Thursday, February 23, 2017

Fwd: Trump Returns Power To The People

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Mike Huckabee" <newsletter@mikehuckabee.com>
Date: Feb 23, 2017 9:08 AM
Subject: Trump Returns Power To The People
To: <faigerayzel@gmail.com>
Cc:

The message you have just received was delivered by Mike Huckabee and includes a message from Huck PAC, his political action committee.

Robin,

As expected, President Trump has rescinded Obama's letter of guidance threatening schools with a loss of federal funds if they didn't let self-declared transgender students use whichever bathrooms or locker rooms they wanted. It's being treated by the left as a horrific blow to civil rights, but like so much of what Trump has been doing that's been painted as dragging America to the far right, it just returns us to the center, where we were for decades before Obama tried to drag America far to the left.

Trump's change just puts the issue back under state and local control. If schools in places like San Francisco believe that boys who claim to feel like girls should be able to use the girls' bathroom, then that's between them and the students' parents. Spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump sees this as a state's rights issue. It will be fun to see how liberals attack that rationale, after they've spent the past three months as born-again states' rights advocates, arguing for the states' rights to negate the Electoral College, defy immigration laws and executive orders, and even secede from the union.

In one heartening sign that Trump Derangement Syndrome might finally be wearing thin, even the Trump-baiting Washington Post (New motto: "Democracy Dies In Darkness") has a piece admitting that Obama's transgender bathroom move was "on shaky ground from the get-go." If he wanted "sex discrimination" under Title IX redefined to include "gender identity," he should have lobbied Congress, because only they have the power to rewrite laws. Instead, he tried to do an end-run around the Constitution, using a "guidance letter" and a threat to take away schools' funding to force an unpopular massive social change onto parents and school children. State officials called it "blackmail" and launched 23 lawsuits to stop it.

As WaPo notes, their own blogger Ed Rogers was prescient when he wrote at the time, "This is exactly the type of rule-by-fiat approach that has given rise to the frustration that has now produced Donald Trump." And now that Trump is President, Obama's go-it-alone-with-the-stroke-of-a-pen approach has made it extremely easy for Trump to reverse the policy all by himself, with just the stroke of a pen. Or more accurately, an eraser.

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

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And in case you missed these:

Proud Vandal Of Trump Star Gets Probation

By Mike Huckabee

"I did it, and I'm very happy I did it, and I'm proud that I did it."

So said James Otis, an heir to the Otis Elevator Company fortune, in his no-contest plea to the charge of vandalizing President Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Well, isn't that special?

He said he knew that what he had done was vandalism and theft –- he had smashed the star with a sledgehammer and pickax and stolen the brass medallion –- but he claimed his plan was to auction it and give the money to women who had accused Trump of sexual assault. (I can't help speculating that an heir to the Otis Elevator fortune would probably have some money on hand. But for having to process him through the legal system, California taxpayers get the shaft.) He called his act "freedom of expression" and understood that he would have to receive punishment.

Yet even though this man apparently has been arrested many times for other examples of "expression," he received probation for defacing the Trump star, which is in an area designated a California historical landmark. He does have to pay $4,400 in restitution and work 20 days on a roadside crew --- GOOD --- but he won't go to jail, even though he expressed no remorse whatsoever for the destruction. In fact, he bragged about it.

Well, it's California.

The Oscars

By Mike Huckabee

Most Republicans expect that Sunday's Oscars will be wall-to-wall Trump bashing, because why wouldn't a celebration of movies be a perfectly appropriate place to harangue viewers with your leftwing political opinions? (When you're done with that, why not also list all the foods you hate before saying thanks to your agent? Because we all care just as much.) But as with the Grammy Awards, I have to wonder if anyone in show business understands the damage they're doing to their own industries.

Both music and movies are facing falling revenues and stiff competition due to file sharing, video games, and a thousand other cuts bleeding their traditional business models dry. Yet when they're presented with an annual three-hours of prime commercial time to sell their wares, they take it as an opportunity to make divisive, insulting political comments that insure at least half their potential audience will change the channel. Or else turn off the TV entirely and spend the rest of the evening making out their celebrity boycott lists.

If they do, chances are they won't miss much that they care about, anyway. A Hollywood Reporter poll found that even with NINE "Best Picture" nominees to choose from (were there really that many good movies this year?), only about a third of Americans could name even one. If Hollywood studios don't want to go the way of the prehistoric fossils in the LaBrea Tar Pits, they should take the advice of someone they seem to respect, Woody Allen. In his movie "Stardust Memories," he plays a successful comic who now makes pretentious art films that nobody wants to see. In a dream, he meets space aliens and starts asking them about God and human suffering. They reply, "If you want to do mankind a real service, tell funnier jokes."

All the Oscar participants should take the advice of Woody Allen's aliens. Instead of rending your garments over your political angst (those are expensive duds, and the designers want them back), stick to the point and open with a joke. That might keep millions of Republicans from turning off the Oscars. Unless they're nothing but Trump jokes, which I fully expect them to be.