One Hundred Days of Leftist Savagery

Apologies for the gap in blogging. Life gets in the way of living, or maybe the other way round. I don't know. Had to deal with a number of issues, mostly involving cars. Yes, the Diplomad has revealed himself a coward. No longer able to withstand the daily Diplowife assault on my mini fleet of three classic cars, I have begun the painful process of liquidating them. In fact, if you go to the Laguna Classic Cars website (www.lagunaclassiccars.com) you will see my red 1973 Mach 1 proudly displayed for sale. It will soon be joined by my blue 1966 Oldsmobile and, later, the green 1976 Cadillac. Sigh. I, however, did not go down without a fight. I bought myself a beautiful Jeep Wrangler Unlimited from a wonderful family owned dealer, BlackStar Off Road, and insisted that it have a six-speed manual transmission. Ha! The Diplowife says she cannot drive manual, so there . . . my own safe space . . .

While all that important stuff was going on, of course, the rest of the world carried on.

The pundits are on and on about Trump's first 100 days. This "C-Days" benchmark is one of the silliest in American politics, and has extended overseas to comments on other governmental leaders' first 100 days. I used to hear it in Spain and elsewhere from people who had no idea of the origins of that 100-Day measure. This 100-day obsession comes from FDR's first 100 days during which, with overwhelming strength in the Congress, the disaster of the Great Depression weighing down and panicking the country, and, lest we forget, a much later inauguration date (March 4) which gave him more time to prepare, he rammed through a huge packet of legislation, the New Deal, that laid the foundations for the massive welfare state we now--depending on your views--enjoy or endure. So now the progs have decreed that we "MUST" judge our presidents by what they do in their first hundred days, and compare it to FDR's record. As I have said before about progressives and "words",

Words have meaning, and the left is very good at ever so subtly altering the meaning of words so that over time those words no longer mean what they meant. Words, of course, are the bullets of intellectual debate. If you allow your opponent to select your ammo for you, well, let's just say you are at a disadvantage.

Other than Lincoln, no other president took office encountering such widespread and well-coordinated antipathy, nay, sabotage. From the moment the shocked media meisters had to confront Trump's victory on November 8, the assault commenced. There was no "give the guy a chance," no "honeymoon," no "wait and see." We heard that Trump was not the "legitimate" president because Clinton had "won" the popular vote (Thank you, Mexico!) The chattering class conveniently "forgot" that the President is elected by the electoral college; that we have 51 separate elections in this country--one District of Columbia, 46 states, four commonwealths--to determine who becomes our president. They then turned on the electoral college itself, threatening and encouraging state electors pledged to Trump to switch either to Clinton or to somebody else. That, of course, turned into a disaster for Trump's opponents when it all backfired, and in the main it was Clinton electors who defected. Since and just before the election, the progs have been, as I have written quite a few times, beating the "Russia hacked the election" drum. This has had various versions but all were aimed at showing that somehow Putin wanted Trump to win and managed to get just what he wanted. Trump's opponents, i.e., the Obama misadministration, clearly engaged in a massive surveillance operation against Trump and his staff using the "looking for Russians" excuse. Suddenly the progressives were worried about Russia and our national security! How touching.

Opponents tried to disrupt the inauguration, and have engaged in a consistent pattern of street violence and thuggery aimed at intimidating Trump supporters and trying to give the impression that the country is ungovernable unless the progressives are in charge. Nothing is off limits, including Trump's family, in this assault on the new president. Unprecedented coarseness, violence, and fake news are all arrows in the progressive quiver and being unleashed on Trump and supporters daily.

OK, that said, what can we say about the first 100 days of President Trump?

He's done very, very well, certainly better than  his opponents. His executive orders reversing much of the environmental and anti-energy nonsense of the past and the elevation of Judge Neil Gorsuch to Justice on the Supreme Court alone are worth the price of admission. We cannot exaggerate the importance of the Gorsuch victory. This gives us the chance to reverse a lot of the progressive "lawfare" tactics and undo much of the idiotic and destructive "gun control" and anti-free speech legislation and rulings. It should give Trump the ability to rein-in the criminally stupid 9th Circuit and other progressive judges and reverse their rulings on matters such as immigration and sanctuary cities. AG Sessions has taken exactly the right approach by announcing his DOJ is going after the MS-13 and other international gangsters who have taken root in the US thanks to our lax immigration policies. Illegal border crossings, even without the WALL, are way down in the first months of Trump, all because he has changed to the tone coming from DC. The economy is breathing a sigh of relief with the stock market into record territory, and companies, notably manufacturers, announcing plans to keep or open plants in the US. Granted much of that depends on Trump getting his tax and budget bills through, and that's where he has to work. There is, despite some odd behavior by some prominent Republicans in Congress, also a real chance to get those bills passed, and to undo the Obamacare disaster once and for all.

Trump has proven very adept at foreign affairs. The whole tone has changed. He speaks clearly and acts quickly and decisively. He is having the desired effect. I think we will get a renegotiation of NAFTA, for example, and the revitalization and refocusing of NATO. The Iranian and North Korean regimes, I think, will begin to realize that things have changed and that craziness will no longer be tolerated. ISIS is taking a pounding, and I think is on the road to defeat--at least in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, how it fares in its other bases in Europe, well, that depends on the Europeans. Relations with Russia will improve, as Putin realizes that he can no longer get away with what he was doing while Obama was in office. China also seems more cooperative on the North Korea issue.

Trump is keeping his promises, to the shock and chagrin of his opponents. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment has to been to reveal clearly the fascistic nature of the progressive "movement" in the US. That's my take away from the first hundred days.