Month: October 2018

Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?”

It’s astonishing, really, that Bill Clinton still has admirers.  Robyn Urback, a Canadian writer, is not among them.  She speaks for me in this column.

So I get all rigged out to split logs for my winter’s wood.  I had some old gas in my log splitter, which I drained.  Mike down at Mike’s Mowers told me the California blend of gasoline can only be safely used in small engines after a few weeks of storage, then it goes bad.  So I had fresh gas, but the engine wouldn’t start.

I’m not a mechanic, so I took it down to Mike’s.  I told him I had fresh gas in it, but he said that didn’t matter.  Even fresh fuel in California can foul a small engine, he said.  When I asked him if it was the ethanol, he said it was.

So I wasted a day, and have a fouled engine in my log splitter, because of Donald Trump’s pandering to the ethanol lobby in Iowa.

I’ve held that against Trump ever since, and I got on the Cruz wagon because he had enough guts to tell the ethanol lobby to fly a kite.  And he still beat Trump in Iowa.

Now Trump has decided we’re going to have more ethanol in our fuel.  He made that pandering promise in Iowa, and he’s going to keep it.  And the rest of America pays the price.

Say what you want about Trump, but he keeps his promises.  Except on the national debt.  He said he’d eliminate it in eight years.  Instead, he’s adding a trillion to it every year.  I’ve got a proposal for him on that topic, which I hope to have delivered to him after the midterms.  It’s a different way to balance the budget.

It’s related to, and a derivation of, the BBA Task Force’s campaign for an Article V Balanced Budget Amendment.  That campaign stalled at 28 of the needed 34 states.

I worked with the Task Force for five years, trying to sell the BBA.  I kept running into the same three objections, to which I didn’t have a good answer.

What exactly is a BBA?

Why do we think Congress will comply with a BBA when they disregard the Constitution on a daily basis?

Couldn’t the BBA include a tax increase?

My proposal will quite nicely answer all three of these concerns.

 

In 1974 Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas suffered a stroke which confined him to a wheelchair and greatly impaired his mental faculties.  But he refused to retire.  Ford was President, and Douglas didn’t want him appointing his replacement.

After several months he was so incapacitated that seven of his fellow Justices agreed that they would postpone any decision where Douglas’ opinion would be deciding.  After almost a year he was finally persuaded to retire.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 85 and ailing, and she has a decision to make.  If her health begins to really fail, will she hang on, in order to prevent Trump from replacing her?  How far is she willing to go?  She certainly seems to be more honorable than the execrable Douglas, a vicious, loathsome man.

In the end, it really didn’t matter.  Ford appointed John Paul Stevens, who was as liberal, if not as whacky, as Douglas.

If Ginsburg does retire Trump can be trusted to make another outstanding pick.  A 5-4 majority is tenuous, and can be overturned by one vacancy, as with Scalia.  6-3 would be a whole lot better.

If Ginsburg needs to retire, she should do it soon.  The closer her retirement is to election day, 2020, the more it becomes a political issue.  To Trump’s immense benefit.

 

After 9-11 some people naively asked of the Islamists, “Why do they hate us?”  Raymond Ibrahim’s “Sword and Scimitar”  explains.  It’s their nature.

Hat tip Thomas Lifson at American Thinker

All my fellow California voters have a chance to send a message to Diane Feinstein on November 6.  Vote for the lefty wingnut who’s on the ballot against her  —  de Leon.  He won’t be any worse than she is, and she’s a disgrace of a human being.

Hat tip Instapundit and Powerline