Train Carrying Fat-Cat Politicians Kills Trucker. Politicians Proceed “Heroically” To Their Taxpayer-Funded Retreat.

Labor, Media, Politics, Republicans, The State

So, our mummified media are no longer paused on the story of the train freighted with fat-cat politicians that crushed a truck, killing a young (working-class, no doubt) trucker and gravely injuring a passenger.

The dumpster of a story dumped on the public was of “lawmakers on the scene [who] sprung into action to help the injured, including by carrying one individual across the tracks to an ambulance.”

Wow. A presidential medal is in the offing. For sure.

Move on just as soon as you’ve had your fill of our magnificent legislators doing heroic deeds.

Footnote: A regular guy died. He was 28-year-old Christopher Foley, about whom the media care to report NOT A THING, only that he was helped mightily by the retreat-bound politicians:

Several members of Congress have medical training and assisted the injured. Rep. Roger Marshall’s office says the Kansas congressman and doctor helped individuals who needed medical attention, including performing CPR.
Pence tweeted that he was monitoring the situation and still planning to speak at the retreat.

Other than the death of a young, working-class man, the news to take away from the veritable orgy of journalistic idiocy is that politicians treat themselves and their families to a retreat—to recharge, you know—on the backs of taxpayers. They say it’s a working retreat.

Republicans are gathered at the storied Greenbrier Resort — home to a Cold War-era bunker once meant to house Congress in the event of a nuclear attack — to plot the party’s legislative agenda for 2018 and strategize for what could be a bruising midterm election.

MORE “HEROICS.”

NEW COLUMN: Why Trump Pooh-Poohed “S-ithole” Countries (Part 2)

Africa, America, Donald Trump, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Political Philosophy

NEW COLUMN, now on Townhall.com, is “Why Trump Pooh-Poohed “S-ithole” Countries (Part 2).”

Part 1 was “Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Controversy Deconstructed.”

An excerpt from “Why Trump Pooh-Poohed “S-ithole” Countries (Part 2)“:

… be it Africa or Arabia, the Left labors under the romantic delusion that the effects of millennia of development-resistant, self-defeating, fatalistic, atavistic, superstition-infused, unfathomably cruel cultures can be cured by an infusion of foreign aid, by the removal of tyrants such as Robert Mugabe or Jacob Zuma, or by bringing the underdeveloped world to The West. (Left-libertarian Katherine Mangu-Ward actually told Tucker Carlson that, “If we had a billion people in America, America would be unstoppable. That would be amazing.”)

Alas, bad leaders are not what shackle backward peoples. Not exclusively, at least. And Africa’s plight is most certainly not the West’s fault. Rather, Africa is a culmination of the failure of the people to develop the attitudes and institutions favorable to peace and progress.

However, while human behavior is mediated by values, we’d be intellectually remiss to deny that the cultural argument is flawed. It affords a circular, rather than a causal elegance: people are said to do the things they do because they are who they are and have a history of being that way. See what I mean by flawed?

What precisely, then, accounts for the unequal “civilizing potential,” as James Burnham called it, that groups display? Why have some people produced Confucian and Anglo-Protestant ethics—with their mutual emphasis on graft and delayed gratification—while others have midwifed Islamic and animistic values, emphasizing conformity, consensus, and control?
Why have certain patterns of thought and action come to typify certain people in the first place? …

… READ THE COMPLETE COLUMN. “Why Trump Pooh-Poohed “S-ithole” Countries (Part 2)” is on Townhall.com, where you can read Part 1: “Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Controversy Deconstructed.”

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SOTU UPDATED (2/1/018): Droolius Kennedy The Third

Celebrity, Democrats, Donald Trump, Family, IMMIGRATION

Droolius Kennedy the III. What a hackneyed, weak, dumb rebuttal Rep. Joe Kennedy delivered to President Trump’s SOTU. Essentially, We Are The World. Via Fox News:

“And to all the Dreamers watching tonight, let me be clear: You are a part of our story. We will fight for you. We will not walk away.”

Kennedy was referring to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Those immigrants were protected by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was eliminated by the Trump administration in September. The administration, however, offered Congress a six-month window to create legislation to protect dreamers.

As for the personal charm:

UPDATE (2/1/018):

Melania compared to Pelosi and her posse of crows.

Nancy Pelosi chewing the cud, moving the Polident, smoothing the collagen, the Botox—what do you think?

Yes, America Is Rome. And Yes, Americans Are Fiddling While Rome Burns

America, China, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East, Military, War

The political establishment on both sides is preoccupied, with, as Buchanan puts it, “Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia-gate.”

All the while, the US, led by freewheeling Mad Generals—who else?—is wading deeper and deeper into conflict and war abroad.

Patrick J. Buchanan exposes a reality that has little to do with the mindless things that busy Big Media. Mindless because we are no longer a constitutional republic, which is by nature antithetical to empire. Pretending that we are comes at the cost of neglecting to prevent wars in which the US only loses.

If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week’s end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history.

Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded.

Erdogan’s foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S. to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian border with Turkey east of the Euphrates, all the way to Iraq.

If the Turks attack Manbij, the U.S. will face a choice: Stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon the Kurds.

…. But to stand with the Kurds and oppose Erdogan’s forces could mean a crackup of NATO and loss of U.S. bases inside Turkey, including the air base at Incirlik.

Turkey also sits astride the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea….

Yet Syria is but one of many challenges to U.S. foreign policy.

The Winter Olympics in South Korea may have taken the threat of a North Korean ICBM that could hit the U.S. out of the news. But no one believes that threat is behind us.

Last week, China charged that the USS Hopper, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal, a reef in the South China Sea claimed by Beijing, though it is far closer to Luzon in the Philippines. … If we continue to contest China’s territorial claims with U.S. warships, a clash is inevitable.

In a similar incident Monday, a Russian military jet came within five feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 Orion surveillance plane in international airspace over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to end its mission.

U.S. relations with Cold War ally Pakistan are at rock bottom. In his first tweet of 2018, President Trump charged Pakistan with being a duplicitous and false friend.

“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

As for America’s longest war, in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year, the end is nowhere on the horizon.

A week ago, the International Hotel in Kabul was attacked and held for 13 hours by Taliban gunmen who killed 40. Midweek, a Save the Children facility in Jalalabad was attacked by ISIS, creating panic among aid workers across the country.

Saturday, an ambulance exploded in Kabul, killing 103 people and wounding 235. Monday, Islamic State militants attacked Afghan soldiers guarding a military academy in Kabul. With the fighting season two months off, U.S. troops will not soon be departing.

If Pakistan is indeed providing sanctuary for the terrorists of the Haqqani network, how does this war end successfully for the United States?

Last week, in a friendly fire incident, the U.S.-led coalition killed 10 Iraqi soldiers. The Iraq war began 15 years ago.

Yet another war, where the humanitarian crisis rivals Syria, continues on the Arabian Peninsula. There, a Saudi air, sea and land blockade that threatens the Yemeni people with starvation has failed to dislodge Houthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa three years ago.

This weekend brought news that secessionist rebels, backed by the United Arab Emirates, have seized power in Yemen’s southern port of Aden, from the Saudi-backed Hadi regime fighting the Houthis.

These rebels seek to split the country, as it was before 1990.

Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE appear to be backing different horses in this tribal-civil-sectarian war into which America has been drawn.

There are other wars – Somalia, Libya, Ukraine – where the U.S. is taking sides, sending arms, training troops, flying missions.

Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fight for scores of nations, with troops on every continent, and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware.

…
… As in all empires, power is passing to the generals.

And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial city?

Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia-gate.

MORE: “Too Many Wars. Too Many Enemies”