Pardon Me? | Trump VS….

Trump didn’t even make the top ten in the oldest newspaper in America’s history list of controversial pardons.

  • HEAVY has a state-by-state list of Obama’s pardons and commutations/clemencies.
  • And of course Slick Willy’s list via SOAPBOXIE and the SPECTATOR.

PEW RESEARCH has some numbers:

Despite a burst of pardons and commutations in his last hours in office, Donald Trump used his executive clemency power less frequently than nearly every other president since the turn of the 20th century, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Justice Department data.

Trump granted 237 acts of clemency during his four years in the White House, including 143 pardons and 94 commutations. Only two other presidents since 1900 – George W. and George H.W. Bush – granted fewer acts of clemency than Trump.

His predecessor, Barack Obama, granted clemency 1,927 times over the course of eight years in office, the highest total of any president going back to Harry Truman. Obama’s total was skewed heavily toward commutations (1,715) instead of pardons (212).

Yeah. Trump stands head n shoulders above almost all the rest.

The Silver Lining Mid-Term Election (UPDATED)

Mind you this is after reading some articles and listening to talk radio and dissenting callers expressing their opinion. BUT RUSH LIMBAUGH is the boss of this! First of all, I wish to say, if the 45-people who left Congress for a variety of reasons did so in part because they believed the media in their “Blue Wave” supposition. Obviously many of these Republicans included ideas of their dislike of Trump, or that they were in leading positions and do not want to be “demoted,” but instead transition into the private sector, as well as spend time with family, also reading the tea-leaves about the “blue wave” (etc., etc.). And so, with the amount of GOP incumbent calling it quits for a variety of reasons, the Democrats won the amount of seats they did this election. They would have won MUCH less if these Republicans stuck through another couple years to the 2020 election. Here are some examples that show just how bad this first mid-term is for the party in power:

  • The most House seats ever lost by a president’s party in power was Obama in 2010. He lost 63. Next was Bill Clinton in 1994. He lost 52. In 1958, Eisenhower lost 48, as did Ford and Nixon in 1974. They lost 48. Lyndon Johnson in ’66, lost 47. Harry Truman in ’46 lost 45 seats. George W. Bush in 2006 lost 30. In 1950, Harry Truman lost 29. Reagan, in ’82, lost 26 seats, and in 2016 Trump is at 26 or 27 — and those are New York Times records. (RUSH LIMBAUGH)
  • UPDATE: More LIKE 37 seats.

So, my point is that what the GOP lost in the House yesterday, is FAR better than recent democrats as an example. AND, not only that, if the Republicans who left stuck around, the Democrats would have won less in the House. So to lose the amount we did was with thanks to Trump and keeping a natural cycle to a minimum. Very few midterm Presidents have added to the Senate during their tenure.

And WHY did Trump deem it important to spend time on the campaign trail for Senate races and not the House races? Because the Senate is where judges are confirmed — the Senate. So if say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies or retires, Trump/Mitch McConnell could nominate another Justice via a Senate with more Republicans who are more conservative than their predecessors. [UPDATE, and on cue]

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was seriously injured in a Wednesday evening fall in her chambers at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The health of the 85-year-old justice and progressive favorite is much-watched, lest a sudden change of events give President Donald Trump a third appointment to the high court.

“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell in her office at the Court last evening,” the Supreme Court public information office said Thursday morning. “She went home, but after experiencing discomfort overnight, went to George Washington University Hospital early this morning. Tests showed that she fractured three ribs on her left side and she was admitted for observation and treatment. Updates will be provided as they become available.”

The injury precluded Ginsburg from attending Thursday morning’s ceremonial investiture of Justice Brett Kavanaugh

(THE DAILY CALLER)

But they also confirm judges for the lower courts as well as the Circuit Courts (who are very Left leaning). So we should confirm at least two-a-month for 2-years. Four of the 13 federal appeals courts currently have more Republican:

With the Republican-led Senate rapidly considering and confirming many of his judicial nominees, Trump already has appointed 26 appeals court judges. That is more than any other president in the first two years of a presidency, according to Russell Wheeler, a scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank, although he points out that there are more appellate judges now than in the past.

Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, appointed 55 in eight years as president.

Only four of the 13 federal appeals courts currently have more Republican-appointed judges than Democratic selections.

The two appellate courts closest to shifting to Republican-appointed majorities are the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Trump already has made three appointments to the 11th Circuit, leaving it with a 6-6 split between Democratic and Republican appointees. The 3rd Circuit, to which Trump has made one appointment, now has a 7-5 Democratic-appointee majority, with two vacancies for Trump to fill.

[….]

here are currently 13 appeals court vacancies, six of them with pending nominees picked by Trump, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Both the 11th Circuit and 3rd Circuit have major cases pending in which Trump appointees could make their mark.

An 11th Circuit three-judge panel on July 25 revived a civil rights lawsuit challenging the state of Alabama’s move to prevent the city of Birmingham from increasing the minimum wage. Alabama has asked for a rehearing, which would be heard by the entire 12-judge 11th Circuit if the request is granted.

In the 3rd Circuit, the Trump administration has appealed a lower court decision blocking the Justice Department from cutting off grants to Philadelphia over so-called sanctuary city policies limiting local cooperation with federal authorities on immigration enforcement….

This is Yuuuge. The courts will have Constitutionalists influencing the Courts for generations.

OTHER “Silver Linings”?

Battleground-State Dems Who Opposed Kavanaugh All Defeated

Incumbent Senate Democrats in battleground states who opposed the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination appeared to have paid a price on Election Day, with senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Florida’s Bill Nelson all suffering defeat.

In fact, every Democrat incumbent who opposed Kavanaugh in states rated “toss up” by Fox News lost their race. In contrast, the lone Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, won his race.

“Every Dem Senator in a competitive race who voted against Kavanaugh lost,” tweeted Tom Bevan, Co-founder of RealClearPolitics. Fox News polling offered evidence the Kavanaugh issue was a major problem for those battleground incumbent Democrats.

A Fox News poll from early October, just before the Kavanaugh confirmation vote, found 34 percent of North Dakotans said they would be less likely to vote for Heitkamp if she voted against Kavanaugh, with just 17 percent saying it would make them more likely to vote for her….

The Far-Left Scorecard

Josh Kraushaar compiled what he calls the progressive scorecard from last night. Note that it includes only seriously contested races. (Bernie Sanders won, as did the 29 year-old airhead from New York with the hyphenated name):

  • Arizona governor: Garcia loses
  • Florida governor: Gillum loses
  • Georgia governor: Abrams loses
  • Maryland governor: Jealous loses
  • Texas senator: O’Rourke loses
  • California 45th: Porter trails
  • Nebraska 2nd: Eastman loses
  • Pennsylvania 1st: Wallace loses
  • Virginia 5th: Cockburn loses

Dave Weigel adds three more to the scorecard:

  • Indiana 9th: Liz Watson loses
  • New York 24th: Dana Balter loses
  • Wisconsin 1st: Randy Bryce loses

This covers almost every region of the country. America isn’t quite ready for socialism yet.

Trump campaigned for 11-Senate people… 9 won.

Biggest Loser At Midterms? Barack Obama

But then there were the midterm campaigns that weren’t gimmes, some very high profile, and high media-exposure ones: Joe Donnelly of Indiana for Senate. Bill Nelson of Florida for Senate. Andrew Gillum of Florida for governor. Stacey Abrams of Georgia for governor.

Those were the ones Obama went hoarse campaigning for, yelling and waving his arms, voice cracking, speeches described as fiery, telling voters to vote for these guys or die. With Gillum in particular, racial appeals were a factor and Obama’s presence was supposed to help. Gillum had a big media buildup about being a first black governor of Florida as an argument to draw votes, and he later cried racism to fend off corruption allegations. Adding Obama to campaign was obviously part of the appeal. This time, the race-politics identity card simply failed.

And Obama? What did he get? Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. The voters rather noticibly rejected the ex-president’s appeal for votes. Been there, done that.

A prized and coveted Obama endorsement, or campaign stop, obviously isn’t the election winner in a tight race it used to be. In fact, with these midterms, when it matters, Obama’s a bust. The lesson here that Democrats will surely notice is that it’s largely useless. …

My contention is that the crazies in the Democrat Party may end up helping Trump and Republicans come 2020.


“Democrats couldn’t stop Trump, but they could slow him down and make life miserable for him,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “Subpoenas would be flying from Capitol Hill towards the White House as fast as they can print them out.” (THE HILL)

MSNBC’s Geist: Trump Would Welcome Impeachment Probe: Kavanaugh x 1000

Geist described his theory as “counterintuitive,” but it actually makes perfect sense. Imagine the spectacle of frothing Dems at House hearings, of rabid Dem members fighting for TV time to air their overwrought accusations. What better thing to ramp up the Republican base? 

As Willie said, this would be Kavanaugh times 1,000. And as most concur this morning, it was the Kavanaugh hearings that were largely responsible for galvanizing the GOP, leading to an expansion of the Republican Senate majority. Imagine what that spectacle, times 1,000, would do to create a wave of broken-glass Republicans in 2020.

WILLIE GEIST: Here’s a counterintuitive thought: President Trump would like nothing more than an impeachment investigation. Because it’s not going anywhere in the Senate, it’s dead, it’s a Republican-controlled Senate. And it’s the Kavanaugh situation multiplied times a thousand, which is Democratic overreach, and Donald Trump looks like the victim in the whole thing. He does not mind an impeachment investigation. 

The Inconvenient Truth About the Republican Party

When you think of the Republican Party, what comes to mind? If you’re like many Americans, you may associate the GOP with racism, sexism, and general inequality. It’s a commonly pushed narrative by left-leaning media and academia, but as former Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science Carol Swain explains, the Republican Party was actually responsible for nearly every advancement for minorities and women in U.S. history—and remains the champion of equality to this day. (See her other two videos on my “RACIAL MYTHS PAGE.” Dr. Swain is also a main person interviewed in the documentary, INDOCTRINATE U)

FLASHBACK: Prager Discusses A Reason He Changed Party Affiliation

This was from a C-SPAN recording of Prager in his radio show studio from 1994. Here he mentions a reason why he became a Republican 2-years earlier.

Why Did the Democratic South Become Republican?

The south used to vote Democrat. Now it votes Republican. Why the switch? Was it, as some people say, because the GOP decided to appeal to racist whites? Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, explains.

It was not until the Republican Revolution of 1994 that for the first time in modern American History the Republicans held a majority of Southern congressional seats, a full three decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As the South became less racist, it became more Republican (NATIONAL REVIEW).

Are Democrats Turning Into A Municipal Party?

SAME-OL-SAME-OL. Pelosi was reelected as leader, serious consideration for Keith Ellison DNC Chair (a racist/segregationist and cult member – see also: “Louis Farrakhan’s First Congressman” and “The Ellison Elision.”), and the “head-bobbing – womansplainingPocahontas speaking down to all Americans (she is the 2020 choice so far of the Bernie people). We will win more ground in 2020 at this rate… IF, “the Donald” doesn’t effe it up.

— Must Listen to the Previous Panel Discussion —

A trifecta is when a Party controls both state houses AND the governorship. Here is the post-2016 map to show states that have this:

I think this is a good indicator that the general public is rejecting the PC, gender-politics and tendency to label every thing as sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted (S.I.X.H.I.R.B.). Hillary even saying all white people are essentially racist, supporting anti-Semitic groups like Black Lives Matter, allowing men into women’s bathrooms with parents daughters, etc.

And so each election season something is happening across our nation:

Pre-2016 Trifecta Pre-2014 Trifecta
Pre-2012 Trifecta Pre-2010 Trifecta

I love these maps. It was something I was made aware of (trifectas) by Michael Medved and his statistician historical mind back in 2010. But I haven’t really kept up on it… till this Victor Davis Hanson article, from which I include an extended excerpt:

…In contrast, the Democratic Party is torn and rent. Barack Obama entered office in 2009 with both houses of Congress, two likely Supreme Court picks, and the good will of the nation. By 2010 he had lost the House; by 2012, the Senate. And by 2016, Obama had ensured that his would-be successor could not win by running on his platform.

A failed health care law, non-existent economic growth, serial zero interest rates, near record labor non-participation rates, $20 trillion in national debt, a Middle East in ruins, failed reset and redlines, and the Iran deal were albatrosses around Democratic Party’s neck. Obama divided the country with the apology tour, the Cairo Speech, the beer summit, the rhetoric of disparagement (“you didn’t build that,” “punish our enemies,” etc.), the encouragement of the Black Lives Matter movement, and a series of anti-Constitutional executive orders.

In other words, even as Obama left the Democrats with ideological and political detritus, he also had established an electoral calculus built on his own transformative identity that neither had coattails nor was transferrable to other candidates. Indeed, his hard-left positions on redistribution, social issues, sanctuary cities, amnesty, foreign policy, and spending would likely doom candidates other than himself who embraced them.

The Bernie Sanders candidacy was the natural response, on the left, to Obama’s ideological presidency. But the cranky socialist septuagenarian mesmerized primary voters on platitudes that would have proven disastrous in a general election—before meekly whining about Clinton sabotage and then endorsing the ticket. What then has the Democratic Party become other than a hard left and elite progressive force, which without Obama’s personal appeal to bloc-voting minorities, resonates with only about 40 percent of the country?

The Democratic Party is now neither a centrist nor a coalition party. Instead, it finds itself at a dead-end: had Hillary Clinton emulated her husband’s pragmatic politics of the 1990s, she would have never won the nomination—even though she would have had a far better chance of winning the general election.

Wikileaks reminded us that the party is run by rich, snobbish, and often ethically bankrupt grandees. In John Podesta’s world, it’s normal and acceptable for Democratic apparatchiks to talk about their stock portfolios and name-drop the Hamptons, while making cruel asides about “needy” Latinos, medieval Catholics, and African-Americans with silly names—who are nonetheless expected to keep them in power. Such paradoxes are not sustainable. Nor is the liberal nexus of colluding journalists, compromised lobbyists, narcissistic Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, family dynasties, and Clintonian get-rich ethics.

The old blue-collar middle class was bewildered by the leftwing social agenda in which gay marriage, women in combat units, and transgendered restrooms went from possible to mandatory party positions in an eye blink. In a party in which “white privilege” was pro forma disparagement, those who were both white and without it grew furious that the elites with such privilege massaged the allegation to provide cover for their own entitlement.

In the aftermath of defeat, where goes the Democratic Party?

It is now a municipal party. It has no real power over the federal government or state houses….

Here is the map of Republican Governors:

As the liberal agenda becomes more brash and evident, I am seeing a slow change in demographics. Which is great in many respects.

Democrats ARE Institutionalized Racists-Larry Elder Lays Down the Law!

Larry Elder hits a “bases full homer” with this one. The Sage focuses in on John Podesta’s email to Hillary and talks about all the way this proves what he has been saying for YEARS. That is, the Democrat Party doesn’t care about Black men and women… in fact, they think they cannot change. And so, all the social programs are really just to keep the black man and woman on the Democrat plantation.

Republicans in contradistinction to the Left, think that anyone who works hard and follows some basic sociological steps (graduate high school, marry before having children, and the like) as well as following some basic economic steps (have an entrepreneurial spirit, understand supply and demand, and the like) — can be successful.

A-N-Y-O-N-E-!

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Larry Elder Notes Trump’s Double Standard

Larry Elder hits one out of the park while filling in for Dennis Prager last week. Per the “Sage’s” modus operandi, the left’s double-standard is brought to bare. This is what Larry Elder is best at… that is, showing how the Democrats are two-faced hypocrites. (Larry calls out a couple of Republicans as well.) Enjoy!

Kirsten Powers Talks to Prager About Her Book, “The Silencing”

Kirsten Powers has written an important new book entitled: “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.” In the interview are a couple examples given of ingrained bias. I excluded discussion of her recent column dealing with George Stephanopoulos, but THAT article can be found here.

Another great book by this evolving Christian where truth is winning out. See my previous “expose” of her faith:

From the Rational to the Relational ~ Kirsten Powers and Holly Ordway

For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to visit: http://www.dennisprager.com/

Here is the end of Kirstan’s article of George Stephanopoulos:

…While Stephanopoulos might be the piñata of the week, singling him out misses the point. Simpson is harkening back to an era of journalism that sadly no longer exists. After all, we have a mainstream news media that took a Democratic Party talking point — “the war on women” — and reported it as if it’s breaking news.

Presuming guilt among Republicans and goodness among Democrats is so reflexive and rewarded in today’s mainstream media culture, it’s not that hard to see how Stephanopoulos truly would not have understood he had an egregious conflict of interest as he faced down Schweizer. Like a fish doesn’t notice the water, today’s mainstream journalists are impervious to their bias in favor of Democratic candidates or liberal issues. They believe they are being objective because they have mistaken their ideological belief system for truth. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has noted repeatedly, “The facts have a liberal bias.

This view has fertile ground in which to flourish, as the ideological and intellectual diversity of the nation’s newsrooms decreases. Per The Atlantic, “Among journalists who align with one of the two major parties, four in five said they’re Democrats.” While many of these people are able to account for their bias, too many aren’t. A friend recently recalled to me watching journalists at a mainstream media outlet erupt in cheers as election returns came in favoring President Obama. It must have been lonely for the few Republicans: According to an Indiana University survey, in 1971, almost 26% of reporters were Republican. Today, it’s 7%.

Expect the facts to keep getting more liberal.

…read it all…

For more on this topic, see Deck O’ Race Cards (PJTV), and Dennis Prager.