<  ----------- Some Guy   ?!   .....  !!!!!   :



https://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-last-laugh-1500501806



" Obama’s Last Laugh "

" Schadenfreude for Democrats can’t get much better than watching the Republican party self-humiliate  "


By Daniel Henninger



" Like pop-up dolls, across the length of Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans voted to “repeal” the law that bears his name—ObamaCare. He laughed at them then, and he’s laughing now. No repeal and no replace. They can’t even do repeal and punt.

For Democrats, this doesn’t quite make up for losing the election to Donald Trump, but it has to help. Schadenfreude can’t get much better than watching the Republican Party self-humiliate with an abject inability to win while controlling the House, Senate and White House.

To reimagine the spectacle, it’s as if Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Claire McCaskill and Elizabeth Warren had carved each other up over some Democratic bill. That will . . . never happen.

It was written here in March that the Trump win in 2016 could be either a temporary bubble or produce a Republican governing majority for a generation. What does it look like now? How did so much promise produce this week’s dud?

One problem revealed by this episode is the liabilities of a presidency held by a nonideological figure, a goal of good-government types. Until this moment, the Republican Party had become self-identifiably conservative. We have just learned two things.

The Republicans are not as conservative as they thought. As important, a complex legislative effort like this—Reagan’s 1986 tax bill comes to mind—was going to require both ideological discipline and direction from the top, from the president. The unideological Mr. Trump neither conveyed nor enforced idea discipline in his public messaging, other than “get it done.”

Lacking an ideological North Star, the Republicans reverted to form: They divided—first with the Freedom Caucus’s rebellion from the right in the House and then with the moderate Republicans’ 1970s-like spending demands in the Senate. At that point, the Laurel and Hardy act of Sens. Mike Lee and Jerry Moran blowing up the bill was almost comic.

Left undone by this failure is a historic chance to reform the 1965 Medicaid entitlement that now will roll unchecked to the fiscal cliff. Also lost is $772 billion in savings, which imperils both permanent tax reform’s promise of strong economic growth and America’s underfunded defense posture.

Republican Party conservatism always seems to be an undone symphony. It started with Goldwater. Then came Reaganomics for a decade, which gave way in the 1990s to the religious right until the tea party displaced them, which gave way to a preoccupation with illegal immigration and the “establishment.” It’s one Holy Grail after another.

Now, incredibly, the party’s various idées fixes seem to include expanding Medicaid’s medical mediocrity to the nonpoor. A bedrock belief in individual liberty and private property endures, but beyond that, the Republican identity today looks fatally inchoate, no one idea lasting long enough to make a deep impression on the electorate.

Democrats don’t indulge defection. After new Democratic National Committee head Tom Perez demanded a pro-abortion litmus test for party candidates, even Nancy Pelosi demurred. But make no mistake: Mr. Perez’s crude message was heard through the ranks. Income inequality, Medicare for all, choice—keep it simple, stupid.

When new Minority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed early support for a few of the Trump cabinet nominees, thousands of progressives demonstrated in front of his Brooklyn apartment shouting, “Get a spine, Chuck!”

Mr. Schumer hopped back in line fast. Did anything remotely like this public pushback happen to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, which Mr. Trump won by 42 points? Democrats are in the streets. The Republicans are on Twitter .

The ObamaCare reform failure has damaged President Trump. He has come a long way with some undeniable magic, but at the political margin, his can-do reputation has taken a hit.

The Trump White House is right that it has accomplished a lot—energy and financial deregulation, abandoning the Paris climate pact, reversing the Obama pen-and-phone executive orders. But big legislation is the big league of politics. It turns out the American Congress is not Wollman Rink.

This same Hydra-headed Republican party will now descend upon the budget and tax reform. The GOP’s negative-energy factions are already in play. On cue Monday, Mark Meadows of the Freedom Caucus pronounced the House budget dead on arrival. Some might call that a Freudian slip.
***
As antidote to this, let me recommend “Free People, Free Markets,” an entertaining history of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, written by my former colleague and long the page’s deputy editor, George Melloan, and published by Encounter Books.

The page’s first editor was company co-founder Charles Dow, who put the editorials on the front page, calling them, as today, Review & Outlook. His successors, such as William Peter Hamilton and William Henry Grimes, produced decades of consistent conservative opinion. As Mr. Melloan’s history and this week’s events make clear, the main job requirement for daily opinion writing remains the same: optimism.

sirmoonie wrote on Jul 21^st, 2017 at 9:31am:


Keep drinking the Kool Aid....this will all pass

<  ------------   Edith   ...... ?!   ....  !!!!!   :







https://www.wsj.com/articles/our-self-interested-senators-1500592123





" Our Self-Interested Senators "

" An open health-care debate finally would bring some actual accountability.  "


By Kimberley A. Strassel



" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at this point has busted pretty much every move in his effort to rally 50 votes for an Obama Care replacement. He’s listened. He’s negotiated. He’s encouraged. He’s cajoled. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Months later, still lacking a majority, the time has come for the Kentucky Republican to execute the final, clarifying move. It’s time for Mr. McConnell to make this all about his self-interested members.

Up to now, this exercise has been about trying to improve health care and the federal fisc. The House bill isn’t perfect—no bill ever is—but it amounts to the biggest entitlement reform in history. It repeals crushing taxes. It dramatically cuts spending. And it begins the process of stabilizing the individual health-care market and expanding consumer freedom.

None of this is good enough for a handful of senators, so now it’s time to make this exercise all about them. Mr. McConnell should make clear that the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party stands ready to make good on its repeal-and-replace campaign promise—and that it would have done so already were it not for a cynical or egotistic few. It’s time for some very public accountability.

That rests in Mr. McConnell giving his caucus a drop-dead date to broker a compromise, after which he will proceed to bring up the House bill. And any Republican who votes against moving forward, “a motion to proceed,” will forever be known as the Republican who saved ObamaCare. The Republican who voted to throw billions more taxpayer dollars at failing entitlement programs and collapsing insurance markets. The Republican who abandoned struggling American families. The Republican who voted against a tax cut and spending reductions. The Republican who made Chuck Schumer’s year.

And that’s only a short list of the real-world accountability. That vote might also provide home-state voters a new, eye-opening means to account for the character of their senators. Few things drive conservative voters battier than phony politicians, those who say one thing and do another to avoid hard choices.

Nearly every Senate Republican is on record having voted to repeal ObamaCare—back when they knew that President Obama’s veto made the vote consequence-free. And to be crystal clear, any senator who now votes against simply proceeding to debate is doing so for just one reason: To again avoid consequences, to again avoid accountability.

Because the good senators understand just how illuminating those votes would be. Under the Senate reconciliation process, anyone can offer endless amendments—with roll-call votes.

Voters would be able to see just how gigantic a Medicaid payoff Ohio’s Rob Portman, Nevada’s Dean Heller and West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito are demanding for their support. They’d watch supposed conservatives such as Tennessee’s Bob Corker vote against pro-growth tax cuts. They’d observe Utah’s Mike Lee offer up changes to ObamaCare mandates, muster not even a dozen votes, and realize how unpopular his position is. They’d witness Kentucky’s Rand Paul vote against all reform ideas—no matter how good—because they still weren’t good enough for Rand Paul.

They’d see Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski cynically vote against the very same repeal-only amendment she supported in 2015, back when it didn’t matter. They’d see South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy cast the only two votes for a bill they’ve been pushing—and confusing everyone with—for weeks.

Mr. McConnell can meanwhile count on a great deal of help in this accountability effort. Conservative grass-roots groups have tried to play a constructive role throughout this debate, but they have had it with Senate egos. They’re mobilizing to name names. The chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed, sent a letter to every senator on Thursday, explaining that his group would be watching the voting and documenting any “no” votes on “tens of millions of congressional scorecards and voter guides to be distributed in 117,000 churches nationwide in 2018.”

A flood of other conservative outfits—the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots—are launching websites and Twitter campaigns to highlight holdouts. Some groups are planning primary challenges against those who refuse to debate a bill. The Murkowskis of the world may be hoping nobody will remember by the time they’re up for re-election, but they shouldn’t count on that.

What the Senate leadership most needs to stress these coming days is that senators who claim they can’t “support” debating a flawed bill are snowing voters. Don’t like the bill? Get it to the floor and offer amendments. But do it in the open. Do it with some accountability.

Maybe, finally under the public glare, Republicans will get their act together.  "

Joey?

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/07/23/poll-trump-is-the-only-president-not...

< ---------- Sir Moonie    .... ?!  .... !!!!!!!    :






https://www.wsj.com/articles/mueller-is-trumping-congress-1500937661




" Mueller Is Trumping Congress '

" Special prosecutors corrupt; independent counsels corrupt absolutely.    "



By William McGurn







" Did Congress learn anything from Lois Lerner ? Judging from Capitol Hill’s self-abasing deference to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, the answer is no.

You remember Ms. Lerner. She was the official at the center of an Internal Revenue Service effort that denied conservative political advocacy groups tax-exempt status, or at least held up approval long enough that these groups could not be a factor in the 2012 election.

Back when Republicans were holding hearings on the matter, time and again they were lectured not to do anything that might affect the FBI’s investigation—which eventually ended with no charges against anyone. Though Ms. Lerner was found in contempt by the House for her refusal to testify, it proved all for show.

The tip-off came when then-Speaker John Boehner, rather than use Congress’s inherent contempt power to jail Ms. Lerner until she talked, opted for classic swamp symbolism—by passing the buck to an Obama Justice Department everyone knew would never prosecute her.

The result? Ms. Lerner avoided having to answer any hard questions. The IRS merrily continued to lose or destroy crucial documents. And John Koskinen, the awful replacement IRS commissioner who stonewalled and misled, remains in office.

The Lois Lerner fiasco offers a sobering lesson for a Congress whose various committees are holding hearings on Russia’s intervention in last year’s elections as Mr. Mueller investigates the same. While Mr. Mueller’s office is a watered-down version of Ken Starr’s or Lawrence Walsh’s , it remains true that special prosecutors corrupt even if they don’t corrupt as absolutely as independent counsels. The main headlines of the past week—Is Donald Trump attempting to undermine Mr. Mueller? Will Trump Fire Mueller?—all speak to the challenge a special prosecutor poses to the constitutional authority of the president.

Far less scrutiny has been devoted to the challenge Mr. Mueller poses to the authority of the legislative branch. In this case, ironically, the challenge stems less from the aggressiveness of the special prosecutor than from the meekness of Congress. In between their public tributes to Mr. Mueller’s sterling character, too many in Congress seem to worry more about how they might be affecting his investigation than about what his investigation might be doing to theirs.

One small snapshot: Mr. Mueller, an unelected appointee, had the Trump memos written by former FBI Director James Comey even as the FBI was refusing to release them to the elected representatives of the American people.

When Mr. Mueller was appointed back in May, Sen. Lindsey Graham rightly noted that though he respected the decision, the appointment will “really limit what Congress can do, and it’s going to really limit what the public will know about this.” Alas, the South Carolina Republican went on to say that “we in Congress have to be very careful not to interfere in his lane.”

Certainly representatives and senators shouldn’t set out to frustrate Mr. Mueller’s investigation. But neither should they permit Mr. Mueller to frustrate theirs.

In this investigative capacity, Congress has many tools to enforce its demands for information. It can, for example, use inherent contempt to jail someone until he testifies or produces the requested information. True, inherent contempt hasn’t been invoked since 1935, but given that the civil path to enforcing a contempt finding takes years and the criminal option (as Ms. Lerner showed) has effectively been overridden, Congress would do well to rely on its own powers and authority.

Here a May 2017 review from the Congressional Research Service is illuminating. Although witnesses before a congressional committee do have the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment, the House can get a court order directing the witness to testify so long as the threat of prosecution for that testimony is removed. Mr. Mueller might not like this, but that shouldn’t stop Congress from using a power designed to extract information rather than punish.

Even more intriguing, sensitive or privileged client information is not exempt from congressional subpoena. This might prove especially fascinating in the case of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has had business dealings with a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party. Ditto for Glenn Simpson, whose Fusion GPS commissioned what became the Christopher Steele Russian dossier on behalf of political clients.

Not to mention the many other powers of Congress, including impeachment and the purse. The point is, Congress has many ways to get to the bottom of the Russia story and hold people accountable—if it so chooses.

In Anderson v. Dunn (1821), the Supreme Court correctly noted that without the power to imprison those found in contempt, Congress would be “exposed to every indignity and interruption, that rudeness, caprice or even conspiracy may mediate against it.” Two centuries later, the different examples of Ms. Lerner and Mr. Mueller both point to a brand new indignity—which Congress inflicts on itself when it is too timid to assert its own powers.  "

leonid wrote on Jul 25^th, 2017 at 12:33pm:



****************************************


Leonid .........................


We are very close . It is going to be a Biggin'  ( Just like 1950 all over again )    ......   Get the PopCorn fired up and the Dirty Martini's Ready to Go !!!!!   :



https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-prepares-for-a-crisis-along-north-korea-borde...




" China Prepares for a Crisis Along North Korea Border   "

" Beijing bolsters defenses along its 880-mile frontier and realigns forces in surrounding regions  "


By Jeremy Page


" BEIJING—China has been bolstering defenses along its 880-mile frontier with North Korea and realigning forces in surrounding regions to prepare for a potential crisis across their border, including the possibility of a U.S. military strike.

A review of official military and government websites and interviews with experts who have studied the preparations show that Beijing has implemented many of the changes in recent months after initiating them last year.

They coincide with repeated warnings by U.S. President Donald Trump that he is weighing military action to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, while exerting pressure on China to do more to rein in Pyongyang.

Recent Chinese measures include establishing a new border defense brigade, 24-hour video surveillance of the mountainous frontier backed by aerial drones, and bunkers to protect against nuclear and chemical blasts, according to the websites.

China’s military has also merged, moved and modernized other units in border regions and released details of recent drills there with special forces, airborne troops and other units that experts say could be sent into North Korea in a crisis. They include a live-fire drill in June by helicopter gunships and one in July by an armored infantry unit recently transferred from eastern China and equipped with new weaponry.

China’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond directly when asked if the recent changes were connected to North Korea, saying only in a written statement that its forces “maintain a normal state of combat readiness and training” on the border. It has denied previous reports of thousands of extra Chinese troops moving into border areas.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman on Monday said: “Military means shouldn’t be an option to solve the Korean Peninsula issue.”

Chinese authorities have nonetheless been preparing for North Korean contingencies, including economic collapse, nuclear contamination, or military conflict, according to U.S. and Chinese experts who have studied Beijing’s planning.

China’s recent changes in force structure, equipment and training are connected to nationwide military reforms launched last year to overhaul Soviet-modeled command structures and prepare better for combat beyond China’s borders, those experts say.

In the northeast, however, those reforms are geared predominantly toward handling a North Korean crisis, the experts say.

China’s contingency preparations “go well beyond just seizing a buffer zone in the North and border security,” said Mark Cozad, a former senior U.S. defense intelligence official for East Asia, now at the Rand Corp.

“Once you start talking about efforts from outside powers, in particular the United States and South Korea, to stabilize the North, to seize nuclear weapons or WMD, in those cases then I think you’re starting to look at a much more robust Chinese response,” he said. “If you’re going to make me place bets on where I think the U.S. and China would first get into a conflict, it’s not Taiwan, the South China Sea or the East China Sea: I think it’s the Korean Peninsula.”

China, like many foreign governments, still considers a U.S. military strike unlikely, mainly because of the risk of Pyongyang retaliating against South Korea, an American ally whose capital of Seoul lies within easy reach of the North’s artillery.

The Pentagon declined to discuss U.S. planning efforts. American officials didn’t respond to questions about steps taken by China. But top American officials say they are focused on diplomatic and economic pressure, and view military action as a last resort.

Although technically allied to Pyongyang, Beijing wouldn’t necessarily defend its regime, but is determined to prevent a flood of North Koreans from entering northeastern China and to protect the population there, U.S. and Chinese experts say.

Beijing also appears to be enhancing its capability to seize North Korean nuclear sites and occupy a swath of the country’s northern territory if U.S. or South Korean forces start to advance toward the Chinese border, according to those people.

That, they say, would require a much larger Chinese operation than just sealing the border, with special forces and airborne troops likely entering first to secure nuclear sites, followed by armored ground forces with air cover, pushing deep into North Korea.

It could also bring Chinese and U.S. forces face to face on the peninsula for the first time since the war there ended in 1953 with an armistice—an added complication for the Trump administration as it weighs options for dealing with North Korea.

Beijing has rebuffed repeated American requests to discuss contingency planning, American officials say.

China has long worried that economic collapse in North Korea could cause a refugee crisis, bring U.S. forces to its borders, and create a united, democratic and pro-American Korea. But China’s fears of a U.S. military intervention have risen since January as Pyongyang has test-fired several missiles, including one capable of reaching Alaska.

“Time is running out,” said retired Maj. Gen. Wang Haiyun, a former military attaché to Moscow now attached to several Chinese think tanks. “We can’t let the flames of war burn into China.”

He wrote an unusually outspoken article for one of those think tanks in May arguing that China should “draw a red line” for the U.S.: If it attacked North Korea without Chinese approval, Beijing would have to intervene militarily.

China should demand that any U.S. military attack result in no nuclear contamination, no U.S. occupation of areas north of the current “demarcation line” between North and South, and no regime hostile to China established in the North, his article said.

“If war breaks out, China should without hesitation occupy northern parts of North Korea, take control of North Korean nuclear facilities, and demarcate safe areas to stop a wave of refugees and disbanded soldiers entering China’s northeast,” it said.

Maj. Gen. Wang said he didn’t speak for the government. But his article isn’t censored online—as it would likely be if Beijing disapproved—in China and other Chinese scholars and military figures recently voiced similar views.

In recent weeks, some details of China’s preparations have also emerged on the military and government websites.

The new border defense brigade patrolled the entire frontier in June to gather intelligence and has drawn up detailed plans for sealing it in a crisis, according to the military’s official newspaper.

Aerial drones would help identify targets, supplementing the new 24-hour video surveillance and addressing problems with “information access, rapid mobility and command and control,” another report in the newspaper said.

Many other units in the northeast have recently conducted new combat-focused training for the kind of joint military operations that experts say would be needed for an intervention within North Korea.

In one drill, a new “combined arms brigade” simulated battle against a “blue team” with artillery, tanks and helicopters, state television reported in June.

The new Northern Theater Command, which controls forces in the northeast, also now incorporates units in eastern China that experts say could be launched across the Yellow Sea toward North Korea.

Meanwhile, authorities in Jilin province, which borders North Korea, are reinforcing and expanding a network of underground shelters and command posts to withstand air, nuclear or chemical attack, local government notices show.

Such facilities were needed “to respond to the complicated security situation surrounding the province,” Jilin’s civil air defense bureau said in a notice on its website, which also features photos and specifications of U.S. military aircraft.

In May, Jilin’s government unveiled what it called China’s first “combat-ready big data disaster preparedness center” in an underground facility designed to protect critical military and government data from nuclear or chemical attack.

Jilin authorities declined to comment, citing the sensitivity of the subject.

China’s military reforms aren’t complete and the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, remains ill-prepared for a North Korean operation, some experts say.

“I don’t see the PLA at this time being particularly enthusiastic about being tasked to undertake a potential near-term mission in North Korea,” said Dennis Blasko, a former U.S. military attaché in Beijing.

But China, like the U.S., has been surprised by how fast North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has progressed, say foreign diplomats and experts. Beijing also worries that Pyongyang’s actions are now harming Chinese security interests, since the U.S. deployment in South Korea in April of a missile-defense system that China says can track its own nuclear missiles, diplomats and experts say.

Beijing’s interests “now clearly extend beyond the refugee issue” to encompass nuclear safety and the peninsula’s long-term future, said Oriana Skylar Mastro, an assistant professor at Georgetown University who has studied China’s planning for a North Korean crisis.

“China’s leaders need to make sure that whatever happens with (North Korea), the result supports China’s regional power aspirations and does not help the United States extend or prolong its influence,” Ms. Mastro said.

—Ben Kesling in Washington contributed to this article. "

<  -----------    "   I LOVE YOU ALL !!!!!    "

Pdog wrote on Jul 13^th, 2017 at 5:30pm:


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gimmekeef wrote on Jul 26^th, 2017 at 9:52am: