” Obama said.
Defending his record, Obama said key elements of his economic agenda for eight years — raising wages, investing in infrastructure and education — were directed at addressing the kind of anxiety that Trump successfully tapped into throughout his campaign.
"The problem was, I couldn't convince a Republican Congress to pass a lot of them," he said. "Having said that, people seem to think I did a pretty good job. And so there is this mismatch between frustration and anger."
Reacting to Trump’s stunning election upset for the second time in less than a day, this time on foreign soil, Obama drew a distinction between Trump’s victory and the so-called Brexit vote in Britain this summer, but also reflected on how nationalist sentiment that is threatening European unity might inhibit America’s own success...
Using Black Lives Matter movement to redefine the American experience into anti-Capitalist upheaval...Read it all, at that link.
As an interior designer relatively new to the business, Christy Lynn Abram lacked the connections that could make her start-up a success. Then a friend recommended Reparations, a new Internet site that allows ethnic minorities to request help or services from a white person who would fulfill them free of charge.Black leftists have created a recipe for mutual hatred and recrimination. No wonder race relations are worse today than they've been in decades.
"I was kind of drawn to it," said Abram, who is black. "My thought wasn't that someone owed me anything. It was more about opening myself up to having someone help me."
Launched as a modest project on Facebook in mid-July but soon expanded to a standalone website, Reparations is starting to draw international attention for its brazen approach to race relations. It is provoking strong reaction, including condemnation from those who see it as a racially divisive tool that exploits white liberal guilt.
But Seattle-based conceptual artist Natasha Marin, who created the project, defended her site as a social experiment intended to explore "white privilege."
"There are people across the political spectrum who don't understand that they have privilege,” she said. “So in many ways the site lets you cash in your whiteness to help other people."
The site has drawn more than 1,000 visitors per day since launching, estimated Marin, who said that her site analytics shut down because traffic exceeded capacity. She said the project has received more than 1,000 requests and offerings.
In a modern news era when social media reaction can amplify a relatively small number of voices into a national or even global conversation, Reparations has spurred coverage by outlets including the Washington Post and the Guardian, as well as several conservative sites such as the Daily Caller and Breitbart, which have taken a more critical approach to the project.
As word of the site has spread, offers and requests have come in from all over the U.S. as well as countries including Britain, New Zealand and Zambia — including one offer of a night’s shelter and a meal to a person of color traveling near Paparoa, New Zealand.
Marin, 37, is black and hails from Trinidad. She said that she has received a barrage of negative online feedback, including death threats, racial slurs and messages calling her a "whore."
She said she was surprised by some of the vitriol.
"You can tell the whole world that I was that naive," she said. "I don't feel like I deserve the hatred I've been getting out of this."
The artist said that requests are moderated and that she tries to facilitate exchanges.
Abram, the interior designer, said she received several responses that were helpful, including one from a man in Montreal who gave her career advice via Skype. But she also received "nasty” messages, including one that said white people didn't owe her anything and another that called her a "bloodsucker."
The concept of reparations has been controversial, especially when referring to the notion that black individuals in the U.S. should be compensated for the legacy of slavery.
On Monday leaders affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement published a political platform calling for slavery reparations.
"The government, responsible corporations and other institutions that have profited off of the harm they have inflicted on black people — from colonialism to slavery through food and housing redlining, mass incarceration, and surveillance — must repair the harm done," said the Movement for Black Lives, an umbrella group that includes Black Lives Matter...
Race Relations Are at Lowest Point in #Obama Presidency, Poll Finds. Obama brings it on himself. #Dallas https://t.co/WJFpBmFC7o
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 14, 2016
Wow this #KellyFile panel. And Rev Jesse Lee Peterson is speaking truth right now.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) July 12, 2016
My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.
— jon gabriel (@exjon) November 24, 2014
#FlashbackFriday What Assata taught me ===> https://t.co/kMXlLJeWCJ
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) July 8, 2016
"The left’s sick fetish for cop-killers is still going strong after four decades of violence..." https://t.co/zPXoFqBIEE via @MichelleMalkin
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 8, 2016
