Nancy Pelosi (D, San Francisco), House Minority Leader
Reprehensible behavior:
Donald Trump, President of the United States
The results of the soon-to-be-defunct Pennsylvania 18th congressional district election signals a rising tide for the Democrats in November, but not because of any great love for their lefty ideas.
Conor Lamb (D), winning candidate in the 18th congressional district race.
Their (Dems) fortunes rose in direct proportion to the repulsiveness and churlishness of a president with a “R” after his name. Trump is the accelerant for this state of affairs, not love for SDS-type values. (SDS: the 60’s Students for Democratic Society – Tom Hayden’s, et al, group for bringing socialism to America).
This is an election year that will pivot on the choice between reprehensible ideas (Democrats) vs. reprehensible behavior (Trump). Trump has soiled the “R” label. It’s a sad situation when people react to deplorable conduct by turning to people with deplorable ideas.
Time to recycle the wisdom of the historian Robert Blake: ““The right to misgovern oneself is as valid as any other political right, and it is exercised more often than most.” We might see it play out in November, and maybe two years later.
Robert Blake, historian, Queen’s College, Oxford University.
Say good-bye to your tax cut and guns; say hello to incessant impeachment dramas and the Californication of the federal government.
The following is a commentary to “Sessions: ‘I will recuse myself’ from investigations when appropriate”, Washington Examiner, 3/2/17, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sessions-i-will-recuse-myself-from-investigations-when-appropriate/article/2616229?fb_action_ids=416334178716129&fb_action_types=og.comments.
Tempest in a teapot: Sessions having 2 short encounters with Russia’s ambassador. If an ambassador doesn’t develop relationships with a country’s policy-makers, what’s the guy to do? As senator and senior member of the Armed Services Committee, is Sessions to run at the mere sight of an approaching Russian diplomat? Nonsense, nonsense.
Andrew Puzder
Tempest in a teapot: Andy Puzder “unacceptable” for Labor Secretary for a messy divorce, disproven accusations of spousal abuse, and hiring an “undocumented” person. Such allegations would automatically exclude anyone with the income to hire domestic help, and that means the Democrat senators pompously grilling Puzder. More nonsense.
Jerry Brown (l) and Meg Whitman (r) shake hands before 2010 debateIllegal immigrant maid and attorney Gloria Allred at press conference, Sept. 29, 2010
Tempest in a teapot: Meg Whitman, California Republican gubernatorial candidate, hiring an “undocumented” person for domestic help. This is smaller than a teapot. Try a thimble. More nonsense.
Kimba Wood, Pres. Clinton’s second nominee for Attorney General
Tempest in a teapot: Kimba Wood, Clinton’s Attorney General nominee, employing an “undocumented” nanny. Proof that dippiness is a bi-partisan sport. More thimble-scale nonsense on parade.
Zoe Baird, Pres. Clinton’s first nominee for Attorney General
Tempest in a teapot: Zoe Baird, Clinton’s first nominee for Attorney General, drug over the coals for similarly employing an “undocumented” nanny. Apparently there was a dragnet for “undocumented” nannies at the time. More partisan dippiness.
Were there other episodes in theatrical grandstanding, and are we likely to experience more? Probably. Our press and partisan inquisitors are more interested in chasing down the employment records of nannies, maids, and gardeners, while culling divorce records and chasing down chance encounters during years of service in the public eye, than a mature examination of a person for their policy preferences. Ideological biases will have a greater impact on whether a citizen can even operate a wedding cake business.
Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne.
To borrow from Macbeth: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The following was a response to an article by Kevin D. Williamson in National Review Online, “Abolish President’s Day”, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445013/presidents-day-imperial-cult
KDW, interesting idea about abolishing President’s Day – one that I find intriguing. Electing a president, as popularly viewed, has nearly become an exercise in choosing our next 4-year emperor. Most risible is the infantile incantations about him (or her, but we haven’t had one yet) as the “leader of the economy” and “leader of the people”, a grand vizier, or caliph, of all living souls within the country.
We even have our own Roman Forum in the form of the Washington Mall. The Lincoln Memorial is as close to a functioning temple as one can possibly get, with its gargantuan Athena-like statue. Still missing, though, are the vestial virgins and temple priests.
Artists rendering of the Roman ForumThe National Mall, Washington, D.C., looking west.
Watch that space for raising Obama to the godhead.
Are we morphing from a self-governing citizenry into adolescent dependencies of a father-god? Even more profound, are we now the kind of people who desire persons to worship since the traditional object of veneration is held in disrepute by the fashionable currents of lifestyle progressivism? The gigantic and ostentatious has replaced the humility and modesty more appropriate for a republic.
