THIS WEEK IN POLITICS
The Highest Of Highs, The Lowest Of Lows

9 Feb. 2019

Dear Friends and Patriots,

          I have to start by stating an assumption that each and every one of you watched the State of the Union (SOTU) address on Tuesday night. Wasn’t that a made for TV movie! It had pretty much every plot element needed to make for a successful movie. It had great main characters, and lots of supporting actors. It had a plot and a theme. It had dramatic moments, and moments of humor as well.   It had cameo appearances by past heroes. It had current heroes and plenty of villains. The only things that seemed lacking to make it a good action flick was a decent car chase and the obligatory fight scenes. So, it was more psychodrama than an action flick. We should be good with that.

          Until Thursday I hadn’t intended to sound off on the SOTU. I’d listened to the pundit class in the hours before who predicted tedium, pablum, lassitude, and an overall pedestrian experience. All of them announced their general dislike of SOTU speeches and stated their belief that such events were merely useless pageantry that led to nothing of any consequence. They were declared to be overblown and superfluous events that were almost totally forgettable and usually were forgotten less than two hours after the obligatory contradictory rebuttal by the adversary party.   Now, I admit to you that those pundit assessments were generally reflective of my own opinions. SOTU events rarely excite and even more rarely thrill. In fact, the most fascinating thing about them are the walk-in by the President, just to see who gets in the “hand-pump and posterior-kiss” line to shake his hand and to see who gets caught snoring during the course of the speech. Otherwise, those events tend to be the very definition of two hours wasted. And, yet, they still occur, and in the main we still watch.

          When I watched the SOTU this time I was aware there were some real differences. But, I didn’t think I’d need or want to write about them because I was sure someone in the media would figure those things out and dwell on them. I watched the rebuttal speech by Tracey Abrams, too. Yeah, that was certainly something else, wasn’t it? But, still I thought there would be no need to comment. After all, if all I would end up doing is parrot the thoughts of others it would waste both your time and mine. Then, late on Thursday it hit me that there was a major element to the SOTU that wasn’t mentioned. Everyone was dwelling on superficialities of dress, facial expressions, applause patterns, cadence, body language, speech mechanics, and the bullet points of the speech.   But no one seemed to stand back and look at the event with any strategic interest in mind. No one seemed willing to comprehend the reality of the event and draw historical parallels and to discern greater meaning of the event and its ultimate ramifications. When I realized that, I understood what should have been stated, but wasn’t. So, since I haven’t heard anyone else describe the SOTU with those considerations, I hope to give that now.

          What I saw was almost Biblical. I saw President Donald Trump in the role of Daniel. The House chamber was his Lion’s Den. While it’s true he had half the room in his “amen” corner, the other half was decidedly hostile. They were the lions and lionesses, and they were hungry for an opportunity to humiliate the President; to at least figuratively eat him alive. But, that didn’t happen.

          It’s easy to guess the Democrats in that chamber expected President Trump to come out with his guns blazing and make a general fool of himself. They expected him to point fingers, name names, and heap them with scornful and demeaning remarks. But, that didn’t happen. What did happen was unsettling to them, and they’re still trying to figure it out. Instead of hectoring and admonishing them, the President took them to school. He gave them an artful lecture on the realities of illegal immigration. He gave them a morality lesson on life itself. He gave them detailed information on the economy, replete with facts, figures, and metrics that indicate just how good and strong our economy has been under his leadership. He gave them a foreign policy lecture on how to build relationships that work, even while the other parties involved might not be all that socially acceptable. He ran down the list of items on his agenda, one by one; his promises to the people of our nation, and succinctly explained the rationale for each and every one. He exhibited kindness and deference. He was poised and appeared comfortable. He owned the room.

          The part the media seems to have missed has to do with the exhibition of courage President Trump displayed. He wasn’t there to play games. He wasn’t there to fold his cards and cede any part of his battle. He was there to win, and he left no doubt at all he intended to win. He laid out his administration’s agenda going forward and challenged the beasts in the audience to help him. He stood his ground with absolutely no hint of fear, doubt or effort. He intimidated them, and the visuals stunningly reinforced it. It was truly masterful.

          When President Trump was into the first minute of his address I realized I was hearing another Steve Miller masterwork. Gosh, I have to tell you, as speech writers go, Steve Miller is the acme and the apex. He’s the best! I think so because I think just like him and appreciate the way he weaves principles of freedom and liberty into the narrative. If I wrote speeches for politicians, that’s the kind of speech I would write – or at least try to.

But a speech writer can only scribe words on paper. The rest is the delivery. That’s where Trump excelled. It’s one thing to have a lot of great words on paper, but it’s another to stand in front of a crowd full of hostile people and deliver those words with proper cadence, emphasis, tone and tenor. A lesser President would have had great difficulty with some of the words used in that speech, especially the ones used to describe the realities of abortion and crimes committed by illegal alien criminals. Then of course there was his banner declaration, “America will never be a socialist country!”   Yet, President Trump showed no reluctance, nor hesitation. He stood in front of those snarling lions and lionesses and showed absolutely no hint of fear or nerves. He was steadfast and resolute. He was their master, and they knew it. By the time he left the chamber it was the Democrats who were showing fear. Daniel, in the guise of Donald Trump, had walked into the Lion’s Den to face his enemies. He left that den without a hint of a scratch or even a bead of sweat.   As stated before, it was truly masterful.

The SOTU speech was followed by the Democrat rebuttal by Stacey Abrams. I’d never heard her speak before, and never actually thought I wanted to. I knew her as a committed socialist and a special interest monger. I closed my eyes as she began. After all, that woman ain’t much to look at, if you know what I mean. She’s certainly no beauty queen. I didn’t want her looks to distract me from her words. What I heard was pretty impressive in large part. I heard an obviously well-educated woman who was poised and extremely articulate. Barack Obama ain’t got nothing on her!   She can string some words together and make some really fine sentences. She can weave those sentences into well-constructed and tight paragraphs. She can line those paragraphs up and reinforce a point. She’s really a very good and polished public speaker. It’s when you listen intently and think about what she’s actually saying that you realize she’s more than one brick short of a full load. I’m thinking maybe she only has one brick. She’s either a 100% committed socialist ideologue or she’s completely crazy. You can decide which. I was amazed when she started describing how bad the US economy is and has been under President Trump. The economy she described bears not even the slightest resemblance to today’s reality. All her commentary was like that. It was as if she didn’t actually listen to the SOTU, but wrote her speech in a void, while referencing the Obama economy of 2009. It was downright strange! Was anyone paying attention? For her sake, I hope not. It was actually embarrassing to see someone so disconnected from reality.

I want to change subjects now and keep one of my promises. Recall I promised you I’d have a few things to say on the most recent abortion controversies. It’s a good thing I waited a week. A whole lot has happened in a very short time.

The change in law in New York was on my mind last week. It’s truly an abomination. It’s made even more so by Gov. Cuomo’s cheerleading session after signing the bill into law. Imagine a group of people dancing and cheering over a law that paves the way for infanticide. How low can you go?

More recently we heard Virginia Governor Ralph Northam describing events that would occur if a proposed law similar to New York’s had passed in his state. What he described was clearly a live birth followed by allowing a living infant to expire through lack of care or to be put to death. Make no mistake about it, that’s what he said. And the way he said it left no doubt he knows what he’s talking about. He’s a physician and the scene he described is probably one he’s personally witnessed. He described something that is actually happening in many hospitals all across our nation. He was describing institutional infanticide. He was describing an unspeakable horror in a decidedly detached, objective manner. It created an instant firestorm, as it should.

I’ll go on the record on this subject. I am not, nor will I ever be a proponent of abortion. There may be occasions where there’s an actual medical necessity for such things; I’m not 100% sure. What I am sure of is the pro-abortion people who insist on calling themselves pro-choice want the rest of us to believe our primary concern should be for the welfare of the woman involved – to the exclusion of all else. Their positions are at best amoral, and are often immoral. They want us to believe an infant is only a fetus; a parasitic life form that has no literal right to exist if its host decides she doesn’t want it inside her. To the pro-abortion people an unborn infant has no rights at all. And, there’s where everything starts getting muddled.

In many states the law allows charging a murderer twice if the victim is a pregnant woman. The murderer is charged for the deaths of both the woman and for the unborn child. Isn’t it odd that women’s rights organizations will march on a Saturday for the right of a woman to kill her child in the womb, then march on Sunday in condemnation of someone who killed a woman and her unborn child? Do you find that dichotomy to be all too strange? On Saturday one baby is an unwanted parasite, but on Sunday another baby is an innocent victim. In essence, to them the validity of a baby’s existence is not in whether or not it’s a viable living being, but whether it’s wanted and who kills it. If unwanted and killed by a doctor it obviously wasn’t worth much, but if killed on the street along with its host mother it’s obviously worth several years of another person’s life, and maybe that person’s life itself. Is that remotely sane?

Science proves what our own hearts tell us. We can use words like zygote and fetus, but it doesn’t matter. What we’re talking about is a baby; a human life. If we are to ever be a civilized species and not just a family of barely restrained killers we might think about what’s happening in different terms. The pro-abortion people want to reduce everything down to medical terminology and the proclamation of rights of only one interested party. They want to divert even their own followers from the reality of what abortion actually is and they never want any discussion of it from any aspect of morality.

I heard something this week supposedly written by a young woman about abortion. She was making the case for elective abortions. She started out by stating she found herself pregnant at 16 and wanted an abortion because she knew she was incapable of providing a good home for a baby. She said she knew she wanted to wait until she could provide a nurturing environment and her children could be provided for in the ways they needed and deserved. She went on to say that wasn’t how things turned out. According to her she took “all the precautions; birth control pills, condoms, and everything, but still ended up pregnant.” She was living with her mother, who adamantly refused to allow her to get an abortion, so she had her child. Now she states she loves her daughter more than life itself, but if she had to do it all over again and her mother didn’t stand in her way she’d get that abortion. She said her life is hard and though she loves her daughter intensely she knows her child would have been better off if she wasn’t born because she’ll probably never get the life she deserves.

I want you to read the paragraph above again. I hope you understand the perversities of logic that young woman uses. I hope you agree that regardless of precautions taken, she didn’t take “all the precautions.” If she’d taken them all she couldn’t have gotten pregnant. She may be right that she can’t provide adequately for her child, but she never hints at why. There seems to be no father involved in either her or her child’s life. She never hinted at why her mother refused to allow her abortion; just that she wouldn’t. And, lastly, how can anyone say they love their child with all their heart and in the next breath say they wish that child had never been born? Exactly what kind of love is that? Apparently no one asked the daughter what she thought. Yet, this is what was run as an interview on a PBS station. It’s supposed to bolster the pro-abortion stance. It’s supposed to serve as a lesson to us. You need to ask what that lesson is, because I don’t have a clue. This is the level the pro-abortion crowd wants to deal with the subject. They promote false logic and false ethics. Their dishonesty is boundless!

Today there are calls for Gov. Northam’s resignation. Is it because of the extreme lack of common sense, compassion and sensitivity he displayed in his interview? No. It’s not that. They (the Democrats who are after his hide) don’t care about that. They have created a diversion in hopes he’ll just go away. Immediately after his interview someone produced a photo that supposedly depicts the Governor at a party with blackface makeup on, standing next to someone dressed as a klansman. It’s a picture in his medical school yearbook. All of a sudden there’s a big, huge outcry from the NAACP and the race-hustler crowd who want the Governor’s hide tacked to a wall.   They want him ousted - gone. But, my friends, the truth is they only want him gone because he betrayed one of their secrets, not because of an old photo. They want him gone because he just validated a truth that living babies are allowed to die or are murdered in hospitals all across our nation and almost no one talks about it. They want him gone because he admitted he doesn’t have a problem with murder of innocents. They want him gone because they don’t want the same questions asked of them. They don’t want to be caught admitting they, too don’t find anything wrong with the murder of innocents.

That’s all the truth you need to know about the pro-abortion movement.

So, there you have it. This past week we saw the highest of highs with an exceptional performance and demonstration of personal courage from our President, and we saw an incredibly callous display of human indifference. Where’s that common ground everyone keeps talking about? I don’t see it. I don’t even see a reason to go and look for it.

In Liberty,

Steve