Tag: politics

Ryancare goes down in flames

Not even the God-Emperor’s intervention was enough to save it:

Following a day of drama in Congress yesterday, Friday was another nail-biter until the last moment, and after Trump’s Thursday ultimatum failed to yield more “yes” votes, the embattled bill seeking to replace major parts of Obamacare was yanked Friday from the floor of the House.

As a result, Trump suffered a second consecutive blow as opposition from within his own party forced Republican leaders to cancel a vote on healthcare reform for the second time, casting doubt on the president’s ability to deliver on other priorities.

The withdrawal pointed to Trump’s failure to charm republicans in the last minute, raising questions about whether he could unify Republicans behind his pro-growth legislative goals of tax reform and infrastructure spending.

NBC News reported that the President Donald Trump asked House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., to pull the bill. A source told NBC that Ryan during visit to Trump at the White House earlier Friday afternoon had “pleaded to pull” the bill after telling the president that the GOP leaders had failed to convince enough House Republicans to support the bill.

Trump personally told Washington Post reporter Robert Costa about the move to avoid an embarrassing loss in the House during a phone call, Costa tweeted. “We just pulled it,” Trump reportedly said to Costa.

A large number of GOP House members had declared their opposition to the bill since Thursday night. It was the second time in less than 30 hours that Republicans postponed a scheduled House vote on the American Health Care Act. Republicans could afford to lose at most 22 members of their caucus in the vote. But as of Friday afternoon, there were 34 GOP House member publicly opposing the bill.

Ryan visited Donald Trump at the White House at around 1 p.m. to inform him of the shortfall in support. The second delay was another humiliating setback for GOP leaders and Trump, who had thrown his weight behind the bill.

Trump on Thursday night demanded that the House vote on the plan on Friday, and said he would not agree to change the bill further than he already had in an effort to persuade wavering Republicans to back it.

Shortly after the president drew that line in the sand, GOP leaders amended the bill further to allow states, as opposed to the federal government, to mandate what essential health benefits have to be part of all insurance plans.

But as was the case on Thursday, GOP leaders knew Friday that if the vote occurred as scheduled, the bill would be defeated.

I think the key thing here is that the God-Emperor learns who his allies are. He should have been working with the conservative element in the House that voted against the act, not the Ryan-led mainstream element that was the core Republican opposition to him in the primaries.

This is going to be a little counterintuitive for a centrist negotiator like Trump, but he’s just experienced the same thing that George W. Bush did whenever immigration reform was proposed. The core Republican power in the House is the conservatives, not the moderates. To get anything done, Trump has to work with them first.

Ultimately, this should be a good thing, because Trump always learns from his failures. That’s why I don’t put any stock in the “fatal blow to Trump’s political capital” narrative that the opposition media will inevitably be pushing.

Would this really surprise you?

The intel leaker is reported to be Sen. John McCain:

This could be the beginning of the end for embattled Sen. John McCain’s life in politics. According to White House officials, McCain is believed to have somehow gained access to the content of President Donald Trump’s private, classified telephone calls with world leaders. And he isn’t keeping quiet about what was talked about either.

An analysis of McCain’s recent public statements by White House officials, coupled with information from intelligence personnel working with the Trump administration, paints a disturbing picture for McCain — or any elected U.S. politician. Officials believe the senator has inside knowledge of a number of President Trump’s telephone conversations, including at least one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Even more alarming, officials believe McCain is secretly sharing this sensitive information with colleagues and his cabal of friendly mainstream media journalists in a dangerous clandestine campaign to damage Trump’s presidency even before it has a chance to succeed. Trump has been searching for media rats in the Beltway in recent weeks. White House aides are confident they have now outed one of the major leaks plaguing the early days of the Trump presidency. To everyone’s surprise, it is a senior senator supposedly belonging to the same side of the political aisle as the president.

Never trust a cuckservative. Never EVER trust a cuck. At least you can trust the Left to always shriek and attack you at every given opportunity. But a cuck will play Noble Sir while nobly opposing you on the basis of nobly going down to defeat on noble principle, all the while trying to sneak around and stab you in the back.

Cucks talk about nobility and honor and principle all the time for the same reason that Google talks about not being evil and Apple talks about the user experience.

On a tangential note:

Lt. Gen. Thomas Mcinerney weighed in on Devin Nunes’ bombshell revelations that said the Trump team were being spied on by the NSA/CIA — and it wasn’t Russia related. The whole cover for the surveillance was supposed to be because Trump had a bunch of Ivans working for him, but that simply wasn’t the case, or the concern, inside the Obama White House.

McInerney believes when all of the evidence comes out, Obama will rue the day he decided to spy on Trump. Moreover, he said the democrats are chimping out and fabricating a Russian spy novel in order to avoid Trump investigating the Clinton server and how both Hillary and Obama violated the espionage act, a crime punishable by heavy fines and up to 10 years in prison.

They’re building a wall

A report from the inside the belly of the beast indicates the God-Emperor is gradually forcing the rebellious creature to do his will.

At this morning’s staff meeting, certain persons had a very sour look on their faces, so I knew the news would be good.

— CBP has announced that some 100 feet of a series of “test wall sections” will be built quickly, among the competitors already chosen.

— One of these walls will be in the high-profile, high-traffic San Diego section.

— CBP will then choose from the “test wall sections” as to which one it likes and proceed from there, negotiating on cost, etc., with bidders.

— The contracting timeframe has been moved to as quick as possible under current law, and is as short as three weeks for this stage.

The Wall is being built.  It’s going to be solely on Fed property, so no states can stick their noses in it.

But they’re certainly going to try.

Three California Democrats have a warning for contractors who sign up for President Donald Trump’s border-wall construction project between the U.S. and Mexico: Build it, and we will divest from your company.

In the latest act of resistance against the Trump administration, the state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would force the state to drop its pension investments in any companies involved in the project.

“This is a wall of shame and we don’t want any part of it,” Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, said in a statement. “Immigrant stories are the history of America and this is a nightmare.”

It’s not a surprise Mr. Ting knows nothing about the history of America? He’s not American.

That ship has sunk

The God-Emperor tells Republicans to get in line:

President Donald Trump arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning with a stern message for Republicans who’ve been wobbly about dismantling Obamacare: Give me your vote or you may lose your seat in 2018.

During a closed-door meeting with the House GOP conference, the president gave a full-throated endorsement to the House repeal bill that will come to the floor for a vote on Thursday. He warned that if Republicans don’t pass the bill, “I honestly think many of you will lose your seats in 2018.”

Trump even called out the bill’s most vocal critic in the House, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who’s led the conservative opposition to the Republican health care plan. “Mark, I’m gonna come after you” if he keeps it up, Trump said, according to multiple sources.

The sources cautioned that Trump may have been “half joking,” as one put it. He winked and he smiled at Meadows, and acknowledged the congressman was a strong supporter of his campaign.

But singling out Meadows in front of his colleagues sent a clear message: Trump wants him to get in line. And fast.

I have no doubt that the bill isn’t as good as it should be. Who cares? The point is that Republicans have to stop pretending that they’re going to act someday and start acting. Their careers depend upon it.

No one is interested in the noble principles and noble defeats of conservatism any longer. That ship has sunk.

Noble defeatists hell-bent on losing

The God-Emperor simply cannot count on the cucks and cons in Congress following his lead:

Congressional Republicans have a lot to say about their new president.

Donald Trump’s proposed budget is “draconian, careless and counterproductive.” The health care plan is a bailout that won’t pass. And his administration’s suggestion that former President Barack Obama used London’s spy agency for surveillance is simply “inexplicable.”

With friends like these, who needs Democrats?

Less than two months in, Republicans have emerged as one of the biggest obstacles to Trump’s young administration, imperiling his early efforts to pass his agenda and make good on some of his biggest campaign promises.

Trump’s embrace of a House GOP plan to overhaul the country’s health system faces deep opposition from across the party, as does his push to get U.S. taxpayers to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Republicans largely rejected his thin, 53-page first budget, joking that there’s a “fat chance for skinny budget” on Capitol Hill. And his tax reform and infrastructure plans have yet to gain any real traction in Congress.

Eventually, Republicans in the House and Senate are going to grasp that it is the God-Emperor who is popular with Americans, not them. They need to understand that their days of going down to noble defeat and always playing the role of the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Globetrotters is over.

The fate of the American people is at stake. The Republican propensity for defeatism and surrender needs to be relinquished, but if it is not, well, it’s not as if President Trump will find it too difficult to rout them. Losing is what they know best how to do, after all.

And if they won’t get with the God-Emperor’s program, a few examples will have to be made in the 2018 primaries.

More Reagan than Reagan

And more courageous too. The God-Emperor follows through on one of Ronald Reagan’s failed promises:

President Donald Trump made good on a long-time conservative goal in his first proposed budget Thursday morning, targeting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities for complete elimination.

Trump’s budget would zero out the $445 million budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a relatively small source of funding for programming and broadcast operations on public TV stations and NPR radio stations nationwide, per the Washington Post.

The budget would also eliminate the budgets for both national endowments, which stood at $148 million each in 2016, as well as $230 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which supports libraries and museums. Additional cuts would affect two tourist mainstays in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art.

One can practically hear the liberal shrieking from across the ocean. President Trump hasn’t even been in office for 60 days and he’s already proven to be better than the most lionized conservative president the Republicans have ever had.

It should be informative to see which Congressional Republicans cuck on this, just as they’ve tried to cuck on Obamacare. It is becoming increasingly clear that they never actually intended to do anything they promised since 1980. It is also becoming obvious that anything is on the table. He may well abolish the Department of Education too.

It’s amusing to see the opposition media ping-pong from complaining about how the Wall will cost too much with claiming that $971 million is just a tiny drop in the bucket so there is no reason to cut it. But that’s $971 million more that can go towards the Wall and making America great again.

Now let’s see him eliminate Hollywood’s tax exemptions, as Glenn Reynolds has repeatedly suggested.

2nd travel ban blocked

The federal judges are doubling down against the President:

The state of Hawaii says an imam from Honolulu has legal standing to assert the First Amendment claim of religious discrimination when challenging President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban.

Hawaii’s case for a temporary restraining order to block the ban is being heard Wednesday in federal court in Honolulu.

The judge told lawyers that he is more interested in constitutional claims and wanted to know who had such standing in the lawsuit.

Attorney Colleen Roh Sinzdak says a Muslim plaintiff in the lawsuit, Ismail Elshikh, has such standing to challenge the ban. Elshikh says the ban prevents his mother-in-law, who lives in Syria, from visiting family in Hawaii.

Sinzdak says Elshikh and all Muslim residents in Hawaii face higher hurdles in reuniting with family members because of their faith.

She says that harm applies to all residents, not just Muslims.

If this genuinely surprises or demoralizes you, do remember at whose grave the God-Emperor was laying a wreath recently. This is all just setting the stage. This is just recon.

Another step forward

The media is spinning it as a loss, but the fact is that Geert Wilders and the Party of Freedom outperformed the polls in the Dutch elections:

Right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders has hailed his party’s General Election results despite exit polls saying that Holland’s liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte will cling to power.

Rutte’s VVD party currently has 31 seats in 150-place parliament, according to the polls, while Wilders’ PVV party is joint second, alongside two other parties, with 19 seats.

The polls represent a decrease of 10 seats for Rutte and an increase of seven seats for Wilders. Rutte – who has vowed never to work alongside Wilders – will now be forced to form a coalition government, which is predicted to take him months.

Earlier today: The survey showed that the PVV had dropped to just 16 seats in the 150-member parliament but VVD is now on track to get 29 seats.  


It’s a good result. It’s not a great result, but it is another step in the right direction.

Feminism is cultural Marxism

A detailed article on the Redstockings and their influence on feminism at Return of Kings:

In many ways, 1969 was a pretty cool year, but it was also during a wave of crazy radicalism that made today’s upsurge of rent-a-mobs seen like a croquet match. During that year, a group of New York feminists dropped a bomb on civilization. They called themselves the Redstockings; the color red was a reference to Communism.

They’re a bit obscure these days, but back then, they were big enough to have a few chapters around the USA. Ellen Willis and Shulamith Firestone co-founded it; the latter having been a co-founder of New York Radical Women a year and a half previously. Soon after, some lesser lights (or dimmer bulbs) of the Sisterhood joined them. Firestone was one of the co-authors of their Redstockings Manifesto, before abandoning ship later that year to co-found yet another outfit.

This document became quite influential. For example, it’s in a list of essential feminist manifestos, along with other items by Valerie Solanas (number one, bless her heart), Andrea Dworkin, and another by Firestone herself. Since the Terrible Trio wrote four items on that top ten list, consider them a fair sampling of what feminism is all about. Remember that if anyone tries to tell you that those types don’t represent at least a significant part of feminism.

Despite their influence, this is not to say the Redstockings started it all singlehandedly. Still, their manifesto gives a capsule summary of what radical feminism was at the time and would morph into later. Although it’s a Second Wave document, it contains kernels of the ideology by other varieties in recent times. This foundational text begins with a preamble about the “final liberation from male supremacy”. (Okie dokie…) Then:

Item 2 – Class consciousness

“Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives.”

This whopper shows Firestone’s inclination—one shared with many others—for taking Communist rhetoric and adapting it to feminism. This makes it—big surprise—an instance of cultural Marxism. The considerations of economics and actual social class that orthodox Communists were concerned with get left behind. This was, in fact, one of the reasons for the schisms in New York’s feminist scene.

One of the fascinating things about the last few years is the transition of many apolitical Game writers and sites to politically conscious Alt-Right and Alt-Lite perspectives. This is significant, because all of the writers involved are entirely accustomed to being mobbed and assailed by the mainstream media, so they’re not inclined to cuck and run like most conservatives are when faced with criticism.

US Attorney refuses to resign

This would appear to be a breach of standard protocol. One assumes he has a good reason for doing so:

Preet Bharara, a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is refusing the Trump administration’s demand to resign, according to multiple reports Saturday.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday asked 46 attorneys appointed by former President Obama to submit their resignations, including Bharara.

“HOLDOVER: Bharara is not submitting his resignation, according to several ppl briefed – WH not responding to what they’ll do next,” the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman tweeted Saturday.

CNN’s Jake Tapper also reported that Bharara was refusing to resign.

I have no idea what would possess the man to take this stand now. Is he trying to stop an investigation? Is he trying to protect an investigation? There is simply not enough information to have an opinion at this time, especially given all of the darker rumors floating around.