We got a bit of comic relief this week, in the form of the Green New Deal, being pushed by the darling of the progressives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC, as she has become known.  Only it’s not funny.  I tend to credit the notion that the prominence of AOC (Almost Openly Communist) among left-wing nuts, is evidence that the Democrat party is in serious trouble.  Let me make an analogy.  In 2011, after the first 2 years of the Il Duce Obama unpleasantness, I attended a Republican National Lawyer’s Association event in Washington to celebrate the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan.  The name tag they gave us had our names and the State we were from.  More than one person came up to me and gushed, “You’re from New Jersey.  Do you think Chris Christie will run for president?”  They were so hopeful, even desperate, and they viewed the newly elected Governor of New Jersey as the savior of the Republican party.  At the time, I was shocked by the idea that anybody would be counting on a newly elected Governor, who previously was unknown outside of New Jersey, as even a viable presidential candidate, much less a savior.  I concluded that, if Republicans were that desperate for a leader, we were in real trouble.  I was right.  Enter AOC.  Progressives have hitched their wagon to a newly elected 29 year old ignorant imbecile from New York City.  AOC has an opinion on every subject, but she can’t explain her positions on any issue.  She exhibits classic progressive delusions of rectitude, “I feel, therefore I’m right.”  If AOC is the poster-child for the Democrats, then they are in big trouble.  Take the Green New Deal.  Once AOC proposed it, lemming leftists, including announced Democrat presidential candidates, jumped right onboard.  They had to embrace it, no matter what, or risk being declared “unclean” by the inmates running the Democrat asylum.  Problem was the Green New Deal (GND) turned out to be a juvenile fantasy, right up there with a beauty pageant contestant’s promise to work for world peace.  The GND promises many things, all of which are either unattainable or downright stupid.  The centerpiece is the quest to end the use of all fossil fuels in 12 years.  Why?  Well, because global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism. Uh huh.  So that means no more oil, so no more cars or airplanes.  No more natural gas, so no more heat for your home.  Of course, no more coal.  But even that’s not enough.  She’s coming for the cows too.  Too many cows.  Too many farts, and too much methane, so goodbye beef.  We will be moving to green energy sources like windmills and solar power.  But they don’t work?  Well, you take the good with the bad.  But wait, there’s more.  There will be guaranteed jobs for those who want to work, and guaranteed incomes for those unwilling to work, yet willing to be paid to do nothing.  Oh yes, and also, free healthcare and free college tuition.  Now, many of the progressive masterminds running for president endorsed the GND before giving any thought to its contents.  But somebody ought to think about it.  I’ll try.  This mess derives from the Green Party.  This from their website, “The Green New Deal will convert the decaying fossil fuel economy into a new, green economy that is environmentally sustainable, economically secure and socially just.  The Green New Deal starts with transitioning to 100% green renewable energy (no nukes or natural gas) by 2030.  It would immediately halt any investment in fossil fuels (including natural gas) and related infrastructure.  The Green New Deal will guarantee full employment and generate up to 20 million new, living-wage jobs, as well as make the government the employer of last resort with a much-needed major public jobs program.”  I always wonder what world progressives live in.  It can’t be our world.  In our world, the fossil fuel economy is thriving, and more people are employed than ever before.  Indeed, it’s thriving principally because we lead the world in fossil fuel production.  Here’s the part AOC really likes.  “The transition to 100% clean energy will foster democratic control of our energy system, rather than maximizing profits for energy corporations, banks and hedge funds.  It will promote clean energy as a human right and a common good.”  Let me translate.  The government will take over all corporations, and nationalize energy production.”  That plan worked out well in Venezuela.  Clean energy will be a human right.  It’s all about equality, and under the GND, we’ll all be equally cold, miserable, and unable to travel.  Well, not all of us.  AOC says that her billionaire bolshevik friends can keep their private planes.  So let’s recap.  Government control over industry and finance (that worked great in the Soviet Union), and guaranteed jobs.  Okay, so, after we close down the coal industry, the oil industry, the natural gas and nuclear industries, the automotive industry, the aviation industry, and the beef industry (there goes McDonald’s), exactly where are the newly unemployed and impoverished serfs of America supposed to work?  Presumably we’ll be all retrained, at no cost of course, to operate windmills.  It’s really hard to believe any candidate for public office would support such crap, and yet they say they do.  They’re for all the pie in the sky giveaways, at a cost of, who knows, $100 trillion or more?  They’d gladly take over private industry, for the public good of course, but they’re not Socialists or Communists, oh no.  These are the people who think they have to destroy America in order to save it.  They’ll take control of every aspect of your life.  They’ll steal every bit of your personal liberty, they’ll take your job, confiscate your wealth, destroy your life’s work, and sentence your children and grandchildren to slavery, while all the time promising you that it’s all very “democratic.”  Pay no attention to that 29 year old imbecile behind the curtain.  The great and powerful Greens know what’s best.  Windmill workers of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but your Country.

This week the theater of the absurd was fully open for business, as the country was gripped with the crucial question of whether Democrat Virginia Governor Ralph Northam will resign from office over the February 1st publication of a photograph from Northam’s medical school yearbook of two people, one in blackface, and the other wearing a KKK robe and hood.  Democrats set the stage for this idiocy by going back to Brett Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook in hopes of finding something negative.  Northam was elected Governor over Republican Ed Gillespie, who Northam accused, without evidence, of being a racist.  A photograph of a politician in blackface would have been bad enough, but the connection to the KKK, was the daily double.  Northam did not make things better.  At first, he admitted he was one the people in the offending photo.  Then, over the weekend, after consulting with aides during the Superbowl, Northam announced he wasn’t one of the people depicted.  That 180 degree turnabout would have been troubling enough, but Northam then made it even worse.  He denounced the photo as “clearly racist,” and because it was clearly racist, and because he knows he’s not a racist, that’s how he knew it couldn’t be him in the picture.  What a great explanation!  “Sir, can you identify yourself?”  “Sure, this is me.”  Uh huh.  You see, Northam was sure he wasn’t wearing the KKK hood because he doesn’t approve of the KKK, and would never wear that outfit.  That’s plausible, wearing the KKK hood might remind voters that all KKK members were Democrats.  But how about the guy in blackface?  Well, there was more to the explanation.  Northam went on tho explain that, although he’s sure he’s not in this picture, he was confused, because he was in the habit of appearing in public in blackface.  That makes perfect sense, when you think about it.  All Democrats like to promote victim status, so no self-respecting Democrat, given the choice of appearing either in blackface or in a KKK hood, would fail to choose the blackface.  But wait, Northam wasn’t done.  He went on to explain that he wore blackface, a little shoe polish, in a dance contest, which he won, for his imitation of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk.  All this during medical school?  When you think about medical school, you don’t normally think of Halloween parties and dance contests.  Northam’s excuses did not help him.  The mob immediately demanded Northam’s head.  What? Blackface?  He’s a racist, racist, racist!  It reminded me of the old movie, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, “Plague in Crete?  Unclean!”  Really, and just for the record, appearing in blackface doesn’t mean you are a racist, it just means that you may be a racist.  It proves you to be stupid in the extremis, and it’s clearly unacceptable in this day and age, and it’s an optic that’s the kiss of death for any politician, oh, and did I mention it’s stupid?  There were calls for Northam’s resignation, including from the head of the Democratic National Committee, who said “It’s time for Northam to step aside and let Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax serve as Governor.”  There was a bit of a problem with Fairfax, however.  Seems he’s in the middle of a slight controversy over an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2004.  Fairfax, also from the Party that lectures us that all woman must be believed, took the assault allegation pretty well, reportedly screaming “F*** the bitch!  No problem, next in line to be Governor is Virginia’s Attorney General Mark Herring.  Herring also called for Northam to resign.  But, whoops, Herring, who’s closely tied to Hillary Clinton, announced he also appeared in blackface while in school.  Hey, maybe it was Herring in the picture Northam is sure isn’t him.  Anyhow, it turns out that none of this mess came about because someone was concerned over Ralph Northam’s Halloween costume in 1984, or dance contest outfit.  The photo was posted on February 1st, because on January 30th, Governor Northam, who claims to be a pediatrician, took part in a talk about a pending bill in the Virginia legislature, which would permit abortions up to the day the baby was to be delivered.  Northam was heard to explain how it would work, “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen.  The infant would be delivered.  The infant would be kept comfortable.  The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired.  And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”  In other words, what pediatric specialist Northam was advocating was the dispassionate, premeditated murder of helpless infants.  Dr. Mengele would be so proud.  It seems some of Dr. Northam’s medical school classmates, the ones who were present the day they taught that doctors aren’t supposed to kill people, took offense at Northam’s abortion comments, and released the KKK photo in retaliation.  The photo blew up Virginia’s entirely Democrat executive branch.  Cool.  The Democrat party is in disarray, and its colossal hypocrisy is on full display.  For today’s Democrats, rubbing shoe polish on your face 35 years ago disqualifies you from holding office, but killing babies after they are born is cause for celebration.  In Democrat Crazyland, Al Jolson is a villain, and Kermit Gosnell is a hero.  It’s sick out there and getting sicker.

Although the partial government shutdown has been called off for three weeks, the arguments for and against the border wall continue.  Republicans keep reminding anyone who will listen that, in recent times, the Democrats have supported the building of a wall on the southern border.  That’s true, of course.  Schumer and Obama and Clinton and Feinstein and the rest of the progressive imbeciles all voted to build a wall, and never followed through.  The trick is to convince people who don’t pay much attention that you are in favor of protecting the border, without really closing up the sieve that is our southern border.   And the Democrats looked upon the open border and saw that it was good – for them.  So-called Republicans, eager to serve their Chamber of Commerce masters didn’t protest much.  The Democrat playbook never changed over the years.  They’d found the perfect formula.  Promise the sheep of the electorate anything, but deliver nothing.  Obama, Schumer and the rest all stood in front of cameras and decried illegal immigration.  It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.  The Democrats vowed to secure the border, but did nothing.  There were consequences.  More than 600,000 residents of Texas became crime victims at the hands of illegal aliens.  Too bad.  There were troubling recurrent stories of Americans murdered in their prime by illegals.  Regrettable,  but acceptable to the Democrats, who looked upon the open border and saw that it was good – for them.  Time passed.  And then, over the horizon came Donald Trump.  Like the Democrats, and so-called Republicans, Trump spoke out against illegal immigration, but he was different than the rest.  Trump wasn’t satisfied with just promising to secure the border.  He actually intended to do what he promised.  Think of Rocky, “He don’t know it’s damn a show, he thinks it’s a fight.”  And fight Trump did.  He talked about the wall, he gathered designs for the wall, and he actually began to build the wall that Democrats had promised 11 years before.  Something had to be done.  The Dems and Never-Trump so-called Republicans had finally found common ground for bipartisan action.  Trump must be destroyed.  If he wants a wall, there must be no wall.  If the border sieve continues to be overrun with illegals, who can’t be held, can’t he housed, can’t be financially and medically supported, and can’t simply be sent back to from whence they came, so be it.  Trump must be destroyed.  And the Democrats looked upon the chaos on the border and said that it was good – for them.  And as the Democrats continued their relentless march to the Left, their border position became easier for them.  They still said the magic words, “We are all for border security,” but added, “just without a wall.”  Walls work in Israel, and in Syria, and in Denmark, and around the Vatican, and around any number of homes and estates peopled by imbecile progressives, but not on our border.  The Border Patrol agents who have to do the dirty work say a wall is necessary, but what do they know?  Progressives always know best.  The Democrats now have moved another step away from good sense and sanity, and have declared a border wall, barrier, fence, anything that might actually stop illegals from invading our country, really, to be “immoral.”  That’s right.  Any attempt by the United States of America to preserve its sovereignty by taking steps to keep out undesirables, to have some control over who crosses our border, or to have any inkling as to who is in our nation, is immoral.  Not only immoral, racist.  A wall is immoral and racist.  A fence is immoral and racist.  Asking a question on a census form about citizenship is immoral and racist.  And once again, irony has eluded the Democrats.  Think of it.  Democrats have the colossal gall, the nerve, the big brass balls, to lecture us on morality.  When I went to law school so many years ago, I was taught that regulation of morality was a police power vested in the States.  Of course, Democrats don’t recognize federalism, or the notion that the States have powers forbidden to the federal government.  They were against State’s rights, until recently.  Under Il Duce Obama, the Dems stopped the State of Arizona from enforcing federal immigration laws.  With the advent of Trump, blue States have a new respect for State’s rights, the right of sanctuary States to ignore federal immigration laws.  These are the same people who denounced all attempts to regulate morals.  Mustn’t judge, you see.  No morals.  You should be free to do whatever you want.  Want to marry a goat, that’s OK.  You’re a boy who wants to be a girl, they’re good with it.  Can’t decide what gender you are?  Sorry, it was insensitive of us even to ask.  These are the same Democrats who just last week, celebrated a New York law that will allow abortions to be done by non-doctors, and permit infanticide up to the very time of birth.  How progressive.  Yeah, those Democrats are the ones decrying the immorality of a border wall.  Why?  Well, there’s no crisis on the border, there’s no emergency.  Really?  As this is written, illegal immigrant caravans are still marching north, and the Border Patrol just seized a truck coming in from Mexico with enough fentanyl on it to kill 57 million people.  No crisis here.  Trump wants a wall?  Can’t permit it.  The killing of innocent infants is considered moral by Democrats, but a wall that would repel fully grown criminals is not.  Somebody has gone crazy in Washington, and it’s not President Trump.

I’ve written about the liberal mental disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.  It causes once professional and prudent people to blindly attack President Trump, anyone who works for him, supports him, or exhibits any item in any way associated with Trump, like, for instance, a red MAGA hat.  The media Trump haters have forsaken any semblance of responsible journalism.  We knew the media didn’t tell the truth, but it used to be able to distinguish truth from lies.  It can’t anymore, and now the truth doesn’t even matter.  Lately, we are getting “reporting” that starts out, “If true …”  You know, “If true, Trump is a criminal;”  “If true, Trump will be impeached.”  It’s supposed to be the media’s job to confirm what’s true before it’s published.  Remember All the President’s Men?  The Washington Post hated Richard Nixon and wanted to remove him as much as today’s media wants to remove Trump, but they took pains to verify stories before they published them.  Not anymore.  All week we’ve been assailed by a story from the March for Life.  It’s the story of a group of Kentucky Catholic High School boys who marched against abortion, an elderly Native American banging a drum, and a group of African American protestors (or possibly lunatics).  The story run by the media was that the schoolboys cruelly mocked an elderly Vietnam veteran, in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.  If true, it wouldn’t be much of a story, except some of the schoolboys were wearing MAGA hats, no doubt a capital offense.  There was the haunting picture of a 16 year old simply standing near the Indian banging his drum.  The kid didn’t say anything, and didn’t do anything, so he must have been at fault.  The media denounced the schoolboys.  The Indian, one Nathan Phillips, told CNN that he stepped between the schoolboys and the African Americans, all duly ordained ministers of the Order of the Black Hebrew Israelites, because the schoolboys were about to attack the BHI clergymen.  If true, Phillips was a peacemaker.  If true.  The problem is none of it was true.  This didn’t stop the media from denouncing the schoolboys as beasts.  “A racially-charged frenzy of barely-restrained violence” committed by a “frothing mass of MAGA youth, frenzied and yelling and out of control.”  This motivated a Tweet storm from so-called “woke” folk of the media and Hollywood.  The schoolboys should be expelled, their chaperones fired, their school  burned to the ground with the boys in it, the boys should be thrown into a wood chipper.  That seemed a bit strict, even if true.  In addition, the liberal imbeciles once again missed the irony.  The same imbeciles who invite illegal alien criminals into America, no questions asked, and who favor releasing such criminals back into society rather than deporting them under the law, advocated arson and the murder of American boys who committed no crime.  The Phillips story wasn’t true.  Video evidence, which easily could have been reviewed before the boys were condemned, proved that the BHI’s cursed and taunted the schoolboys, calling them things like, “a bunch of faggots made by incest, racists, bigots, white crackers,” etc.  One of the schoolboys was black.  The BHI priests called him “nigger,” and told him the white men would harvest his organs. (Apparently he was thinking of  Planned Parenthood).  The leader of the BHI’s, one Chief Ephraim Israel, of the House of Israel, Brooklyn Archdiocese, admitted all this.  Chief Israel said the students tried to shut him up by loudly reciting Covington Catholic school spirit chants, “They started doing their chants, so I was cutting into them.  I called them dogs.  They sounded like dogs.”  How religious of the Chief.   The Chief was sorry that Phillips got in the way because he “actually interrupted what we was teaching, we had so much more to go.”  I guess we missed out on the human sacrifice portion of the class.  What the adult BHI’s were yelling at children are known in the law as “fighting words,” words calculated to start a fight.  Such words are not protected by the 1st Amendment.  The BHI’s are lucky they were dealing with polite Kentucky Catholic schoolboys.  You yell that crap at some Jersey high school guys, and asses will be kicked.  Just sayin’.  Those kids showed great restraint.  After the imbeciles learned the truth, they recanted their death threats, right?  Wrong!  The Tweets stayed up, and the school had to close.  But real religious leaders came to the aid of the schoolboys, right?  Wrong!  Father Edward Beck, a CNN contributor, said, “I think the students acted inappropriately.  You had kids behind them (the BHI’s) seemingly mocking this elder and smirking and laughing at him.  I don’t understand how the chaperones don’t step in and say, first of all, boys, get to the bus.”  Okay, they were waiting for the bus in the spot were they were ordered to wait.  Father Beck wasn’t done, “The hats that they were wearing, the so-called MAGA hats, come with a certain political agenda that, in my opinion, can be seen as anti-Catholic, anti-Christian.  Because abortion is not the only pro-life issue.  What about immigration and the migrants?  What about capital punishment?  What about the environment and climate change?  By wearing that hat, it’s saying you’re aligning yourself with a political agenda.  The students have no right to be wearing that hat.”  And there you go, that’s what it was all about, the hats.  No hats, no story.  The priest’s message was,” Yeah, we hate abortion, but we hate Trump more.  And, “What about capital punishment?”  You really want to go there, Father?  But for capital punishment, there would be no Catholic Church.  Think about it.  If Pontius Pilate had put Jesus on probation, where would they be?  If instead of Christ on the Cross, every church had a depiction of Jesus reporting to his probation officer, the Vatican wouldn’t have all that gold.  If Father Beck sounds like a Communist, forgive him.  He’s a Passionist,  an Order whose members are not allowed to possess land.  They rely on their own labor and on contributions from the faithful to maintain themselves financially.  Stalin would have been so proud, except he killed all the priests.  Oh well.  Oh, and what about Mr. Phillips?  He never was in Vietnam.  He joined the Marines, and worked as a refrigerator mechanic in Nebraska and California, before he went AWOL.  At least he kept Ho Chi Min from taking Omaha.  At the end of the day, “If true” journalism sounds a lot like starting a story, “Once upon a time.” In either case, what follows is fantasy.

The partial government shutdown has now entered its fourth week, with the Left-wing lapdog media constantly counting the days and measuring this shutdown (during which precious little of the government is actually shut down) against shutdowns past, and all the time bashing President Trump.  It is high time that the dispute was settled, and the President is every day being lambasted as the only obstruction holding up a solution.  The other day, Senator Mark Warner had a column in The Wall Street Journal in which he lectured the President on how to make a deal on immigration.  You get that?  Warner is going to teach Donald Trump how to make a deal.  Senator Warner preaches that he also spent time in the business world.  Apparently not enough, however.  Warner’s easy solution?  It’s all Trump’s fault because he has refused to negotiate or compromise, and he should do that.  I’m guessing that Senator Warner only watches MSNBC, because it seems he hasn’t heard that Donald Trump spent the holidays at the White House begging Congresspeople to come on over and discuss a solution, while Nancy Pelosi cultivated even more wrinkles on the beach in Hawaii.  When she finally did return, Trump met several times with Nancy and the loathsome Chuck Schumer to reach a compromise, only to be told that their position is “zero money for a barrier on the border,” nada.  Nancy Pelosi did make a counteroffer though, at one point grudgingly offering to let the President have $1.   This from a woman who firmly believes that our bloated $4.6 trillion budget is much too low.  So Trump went to the Capitol for yet another meeting after Chuck and Nancy demanded that he first reopen the government, and then they would negotiate a settlement.  The President pointedly asked Pelosi if she would reconsider providing any funds at all for a barrier after the government reopened, and she said, “No.”  And Trump’s the obstruction, huh Senator Warner?  Warner, of course is a Democrat, so he suffers from Left-wing delusions of rectitude.   I’m sure he truly believes that the Democrats’ attitude constitutes negotiation and compromise.  Here’s how it goes – While the government is shut down, you get nothing, shove it!  However, if you reopen the government, you still get nothing, shove it and rotate on it!  Some negotiation.  Some compromise.  The President stayed at the White House last weekend as well, still ready and willing to talk about a solution, but the Democrats apparently all went to Puerto Rico for the weekend to see Hamilton, courtesy of Left-wing lobbyists.  I saw a photo of our Senator Menendez on the beach with a bimbo.  I’m glad he got a vacation in, he worked so hard to avoid prison.  And here we are with late January fast approaching, lines getting longer at TSA checkpoints, and something’s got to give.  The President won’t simply fold, nor should he, and the Dems are too afraid of their whacky base to do the right thing, even if they had any interest in doing the right thing.  They’re having too much fun bashing the President for spending his own money to provide a variety of fast food for the championship Clemson Tigers.  Fast food for a group of teenage football players who consume 6,000 calories a day?  How racist!  But the shutdown needs to end, so it looks like the only way out is for Trump to declare a national emergency, and redirect government money to have the Corps of Engineers build the steel barrier.  The National Emergencies Act was sponsored by Peter Rodino of Watergate fame.  It was enacted in 1976, when an unelected Republican president occupied the White House.  The Act authorizes the president to declare a national emergency, which declaration activates emergency powers.  The proclamation of an emergency can be done by Executive Order, and must be immediately transmitted to Congress.  A national emergency can be terminated if the president issues a proclamation or if Congress enacts a joint resolution terminating the emergency.  Note this provision.  Congress has enacted a statute which provides for two and only two ways to end a declared national emergency.  Despite this, Democrats in Congress are vowing to mount court challenges to any declaration of a national emergency.  No honest court would touch it.  No judge is in a position to decide whether a valid national emergency exists.  In any case, I just told you the only two ways to end an emergency, as prescribed by the Legislature.  In short, no court has jurisdiction to hear such a case.  Of course, the Dems are not honest, so they will find a judge who will issue a phony injunction, which will persist until the Supreme Court decides what I just told you – it’s not a justiciable issue.  No court has jurisdiction.  An emergency declaration is far from a perfect solution, but it might be the only way out.  It’s been used many times, most recently by one Il Duce Barack Obama, who in 2009, declared a national emergency in order to enable U.S. health care facilities to implement emergency operations plans, to combat “the H1N1 influenza pandemic in the United States.” Now a pandemic is a deadly disease occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.  If you don’t remember surviving that pandemic don’t feel bad, either did I.  But no mistake, I’m not saying Obama was wrong to declare an emergency in 2009.  That’s just the point.  He had the discretion, and better safe than sorry.  So, if the possibility of bird flu is a proper national emergency, it seems to me thousands of migrants, including thousands of unaccompanied minors at the border, with new caravans on the way to the border, all of whom cannot be detained and cared for, and who could be turned away by a proper barrier, is just as emergent.  Remember the movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming?  Repeat after me, “Emergency!  Everyone to get from border!”