Half Full or Half Empty?

                Last time I bothered to check (I know, that sounds so CNN) somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the American people didn’t trust the American Media. Those on the right don’t trust those crack reporters like Wolf Blitzer, Juan Williams, Anderson Cooper, Stephen Colbert, Rachel Maddow, or Whoopi Goldberg. Those on the left just hate all those lying bastards on Fox News but especially that Hannity guy.

                So it’s hard to tell what to make of the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll last week that had Trump’s approval rating at an all-time high of 50% and then later in the week, 51%, while during the same week Real Clear (?) Politics and The Hill had him at an “all-time low” of 41%, apparently forgetting the 37% they had him at after he had just won a Presidential election but before he was even sworn into office.

                Trump himself, of course, licked his finger, stuck it in the air and declared he was seven or eight points higher than The Hill Poll.

                I do know Rasmussen prides themselves on polling daily and that they only count answers from likely voters, which makes sense to me because if someone is so apathetic (or illegally here and not in illegal-friendly California) that they aren’t even going to bother to vote I don’t know that their opinion carries a lot of weight with regard to the outcome of anything.

Remember, most of these pollsters are the same ones who told you Hillary was going to win in an unprecedented landslide.

                I do not know but it is emotionally satisfying to believe (a favorite reporting technique of the Associated Press) that Real Unclear Politics, MSNBC and The Hill will accept the answers of anyone who answers the phone as long as they’re old enough to answer yes or no to the leading questions and as long as they hate President Trump.

                It is unclear whether Presidential saliva on a finger in the wind has any scientific credibility or not.

                My own anecdotal contribution comes from call-ins I hear to the Rush Limbaugh Show from people who allegedly voted for Hillary who have since come over from the dark side and been impressed and influenced by the avalanche of positive results from the President’s policies. In no way is this a scientific poll on my part and I’m not pretending it is solid evidence which is one way I’m different from CNN.

                But the fact that anybody that used to be on the democratic left has changed their view of Trump and the wonderfully positive direction the country is going has got to be a seven-alarm heart attack for a group that continues to seethe hatred and contempt for Trump and all of us deplorable, child-killing, woman-hating, Russian-loving, racist a-holes on the right.

                Hard to tell who to believe. Half full or half empty? I don’t know but there is darn sure a skip in my step that was lacking during the “America’s best days are behind her. We need to accept and get used to the New Normal,” years that were the reign of terror of Obama.

As Thomas Sowell wrote, “If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting the news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference and chooses their news sources accordingly.”

Which sounds a lot like, “believe whatever makes sense to you ‘cuz you can’t trust anything you are being told.” You may quote me.

Whichever side you are on, I think it is clear the media (especially the lamestream part) doesn’t understand Trump at all. I appreciate Dr. Charles Krauthammer’s recent observation that Trump is a pragmatist above all else and fits into neither liberal nor conservative pigeonholes conveniently.

                Neither the media nor Washington knows how to deal with the guy, which is exactly why we voted him in.

Upset that he only got $1.6 billion for a wall along the Mexican border that sly dog managed to trade a bunch of pork fat for $650 billion in military funding and now he’s doing an end run around Congress by sending the military down to help secure the border.

                When he says the military what Trump actually means is the National Guard. And when he says he’s sending them, so far all he’s doing is asking the border states to send them and so far Arizona and Texas have responded enthusiastically while New Mexico and predictably California have remained silent.

                Some hack on MSNBC gleefully pointed out that the National Guard cannot enforce domestic law so it won’t be very effective. He’d be right if he knew what he was talking about. Under Title 10, the Federal Government can order and control the actions of the National Guard in a national emergency but they are not empowered to enforce domestic law.

                That’s not what Trump did. He invoked Title 32, which leaves activation and control of the Guard in the hands of the states and does allow for the enforcement of local laws as necessary to achieve the desired results.

                What the left is also fairly quiet about is the fact that Trump has also revoked Obama’s “Catch and Release” policy with regard to illegal immigrant detention, instead they point out that Obama, his own bad self, had deployed 6,000 Guardsmen to the border at one point whereas Trump has only asked for 4,000.  The MSNBC guy got that right, but Trump intends to have illegals detained and then sent back as opposed to detaining them and then releasing them into the United States which seems like it was a horrible waste of resources and 6,000 National Guardsmen.

                I’m not sure what New Mexico will do but I think its fairly safe to bet that Governor Sanctuary Man Brown will defy Trump in front of as many television cameras as he can arrange. And that’s actually ok if you think about it.

                No matter how you cut it, California has 55 electoral votes no matter how many illegals they allow to participate in U.S. elections. We may as well funnel all the MS-13 members into CA and give them rides to the voting booths. California still only gets 55 electoral votes in 2020. Did anyone harbor any illusions that California might become a red state under any imaginable set of circumstances?

                Rest easy though, folks. The governors of Oregon and Montana have declared that they will NOT activate their National Guardsman to stem the ever slowing tide of illegals into the U.S. (not making that up--they had press conferences and everything).  I guess that means all the Hondurans trying to sneak across the Mexican border into Oregon and Montana should have a fairly easy time of it.

                If you aren’t chuckling, you need to look at a map.