The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
The nature of power in the networked age
by Niall Ferguson
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Top Headlines
Senate confirms Elaine Chao for Transportation secretary. (USA Today)
Betsy DeVos clears committee with zero Democrat votes. Full Senate vote next. (Washington Free Beacon)
DHS Sec. John Kelly defends travel suspension, personnel helped draft the EO. (Military.com)
More Americans than not support Trump's immigration order. (Washington Examiner)
Trump names Ronald Vitiello to head Border Patrol. (Washington Times)
Oops: Pentagon believes Iran-backed attack on Saudi frigate meant for U.S. warship. (Fox News)
The problem is... 48.9% of union members worked for government in 2016. (CNS News)
Videos prove Planned Parenthood's ultrasounds used for killing, not care. (Live Action)
Leftists seek to honor fired Acting AG Sally Yates with JFK Profile in Courage Award. (RedState)
Vox: Cancel the Oscars broadcast to protest Trump immigration policy. Yes, please do! (Vox)
Policy: A federalist Rx for liar-nObamaCare ills. (Manhattan Institute)
Policy: Is it a "Muslim ban"? (National Review)
~The Patriot Post
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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Confirmed
{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has been confirmed by the full Senate Vote... Democrats Mark Warner (VA), Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Joe Manchin (WVA) joined with all senate republicans for the 56-43 vote. Suffice to say, anyone who has followed DC politics for any substantive amount of time is aware of the inherent ideological issues within The U.S. State Department. Filled with bureaucrats whose career has been at the epicenter of left-wing globalist advocacy. If you go back to rethinking the larger State Dept. challenge, Rex Tillerson will essentially be in charge of a U.S. Department that is comprised almost exclusively of hanoi-Kerry/liar-Clinton/liar-nObama/Bush/ UniParty/GOPe big “G” Globalists...
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Corporate Elites Challenge Trump
For Rule Of America – That’s Fascism
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Lou Dobbs has a few thoughts as the establishment fascists, the “corporatists, are broadening their against President Trump and in particular his policies to secure our borders and our ports... and to control the flow of immigration and refugees into this country.” “Interestingly,” notes Dobbs, “the two principle lobbyists for US multinationals are the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. And they’ve been uncharacteristically quiet and out of sight as the corporate broadsides become more frequent and louder.” Dobbs says, “Traditionally few CEOs have gone public with their politics, that’s changing. Those CEOs for years have feared they might alienate their customers but for some reason that tradition is being shattered, almost daily. One of the wealthiest men in this country is Jeff Bezos, he is the founder of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post.”... http://rickwells.us/dobbs-corporate-elites-challenge-trump-rule-america-fascism/
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Coach Pulosi From The Sidelines –
Tell Them You’re A Muslim, Be Cool
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Democrat politics are special interest, identity, fad politics. It’s cool to be anything other than a white heterosexual Christian male and the further one is away from that “loathsome, inherently oppressive... and privileged” creature the higher esteem they are held in by the gutter rat Democrats. While the Senate doesn’t have caucuses, the House is full of them. They’re associations of representatives working together to advance agendas favorable to their subset. The racist organizations, the Congressional Black Caucus or Congressional Hispanic Congress work to advance causes based upon skin color. The Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus works to promote the Democrat homosexual and anything goes agendas. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is composed of communists, progressives, Marxists and both closeted and out of the closet commies. It’s chaired jointly by Raul Grijalva, a communist Mexican supremacist and Keith Ellison, a Muslim black supremacist... http://rickwells.us/coach-pelosi-sidelines-muslim-cool/
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Germany: Angela Merkel
Faces Challenge for Chancellorship
by Soeren Kern
by Soeren Kern
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ Martin Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament, has been chosen to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany's general election on September 24... The policy positions of Schulz and Merkel on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right. Polls show Merkel, who heads the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), slightly ahead of Schulz, the new leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Regardless of who wins, Germany is unlikely to undergo many course corrections during the next four years... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9870/martin-schulz-angela-merkel
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Waning intelligence as the leftist mean
kiddies still fight to control the USA
by Sher Zieve
{renewamerica.com} ~ The Democrat Party and RINOs are placing all of us in jeopardy due to their lack of intelligence...or lack of any care for humanity other than themselves. No...not security, top-secret or cyber intelligence... It's simply basic human intelligence to which I'm referring. Over the last eight years, it seems to have completely vanished off the face of the Earth. Since the election of US President Donald J. Trump in November, the Left in our country appear to be suffering from some malady that has sapped what had still remained of their fragile intellects. In fact, these folks began blaming P.E. Trump for all manner of committed horrors before he had even taken office. The horrors had actually been effected by their leftist icon liar-nObama. Oopsie...! Note to the Left: Before a POTUS can be blamed for anything relating to US policies, he or she has to have actually assumed office. Apparently, that bit of 'trivial' information is no longer being taught in US public (aka government) schools. Sigh... http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/zieve/170201
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The nature of power in the networked age
by Niall Ferguson
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ The United States is living through a kind of Trumpian Genesis: seven days of high-speed political creation.
In the beginning Trump created heaven (for his supporters) and hell (for the mainstream media).
And Washington was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of CNN.
And Trump said, let liar-nObamacare be repealed.
And Trump saw the reports of his inauguration, that they were bad: and Trump divided the press from the administration.
This is about our values and who we think we are as a people and as a nation.
And Trump called the first day a National Day of Patriotic Devotion.
Day Two was dominated by the women's marches against Trump. On Day 3 Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and froze new hiring by the federal government.
Day Four saw five new executive orders, two of which reversed the liar-nObama administration's halt to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. Trump also signed a bill requiring that the pipelines use American steel.
On the fifth day Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to begin building a wall on the US-Mexican border.
And on the sixth, his press secretary said that the wall would be paid for by a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico.
Technically, Trump was entitled to a day of rest on Friday. He didn't take it.
On it goes. Each day brings news of fresh executive orders, interviews, tweets. Each day the media shoot back at Trump. To read some of the press coverage of Trump's first week, you would think the Apocalypse was imminent.
Indeed, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last week moved its famous Dooomsday Clock forward to two and a half minutes to midnight. Yet in issuing executive orders, Trump is merely following the precedent set by the previous occupant of the White House.
The hysterical over-reaction of the media is fresh proof that Trump is a self-publicist of prodigious instinctive talent.
Trump became the president essentially by doing to the Republican Party what Uber did to the taxi companies: he disintermediated it. In essence, he exploited his appeal as a television "ratings machine" to communicate his message to the electorate. Then his campaign strategists used social media to craft targeted online campaigns that moved voters away from liar-Hillary Clinton in the key swing states.
Trump is not wrong to refer to the people who elected him as a movement. But I would prefer to call it a network. This was not a top-down command-and-control operation like the liar-Clinton campaign. It was self-organizing, spontaneous, horizontal. Trump didn't campaign in the traditional sense. He went viral.
The key question is how far he is now going to be able to disintermediate the federal government, too.
Right now, there is a striking bifurcation between his performance in the role of president, which - as when he played the part of Republican nominee - is still directed at his network, and the actual process of government, which in practice will be carried out by legislators, bureaucrats, and public employees.
I have to confess I enjoy the entertainment for no other reason than that it drives the most tedious people in America to distraction. But the real point is not what Trump says. It is what his administration does.
No one yet knows what precisely that will be. It may be that the net result of the Republican corporate tax reform will be economically disruptive, increasing the deficit and inflation. On the other hand, it may be that the repatriation of corporate capital will generate more revenue than anyone expects.
It may be that all the regulations introduced since the 1980s are all that stands between us and environmental and financial disaster. On the other hand, it may be that most of this regulation was merely a bureaucratic scam and a leaden weight on small and medium-sized businesses.
It may be that a trade war will break out between the United States and China, one that will hurt us almost as much as them. On the other hand, it may be that the Chinese will end up rolling over in the face of Trump's aggressive negotiating tactics because their economic and political position is much weaker than most people appreciate.
And it may be that challenging the globalized economic order is a fool's errand that will end up hurting everybody, including ordinary Americans, by raising consumer prices. On the other hand, it may be that globalization had overshot, and it was high time we dialed back the volume of migration, off-shoring of jobs and cross-border investment.
The question we need to ask is not: Can Trump keep enraging the media and thereby signal to his network that he is delivering change? He can do that all day long. That's not rule by decree; it's rule by reality TV.
The real question is: Can his administration - using the usual cumbersome channels - enact and implement reforms that will fundamentally improve the lives of ordinary Americans?
The answer to that question will not be found in Trump's Book of Genesis. But I doubt very much it is in the liberals' Book of Revelation either.
In the beginning Trump created heaven (for his supporters) and hell (for the mainstream media).
And Washington was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of CNN.
And Trump said, let liar-nObamacare be repealed.
And Trump saw the reports of his inauguration, that they were bad: and Trump divided the press from the administration.
This is about our values and who we think we are as a people and as a nation.
And Trump called the first day a National Day of Patriotic Devotion.
Day Two was dominated by the women's marches against Trump. On Day 3 Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and froze new hiring by the federal government.
Day Four saw five new executive orders, two of which reversed the liar-nObama administration's halt to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. Trump also signed a bill requiring that the pipelines use American steel.
On the fifth day Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to begin building a wall on the US-Mexican border.
And on the sixth, his press secretary said that the wall would be paid for by a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico.
Technically, Trump was entitled to a day of rest on Friday. He didn't take it.
On it goes. Each day brings news of fresh executive orders, interviews, tweets. Each day the media shoot back at Trump. To read some of the press coverage of Trump's first week, you would think the Apocalypse was imminent.
Indeed, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last week moved its famous Dooomsday Clock forward to two and a half minutes to midnight. Yet in issuing executive orders, Trump is merely following the precedent set by the previous occupant of the White House.
The hysterical over-reaction of the media is fresh proof that Trump is a self-publicist of prodigious instinctive talent.
Trump became the president essentially by doing to the Republican Party what Uber did to the taxi companies: he disintermediated it. In essence, he exploited his appeal as a television "ratings machine" to communicate his message to the electorate. Then his campaign strategists used social media to craft targeted online campaigns that moved voters away from liar-Hillary Clinton in the key swing states.
Trump is not wrong to refer to the people who elected him as a movement. But I would prefer to call it a network. This was not a top-down command-and-control operation like the liar-Clinton campaign. It was self-organizing, spontaneous, horizontal. Trump didn't campaign in the traditional sense. He went viral.
The key question is how far he is now going to be able to disintermediate the federal government, too.
Right now, there is a striking bifurcation between his performance in the role of president, which - as when he played the part of Republican nominee - is still directed at his network, and the actual process of government, which in practice will be carried out by legislators, bureaucrats, and public employees.
I have to confess I enjoy the entertainment for no other reason than that it drives the most tedious people in America to distraction. But the real point is not what Trump says. It is what his administration does.
No one yet knows what precisely that will be. It may be that the net result of the Republican corporate tax reform will be economically disruptive, increasing the deficit and inflation. On the other hand, it may be that the repatriation of corporate capital will generate more revenue than anyone expects.
It may be that all the regulations introduced since the 1980s are all that stands between us and environmental and financial disaster. On the other hand, it may be that most of this regulation was merely a bureaucratic scam and a leaden weight on small and medium-sized businesses.
It may be that a trade war will break out between the United States and China, one that will hurt us almost as much as them. On the other hand, it may be that the Chinese will end up rolling over in the face of Trump's aggressive negotiating tactics because their economic and political position is much weaker than most people appreciate.
And it may be that challenging the globalized economic order is a fool's errand that will end up hurting everybody, including ordinary Americans, by raising consumer prices. On the other hand, it may be that globalization had overshot, and it was high time we dialed back the volume of migration, off-shoring of jobs and cross-border investment.
The question we need to ask is not: Can Trump keep enraging the media and thereby signal to his network that he is delivering change? He can do that all day long. That's not rule by decree; it's rule by reality TV.
The real question is: Can his administration - using the usual cumbersome channels - enact and implement reforms that will fundamentally improve the lives of ordinary Americans?
The answer to that question will not be found in Trump's Book of Genesis. But I doubt very much it is in the liberals' Book of Revelation either.
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