The Democrats will control the House in the next session of Congress and they have a choice: They can either make a lot of partisan noise and not get anything done or they can attempt to work with the Republicans toward solving some problems.

If, after taking office, they launch an all-out investigation of President Donald Trump, then they won’t get anything accomplished because the Republicans, who control the Senate, are not going to compromise with people who are attacking the president.

If the Democrats do what some of the more radical members of the group are demanding and impeach Trump, then not only will nothing get accomplished, but it would almost certainly result in a big win for Republicans in 2020. The backlash from a senseless impeachment could give Republicans enough of a majority in the Senate in 2020 to pass what they wanted. It would certainly cause the Republicans to win the House.

Most people don’t pay a lot of attention to what goes on in Washington except right around elections. But impeaching a president when there is absolutely zero chance of that impeachment going anywhere would turn the moderates and independents against the Democratic Party. It would also mean absolutely no cooperation between the Republican Senate and the Democratic House. And even if the Senate did cooperate, you can be certain that Trump would veto anything the Democrats wanted to pass.

On the upside, an impeachment process would tie up Washington for two years and, since most of what comes out of Washington makes things worse not better, that could be good.

It’s early, but it appears that cooler heads will prevail among the Democrats in the House and, although they will certainly launch some investigations, the leadership appears to have some items on its agenda that it would at least like to get through the House so they can go back to the voters in 2020 and talk about what could be done if the Democrats only had control of the Senate and the White House.

*****

Trump doesn’t get along with Speaker Paul Ryan at all. In fact, it appears that he likes Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi more than Ryan, and Trump is not a diehard Republican. He remembers that the Republican Party did pretty much everything in its power to keep him from getting the nomination, and some even refused to support him after he had won the nomination.

So there is little doubt that if the Democrats will work with Trump, he will have no problems working with them. If that happens that is going to be a huge problem for the mainstream media because the people they love and fawn over would be working with a man they despise.

What if Pelosi becomes speaker and starts working with Trump? The mainstream media can’t report that it is the worst idea ever because they are wedded to Pelosi. It’s going to cause some real heartburn in the press corps if those two can find common ground.

*****

I know this is not going to stop because it is such a good though deceptive argument, but the left keeps writing about Trump and his supporters being against immigration and immigrants, and it is simply false. Trump and many conservatives are opposed to illegal immigration.

Trump is married to a legal immigrant. His ex-wife and the mother of three of his children is a legal immigrant. Furthermore, his mother was a legal immigrant. If Trump were against legal immigration he would have to think that he should have never been born, and nobody thinks that Trump believes that.

Trump and conservatives are in favor of legal immigration. What they are opposed to is people coming across the border illegally and living here. In particular they oppose people coming across the border illegally and then taking advantage of the largess of America.

This is a country that is over $20 trillion in debt. We obviously can’t take care of Americans without borrowing money; to borrow money to take care of people from other countries is a recipe for disaster.

Also, Trump did not come up with the plan to separate families at the border; it was also done under former President Barack Obama and was the result of a court order.

I think everyone agrees the current immigration system is a mess and needs to be completely revised. So far neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have had the will to do it. Maybe having a split Congress will result in some action.

*****

As a journalist I have to agree with Trump about CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta. He is not only rude and disrespectful to the president of the United States, he is inconsiderate of his fellow reporters.

Press conferences don’t last forever, and if one reporter dominates the press conference and refuses to follow the unwritten rules, then he is not stealing time from the president – who can end the press conference any time he wants – but from the reporters who don’t get to ask questions because Acosta stole their time by making statements about his own political beliefs instead of asking a question and sitting down.

It is the president’s press conference, not Acosta’s. If Acosta wants to hold his own press conference he can, and he can talk for as long as he wants.

The White House was well within its rights to take Acosta’s White House press pass away, and the idea that Acosta has a First Amendment right to access to the White House is patently absurd. The First Amendment does not even hint that anyone who calls himself a reporter has to be given access to the president.

Acosta in the video is shown using his arm to push away the arm of the White House intern who was sent over to retrieve the microphone at the direction of Trump – who happens to be president of the United States, whether Acosta likes it or not.

Much has been made of how hard or how fast he pushed her arm, but that really is not the issue. The fact is that he would not give up the mike after making his statement arguing with Trump and asking two questions. It’s behavior that the White House cannot allow to continue.

The White House Correspondents’ Association should handle this because Acosta, with his antics, is stealing time from every other reporter. But either they are scared of Acosta or they like the fact that he is being rude to the president and are all willing to give up their time to allow Acosta to be a big baby.

Reporters involved in gathering news often have to deal with government employees who are just doing their jobs.

At Greensboro city hall, security guards at times tell reporters they can’t go in an area where in fact reporters are allowed. I can’t say how many times over the years this has happened, but more than a few, and I would never consider pushing a security guard away the way Acosta did with the White House intern who was trying to do her job. The president had told Acosta that he had to give up the microphone. It is not Acosta’s microphone; it belongs to the White House. Acosta has no more right to it than anyone else.

The people elected Trump president. As president he controls the White House. Acosta can’t barge into the Oval Office and put his feet up on the desk, nor can he wander around the White House at will. When the president tells him to give up the microphone he should give up the microphone, not push away the young woman whose job is to hand the microphone to the reporter designated by the president to ask a question.

Trump deserves some of the blame for this whole incident because he has been far too lenient with Acosta and other members of the White House press corps. He should not allow them to interrupt him, or to do what Acosta was doing and use the press conference to make a statement about what he believed. Press conferences are for reporters to ask questions, not expound their political beliefs.

Obama was famous for taking a question and talking until even he was bored with his own words and finally taking another question. It was a brilliant strategy. He could hold a half hour press conference, answer the questions that had been planted by his staff with cooperative reporters and then maybe answer one or two real questions before calling it a day. Often the reporter from Fox did not get to ask a question.

Trump would never be allowed by the press to do that, but the White House press corps loved and worshipped Obama. In their eyes Obama could do no wrong and Trump can do no right.

*****

The idea that all media is treated equally is balderdash. The Rhino Times was never allowed to have press credentials to cover the North Carolina General Assembly, despite the fact that the legislature is run by Republicans, because the North Carolina Capital Press Corps is run by the mainstream media, which are exceedingly liberal. There was no reason the Rhino wasn’t allowed press credentials except that the mainstream media in Raleigh didn’t want to give them to a conservative newspaper and didn’t have to.

Way back at the beginning of The Rhinoceros Times, we were not allowed to join the North Carolina Press Association. We eventually got in, but it wasn’t easy. We also were not allowed to join the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and we never managed to get in that one.

According to the mainstream media it is perfectly acceptable to ban a publication for being conservative but the president doesn’t get to decide who attends his press conferences. It is absurd.

I do wish that instead of banning Acosta, Trump had told White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to never call on him for a question. Not everyone in the room gets to ask a question and that is not considered discrimination. Let Acosta sit there and stew in his own ego for a while; it would be good for him.

*****

One of Acosta’s accusations against Trump was that Trump was lying about the caravan coming up from Honduras by calling it an “invasion.” Trump corrected Acosta by telling him that in his opinion it was an “invasion.”

This is the kind of thing that the mainstream media do to Trump all the time. The mainstream media disagree with Trump and then they label what Trump says as a lie. Then to double down they have their fact checking units also rule it as false.

Trump can call thousands of people headed for the US border an invasion if he sees it that way. We won’t actually know what the intentions of the thousands in the caravan are until they get to the border.

Perhaps they intend to form an orderly line at a legal point of entry and one after another apply for refugee status. Perhaps they intend to attempt to cross the border illegally and then apply for refugee status. Perhaps they intend to attempt to cross the border illegally and disappear into the US. We know that many of them entered Mexico illegally, so it would seem a safe assumption that they plan to do the same at the American border.

Certainly if they plan illegal entry they are not going to announce it to the authorities before they do it. People who commit illegal acts rarely inform the authorities of the intention to commit those acts.

If over 5,000 people advancing on the US border apparently with the intent to cross it illegally is not an invasion, what is it?

Also, I’m so tired of the mainstream media reporting that they are marching north to the US. A recent report in the mainstream media talked about the people walking north and in the same article stated that they were getting rides on flatbed trucks and the next stop was 62 miles away.

If you walk three miles an hour, which is a pretty good clip, it would take almost 21 hours of steady walking to make 62 miles. So it is possible, but it doesn’t seem too likely. However, if you ride on the back of a truck going only 45 mph, you can make it in a little over an hour.

Considering the speed that this caravan is moving there is no way they are walking much more than from wherever the slept out to the highway. Instead of walking or marching north, why can’t they just say “traveling north”?

*****

Listening to people talk about elections reminds me of how cynical I have become. People talk about voting for the person rather than the party, and in local elections this sometimes makes sense. In state and national elections it almost never makes sense because the two parties on divisive issues vote in lockstep.

Look at Obamacare. Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for Obamacare. The big Republican win of the last term was tax reform, which didn’t get a single Democratic vote in the House or Senate. The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh got one Democrat vote, but only after it was known that the Republicans had the votes to pass the nomination and Sen. Joe Manchin was released by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

In the state legislature and in Congress, Republicans vote with Republicans and Democrats vote with Democrats. What you are really voting for in those elections is who you want to control the legislature or Congress.

When 6th District Rep. Mark Walker was first elected he got in trouble with his base because he voted for John Boehner for speaker. They should have been thrilled because it showed that Walker planned to be a player.

*****

Considering the midterm election, for a first term president the Republicans did pretty well. In 2010, when then President Obama faced the same election two years into his presidency, the Democrats lost 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

Compared to that there was a blue wavelet in 2018. Trump fared far better than Obama. The Republicans lost control of the House but gained seats in the far more important Senate.

If Republicans has lost control of the Senate it would have greatly slowed if not stopped Trump’s judicial appointments and there would have been no chance of Trump appointing someone to the Supreme Court as conservative as Justice Kavanaugh.

Seeing what Trump accomplished by rallying voters in states with close Senate races is impressive. Trump, despite what you may have read in the mainstream media, has not lost his base and can get that base out not only to vote for him but to vote for those he supports.

Trump made a smart political decision when he decided to concentrate on Senate races and not spread himself thin by trying to hold on to the House.

Losing the House is bad news for Republicans, but losing the Senate would have been a disaster. Trump has been appointing conservative federal judges at an amazing clip and that is now likely to continue. He has a lot of work to do because in eight years Obama was able to pack the federal district courts and the federal courts of appeals with leftwing ideologues. With the Republicans in the majority on the Supreme Court, the cases that make it that far should show a marked change, but few cases make it all the way to Supreme Court.

In the first midterm election of former President Bill Clinton, the Democrats lost control of both the House and the Senate.

The fact that there was no blue wave because Trump got the Republicans out to vote in the midterms is a sign that Trump is on his way to reelection in 2020. If the Democrats run someone in the Hillary Clinton-Joe Biden mold then Trump has a fairly easy path to reelection.

But if the election follows the historical pattern then it is likely that neither Hillary Clinton or Biden will be far enough left to win the Democratic primary. Look at how well the socialist candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders did in 2016. Who knows, if Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee hadn’t cheated, Sanders might have won.

Reports are that the Democrats plan to have an actual primary in 2020, where the voters, not the party bigwigs, get to select the presidential nominee. If that happens then all bets are off. It seems crazy at this point but if the Democratic leadership gives up its control of the primary through super delegates it might be possible for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be a viable candidate for the nomination. If that happens Trump won’t even break a sweat winning reelection.

But Hillary Clinton would be a lot more fun. She can run around the country doing her terribly fake accents that she evidently believes makes her sound like the people she is talking to. She is really a horrible candidate. She’s not a good speaker. She’s terrible at small groups and even worse one on one.

Bill Clinton one on one makes the person think that they are the most important thing in the world to him. Hillary Clinton makes the person believe that she would rather be having a root canal without Novocain rather than be talking to them.

Anyone with half a brain knows that Hillary Clinton would say or do anything to get elected president. Not that most politicians wouldn’t, but most are far better at hiding that fact from the public. If the Democrats run her it will be like when the Republicans ran John McCain in 2012. McCain was certainly a war hero, but his campaign rivaled even that of Sen. Bob Dole, another war hero, in being completely ineffective.

*****

Why is it that when they do recounts, like in Florida and Arizona, the Democrat always gets more votes? Doesn’t it seem like it should be evenly split? In some races the Republican would get more votes and in some races the Democrat would get more votes. But that’s not how it works. How is it possible that when late votes “are found,” there are always more for the Democrat than the Republican?

But the bigger question is, why does the Republican Party allow it.

*****

It appears that Pope Francis is once again protecting Roman Catholic priests that have abused young boys. How else can you interpret his demand that the North American bishops conference not take any action on the abuse of children, mainly boys, by priests over the last half a century or so.

Pope Francis would rather tell the US how it should handle a wave of illegal immigrants than deal with what he should be dealing with – the criminal behavior of priests in the US.

First of all, until Pope Francis starts providing homes for illegal immigrants in Vatican City – a sovereign nation that he has absolute control over – he has no platform to speak to any other nation about how it handles illegal immigrants. Pope Francis is big on talk about what others should do, but he does nothing himself. He did give a ride in his private jet to a few illegal immigrants, but then he foisted them off on Italy. He didn’t provide housing for them in Vatican City, which he could have easily done.

The problem with having hundreds of priests who should be in jail evidently is not a problem that Pope Francis wants to handle, nor will he allow anyone else to take the lead. A global conference is supposed to be held in February where this issue is supposed to be discussed, but since

Pope Francis seems more concerned about what other countries are doing about illegal immigrants and climate change, the abuse of children by priests may once again take a back seat.

*****

Sometimes you run across a little piece of information that is too much fun. Hillary Clinton definitely wants to run for president in 2020. The column in The Wall Street Journal this week by a campaign aide is testing the waters. But even if the water is found to be icy cold, Hillary Clinton is going to jump in. She doesn’t know how to do anything else.

Because most people have not considered her a viable candidate, a lot of surveys of possible Democratic presidential candidates have left Hillary Clinton off, but in one that did include her, she was tied for third with Oprah Winfrey at 13 percent.

It would be delightful if the Democrats were so dumb that they nominated her. One thing we know for certain is that Trump has her number.

*****

My mental health is better when I don’t listen to NPR, but during the election I listened and found a pronunciation that takes political correctness to a new level. On NPR they pronounce “latino” with a Spanish accent.

Latino is in fact an English word. When they talk about the French they don’t pronounce French with a French accent. When they say someone is Italian they don’t pronounce Italian with an Italian accent. So why not pronounce latino with the American pronunciation.

*****

French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron evidently doesn’t like Trump very much. The speeches at the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I were supposed to be full of feel good stuff about how far the world has come and all of that, but instead Macron took his opportunity at the microphone to attack Trump. This was actually a cowardly thing to do since Trump wasn’t speaking so he didn’t have a chance to respond.

Macron doesn’t like the fact that Trump puts America first and is personally in favor of doing what is best for the world, or something like that.

It’s no wonder Macron doesn’t like Trump. The French economy is not in great shape, meaning the government has reduced spending all over the place, and here comes Trump who has the audacity to say that the French people should pay for the defense of France, not the American people.

I suppose Macron could have brought up what happened to France when it was in charge of its own defense in World War II and found that the French army couldn’t run fast enough or far enough to get away from the Germans. It was no surprise that the Germans ran over the Netherlands and Belgium, relatively small countries, but in fighting France the Germans were supposed to be up against a nearly equal foe. That turned out not to be the case.

But that was 70 some years ago. Of course, during those 70 some years the US has largely paid for the defense of the French people from outside invaders and Trump believes that’s long enough.

Macron doesn’t like that idea one bit. What he is in favor of is a larger view than just nationalism. He believes that that the US shouldn’t be concerned with the US but should be concerned with making certain the French don’t have to pay for their own defense.

*****

I saw a lot about the year of the woman and how we should all vote for candidates, not based on what they stand for or their experience, but simply because they were female. Turn that around and if you vote for someone because they are male you are a sexist pig. That doesn’t seem quite fair.

But what I found interesting about the year of the woman is that it excluded Republican women. Voters were supposed to cast their ballots for Democratic women simply because they were women, and by the same token they were supposed to cast their votes against Republican women and in favor of Democratic men.

For some reason this movement doesn’t make any sense to me, but maybe it’s because I don’t vote based on gender.

In Guilford County, for instance, the Democratic women celebrated the defeat of state Sen. Trudy Wade, who was arguably the most powerful female in the legislature. If having women in positions of power is the key, shouldn’t Democratic women have been supporting Wade over Michael Garrett, a young man who will go down to Raleigh and be just another guy sitting on the back row with no power.

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