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Lift Up Your Hearts: The Democrats Are in a Shambles
American Greatness ^ | january 10, 2019 | Conrad Black

Posted on 01/11/2019 5:58:55 AM PST by billorites

It is time to rekindle our political spirits in this new year, and to take stock of the subjects of encouragement.

First, the takeover of the House of Representatives by the Democrats was, on balance, not as jarring to the vital organs as was feared. As a figure of horror, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has become almost like Bette Davis, one can believe she just acts the part, though she acts it convincingly. And she has earned her spurs as a Democratic legislator with staying power, the first speaker to serve non-consecutive terms since Sam Rayburn (D-Texas). She certainly didn’t get much back-talk from all those bushy-tailed Democrats who were going to send her off to knit antimacassars for her grandchildren. She does not, however, appear to be an effective spokesperson as leader of the opposition, and is strangely inarticulate for someone who must have spent more time in public speaking for the last 40 years than almost anyone in the country.

A second source of happiness, despite the Democrats’ window-rattling ululations of joy, is that they have no mandate to do anything, and they have taken the bait the president dangled to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Pelosi at the White House three weeks ago. The Democratic leadership seems to think they can convince the country that the well-being of 800,000 federal employees, which could be ameliorated without capitulating on the spending bill, is more important than dealing with the protracted shambles in immigration, which most Americans acknowledge to be the country’s greatest problem.

Third, the official debut of Schumer and Pelosi as leaders of the opposition where one of them is actually at the head of part of a branch of government, following the president’s address from the Oval Office on Monday, was a hilarious fiasco. They made an American Gothic apparition with forked tongues rather than a pitchfork and looked like an off-duty pantomime horse doing straight-up. They aren’t making it. They failed to convince anyone that a few weeks of furlough for government employees is more worrisome than the unarmed invasion of the United States by millions of unskilled foreigners.

Fourth, Speaker Pelosi is shutting down her caucus-members who were calling for impeachment of the president, the surest sign that the whole idea is made of straw and hot air. Jerry Nadler, congressman from Liberty Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village, and the World Trade Center (a supreme gerrymander), who had everything but a panel adhering to his forehead illuminating the words “Impeach Trump” for the last two years, has suddenly become almost as judicious as the chairman of a judiciary committee should be.

Fifth, the conduct of the Chinese indicates that the tariffs are sobering their aggressive trade strategists and some sort of rebalancing of what was a ludicrously one-sided arrangement is in sight, with the reduction of the deficit and of the industrial espionage and piracy which the Chinese perfected. No one would know this from the American national political media, but all China’s neighbors, led by Japan, are cheering President Trump’s efforts, as he gives the regional bully his comeuppance.

Sixth, Michigan U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib’s outrageous reference to the president with a particularly vulgar bit of slang must backfire, even if imperceptibly. The Democratic Party chairman, the singularly ill-favored Tom Perez, frequently has been exceedingly vulgar about the president, and there is an implicit attempt to create a general attitude that this president is so gauche and illegitimate that it is in order to deluge him with four-letter words, unlike any of his 43 predecessors in his great office.

Of course, this is preposterous and this president is an impeccable Edwardian gentleman compared to some of his predecessors. This coarsening of public discourse is partly the consequence of a general relaxation of the use of once-unacceptably crude expressions in public, and partly an escalation of the informality of public life in which this president has played a role, but clearly not the leading role. In general, it is lamentable. The country will be relieved when a change of personalities and of the political times makes more civil discourse fashionable again. But even in this contentious atmosphere, the country will not approve degrading the political process by gratuitous denigration of high office-holders. Those who civilly dissent from it and maintain decorum will be rewarded.

Mattis Deserved Better from Trump Before getting to my clinching point of why we should, in the words of the Christian liturgy, “lift up our hearts,” a thought commends itself more generally about the political ambiance of the times.

The president had no business saying of former Defense Secretary James Mattis that “President Obama fired him, and so, in effect, did I.” The implication was that they were both right to have fired him. But when Trump engaged Mattis in that extremely important post, and he was unanimously confirmed, there was no thought then that Obama was right to fire him: that was rather implied to be an excellent commendation.

Mattis is an outstanding citizen who has served the nation with the utmost distinction in modest and great positions, in war and peace. He was right that the president deserved a defense secretary who agreed with him in vital matters, and he deserved a dignified leave-taking.

The president would jump appreciably in public esteem if he were just a little more gracious to distinguished dissenters; his dismissal of the asinine comments of Meryl Streep at a Hollywood self-reward gala two years ago would have been more effective if he had just said her remarks were bunk, as time has shown. She is a brilliant actress and a political moron; there is plenty of precedent for that. She doesn’t have to raise her game after 21 Academy Award nominations; in this area, Trump does. He is the president, not Mrs. Gummer (Meryl Streep). He is a good president and should demonstrate the confidence of one.

Illustrative of the Republican side of this degeneration of public political discussion is the description of the Democrats as “the Democrat Party.” This use of a noun as an adjective was first popularized politically by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.), as he portrayed “the Democrat Party” as an infestation of Communists and traitors in the 1950s. It is like British anti-Semites referring to “the Jew question.” It is all very distasteful, and even lamentable, and while no one is asking for priggishness, and Trump’s deflation of the pomposity of the system is often refreshing, I believe that most Americans, even those quite dissatisfied with one or both parties, do not wish the public dialogue to be conducted at the level to which it has now descended: of a piece with harassing cabinet members and senators in restaurants and bandying about outrageous suggestions of treason.

Hidden Political Blessings Finally, in this catalogue of hopeful facts for our Januarial delectation, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the hyperactive socialist motormouth, though acoustically and ideologically grating, has her good points. She deserves some credit, if only by accident, for causing Anderson Cooper to blink as if being attacked by flies when she called for confiscatory taxation on “the tippy top of the rich.” Cooper is a descendant of William H. Vanderbilt, the son of the Commodore, who bestowed on America one of its greatest socio-economic insights: “The public be damned.” More important, and vastly transcending her ignorance, the new congresswoman babbles nonsense about the Middle East and thinks that universal health care will eliminate funeral expenses—everyone will live forever, like Swift’s Struldbrugs; but she proclaims her religious faith.

Readers may think this irrelevant, and Ocasio-Cortez’s religious practices are irrelevant except to her, but she believes in a divine intelligence and the existence of spiritual forces, which means that she does not believe in the perfectibility of man, or that the possible occupation of the vacuum vacated by the expulsion of religious belief can be filled by humans, i.e. that men become Gods, as in ancient Rome. Readers may wonder, too, what earthly or unearthly relevance the congresswoman’s otherworldly views, unlikely to be more penetrating than her mundane thoughts, may have. The point is that her unembarrassed references to her Catholic religiosity implies that ultimately she will dissent from any notion of totalitarianism. The hot chick of the new Democratic Left believes in worshiping God, confessing bad conduct, repenting sin, and respecting life. For this, we may be thankful. I wish her well. In her way, she is one of us.

And a sorbet, or digestif, has been offered by an unlikely source of political reassurance: Joe Biden has said publicly that he can’t find anyone better qualified to be the Democratic presidential nominee than himself, and presumably he knows all these ciphers milling and jockeying about and portentously thinking about it. He may well be right.

America is truly blessed in unsuspected ways. Sleep soundly, Mr. President.


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1 posted on 01/11/2019 5:58:55 AM PST by billorites
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To: billorites

It’s going to be a hoot when the hoards of Rat politicians start debating for the presidential candidate of 2020.


2 posted on 01/11/2019 6:07:01 AM PST by duckman ( Not tired of winning!)
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To: billorites

Bottom Line...Folks, Neither Democrats, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer could lead anyone with half a functioning brain. After the “Graveyard Duo” presentations this week, Nancy Pelosi is the “Senior Citizen Botox Queen” and Schumer is the presence of “SATAN” himself!!!

Yes, Virginia...the Democrat Party is destroying itself internally. The question is, how long will it take until it collapses from it’s own failures of leadership and decency. I can assure you all, that Pelosi & Schumer are not the “ONES”. Taking out the nightly garbage “YES”, leading the country...”NO”!!!


3 posted on 01/11/2019 6:10:23 AM PST by JLAGRAYFOX (Defeat both the Republican (e) & Democrat (e) political parties....Forever!!!)
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To: billorites

Red Cortez is not one of us in any way, and she would happily vote to load us onto trains to the death camps. The author is wildly wrong about who she is.

She is a communist. The State is god in her world.


4 posted on 01/11/2019 6:14:09 AM PST by JamesP81 (The Democrat Party is a criminal organization.)
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To: billorites

conceptual deprivation + values deprivation = knowledge deprivation = leftardism


5 posted on 01/11/2019 6:17:41 AM PST by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: duckman

The best part about a crowded DEM field of candidates is that when one of them wins a primary w/ 23% of the vote, that means 77% of the voters did not like that person. So hard to get everyone to rally around the ‘winner’ they are weak right out of the gate


6 posted on 01/11/2019 6:18:22 AM PST by Jimmy The Snake
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To: billorites

“Acts the part”

Is acting like a American hating self serving hag better than actually being one ?


7 posted on 01/11/2019 6:18:50 AM PST by Leep (Leftist are neither liberal or democratic. Neither are they pro American.)
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To: billorites
Lift Up Your Hearts: The Democrats Are in a Shambles

And the Republicans are a whole lot better?

8 posted on 01/11/2019 6:19:49 AM PST by DoodleDawg
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To: billorites

Democrat party = party of the Democrats

Those favoring democracy now favor socialism and the dissolution of the Republic.

Current Democrats are in fact, enemies of the American Republic. The Democrat party and current Democrats must be destroyed.

No co existence, no kumbaya


9 posted on 01/11/2019 6:21:16 AM PST by bert ( (KE. N.P. N.C. +12) Princess Gray Beaver, for President?)
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To: billorites

“She [Streep]is a brilliant actress and a political moron; there is plenty of precedent for that. She doesn’t have to raise her game after 21 Academy Award nominations; in this area, Trump does.”

The Academy has been kissing Meryl’s patoot for years. Trump comes along and, for all the normal Joes in America, pops Miss Fancy Pants in the kisser. “Hey Meryl, a bunch of us out here think you SUCK!”

She did it to herself by stepping outside her area of expertise. She thought her spoiled butt would be covered but it got kicked. Her precious was challenged and call into question.


10 posted on 01/11/2019 6:24:01 AM PST by avenir ("But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine."--Paul to Titus)
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To: billorites
Mattis is an outstanding citizen who has served the nation with the utmost distinction in modest and great positions, in war and peace. He was right that the president deserved a defense secretary who agreed with him in vital matters, and he deserved a dignified leave-taking.

Mattis is an insubordinate piece of pig excrement. I saw a rumor posted he will run for President. WHAT A JOKE.

11 posted on 01/11/2019 6:25:01 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: billorites
“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” ― Sun Tzu
12 posted on 01/11/2019 6:26:05 AM PST by waterhill (I Shall Remain, in spite of __________.)
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To: billorites

Yes, but implicit in this thesis is the idea that the American Voter will be revolted enough by Democrat behavior to punish them at the polls in 2020. 2018 should have taught us that not only is that unlikely as long as Democrats are still giving away free goodies, but that actual ballots cast by actual citizens do not decide elections in an era of ballot harvesting and Deep State machinations.


13 posted on 01/11/2019 6:33:44 AM PST by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: JamesP81
The author is wildly wrong about who she is.

Agreed.

Author: "...but she believes in a divine intelligence and the existence of spiritual forces..."

Which ones?

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."--Eph. 6:12

14 posted on 01/11/2019 6:38:22 AM PST by avenir ("But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine."--Paul to Titus)
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To: JamesP81
She is a communist. The State is god in her world.

And frighteningly, she is dumb enough to want to give all power to the state.

15 posted on 01/11/2019 6:38:35 AM PST by IamConservative (I was nervous like the third chimp in line for the Ark after rain had started falling.)
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To: billorites
Sursam corda!
16 posted on 01/11/2019 6:39:57 AM PST by heterosupremacist (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.)
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To: billorites

Great article! Thanks for posting.


17 posted on 01/11/2019 6:55:45 AM PST by refermech
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To: JamesP81
"The State is god in her world."


18 posted on 01/11/2019 6:59:32 AM PST by BeauBo
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To: billorites

...and Justice Ginsburg seems to be on the way out, as well as Rod Rosenstein.


19 posted on 01/11/2019 7:00:38 AM PST by BeauBo
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To: duckman

Well, Kamala’s got the (cough) edge......she put her vagina in the service of her country.


20 posted on 01/11/2019 7:02:38 AM PST by Liz (Our side has 8 trillion bullets; the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.)
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