What is the truth about 2018?

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

...In truth, aside from the Washington hysterias, 2018 was a most successful year for Americans.

In December, the United States reached a staggering level of oil production, pumping some 11.6 million barrels per day. For the first time since 1973, America is now the world’s largest oil producer

Since Trump took office, the United States has increased its oil production by nearly 3 million barrels per day, largely as the result of fewer regulations, more federal leasing, and the continuing brilliance of American frackers and horizontal drillers.

It appears that there is still far more oil beneath U.S. soil than has ever been taken out. American production could even soar higher in the months ahead.

In addition, the United States remains the largest producer of natural gas and the second-greatest producer of coal. The scary old energy-related phraseology of the last half-century—”energy crisis,” “peak oil,” “oil embargo”—no longer exists.

Near-total energy self-sufficiency means the United States is no longer strategically leveraged by the Middle East, forced to pay exorbitant political prices to guarantee access to imported oil, or threatened by gasoline prices of $4 to $5 a gallon.

The American economy grew by 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018, and by 3.4 percent in the third quarter. American GDP is nearly $1.7 trillion larger than in January 2017, and nearly $8 trillion larger than the GDP of China. For all the talk of the Chinese juggernaut, three Chinese workers produce about 60 percent of the goods and services produced by one American worker.

In 2018, unemployment fell to a near-record peacetime low of 3.7 percent. That’s the lowest U.S. unemployment rate since 1969. Black unemployment hit an all-time low in 2018. For the first time in memory, employers are seeking out entry-level workers rather than vice versa.

The poverty rate is also near a historic low, and household income increased. There are about 8 million fewer Americans living below the poverty line than there were eight years ago. Since January 2017, more than 3 million Americans have gone off so-called food stamps.

Abroad, lots of bad things that were supposed to happen simply did not.

After withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, the United States exceeded the annual percentage of carbon reductions of most countries that are part of the agreement.

North Korea and the United States did not go to war. Instead, North Korea has stopped its provocative nuclear testing and its launching of ballistic missiles over the territory of its neighbors.

Despite all the Trump bluster, NATO and NAFTA did not quite implode. Rather, allies and partners agreed to renegotiate past commitments and agreements on terms more favorable to the U.S.

The United States—and increasingly most of the world—is at last addressing the systematic commercial cheating, technological appropriation, overt espionage, intellectual-property theft, cyber intrusions, and mercantilism of the Chinese government.

The Middle East is still chaotic, but it is a mess that is now far less important to us for a variety of reasons. Energy-wise, America is not dependent on oil imports from corrupt Gulf monarchies or hostile Islamic states. Strategy-wise, the new fault lines are not Arab and Islamic cultures versus Israel or the United States. Instead, it is internecine strife within the Islamic world, mostly with Iran and its Shiite satellites opposing the Sunni Arab monarchies and more moderate Middle Eastern regimes.

For all the pro- and anti-Trump invective and media hysteria, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation circus, and the bitter midterm elections, the United States was relatively calm in 2018 compared with the rest of the world. There was none of the mass rioting, demonstrations and street violence that occurred recently in France, and none of the existential and unsolvable divides over globalization and Brexit that we saw in Europe

Europe’s three most powerful leaders—Angela Merkel of Germany, Emmanuel Macron of France, and Theresa May of the United Kingdom—have worse approval ratings than the embattled Donald Trump.

In sum, the more media pundits claimed that America was on the brink of disaster in 2018, the more Americans became prosperous and secure.

Read more here.

"Hillary never attained the lotus position, and Hillary never attained the POTUS position."

In American Spectator, Dov Fischer takes a look back at 2018 memories, devoting one paragraph to each memory. It is long, so I will only post the pithiest highlights.

Reality check: Hillary never attained the lotus position, and Hillary never attained the POTUS position.

Trump went to Europe and nicely told NATO leaders to their faces that they are the cheapest penny-pinching blood-suckers he ever met, and that it is time for them to pay lots more towards their own defense and security, even as they have imposed the most unfair trade restrictions and tariffs against America for 75 years since we saved their keisters in World War II. As a result, reflecting that they do not like him as much as Obama, they did not give him a Nobel Prize for brushing his teeth daily, washing his hands, and drinking his milk. Instead, they sat quietly, hands clasped, faces staring down at their desks, deprived of day’s recess, facing after-class detention, realizing that after falsely stereotyping Jews for a thousand years, it is the West Europeans who are the actual Shylocks and Fagins, cheap and stingy, financially dishonest as the day is long, constantly chiseling and dickering and failing to honor their promises to pay, sucking blood and treasure out of the America that sacrificed the blood of its boys for them in the past century’s two World Wars after they proved unwilling to prepare for their own defenses from enemy attack, hailing “peace in their time” with Hitler as they sold out the Czechs, and incapable of warding off enemy attack without our help.

...Obama (D-IL) and Kerry (D-MA) used United States taxpayers’ money to engage in secret spending and collusion with Leftist groups in Israel to try throwing the 2015 Israeli national elections towards a coalition of Leftist political parties to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu won resoundingly anyway. The very next year, Obama knowingly did not endeavor to stop Russian interference in the American elections until Donald Trump unexpectedly beat Hillary. No one ever has met or identified a single person who can or will say that his or her 2016 vote was based on something the Russians posted somewhere. Meanwhile, Democrats manipulated predatory “vote harvesting” to steal seven or more House seats in California, and they indeed engaged in fake news and Facebook manipulation to steal the Republican Senate seat in Alabama that awaits Jeff Sessions’s return in 2020 as he completes rectifying his error in having stumbled temporarily into the Peter Principle from which he now has recused himself.

...Kamala Harris (D-CA) outshone her senior partner, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), this year of California Fires in Paradise and Senators from Purgatory. As Kamala gets even better known, the public will start learning more about how she rose to the top from the bottom. Kamala Harris slept her way into prominence by being the public escort and consort of a guy named Willie Brown, who was California Democrat Boss in his day. During the incredibly public affair, everyone knew of it and also knew that Brown still was very married. In the poetically immortal words of Blanche Brown, the ostensibly feckless wife: “Listen, she may have him at the moment, but come inauguration day and he’s up there on the platform being sworn in, I’ll be the b***h holding the Bible.” (Well, maybe Blanche had some feck.) Today Kamala Harris preaches morality. In California politics, when someone says “Kamala is lying,” the response is not: “About what?” Rather the response is: “With whom?” Kamala is fortunate that an undergraduate at Barnard already seems to have cornered the nickname “The Mattress Girl.”

...It was quite a year. Have a wonderful 2019. Next year — the pardons… and the Wall.

Read more here.

"In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters."

David Thompson has compiled a list of "mental contortions of our self-imagined betters." He goes month-by-month with absurd political correctness we are expected to obey. In one month, though, there was something wonderful which is presented in brief video form, entitled A Giant Stone in the Sky. Read it all here.

Gaming sporting events via smartphones, Telemedicine, Immigration, Laws, Freedom, People living their lives in safety, ICE-bashing Democrats

Greg likes something called Telemedicine as one solution to the healthcare system problems.

Morgan Ortagus is the new panelist sitting in Kimberley's old chair. She points out that during the Obama years it was okay to bash the police. Now the Democrats are bashing ICE! To disparage people who raise their hand to take an oath to serve our country is flat out disgusting!

Greg says the media was Obamatose during the Obama years.

Dana thinks immigration reform is more likely to get done if the Democrats win the House! (because of Trump)

Greg does a brilliant rant about immigration, laws, freedom, and people living their lives in safety. For some ununderstandable reason, Geraldo objects!

Are smartphones leading to the death of conversations? Jason is worried about young people gaming at sporting events via smartphones. (I bet five dollars he will miss this free throw!)

Strzok testimony, identity politics

Dana Perino is right in saying that all the Strzok testimony did was drive people on both sides to their deepest, darkest corners.

Juan Williams continues his rudeness, interrupting and mocking. Fox needs to get him off this program! Then he tries to be all jovial in the last couple of segments.

Lisa can't figure out who are the ten percent who give Congress an approval rating!

The latest in identity politics is some professor wants to change the name of the University of Wyoming's mascot (Cowboys).

A corrupt cabal!

Ed Henry picks up on something I have been noticing. The press has been having a great time talking about Trump's "failure" to get North Korea to stick with the June 12 meeting in Singapore. Now, North Korea says they still want that meeting! Meanwhile, the Pentagon is keeping the stick out there, saying they are ready for military action.

Just what I thought: Chinese seismologists assessed that the North Korean nuclear site was no longer stable. That has been my read: China put pressure on Kim to meet with Trump!
Meanwhile, we've given up nothing and we have gotten three hostages back.

Our defense budget is 25 to 30 times the entire gross domestic product of North Korea, which is less than the size of Honduras! Trump mentioned our $700,000,000,000 defense budget twice today in his press conference.

Trump's three preconditions: Military exercises with our South Korean and Japanese allies will continue, full, verifiable denuclearization, and the tough sanctions will continue!

The press and Democrats have defended MS-13, defended Hamas, and defended Kim Jong-un in the same month!

Either James Comey went rogue or Loretta Lynch approved it (spying on the Trump campaign).

Tammy Bruce: You stonewall when you want to hide something! Tammy also mentions the whistleblowers at the FBI who are asking to be subpoenaed, so they won't jeopardize their jobs and Congress would pay their legal bills.

Contempt for Congressional oversight

Democrats benefit from voter fraud, therefore they won't clean up voter rolls or advocate for paper ballots. Tucker: only American citizens should be allowed to vote.

Russia has a lower life expectancy than Bangladesh, but they are secretly in control of our country? It is a freezing, poor country on the other side of the globe. Russia's economy is smaller than Texas. They can barely produce a working escalator or non-poisonous vodka! It is regarded by sober people as sad and increasingly irrelevant. Democrats in Washington believe Russia is in virtually complete control of the workings of the U.S. government!

There was actual spying in the 2016 campaign, not from the Kremlin, but from the Obama FBI!

Trump canceled the Singapore meeting with Kim Jong-un, but Kim still wants to meet!

Who cares more about your well-being, you or someone else? Is anything more important than your safety? Do you have the courage to take risks? Mike Rowe says it is not a coincidence that the most dangerous intersections in the world are intersections that have signs that tell you when to walk. Safety first? Mike and Tucker believe personal responsibility, joy, and achievement are more important than safety.

Stonewalling the American people

The same federal agencies that launched a secret counterintelligence espionage investigation into the Trump campaign are stonewalling the American people.

Jesse has on a guest stuffed shirt "ethics lawyer" from the George Bush administration who sarcastically alleges that President Trump just watches Fox News all day long every day. Jesse responds, "You don't know the truth because you haven't been following it as closely as we have here on Fox News!"

Diamond and Silk say "Little Spike Lee is one of the gatekeepers of the Democrat plantation. That's all he is!" "He wants black people to stay stuck!" God bless these two women and Jesse for having them on the air!

Greg Gutfeld takes down Jim Acosta, Juan Williams blasts Kanye West

Kanye West on Trump: "The mob can't make me not love him!" Greg points out that there is a mob out there that wants to silence you if you leave your box. People are leaving the intellectual conformity! Jesse: "He's shattering the paradigms of us against them. You can't underestimate what is going on here politically and culturally."

Juan blasts Kanye and Greg says that's what happens when you step out of a box! Kimberlee adds comments supportive to Greg, so Juan shouts over her as he so often does. Kimberlee says Kanye is entitled to his opinion! Jesse believes Kanye is celebrating people for being independent thinkers (Candace Owens, for example).

Jim Acosta's disdainful superiority act. Greg sends his words right back at him: "You just have to have the faculties to see what Trump is doing, be calm and professional enough to deal with it, but maybe your elevator can't reach a floor where that's possible!"

Pompeo, Kanye West, Candace Owens, DNC howls at the moon

The program started out with the panelists saying the Senate Foreign Relations Committee isn't going to approve Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State tonight. Republicans do not have enough votes, they agreed, since Rand Paul refuses to support Pompeo! McConnell says he is going to keep the nomination open for consideration. Kimberley does a beautiful job explaining why Pompeo should be approved. The same Congressional committee approved John Kerry! Greg said comparing John Kerry to Mike Pompeo is like comparing a stick of driftwood to an iPhone! It's like during the Olympics trying to take out your star teammate (Pompeo has been meeting with Kim Jong Un to set up the Korean talks).

Whoops! While the Five were waiting for the committee vote, they were notified that Rand Paul will be a yes vote! Pompeo will be approved!

A big argument broke out when Juan attacked the other four for their support of Kanye West and Candace Owens. Juan rudely spoke over the voices of the four panelists as they tried to make their points. Kimberlee was especially dynamic.

Juan also loudly approves of the DNC lawsuit about alleged collusion between Russia, Trump and Wikileaks in the 2016 election. Kimberlee again shines, pointing out that Perez is playing to his Leftist base. Jesse points out that the Democrats are broke, and this is a fundraising scheme for the midterm elections.

How did Obama not know about any of this?

Jesse Watters gets better and better. He has a superb opening monolog, then chats with Ed Henry, another one of Fox's sharpest people. His interview with Carter Page was excellent. Page is going after the media with a lawsuit. Mark Levin lists all the Obama administration people who were involved in corruption and then asks how did Obama not know about any of this? He wasn't briefed on any of this? "I don't believe that for two seconds!" Levin has a new show on Fox on Sunday nights.

To finish out the program Jesse interviews people to see what they know about Easter.

Who is to blame?

In her ultra dynamic opening statement, Judge Jeanine socks it to Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley is a guest. "The President respects the First Amendment, but he also respects the Second! Parkland was a systemic failure at the local, state, and federal levels of government. New legislation just passed close the loopholes in the background check."

"Barack Obama dismantled our military protection, the number one job of the president is national security!"

"We have to have 60 votes to pass a funding bill. Republicans don't have that."

DACA? The president offered the Democrats three times the number they wanted, and the Dems didn't take it!

Ann Coulter is a guest. She is depressed. She is mad about the lack of money for the wall. Jeanine defends Trump. There is no greater Trump supporter than Judge Jeanine! Ann wants Trump to take money for the wall from the huge military budget.

David Bossie was Trump's deputy campaign manager. He agrees the omnibus bill was a fundamental failure of leadership in Congress, but he also blames the White House staff!

Infrastructure, spacewalk, the Koreas will meet next month, tariff targets

Tesla in "dire financial straits."

Infrastructure is the next piece of the president's economic agenda. He wants $200 billion. David Stockman notes, "We don't have $200 billion dollars to spend!

Two NASA astronauts are getting ready for a 6-and-one-half hour spacewalk.

Kim Jong Un and the president of South Korea are going to meet on April 27.

Peter Navarro is a guest. He is the White House National Trade Council Director. We extended the tariff on light trucks through 2041 with South Korea.

Our proposed tariffs with China target the "industries of the future."

Trump's alleged affairs, Support for John Bolton

Kimberlee gives a very favorable review of John Bolton. Greg says Trump is surrounding himself with hawks, because he is actually kind of a dove.

But what about Trump's alleged affairs? Greg notes that when Clinton's affairs were exposed, Democrats went after the women Bill was involved with. He points out that Trump's activities before he was president do not come as a surprise. No one is questioning the veracity of Ms. Daniels or Ms. McDougald. Few are surprised that Trump, the beauty contest entrepreneur, had affairs. The only victim in all this is Melania!

Trump, Kim Jong Un, The economy

Of course, Juan Williams does not want to give Trump any credit for the announcement by Kim Jong Un that he is willing to have direct talks about denuclearizing North Korea. Greg demolishes Juan. Dana agrees and adds that South Korea's president has also played an important role. Dana and Kimberlee also give credit to China, although I think China's role is also due to Trump.

Juan thanks Obama for the great economy! Jason shakes his head in disbelief. Kimberlee praises Trump. Greg points out that Democrats are planning to raise taxes. Greg wonders if Stormy Daniels is going to be hired by CNN which seems to feature her every day. Dana and Greg praise Trump, along with Kimberlee and Jason. Unemployment is lowest in 49 years.