The good, the bad and the ugly

Btw, a reminder … if you can’t access the main site of QandO, we’ve set up an alternate site on Blogger that lets you see our posts.  This is a result of the DDOS attacks we continue to suffer.  The alternate site is here.

On to the blogging.  I’ve said, as have all of us, that we’re not Trump fans.  Always like to ensure everyone sees the cards on the table.  Of course we’re not Hillary fans nor were we Obama fans.  In fact, being on the libertarian side of things, we’ve rarely been fans of anyone in the White House.

That said, I’m still enjoying the ugly melt-down on the left and in the media.  It is ugly.  And it’s getting uglier – something they’re likely to regret in a few years. As the elder statesman of QandO, I can, without fear of contradiction, tell you I’ve never seen such an infantile and childish reaction to an election.  Oh, I’ve seen nasty elections, for sure, but, after that, the half of the country that lost out hitched up their britches and rejoined the other half to support the country.  There used to be a phrase – the loyal opposition – that held that once the election was over, the partisanship was put away and both parties worked toward what they believed to be the best for the country.  Now, unfortunately, that has been replaced by virtual children throwing tantrums in the streets and partisan party hacks refusing to acknowledge the will of the people and election results.

Anyway, so far this week there has been some good.  This, to me, is one of those things:

During his last State of the Union Address in 2016, President Barack Obama conceded: “I think there are outdated regulations that need to be changed, and there’s red tape that needs to be cut.”

President Donald Trump is about to take a machete to that red tape.

On Monday, Trump issued an executive order promising that for every new regulation, two old regulations will be eliminated. According to Cass Sunstein, who served as administrator of President Obama’s White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, it’s a regulatory gimmick that just might work.

And more “good”:

“On day one in office, President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, signed a memo to all executive agencies imposing a regulatory moratorium,” wrote Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy for the American Action Forum. “This may sound like an extraordinary action, but President Obama’s then-Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, penned an almost identical memo eight years ago.”

“According to American Action Forum (AAF) research, this memo put a hold on $181 billion in total regulatory costs, including $17 billion in annual costs, and 5.5 million hours of paperwork,” Batkins wrote. “This moratorium freezes 22 rulemakings with annual costs above $100 million and 16 measures with more than $1 billion in long-term costs.”

The Trump administration memo stopped the publication of new rules in the Federal Register, withdrew regulations that were sent for formal publication so they can be reviewed, and postponed recently finalized regulations for 60 days.

As I’ve said to anyone who would listen for years, politicians come and go, but bureaucrats stay forever.  And it is that administrative state, which is unaccountable to the voters, that put together, finalize and enforce the over regulation that is strangling our businesses.  Anyone serious about putting businesses on a path to profitability in general knows that cutting out unnecessary and costly regulation is a necessity.  Instead of spending their money on unnecessary regulatory compliance, they can spend it on employee salaries, expansion and other things that will help the economy grow.

There has also been some “bad” this week.  And starting with the Trump administration, you have to ask, how do you have an effective National Security Council without the Director of National Intelligence as a member?  Yes, there are some rumors that Mike Flynn is the reason for the shakeup, but not the lead in making it happen.  It appears that politics, not national security may be the reason – a bad one – for the elevation of Steve Bannon and the elimination of the DNI.

Also on the “bad” side of things, the nonsense with the Acting Attorney General of the United States deciding that she wouldn’t defend the immigration EO. We apparently didn’t have enough of that with the Obama AG.  It seems that Sally Yates decided that she’d be the judge of what she would and wouldn’t enforce.  Sorry Sally, that’s why we have a court system.  And she should know that.  If her act was to show her as a woman of conscience, she fumbled it and got fired.  If enforcing the law was a problem for her, the correct recourse was for her to resign stating that as the reason.  That’s called “integrity”.  Of course, that wouldn’t have garnered her the media attention she got, would it?

As for the “ugly”, well, it’s been an ugly 11 days since the inauguration.  And certainly there have been some ugly things on both sides, but the preponderance of ugliness has emanated from the left.  They’ve all but rendered the word “hypocrisy” useless as it appears to have become the new normal for that side of the political spectrum.  All the pre-election lectures about accepting the election results and how the other side just needed to “get over it” if Hillary won.  And in-the-street melt down over a 120 day pause in refugee traffic for national security reasons when not one of them said a word when Obama banned refugees from Iraq for 180 days.  Etc., etc., etc.

More surprising than even that is these supposedly smug “intellectuals” who are sure they know best how we should live don’t seem to have a clue as to how their actions since the election are making them even less popular than they were on November 7th.  One thing both sides have experience with is children and no one likes a spoiled child.  We’ve been treated to the ultimate in spoiled child like behavior since November 8th.  We’ve heard their threats and their refusal to ‘get over it’, as they warned the rest of the country to do.  They’ve invented threats that don’t exist.  They’ve continued to denigrate Trump voters with stories of how they feared their plumber and how, suddenly, they wanted to buy a gun.

The “Love Trump hate” meme that they’ve betrayed in the violent confrontations with voters who disagree with them and vulgar and childish displays they’ve made the rest endure because they’re unhappy with an election result show the shallowness of their commitment to the legitimate processes of our representative republic.

“Ugly” doesn’t begin to describe these displays.  But perhaps the silver lining is this self-centered display of intolerance demonstrates to all that their words of “love, tolerance and peace” are simply empty rhetoric.  They should be ashamed.  But there’s no shaming the shameless, especially when they’ve convinced themselves that they're the chosen ones and the rest are, well, “deplorables.”

No dignity, no class, nothing but crass and vulgar whining.

Well, even though I’m not particularly happy about it, I have something to say to that group.

Get over it.  He won.

~McQ