Toxic Judge Makes Up Law

This post has been updated to correct an error about which court Judge Robart sits on.

History is being made in America. The citizens of this country have rarely seen anything like it. The establishment elites, and a portion of the millions of American minds they have embalmed with their toxic philosophy and worldview, are engineering a draconian backlash against the man Americans elected their president.

Don’t be misled by the rhetoric that Hillary Clinton won three million more votes than Donald Trump. That is only one fact of many electoral facts. Mr. Trump pummeled Mrs. Clinton across our land, winning the majority of votes in more than 4,000 counties while she won only 467 counties. Mr. Trump thumped Mrs. Clinton by states also, winning 31 to her 19. Finally, he whipped her electorally, 306 to 232.

The reason we have the electoral college is to prevent a candidate who has large but narrowly concentrated support from winning the presidency. The boast that she won a majority of the popular vote belies the fact that Mrs. Clinton could not find broad-based support, but instead relied on concentrated representation from only a few areas in her effort to win the presidency. Mr. Trump’s support derived from a much, much broader constituency.

Mr. Trump is not the first candidate to win the presidency without winning the popular vote or without winning a majority of the popular vote. He will likely not be the last.

Yet the unabashed effort to delegitimize his presidency, to destabilize it, to strip away the power of his victory, and to subvert the election results continues with malice aforethought and vehemence.

As is usual, the media creeps about complicitly with the establishment elites. Their world has been turned upside down, and Mr. Trump and his staff have exposed their dishonesty and dissembling. More vitally, their own power and role working with the elite in shaping American minds and lives to create the America they want – rather than simply reporting the facts – has been exposed and fractured. That means their power has diminished and could be so significantly reduced that they could slip into superannuation.

Be aware of what is going on and how the elites and the media are synthesizing their effort. They always use their frame of reference, often employing the establishment ethic or moral code to which they adhere to judge him, a code the American people voted to change. They contrive re-interpretations of what Mr. Trump says, explaining what he meant when he said this or that, rather than simply reporting what he said or offering a menu of explanations for what he meant. Additionally, you can bet the interpretation they provide will always be the worst one possible. They deny certain historical facts while affirming others to create a skewed, imbalanced, inaccurate – ergo, false – perspective for their audiences.

Here is an example of what I mean. The president issued an executive order banning visitors, migrants, and refugees from certain areas of the world known by our intelligence services, military men, and the media to be cauldrons of bloody terrorism, hatred, and gross intolerance. Mr. Trump issued a temporary ban of 120 days until such time as effective vetting procedures to weed out the bloody terrorists had been created, tested, and placed. The purpose of his order: protect Americans from mass shootings and explosions and knife attacks.

This past week Judge James Robart of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington State decided to insert himself into the political conversation. Robart issued a ban on Trump’s terrorism ban when the state of Washington complained Trump’s terrorism ban would interfere with its private companies seeking employees (i.e., not American workers but foreign workers!!!)!

Subsequently, Mr. Trump, in another one of those fits of honesty he expresses on Twitter, and which the media caustically detract because it bypasses them, criticized Robart for the bad decision.

So on Monday, what are establishment media outlets reporting? Take Morning Joe on MSNBC, for example. They are trying to pummel Mr. Trump, which is like me trying to pummel a polar bear. Trump’s criticism of Robart is “bone-chilling”, Joe Scarborough declared. The president was violating the sacred space between the executive and the judiciary, spoiling our system of checks and balances, and threatening, oh, hell, I don’t know, the Apocalypse? I kept waiting for the pale horse to appear and gallop over Joe’s thick head.

Joe desperately tried to draw a parallel with guilty Bill Clinton quietly accepting the Supreme Court’s disbarment of him (as if he could have done anything differently) and guilty Richard Nixon quietly accepting the Court’s order to hand over the missing audiotape.

Okay, those were criminal cases and matters of law. No, you can’t hide evidence. No, you can’t escape punishment for acting unlawyerly and unethically (but you still get to be president).

What’s the difference? Whoa! There are many. First of all, Washington – and any other state or commonwealth or county or municipality – has no standing, zero, absolutely none, to direct how immigration is enacted and enforced (i.e., executed by the chief executive, the president). If the terrorism ban inconveniences the employment practices of the selfish, greedy corporations that want to hire foreigners instead of fellow countrymen, TFB. The president acts on behalf of the entire country and all his fellow citizens, not a few warped special interests whose interests are secondary to the general welfare, common defense, and security of the people.

Second, the president has a Constitutional mandate to carry out the laws promulgated by Congress, including the immigration laws.

Third, the federal statutory law gives the president the authority and power to KEEP OUT of the country any individuals or class of individuals. Yes, the wording of the law says exactly that.

President Trump’s criticism of Robart at worst is a minor consideration. I like it because he is taking to task these activist judges who want the law to reflect their own political ideals rather than their jurisprudence reflecting the law. Mr. Trump is holding such jurists accountable.

What the media have been hiding or glossing over is that Robart overstepped his judicial boundaries to defy our checks and balances and to interfere with the president’s sphere of action just so the judge could force his extremist “progressive” philosophy on the American people. Now that’s chilling, maybe even to the bone.

It’s not going to stand. Sooner or later, President Trump’s ban will be upheld and resume. Rest assured that the establishment politicos and their media minions will not rest. Mr. Trump is too much of a threat to their power and dominion.

Drain the swamp!

The Elites Are Manipulating You

Thursday morning, MSNBC’s Morning Joe conducted its post-debate analysis of the final battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It was one of the better shows the program has put on in a while. Instead of the vanilla groupthink into which the show has been descending, opposition and even strong, sarcastic disagreement grabbed the participants. It was refreshing to see an actual discussion.

More than that, it provided viewers, and voters, with some vital information.

At about the 7:29 mark of the show, Joe Scarborough introduced political commentator Mark Halperin, an anti-Trumper who nonetheless retains a measure of objectivity and mental sobriety. He asked Halperin how he scored Wednesday night’s debate. Here’s Halperin’s reply:

“I’m fascinated by a parallel universe in which Trump hadn’t said what he said about respecting the results because he had a lot of good moments. I think he got more of his message out than he ever has. He had the demeanor that a lot of people wanted to see. But there’s no doubt that it’s the revenge of the elites. Elites do not accept that that was an appropriate answer. And it’s not just the coverage in the media aftermath of the debate, the coverage this morning; but until he explains it (his answer) and gets in sync with everyone on his campaign team, I don’t think he’s going to get to talk about much else. That means every bit of good he might have done last night with a strong performance, and her strong performance, I don’t think matters much.”

Scarborough then asked Halperin this question:

“How many people in Scranton, Pennsylvania, care about what he said in that answer compared to people in newsrooms that are (makes whining sounds) whimpering and whining with their, you know, their soy lattes?”

Halperin replied:

“That’s why I say it’s the revenge of the elites. Elites in both parties have been against Trump from the beginning…”

Mika interjected: “Yes, they have.”

Halperin continued:

“They look at this answer as wrong, morally wrong, against our traditions. And so, the elites have the power to make this the whole debate. You know, Kellyanne Conway and others came into the spin room afterward and said, Why are you seizing on one moment? Well, because it’s a moment that is out of sync with everyone else in his campaign. It’s a moment that offends the sensibilities of elites, and it’s a moment that will dominate forever what this debate is about. I think what he said was wrong and his tone was wrong. And it was an unforced error. But there’s no doubt, Joe, you’re right. Normal people won’t care about that answer. That’s why I say again, elites control a lot of this process. They don’t like that answer, and for good reasons. It was not an acceptable answer in the realm of American discourse.”

For reasons I detailed in yesterday’s post, I disagree with Halperin’s take that Trump’s answer was not an acceptable one in the realm of American discourse, that what Trump said was wrong, and that he said it in a tone that was wrong. More importantly, others who possess greater knowledge of history than I have flatly dismissed the kind of objection that Halperin made.

For brevity’s sake, I’ll simply point out the many times the Founding Fathers and others throughout our history, as well as in the history of other nations, have declared loudly the need for perpetual vigilance to safeguard our liberty.

“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” – Thomas Paine

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” – Andrew Jackson

“Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power…. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” – John F. Kennedy

So what can we take away from Halperin’s remarks?

First, and there is no getting around the terminology, our country has a class of elites who dominate both parties, the economy, the government, and society.

Second, these elites often work together for their common purposes, and they at the least, to quote Halperin, “control a lot of the process.” That “process” is the operation of the above named spheres and the dissemination or suppression of relevant information to conduct the operation of the above named spheres via the organs of mass media.

Third, because of that level of control, “the elites have the power to make this the whole debate”.

In other words, the elites can dictate what issues will be presented to you and the triggers and imagery they will use to capture and hold your attention; they will frame the issues, provide the scenery, and situate the perspective from which you will view; the energy and intensity and color of the kabuki theater spectacle will direct you to the proper emotional, “ethical”, and intellectual conclusions! They will make it seem so noble and so obvious!

It isn’t Trump’s job to assume the inviolability of an elitist principle of respecting the outcome. More importantly, it isn’t our job! We are supposed to assume the worst, and we should be constantly checking to see whether the election process is rigged or not; it isn’t our job to validate something without looking warily at it and testing it.

Liberty calls for vigilance! Liberty’s work is never completed, and its work cannot be approached with complacency or indifference or selfishness.

Yet if you watched any of the post-debate coverage, watched the next morning’s news programs, or read the newspapers, is that not exactly what you witnessed? Did you not see an outrage that anyone could call into question the outcome of an election? Did the media minions discuss the whole debate or did they concentrate on Trump’s answer on the election result and the significance they wanted you to take from it? What did the major newspapers headline? Did the TV and press journalists merely report what happened at the debate, or did they damn Trump’s remarks or claim how dangerous and unprecedented they were… and how dangerous Trump is?

It’s unfortunate, but our country has developed classes. The elites have the cattle prods; we amble about as confused members of the herd, if we allow them their way. We can take responsibility for our individual and collective actions and for the outcomes in our political lives. We can take the cattle prods away from them and restore genuine liberty and accountability.

To do that, we must oppose their machinations and their policies and their candidates. We must slap away the funnels through which they try to force-feed their ideas to us. According to our Forefathers, we should assume the elites intend to manipulate us and our system, perverting it into a new kind of tyranny. So we must stand against them and for godly moral, legal, and political principles that promote liberty and the common welfare. When they, or any one or group of us, try to violate or corrupt those principles, as men are wont to do, we must stop them utterly.

It will not come overnight, but it must begin. The first thing we can do is to vote for Trump. A vote for Trump – his election as president – becomes the first upsetting of the apple cart. It is only the first, but it’s a start. If Trump does not live up to his outsider status, to what he promised in relation to our liberty, our defense, our economy, and the destruction of special interests and those conveniences (perpetual terms in office) that facilitate their hegemony, then we will vote him out.

It’s as simple as that. We try him. If he doesn’t do what we want, we dump him and find someone else.

A vote for Hillary, however, restores or keeps in place the fullness of power Trump has threatened to dissolve, a power that is wielded by the elites and for the elites but often to our detriment and indebtedness, an indebtedness we exhaust our lives slaving to eliminate.

The candidate of the elites is Hillary. That’s why even Republicans have prostituted themselves to endorse her. She maintains the status quo that Trump threatens.

The choice is yours. Be manipulated and vote for Hillary and allow the manipulation to continue; or vote for Trump, shrugging off the manipulation and taking the reins to steer your, and your country’s, own political future.

Is Accepting an Election Outcome a Sacred American Tradition?

Most of the media is buzzing about just one of Donald Trump’s answers to the many questions posed at last night’s debate in Las Vegas. Moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump whether or not he would respect the outcome of the election, whatever it might be. Wallace asked the question because of statements Trump has been making on the campaign trail that the election process is rigged. So Trump answered from his heart that he would have to wait until the election was over to judge whether the contest had indeed been fair and democratic.

The puppet masters, and the commentators and reporters in the media they own, immediately attacked the answer like dogs that hadn’t been fed in a week. They hoped to take down the Republican nominee and his America First message once and for all.

Baring their sharp fangs and drooling puddles of sticky, rabid goo out of every side of their mouths, the establishment elites and their minions claimed Trump had disavowed a long-held tradition of the peaceful transition of duly elected democratic rule. They commented and reported that Trump had refused to accept the 2016 election’s outcome and labeled Trump’s answer as a shattering breach of political etiquette and democratic values. Trump’s otherwise stellar performance against a debate veteran like Hillary Clinton was completely blown up and disintegrated into nothing by that one answer, or so they claimed.

Well, that’s one way to give your candidate, criminal Hillary Clinton, a win; but what are the facts? Keeping in mind that I incline toward Trump and away from Hillary, read and judge for yourselves whether I am providing you with facts. Then make up your own minds.

First, did Trump say that he would NOT accept the outcome of the election? No, he did not. He said he did not know yet whether he would or would not and that he would have to wait and see how the process played out. Review a recording of the debate for yourselves to see and hear that fact.

Strike one against the elitist reporting and commentating.

Second, did Hillary answer the question one way or another? No, she did NOT. Wallace asked both candidates the question, but when it came time for Hillary to answer, she launched a matronly tirade against Trump for his indefinite answer. She never affirmed nor denied that she would accept the outcome of the election. Yet the media has not reported that!

Strike two against the elitist reporting and commentating.

That kind of avoidance-answer typifies Hillary and her deceptions. She used it elsewhere in the debate, perhaps most notably when Wallace asked her if she would consider using ground forces in the Middle East. Listen carefully to how she phrased her answer: she said, no, she would not use boots on the ground “as an occupation force”.

If you like equivocation and dissembling, then you have to appreciate her masterful phrasing. If Hillary is elected, she can decide to use boots on the ground and simply say they will not act as an occupation force but will … blah blah … simply engage in fighting for some purpose. We can have troops in a war without them being an occupation force. Wallace failed to qualify Hillary on her answer, as the media routinely makes such failures because they prefer to paint Trump with their sensational labels.

Third, are the establishment elites and their media minions correct? Do Americans have a sacred, inviolable history of the peaceful transition of power in our republic? They said it so loudly and clearly and repeatedly in their post-debate analyses. Is it not a sacred, never violated truth???

No, it isn’t, and the repeated claim that it is shines a light on the fundamental, perhaps deliberate, dark ignorance of the media. It also spotlights their shameless, whorish partisanship.

In a post-debate interview on Fox News, former Secretary of Education William Bennett utterly destroyed this repeated claim.

Strike three! Here are just a few of the facts that relate to this media prevarication.

Does anyone remember the hotly, bitterly contested election results of 2000? Did not presidential loser Al Gore, the Democrats, and every organ of liberal orthodoxy fight the election of George Bush? Does not the Constitution itself contain instructions on how to deal with contested election outcomes? And did not the Supreme Court have to render a decision to settle the matter?

Does anyone remember the Civil War? Do any of the clowns who report and commentate on the news know that within three weeks of Abraham Lincoln’s election as president South Carolina took up its articles of secession and passed them? The secession articles specifically cite the election as a spur to their action:

“A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”

Correctly or incorrectly, many southern states contested Lincoln’s election, not on the basis of fraud, but on the basis of the unconstitutional character of the officeholder and his policies.

Whether the basis for contesting the outcome of an election is the belief a counting error has occurred, fraud, or the unconstitutional character of the president-elect or his policies, or some other reason, election outcomes have been contested in America, and the transition of power has not always been peaceful; in fact, it’s even been bloody.

America was born in a bloody transition of power from tyranny to liberty, republican democracy, and self-determination. Our Forefathers warned us in the Declaration that there may be other times beside the one they faced that would call for such action:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government… .”

None of the above is written to suggest that now is the time for such a change but rather to put the lie to the assertion that some sacred, inviolable principle prevents a candidate from contesting what he or she believes is a faulty election outcome.

In baseball, we cannot exceed three strikes. For this piece, however, we will to illustrate the deeply flawed message that is being propagated, especially to the exclusion of reporting on the substance of Wednesday night’s debate.

So, fourth, why does the media continue to say Trump’s position on the election outcome is unacceptable if it really isn’t? The reason the media takes the stand it does is because it has little ammunition against his actual positions and statements (yes, they did have ammo in regard to his statements recorded on the Access Hollywood video).

What the media does is to hang up what are called “straw men”. Straw men are arguments an opponent can attack, but they are not the actual arguments the other candidate is putting forward. The person erecting the straw arguments hopes to create the impression that they are the actual arguments of his or her opponent.

So, Trump states that some of the illegal immigrants are murderers, rapists, drug dealers, etc., and that he will kick them out of the country. Hillary says Trump insults Hispanics because he calls them murderers, rapists, and drug dealers. Thus, Trump’s position appears to become a xenophobic one (or racist, though that term is misapplied) when in fact it isn’t. Same with his desire to enforce America’s immigration laws. Deportations happen all the time and have been for decades, and other countries deport illegals, too. It has nothing to do with the ethnicity or race or whatever of those being deported.

It’s the same with the election outcome. Let’s rephrase the election outcome question another way. When you pose it to yourself, help yourself by thinking about it without reference to Trump or Hillary:

Would you support an election outcome, even if no one had ever before contested an outcome, if the winner employed fraud to obtain that outcome?

Would you support an election outcome if you knew the votes had been miscounted?

Would you support an election outcome if the candidate achieved office unconstitutionally?

For example, suppose Ted Cruz had won his party’s nomination (forget whether you like or dislike him), but a person filed a lawsuit arguing Cruz was Canadian, not American. A day before election day, the Supreme Court rules Cruz is Canadian and does not meet the constitutional requirement to hold the office of president. It’s too late to take his name off the ballot, and Cruz wins the election anyway.

Do you support Cruz’s election anyway? Do you group yourself with those who think it cannot be allowed and must be opposed? Do you think the Democrat nominee would settle for the outcome for the sake of an alleged “time-honored, peaceful transition of power”? Should he? Or does he have the right, even the responsibility, to challenge the election outcome?

Whichever way you answered these questions, I hope you can see the inherent difficulty in a wildly broad brush stroke that eliminates any and all challenges to an election outcome.

Strike four against the puppet masters and their media minions.

Finally, is Trump’s reservation about endorsing any election outcome, based on his claim the process is rigged, without any merit?

In light of the massive number of hacked emails from Hillary, her campaign, and the Democratic National Committee that Wikileaks has provided, have facts not come forward which lend credence to both Trump’s claims and Bernie Sanders’ claims that the nominating and general election process is rigged?

I can barely stand Megyn Kelly, but last night she grilled Donna Brazile, a Democrat who appears on CNN, and Brazile stuttered and stammered through the interview, utterly refusing to answer who gave her the debate questions ahead of time and which she told the Clinton campaign she had. Other emails detail a synergy and a cooperation among Hillary, the Democrats, media elites, and media members to give Hillary an advantage and to disadvantage Trump. While these particular actions may not constitute fraud per se, they constitute a raw attempt to manipulate the outcome of an election. At the least, what’s going on is anti-democratic.

Strike five against the elitist reporting and commentating.

In my next post, I will review discussion on this morning’s (Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016) Morning Joe program which adds to the impression of an elite ruling class hellbent on imposing its will on the electorate.

The Perils of Decoding “Coded” Language

Mike Barnicle appears frequently on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to offer his political commentary. Barnicle lurks in the shadows of left wingery, though he seems reasonably well educated and experienced. Some websites describe him as an award-winning broadcast and print journalist. He brings some cred to the table.

Barnicle tries his best to appear middle-of-the-road and equanimous. When the going gets tough, however, he quickly reveals his true sentiments.

Tuesday morning the Morning Joe crew played a clip of Trump speaking at one of his rallies. The successful real estate mogul identified once again to the audience his sense that the autocratic party establishments and their media collaborators rig campaigns and elections to suit their desired outcome. Trump named a few locales where he thought such rigging was in process, such as Philadelphia and St. Louis.

Barnicle did some processing of his own. His rusty, coughing mental machinery produced this delightful, if trite, commodity: Trump was employing “coded” language. Crusty Barnicle declared the Republican nominee’s reference to Philly and St. Louis, and one other city I can’t remember, meant The Donald was pointing at one subversive culprit: blacks – a.k.a. African-Americans!

WWWOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

By virtue of his implication, Barnicle’s puffy righteousness pronounced Trump a racist, thereby repeating and reaffirming and confirming all of Hillary’s and all of her clamorous media collaborators’ blathering about Trump’s nasty penchant for hate.

Never mind that Trump has continually identified wealthy and powerful elites and special interests and their media lackeys as the culprits, and that 99% of blacks, thanks to the mismanaged Obama economy, cannot be a part of that cabal. For that matter, probably 90% or more of whites, orientals, Indians, gays, women, Hispanics, and any other minority you can contemplate, cannot and are not a part of that special clique either.

Facing that truth would require Barnicle to search his calloused soul. He can’t do that. That would mean he and his bias have been part of the problem. “No! No! It cannot be mmmeeeeeeee!”

Hillary and her media collaborators often resort to labeling to convey a message. She does not have anything substantive to say about Trump, so she just calls him a racist. Why? No particular reason. He does not want to suppress black voters. In fact, he wants more of them to vote for him. She does not name any fact to support her contention. Oh, every now and again she’ll say that something Trump said or did will “equate” to racism. Some KKKer was in his audience of tens of thousands. Or he didn’t out of the blue condemn someone or something.

Of course, Hillary selects carefully what she wants to highlight. Trump does, after all, condemn those who kill Americans and others because of their perverted religious beliefs. Ah! That’s different! That condemnation of evil is bad. Its xenophobic or religiophobic or something.

Hillary is such a scammer! Such a con artist! Such a two-face! So are her media collaborators.

Hillary cannot tell the truth. If she ever does, her narrative that Trump is a divider will fall apart. She can’t allow that to happen, eh?

I don’t know how Barnicle built his reputation. It certainly wasn’t on objectivity. It’s probably one of those situations where all his professional and personal pals got together to laud his partial reporting. It’s funny how Barnicle wants to decode Trump’s hidden meaning when he can’t even figure out the plain meaning in the emails produced by Wikileaks that Hillary’s lackeys at the Department of State wanted a quid pro quo deal with the FBI: we’ll allow more foreign assignments of your agents, if you change the classification of Hillary’s emails.

Not even a raised eyebrow for the obvious.

But Barnicle – oooooooooo! – Barnicle can decipher Trump’s secret messages. Stay tuned. Next time Trump mentions the city “Orlando” by name, you’ll know he’s hating on Mickey and Pluto.