Daily Musings - 5/13/2016 - WAPO Petraus

WAPO: Anti Muslim-bigotry-aids-Islamist-terrorists- David Petraeus

I hate to criticize General Petraeus, but he left the internal political situation of the US out of his review.
If you attack me, kill my children, kill my wife and family, and do it in the name of Allah, I will hate you, and this focused hate is spread out to the religion who carries the name of the prophet.  I will also try to prevent your from being able to attack me, and stopping you at the borders may not be the best policy, but it certainly looks that way.
The political argument became, as usual, about the tone, not the content of Trump's speech. He said, very clearly, we must stop any Muslims from entering the country until we figure out how to separate out the terrorists. (Until we figure out what is going on.) This was converted into a racist comment, and you get the result our General speaks about.
Even immediately after his comment, when asked about whether he intended to allow Muslim members of the armed forces to return home, he said: Of course, they don't represent a danger.
So please, don't throw around racism, and then accuse Trump of causing a furor that helps the Terrorists. The media, and the "outraged" are responsible for that reaction.

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WAPO: Judge Strikes Down Obama Health Law Insurance Subsidy in victory for House GOP -- By Spenser S. Hsu, Greg Jaffe and Lena H. Sun

Roberts: Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter

This person was considered a "conservative"? It's the job of SCOTUS to divine Congressional will and fix their errors of law creation through interpretation? I though Congress could simple change the laws they screwed up in order to fix them!

I am be naïve. I thought SCOTUS would review laws against what is stated in the Constitution and find them OK or flawed.

After Rowe v Wade, and after LGBT, I should have known better.

What is funny is that in this case, the administration says, if the laws can't be interpreted as I interpret them, change them, overcome my veto, and then they will be changed. So the president has a 2/3 voice in how to interpret the law, even though he is supposed to apply them as Congress intended them.  POTUS has a veto over law interpretation! Great separation of powers.

Daily Musings 3/31/2016 The Trump v Everyone controversies

I have gotten tired of responding to the taunts, word parsing, and snide tweets of the "Never Trump Group."
I found, through a tweet, the following interview with  Ann Coulter interview at PJ Media. Her point and mine overlap significantly.
1. Trump is not a politician: Politician's hide behind carefully reviewed statements often tested in front of sympathetic and unsympathetic groups for impact.
2. Politicians never deviate from these scripts unless they make a mistake.  This leaves pundits to review meaningless minutiae.
For example how many low yield tactical nukes are in Germany, as if that number was significant and couldn't be tripled or halved by next Monday.
For example discussing the position of the Chinese who now want people to tone down the rhetoric over North Korea, but is unwilling to do anything about NK.  As if there was an argument over tone and not one over a crazy man controlling Nukes and our impotence=unwillingness to do anything about us. It seems a few kilotons puts them in a position of superiority over SK and Japan and US.
3. Trump answers questions, is transparent, even when it costs him.  He puts his foot in his mouth sometimes by misunderstanding barrages of questions aimed at tripping him up, and he answers foolishly sometimes instead of changing the subject.
Of course, when this happens, people whose entire life was parsing tiny mistakes of expression mad by professionals who never deviate from prepared positions, have a Ball.  They can paint Trump anyway they want since is language is direct and understandable, but not tight and expertly crafted to prevent them.
4. Trump live a life of honesty, a bit more libido than most, and as a counter puncher. Sometimes upper cuts miss, and then he is pilloried for them. Most of the time, they hit their mark, so he is pilloried for them to begin with (word parsing) and eventually they get the point since his target audience does get the point almost immediately.
This is what happened with the wall. They got the point.
This is what happened with immigrants who are Muslims. They got the point.
This is what happened with trade deals. They got the point.
This is what happened with the deal with Iran. They got the point.
This is not what happened over a hypothetical Trump had clearly not considered, but answered anyhow. He went to MSNBC of all places and to Chris Matthews the master of rapid fire, and a rabid pro Hilary supporter. He was asked whether it would be a crime if Roe v Wade was overthrown. He said yes. He was asked who is to be punished, and pressed to say it would be the abortion seeker.
A sleeker politician would never have gone there, you don't answer hypotheticals. He was criticised for that which is laughable, after all he's Trump.
A sleeker politician would have had the "right" answer ready. It is not the mother who is trying to kill her baby that is the criminal, it is the doctor who facilitates it! You moron!
So his advisers "clarified" it within minutes and Trump admitted a day later on O'Reilly to have stepped in it. He has been criticized for admitting error.
Again everyone uses misinterpretations of what he said, or his errors, and apply it to his character, his ability to meet presidential functions, and even his humanity.

We always claim we wanted transparency. With Trump we have it, and, for political reasons, the RNC, the Rep Puppet Masters behind the super Packs, and the pundits, all want to destroy him.

What are the political reasons?
1. He is uncontrollable, he believes in himself (most Pres do),
2. He is independently wealthy to the point of not needing backers, and this means backers can't gain access to him through cash, or influence him through cash.
3. He is a moderate Republican. He'd probably compromise on abortion and permit it in the first Trimester. He would seek to overturn RvW, and he would select reasonably conservative judges to SCOTUS.
4. He is a populist, so he would do his best for the little people who elect him.
5. He keeps his promises. He would set up the wall (injuring the wealth of  many who depend on ilegal labor), he would close the influx of Muslims into the country (injuring Saudi Princes who support ISIS and other radical groups to keep their agreements with their religious communities.)
6. He would made unprofitable the earnings of Puppet Masters outside of the US by curbing countries agreements when they manipulate the currentcies.

So there you have why I am for Trump. Whether he succeeds or not, I am proud of his attempt to bring reason and rationality into politics.

Washingto Post Responses

Washington Post - For Muslims in the U.S. military, a different U.S. than the one they swore to defend  By Thomas Gibbons-Neff

Another attack on Trump based on sympathy, respect for our troops, and with an underlying disregards for facts or human life.

The persons quoted are good people, their service is and should be respected by all, but conflating their actions to those of Trump is simply to sow propaganda rather than understanding.  “He is horrible, we have great Muslims in the army.”  Where is the connection? I responded with the paragraph below.

While we respect your service, and would love to have no suspicions concerning your fellow Muslims, the action of a small minority, and the acceptance of that minority by a much larger minority, have made all Muslims suspect.  It may be unfair, but it is safe.  To put lives in danger because we want to be nice is not a solution. It depends on how much you respect life vs how much you want to be fair to the majority of Muslim's who are not Jihadists.

Some of us choose life.

Washington Post: The slippery slope to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims - E.J. Dionne Jr

While I agree with Dionne on the mosque near ground zero, it was insensitive, but not illegal, the following statement is both crazy, provocative, and based on nothing:

“Thus, Trump’s embrace of a religious test for entry to our country did not come out of nowhere. On the contrary, it simply brought us to the bottom of a slippery slope created by the ongoing exploitation of anti-Muslim feeling for political purposes.”

If there had been attacks on Muslims, or even incitement to go attack them, I would be as aghast as Mr. Dionne seems. Trump did not embrace a religious test, he defined a group of dangerous individual by the one thing all of them claim, and the one thing most of their supporters (who are not necessarily Jihadists themselves) agree.  This is a religious war against the West, and in particular America and Israel.

We did not refuse to use the term “Communist” to describe our opponents during the cold war, even though, technically speaking they were fascist dictators rather than supporters of Karl Marx. We did not refuse to use the term “Communist” on Mao, even though he was more of a warlord that won than anything else.  So why wouldn’t we call Muslim’s to those who present a danger, and look askance at those who support them, as well, unfortunately, at those of the same faith in their midst?

We have the same problem with modern warfare. How do you prevent collateral damage when your enemies hide among civilians? The same case is to be made for Muslims. How do you determine who the “nice” Muslims are when faced with people who blend in, and plot your murder?

Trumps ban on Muslims might survive a court challenge Charles Savage, NY Times.

While I wouldn't have expected it from the times, this is a fairly balanced article which matches my memory and cursory research on the matter today.

The US Constitution gives all power over immigration and Visas to Congress, Congress has delegated sufficient discretion to the President to make President Trump capable, on his first hour in office to impose such a ban.

There is an international treaty which would not permit such a ban, but Congress never ratified it and made it national law, therefore it is irrelevant.

There are sufficient historical pronouncements by the Supreme Court to make it established law that the President has this power.  Similarly, acts of comparable severity, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibiting any Chinese immigration to the States (1898 US v Wong Kim Ark) makes it difficult to see why the Courts would not upheld it.  These repressive laws were extended until the early 1900 and were not repealed until WWII.  Only in the late 60s and 70s did ethnic Chinese arrive in the States in quantity.

Significant events in 20th Century:

1. "In 1932 President Roosevelt and the State Department essentially shut down immigration during the Great Depression as immigration went from 236,000 in 1929 to 23,000 in 1933. This was accompanied by voluntary repatriation to Europe and Mexico, and coerced repatriation and deportation of between 500,000 and 2 million Mexican Americans, mostly citizens, in the Mexican Repatriation. Total immigration in the decade of 1931 to 1940 was 528,000 averaging less than 53,000 a year."
2. "The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act) abolished.." national quotas and circumscribed Eastern block countries to miniscule immigration quotas. Ted Kennedy created the bill in question
3. In the 80s we set refugee targets to 50K per year, and immigration to 270K. We added penalties to employers using illegal (which were largely ignored) and accepted 3M illegal.
4. "The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) vastly increased the categories of criminal activity for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported and imposed mandatory detention for certain types of deportation cases. As a result, well over 2 million individuals have been deported since 1996.^[7]"
5. Although a lot of bills have been proposed, some passed one house or the other, no major Immigration bill has been brought forth by Congress for Presidential signature.

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TRUMP

So Trump is fairly mainstream in his proposal, although typically too straight forward and not Politically correct for the establishment the media, or the administration.

The screaming and tearing of hair we see are from those who despair of beating him in the polls, and seek of something that will lower the esteem his followers have for him.

While I still don't support him, I am tempted by the contempt I feel for those who instead of discussing the merits of his proposal insist in dissecting words, ascribing evil intent and besmirching his character.  It is almost too delicious not to join him in his contempt for the ruling Republican, Democratic, and Media classes.