Lightning round - a whole bunch of stuff

As we watch the press anguish over Trump’s bad relations with them (and the inference that it’s all Trump’s fault), Jamie Dupree (one of my actual favorite newspeople) points to a reminder:

I know most people think the news media is in the bag for Barack Obama.  But the natural friction between the press corps and a President is already in full view.

“Press Relations Already Tense,” was the headline on politico.com last night.

“Media Frustration Spills Into Briefing,” said another.

How did this happen after only two days, you ask?

Well, the battles started on the very first morning of President Obama’s term, as he went to the Oval Office.

And the battle is simply the result of having a spoiled, entitled and coddled White House media corps.  Read the whole thing.

Andrew McCarthy makes the case for withdrawing from TPP.  He says it was too protectionist and undermined American sovereignty.  It’s a good read.  He conducts a class on how these treaties work, what Congress has to do with them and how the world views and treats them.

He also points out that withdrawal doesn’t cede anything to the Chinese or signal our withdrawal from Asia.  We are, after all, the nation all nations want to trade with, including the Chinese. However, he further notes that Tump may favor more protectionism in the bilateral trade agreements he plans on pursuing.  Read the whole thing.

I”d also point out that while TPP was mostly dead anyway, Trump’s formal withdrawal gave him a cheap win with organized labor.  Politics.

As I’ve been pointing out in recent comments at other places, Trump is a master at baiting the press and getting them to talk about what he wants talked about.  Politico is finally catching on:

It should go without saying that every new president dictates the news agenda. But has any new president’s dominance been as complete as Trump’s? His ability to move news by tweeting—as a candidate, as the president-elect—has been well chronicled. He’d send some ack-ack up in the air and the press corps would have a cow. Now that he’s inside the White House, he hasn’t changed a bit, and he’s using the pulpit of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to recycle the themes he trotted out on his presidential campaign. With his every gesture, he’s happily feeding the hand that bites him, and stories resolve into a picture of a decisive man of action enacting his campaign agenda.

It has been amazing to watch.  They seemingly can’t help themselves, so determined are they to destroy this presidency.  It’s been quite instructive to watch, with Trump emerging as the winner in most cases.

Is anyone really surprised by this?  Politico headlines it as “Democrats hold lessons on how to talk to real people“. No surprise, but still hilarious. The self-described party of “the people” learning how to talk to “the people.” How will they answer “what did you do for us the past 8 years”, I wonder?

While Democrats in the Senate attempt to savage Trump’s nominee for the Department of Education, here’s what they’ve accomplished in the past 8 years.  Not very impressive:

The final IES report on the School Improvement Grant program is devastating to Arne Duncan’s and the Obama administration’s education legacy. A major evaluation commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and conducted by two highly respected research institutions delivered a crushing verdict: The program failed and failed badly. (The Washington Post’s article by Emma Brown does an exceptional job recounting the administration’s $7 billion folly.)

Despite its gargantuan price tag, SIG generated no academic gains for the students it was meant to help. Failing schools that received multi-year grants from the program to “turn around” ended up with results no better than similar schools that received zero dollars from the program. To be clear: Billions spent had no effect.

And you thought only Hillary Clinton could waste a billion dollars to no effect.  How often does it have to be said that our education woes aren’t a result of a lack of money but the wrong approach enabled by an entrenched bureaucracy and teacher’s unions blocking meaningful reform?

The bottom line is our public schools are a failure and it is time to try something new – like introducing competition and choice and seeing the best rise and the failures go away – as they should. However, other than a woman’s right to choose, the left is adamantly against American’s having any other choice.

Apropos of the post yesterday, it seems more and more evidence of voting fraud is surfacing.  And the examples, apparently, are legion. Why should not come as a particular surprise to anyone:

What we do know, despite assertions to the contrary, is that voter fraud is a problem, and both sides of the political aisle should welcome a real investigation into it — especially since the Obama administration tried so hard for eight years to obfuscate the issue and prevent a real assessment 

Former Justice Department attorney Christian Adams testified under oath that he attended a November 2009 meeting at which then-deputy assistant attorney general Julie Fernandes told DOJ prosecutors that the administration would not be enforcing the federal law that requires local officials to purge illegitimate names from their voter rolls. 

This refusal to enforce the law came despite a 2012 study from the Pew Center on the States estimating that one out of every eight voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date or a duplicate. About 2.8 million people are registered in more than one state, according to the study, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead. In most places it’s easy to vote under the names of such people with little risk of detection. 

The Obama administration did everything it could to avoid complying with requests from  states to verify voter registration records against federal records of legal noncitizens and illegal immigrants who have been detained by law enforcement to find noncitizens who have illegally registered and voted.

A lawless, opaque administration that preferred the “pen and phone” to Constitutional order.

You’ve likely read the story about Secret Service agent Kerry O’Grady.  She had made it clear and public that should the occasion arise, she was not willing to take a bullet for Donald Trump.  Obviously, given their mission, that’s unacceptable.  Many are calling for her to be fired, something she richly deserves, however I think Ed Morrisey has a better solution.  The Secret Service has many other jobs that have nothing to do with Presidential security.  If she was such a Hillary fan then Ed suggests a perfect punishment would be to assign her to Hillary’s Secret Service detail – a detail that the majority of agents view as punishment of the worst kind.  I like it.

We’ve all been told for years that Barack Obama was one of the most popular presidents in our history.  Umm … maybe.  But more importantly than popularity, how did Americans approve of his job performance?  Well, it seems that Tricky Dick rated higher in that area, destroying the Obama myth once and for all.  Here’s Gallup’s average for all post-WWII presidents and it isn’t kind to Mr. Obama.

Of course, anyone who has paid attention intuitively and substantially knew his job performance was lacking.  Alas, Jimmy Carter, who all thought had benefited from a Barack Obama presidency, is found under Obama.  Also remember, Gerald Ford had all of 2 years in office facing problem inflation he inherited and Harry Truman had to follow FDR.

~McQ