Archive for 2018

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Butter A Carb?

HEATHER WILHELM: Hapless in Democratland.

Strangely, the Democratic party’s strategy for 2018 seems to revolve around reminding people how happy they are that Democrats aren’t in charge.

Witness prominent left-leaning responses to Trump’s State of the Union address, which earned an impressive 75 percent approval rating in a CBS News poll. Eight out of ten of the viewers in the poll “felt that the president was trying to unite the country, rather than divide it,” and “two-thirds said the speech made them feel proud.” Sure, we can argue about the policy implications of the address, but that’s been true for almost every State of the Union in the history of the nation. (“Free” community college! The magical “creation” of hundreds of thousands of jobs! An army of hydrogen cars!) In short, it was a well-written, well-delivered speech.

Perhaps that sounds boring to you, so it’s high time for some hyperventilation. Over to you, Democrats! CNN’s Sally Kohn called the speech “scary” and “terrifying.” Elizabeth Warren tweeted that she attended only because she wanted its horrors “burned into my eyes.” But it was perhaps MSNBC’s Joy Reid who took the cake, tweeting out a bizarre and amazing word salad trashing various American institutions: “Church . . . family . . . police . . . military . . . the national anthem . . . Trump trying to call on all the tropes of 1950s-era nationalism. The goal of this speech appears to be to force the normalization of Trump on the terms of the bygone era his supporters are nostalgic for.”

Ah, I can see the campaign posters now: “Can’t stand church and family? Neither can we! Vote for the Democrats in 2018!” It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it? I mean, come on, people. Pretending to be a normal human being can’t really be that hard.

Actually, when politicians rate at least half the country as “deplorable,” then it really is that hard.

BILL ROGGIO: US officials estimate Taliban strength at a minimum of 60,000 fighters.

NBC News reports that US and Afghan officials estimate the Taliban’s strength in Afghanistan to be a minimum of 60,000 fighters. This updated figure is significant, because as the report notes, for years the only previous estimate was approximately 20,000.

Given all of the information available to FDD’s Long War Journal, I believe this latest assessment to significantly more accurate. I am quoted in the above-referenced article that 60,000 would be my low-end estimate. In fact, with the amount of territory up for grabs and fighting taking place, that number could easily be doubled.

The report went on to note that one official thinks it’s a “fool’s errand” to estimate Taliban strength as “the fighters often change their allegiance from one terror group to another.”

There’s more than one fool’s errand in Afghanistan.

DID OBAMA FOLLOW CLINTONS’ EXAMPLE ON TRASHING RECORDS? Good question and one that ought to get the attention of multiple officials in federal law enforcement and document retention. Charles Ortel lays it out on LifeZette. Are you listening, National Archivist David Ferriero?

ED MORRISSEY: Do Dems Have A Bigger SOTU Response Problem?

Reactions to SOTU speeches in the chamber usually matter less than the speeches themselves, which don’t have much staying power either. It’s about as meaningful as the White House bragging today of Trump having received a record amount of applause. It’s meaningless because (a) that’s a function of the speech length, the longest SOTU in 18 years, and (b) applause is just as manufactured as the stony silences on the other side of the aisle. Yes, it’s true that Democrats sat on their hands during the sunnier economic news, but let’s not ignore the fact that Trump was taking all of the credit for that, too. It’s gameplaying on both sides, nothing more.

It’s these responses that may do more damage to Democrats — after the speech when they opened their mouths. As Americans overwhelmingly approved of the speech, Democrats went out to the media to take personal shots at Trump:

“It didn’t deliver on substance. It wasn’t inflammatory, for the most part. But we’ll see what he tweets at 5 o’clock in the morning when his Adderall wears off,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said in an interview with The Hill.

Fellow Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio) called Trump “low-energy,” described his speech as “uninspiring” and said he is waiting for sunrise, when Ryan anticipates the president will take to Twitter, “thumbs moving.”

Stay classy, fellas. As Salena Zito reports this morning, this is how we got Trump in the first place, and how we’re likely to get a lot more Trump in the future.

What’s remarkable is that the Democrats still haven’t caught on to the fact that there’s usually a hook inside Trump’s bait.

THE U.S. ARMY PLANS TO SHOOT DOWN MISSILES with artillery.

CHANGE: San Francisco will wipe out thousands of marijuana convictions dating to 1975.

San Francisco will retroactively apply California’s new marijuana legalization laws to prior convictions, expunging or reducing misdemeanors and felonies dating to 1975, the district attorney’s office announced Wednesday.

Nearly 5,000 felony marijuana convictions will be reviewed, recalled and resentenced, and more than 3,000 misdemeanors that were sentenced prior to Proposition 64’s passage will be dismissed and sealed, Dist. Atty. George Gascón said. The move will clear people’s records of crimes that can be barriers to employment and housing.

Another barrier to employment is showing up drunk or stoned, but there’s no law or commutation which can help with that.

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, MEET DIANNE FEINSTEIN: LifeZette’s Jim Stinson dug into the senior California senator’s past statements on immigration issues and found some real gems. She probably doesn’t find them all that shiny, however.

HELEN RALEIGH: Why North Korea Will Be The Biggest Winner Of The Winter Olympics. “South Korea caved to all of Kim Jong Un’s demands. What did Seoul get in return? Pretty much nothing.”

I have to give the “Little Rocket Man,” Kim Jong Un, credit for choosing his timing so strategically. Only a month ago, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed the toughest sanctions to date against North Korea, which would further suppress Pyongyang’s energy supplies and the usage and exploitation of North Korean labor overseas.

Pyongyang quickly denounced the latest sanctions as an “act of war.” The international community had been hopeful that this latest round of sanctions might be tough enough to get North Korea back to the negotiation table. But the Little Rocket Man came up with an ingenious strategy to break out this economic isolation.

He recognizes that the Winter Olympic games in South Korea provides him with a perfect stage, a rare opportunity to promote his own propaganda and shape world opinion about him and his regime, at little cost to him. To make his strategy work, he needs a willing and foolish partner, and he quickly found one in South Korea’s President Moon Jae In.

Surprising exactly no one who has followed Jae In’s progressive politics.