BALTIMORE, Maryland, Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - On a night when Maryland suffered its first defeat of the college basketball season, incoming President Donald Trump met for a second time with Mitt Romney. The meeting was over dinner at a Manhattan restaurant that is one of the most posh in the world. The dinner party included only one other person, Reince Priebus, whom Trump has appointed as his White House Chief of Staff. Priebus is still the RNC Chairman. He is said to be the only major member of Trump's inner circle to support the appointment of Romney to the position of Secretary of State. Others in the Inner Circle are against Romney, at least for the State position, because of his caustic opposition to Trump's Presidential bid.
Appearing on Fox News last night, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said he opposed Romney for the Secretary of State position but would support whomever Trump picked.
Unless you live under some kind of information shell, you know that this nation is at a critical juncture in its 240+ years of existence. The two major political parties hardly resemble their statures during the years that each shown bright on the American scene.
The Democratic Party has been taken over by the Ultra Far Left. Its leaders demand fidelity, even to policies that jump over the legislative restraints previously enacted as if those restraints do not exist. I don't have a clear view of where these people want to take the nation, at least not as a whole. I know that the Ultra Leftist Party Leadership, led by Lame Duck Barack Obama, is doing all in its collective power to promote racial division in the nation, making personnel decisions based on race on a whim. I know that Democrats want to change the economy from one in which capitalism holds sway, where each person is free to think, free to communicate and free to act as they choose, provided they do not injure others on purpose or with reckless abandon, and where each citizen is at liberty to undertake whatever job or vocation they choose and free, as well, to make as much money as they want or are able to. Instead, the Far Left-led Democrats want a national economy where the government is all powerful, where private enterprise is discouraged, where stale socialistic endeavors tightly controlled by the powerful central government is the new norm. I know that the Democrats do not want the USA to lead the world in anything. I know the Democrats are not in favor of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; instead they wish to make the national motto something akin to collective effort for the collective good, individual liberty and individual thinking be damned. Also important to these Leftists is the idea, when it comes to paying workers, of minimum incomes paid out, nearly usurious national taxes paid in to supremely governments that look a whole lot like the governments that ran nations that were stuck behind the Iron Curtain. In the Democrats' thinking, individuals have virtually no role.
The mainline national GOP is primarily interested in keeping its shrinking slice of power, even to the point of working against the candidate nominated by the party's voters, because that candidate, Donald Trump, would upset the tired apple cart that is in Washington in these days. By contrast, the elected Republicans that are in charge in the various state governments - the GOP currently controls the governments of some 34 states - are a very vital dynamic group, leading their respective states, for the most part, in a manner that is just as the framers of the United States Constitution envisioned. Why there is a disconnect in the Republican Party between these state GOP governments and the RHINO clowns running around in Washington is a great mystery. I really believe that the national GOP is quite nervous about having control of both the legislative and executive branches of the national government. I wouldn't be at all stunned if Mitch McConnell, the Senate President, and Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, end up working with Congressional Democrats against President Trump on quite a few, if not most issues. There is a stunning amount of resentment against Trump in Washington, arising, it seems, out of the fact that Trump is a real outsider coming to Washington without any prior political experience.
Democrats in Congress were unable to work effectively with Jimmy Carter when he was President because he was viewed as an outsider with no political acumen. Trump, unschooled in the ways of Washington - a trait that is positive when it comes to morals and ethics but negative when it comes to getting along in the nation's capital - could face all of the problems faced by Carter, and then some.
And unlike George W. Bush, Trump won't be able to turn to the GOP for support. He could very easily be isolated politically and left to swim against the current for his entire tenure, whether it be four years or eight years. I hope he makes every effort to tap into the one recourse naturally open to him: taking his message directly to the people. He is schooled in public discourse, having starred in a prime-time television show for years. That could be his plan and his salvation.
Food for Thought: The French Revolution is often looked on by intellectuals as the catalyst of great leaps forward in all topics deemed enlightened and advanced. Yet, as the Oxford History of the French Revolution, Second Edition, by William Doyle, Oxford University Press, 2002, has noted, book production in France increased dramatically during the latter half of the eighteenth century until the start of that revolution in 1788/1789.
In his Pulitzer Prize Winning Book, Profiles in Courage, the late United States' President, John F. Kennedy, wrote that "...democracy means much more than popular government and majority rule, much more than a system of political techniques to flatter or deceive powerful blocs of voters. A democracy that has no...monuments of individual conscience in a sea of popular rule is not worthy to bear the name." Ibid, at page 223. The book was originally published in 1953, and the quote was taken from a paperback edition published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics in 2006.
Sports: Terp Rally, At Long Last, Comes Up Short, Maryland Falls to Pittsburgh, 73-59 - This time they fell too far behind against too good of a team. This time even their penchant for breathtaking comebacks was stretched too thin. This time, they lost.
A Pittsburgh team with a lot of upperclassmen and a very big line-up punched Maryland's basketball team smack dab in the gut Tuesday Night in College Park in a renewal of the annual ACC/Big Ten Challenge. The Panthers, up by 21 points at halftime, 25 points with 15 minutes left to play, and still ahead by 22 points with 13 minutes to play, managed to hold off a gutty Maryland rally and beat the Terps on the losers' home court, 73-59.
Led by Freshman Daniel Huerter, Junior Melo Trimble and Red Shirt Sophmore Dion Wiley, Maryland went on a dramatic 22-9 run over a 9 and one-half minute stretch of the second half to pull within 8 points, at 63-55, with 3:35 left. Those 22 points included three 3-point shots by Huerter, two by Wiley and one by Trimble. But with the Pitt lead at 8, another three-point try by Wiley rimmed out; it could have cut the Panther lead to 5 and sent the already delirious Maryland crowd through the roof. Maryland again trimmed Pitt's lead to 8 with 1:40 left on two free throws by Anthony Cowan, but Damonte Dodd fouled out on Pitt's next trip down the floor and Michael Young put the Panther lead back into double digits with two free throws.
Trimble led Maryland with 13 points. Cowan had 11 points for the Terps and Michael Cekovsky added 10. Pitt was led by Young with 25 points and Jamel Artis with 22 points. Cekovsky played the most minutes so far for him this season, spending 20 minutes on the floor.
TV Analyst Jay Williams criticized Young for engaging Maryland Fans in a battle of insults, telling the Pitt Star that such nonsense will not benefit him in the long run. It was very good advice.
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