Walls and Negotiation

Last Friday, President Donald Trump hosted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R, CA), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY), and a few others for another round of attempted negotiation over the border wall we so badly need.

The outcome?  Pelosi and Schumer continued their refusal to negotiate at all.  They demanded the government’s partial shutdown be ended before they’ll say a word about funding for a wall.  Never mind that, as they’ve made clear since last month, that word, their only word, is “No,” anyway.

Trump may be responsible for the partial shutdown’s initiation (that’s arguable, though, given Pelosi’s and Schumer’s opening position, even before Trump said he’d officially take the fall), but it’s plain that Pelosi and Schumer are responsible for keeping the partial shutdown going—they’re the ones refusing even to discuss funding for a wall, much less negotiate the matter.  This is the same pair that voted for a wall under both Clinton and Obama, and this is the same pair that supported $25 billion for a wall in return for protections not for just 800 thousand DACA persons, but for those 800 thousand DACAs plus a million more who are similarly situated, just a bit over a year ago.  Until Schumer welched on the deal.

Just after that meeting, we had this spectacle: on Fox News‘ Outnumbered Overtime program Progressive-Democratic strategist and ex-Hillary Clinton campaign advisor Antjuan Seawright disparaged Trump’s “shutdown” over his keeping a campaign promise (scroll ahead to about 2:48).

How is it possible to negotiate with those who refuse to negotiate?  How is it possible to negotiate with those who consider promises to be empty words?  Even were the former overcome, no agreement with Progressive-Democrats could be trusted—their agreement is only too likely to be just another ploy.

Has Jeff Flake Relocated to Utah?

After Mitt Romney’s unprovoked tirade in his New Year’s Day op-ed in The Washington Post—before he even was sworn in as the Republican Senator from Utah—I have to ask.

The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December.

It’s downhill from there.  America is divided and getting more so—and that’s President Donald’s fault, not at all the Progressive-Democrats’.  It was the Progressive-Democrats that tried to assassinate with smear a Supreme Court nominee.  It’s Progressive-Democrats that daily dismiss those who disagree with them as ignorant, racist, misogynists.  It’s Progressive-Democrats who want to abolish ICE, hamstring CBP, and functionally eliminate our nation’s borders by demanding they be entirely open.  It’s Progressive-Democrats who move to protect illegal aliens, even at the cost of murdered cops, American citizens, and the expansion of our drug abuse epidemic, while declining to protect those same cops and citizens with the same energy.

But divisiveness only comes from one side.

It’s early in Romney’s Senate term, but he’s not off to a promising start.  Except, perhaps in the eyes of his BFF.

Bloomberg, Democrats, and Rehabilitation

In a Fox News piece about billionaires contemplating running for President in 2020, one comment jumped out at me.  Adrienne Elrod, erstwhile Hillary Clinton senior advisor and current Progressive-Democrat strategist, made this remark about Michael Bloomberg’s chances in particular, were he to enter the primary contest for the Progressive-Democrat Party’s nomination.

[T]he biggest thing that’s going to hurt him more than his personal wealth is the fact that he used to be a Republican.

Fox News cited her as continuing:

She said that would be a “far bigger liability” competing in “a very left-leaning progressive grassroots primary.”

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party—at the least what a major wing of the Party fighting for control of it—thinks of rehabilitation, of redemption.  The Party—or its potentially controlling wing—does not believe a man can rehabilitate himself, does not consider a man redeemable from his sins.

Keep this in mind over the coming couple of years.

Side Note

Much has been made of the Republican Party’s “control” of a unified Federal government these past two years, with Republicans “controlling” the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Presidency.  Much is made, also, of the Republican Party’s continued “control” of the Senate, indeed its increased “control” following the mid-terms, as a result of which Republicans extended their majority from 51 to 53.

The latest is Matthew Continetti’s claim on last Friday’s Special Report (hosted by Bret Baier on Fox News): in discussing the Schumer Shutdown Redux (my term, not Continetti’s), Continetti insisted that this shutdown began in that unified government—repeating particularly the claim that Republicans “controlled” the Senate.

After all this time, the claim of Senate control cannot be simply a misspeak or a one-time bit of sloppy journalism; I have to ask.

In what fantasy world do Continetti and his fellows live where 60 is less than 51?  Less even than 53?

The Party of Expansionist, Acquisitive Government

That’s what we can see made plain in the incoming Congress’ House of Representatives.  Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D, NJ) had this on her Progressive-Democratic Party’s plans:

There are dozens of measures…that have been languishing with Republicans at the helm for years, and I expect to see many of them finally come to the floor under Democratic leadership[.]

Plans like rolling back the just enacted tax cuts and preventing the individual income tax cuts from becoming permanent.  Because the Progressive-Democrats know more about how to spend our money than we do.

Plans like Medicare for all, free education for all—paid for by raising those taxes.  So much for “free.”

Guaranteed jobs, especially, “green” jobs—at the Progressive-Democrat’s mandated minimum wage because, like all workers, “green” workers are just too stupid to be trusted with freely negotiating their own compensation package.  And hired by whom?  Not so much a free economy employer; “greenery” isn’t competitive, so the Progressive-Democrats intend to centrally plan our energy economy and require greenery along with subsidizing it.  That can be expected to work as well as the Progressive-Democrats’ centrally planned health economy.

Oh, and they want to deepen the central planning on that: as part of their “Medicare for all” bit, they intend for Uncle Sugar to be sole dispenser of and sole payer for each citizen’s (and illegal alien’s) health care.

Block border security by blocking any wall and by eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  And hamstringing US Customs & Border Protection generally.

It’s going to be an ugly, wasted two years with no serious legislation coming out of the House—only the Party’s nakedly socialist claptrap.  Socialist and Government-run because, these worthies insist, the average American is inadequate to the task of his democratic duty.