Trump handed historic victory

Thanks to a Republican and a Democrat, President Trump is kicking federal judiciary butt while Al Franken is grabbing butt and telling us how sad it makes him feel.

We don't care how you feel, Al. Your feelings don't matter.

Anyway, the Republican to whom Trump owes a thank you is Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The senator is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and has just used that clout to get rid of one of the final hurdles regarding judicial appointments to the federal bench.

Specifically, last week Grassley decided not to hold u hearings for judicial nominees who aren't first cleared by their own home state senators. This is a Senate tradition known as "blue slip courtesy" that originated at a period in our history before communication technology and the state senator had access to much more information than the rest of the nation.

Grassley noted that Democrats were trying to use the blue slips tradition to replace the filibuster that their fellow Democrat, now retired, Harry Reid made possible by killing the filibuster rules. (Yes, Reid is the Democrat that President Trump should thank.) So Grassley gifted Trump with the ability to appoint federal judges. 

This comes at a time when the media is covering stories about Trump's difficulties working with Congress, especially Senators Bob Corker, Jeff Flake and John McCain. This, of course, is understandable  because it's unprecedented for a president to feud as much as Trump has with his own party this early in his presidency.

And unless the Democrats can win the Senate majority in 2018, there is nothing they can do about it.

It's obvious that Trump is going to take the credit for the appointments, but that's okay--it's what presidents do.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!


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Trump assures public that he's smart

President Trump blamed the media for making him look like a mouth-breather, and he proudly boasted that he is a smart guy from an Ivy League school adding, "But what good is ivy on a building? It makes a mess. It's bad for the brick work. Ivy. Chee!"

He went on: "You know people don't understand, I went to an Ivy League college," he told fake news reporters at the White House as he was about to board Marine One.

"I was a nice student. I did very well. I'm a very intelligent person," he said, using only one 'very,' which raised a sense of skepticism among the journalists.

Trump earned a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School where he won a Perfect Attendance Award, although he was not 'nice' in English.

Trump said it was the reporters who make him look "more uncivil than I am."

"I think the press creates a different image of Donald Trump than the real person," Donald Trump said, using third person correctly while alluding to the recent conversation he had with the Gold Star widow of a fallen soldier killed in Niger by Muslim terrorists.

The President also called Sen. Bob Corker "liddle' Bob" and a "lightweight." He also called him a loser and said he "couldn't get elected dogcatcher."

Corker vehemently disagreed Trump's claim saying that he could easily be elected dogcatcher but they aren't elected officials.


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Trump's 'tweet-off' with Sen. Corker

In a Tweet-off on Sunday, President Trump went after the escalating vocal critic of his administration, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). 

Trump said Corker gutlessly dropped his re-election bid after begging him for an endorsement in which he said 'no.'

"Corker 'begged' me to endorse him," Trump said in a salvo of tweets. "I said 'NO' and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement). He also wanted to be secretary of state, I said 'NO THANKS.' . . . Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn't have the guts to run!"

Corker returned fire a few minutes later and tweeted: "It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning."

This attack by the president comes after Corker saying last week, that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will resign. He also said that Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly "are those people that help separate our country from chaos."

It wasn't always this way. Early in Trump's term the couple played golf together along with retired NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, another Tennessee native. 

Nobody saw it coming between Don and Bob (which also happens to be the name of a great hotdog joint in Rochester, NY).

But the relationship went south, at least publicly, in August, when Bob criticized Trump for how he handled the violent Charlottesville, Virginia protests, in which an alleged white supremacist plowed his car into the crowd and fatally struck a young woman.

Corker said the president has not demonstrated "the stability nor some of the competence" needed to be successful.

"You just put your lips together and blow"

On Sunday, Trump argued that Corker supported the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration that Trump claims Iran is violating. Trump tweeted: "He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal!" ending his sentence with his signature exclamation point.

In an August 2016 opinion piece in The Washington Times, Jed Babbin says that Corker "has a problem" when it comes to the Iran deal and that he basically caved in to the Obama administration when he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

So Trump is correct when he tweeted about Corker's involvement with the Iran deal. Whether or not Corker asked for his endorsement is a moot point--he probably did but we cannot know for certain.

What we know is that Corker has a belly-full of sour grapes and Trump is the cause. Like Hillary Clinton, Corker needs to bow out gracefully, but grace is beginning to seem like a very rare commodity in Washington D.C.



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Obama & Cameron: "Why Won't You Leave Iran Alone?"

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron lectured Congress about not doing anything to reimpose sanctions on Iran because it might interfere with a deal that will keep the "hell bent on destruction of the West and all infidels elsewhere" from getting a nuclear weapon. These two men know better than the rest of us that Iran will comply with our wishes if we just give them more time not to develop nuclear weapons.