"...if Donald Trump decides he has to schmooze Al Gore before giving me Scott Pruitt, I can live with that."

I am glad to see one-by-one writers at National Review coming around to praise the actions of President-elect Trump. For example, Andrew McCarthy:

Well, if there had been a second Clinton administration, do you think we’d have gotten Pruitt? How about Jeff Sessions at Justice, or General James Mattis at Defense? Or Trump’s promised upgrade in immigration enforcement to be carried out by General John Kelly, the clear-eyed So-Com commander who has warned about radical Islam’s inroads in Central and South America (and a Gold Star dad whose son laid down his life in Afghanistan, fighting our jihadist enemies)?

Do you figure Hillary would have tapped teachers-union scourge Betsy DeVos for the Education Department? Or a staunch Obamacare critic such as congressman (and doctor) Tom Price to run HHS? Do you think a President Clinton would have stocked her national-security team with advisers who believe we need to organize policy around the idea that the jihadist regime in Iran is an enemy of the United States — not a potential ally we should appease at all costs, but a foe whose ambitions and provocations need to be checked?

Not a chance.

Trump’s call with the president of Taiwan? I like it. After all, to pull off the “strategic ambiguity” of our dubious “One China” policy, needn’t we at least maintain some, you know, ambiguity? And in a week when we observed the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I must say Trump’s echoes of Reagan and MacArthur — declaring, “There can be no substitute for victory in the pursuit of peace” — were far more welcome than a lecture on the perils of “fake news” from, of all people, the woman who fraudulently blamed a YouTube video for the murder of four Americans by jihadists in Benghazi.

...On that score, I am not as glum as some of my friends over Trump’s Carrier intervention. As a matter of policy, I think our editorial has it right. Thus, I can’t praise it because I am not convinced, as Moore is, that it “puts American workers first.” When the government dabbles in this sort of thing, some American workers always benefit over others.

It succeeds as theater, however, because the visibly affected workers are the ones whose jobs have been saved. And in politics, theater has its place. Since the economic effect of the Carrier bailout is negligible, is this one of those places? That depends. Let’s say Trump did it merely to showcase his emphasis of American well-being over global concerns, before implementing economic policies that benefit American workers across the board once he takes office. If so, Carrier will be remembered as a clever gambit that won Trump some goodwill. On the other hand, if Carrier is a prelude to Obama-style crony capitalism — just substitute Trump’s manufacturing rationalization for Obama’s green one — then it will rightly be seen as the seed of a debacle.

Time will tell. As it will regarding Trump’s olive branches to the left — the praise for Obama, the let-felonies-be-bygones approach to Hillary, the audience with Gore, the bridge-building with the New York Times editorial board, the phone call to Al Sharpton, and so on. It is said that Trump is not ideological and wants to overcome our country’s deep, paralyzing divisions. That’s an appropriate thing for a president to try to do, and maybe Trump’s combative persona can make some ironic headway. The Left knows that, unlike the gentlemanly George W. Bush, the new president will punch back and then some. Maybe he’ll get better cooperation — or at least less sabotage.

We’ll see. I am pleasantly enough surprised that I am not fretting, for now, over Ivanka’s visions of Eleanor Roosevelt. There’s a long way to go, but if Donald Trump decides he has to schmooze Al Gore before giving me Scott Pruitt, I can live with that.

Read more here.

"For a guy less than 4 weeks out from the election, he’s doing awfully well."

At Instapundit Glenn Reynolds takes a look at some of the things Trump has done so far:

(1) Killed off dynastic politics, at least for now. If Hillary had won, 4 of the last 5 presidents would have come from two families. That’s not healthy.

(2) Kept Hillary out of the White House. She’s amazingly crooked even by DC standards, and amazingly inept even by DC standards as well. Debacles galore have been prevented by keeping her out. Plus, a Clinton presidency would have allowed the completion of the Obama Administration’s weaponization of the federal government and possibly ensured one-party rule for decades. And at the very least, it would have allowed the sorry gang that Obama and Clinton brought in (go read the Podesta emails!) to bore in for four to eight more years.

Those two reasons were reason enough to back Trump. But now let’s look at what’s happened since election night:

(3) The Mattis appointment. In one swoop, a big start toward fixing the military that Obama turned from warriors into social-justice warriors. Plus, a big blow to PC culture in general.

(4) The Carrier deal. Sure, everybody hates it — except for the voters. But it’s a promise kept, and one that makes American working-class folks feel like, finally, somebody cares. And it’s rich to see people who didn’t bat an eye at Solyndra going ballistic about $7 million over 10 years.

(5) Crushing the media’s sense of self-importance: They thought they were going to hand this election to Hillary. Now they’re realizing just how few people like or trust them, while Trump bypasses them using Twitter and YouTube. As I’ve said before, in the post-World War II era, the press has enjoyed certain institutional privileges based on two assumptions: (1) That it’s very powerful; and (2) That it will exercise that power responsibly, for the most part. Both assumptions have been proven false in this election cycle. Like many of the postwar institutional accommodations, this one will be renegotiated under Trump. It’s past time. After getting spanked in 2004 over RatherGate, the press realized with Katrina that if they all converged on the same lies they could still move the needle. Now they can’t.

(6) China. Obama’sFforeign policy has been disastrous. Trump has served notice to China that we’re not abandoning our allies on the Pacific Rim. That will be noticed elsewhere, too.

(7) The transition. It was supposed to be “chaos,” but it’s been smooth and obviously well-planned. This bodes well and, among those willing to pay attention beyond SNL sketches, is changing minds.

Don’t get cocky, because he could still blow it and the press will be looking for anything they can use to destroy him, as they do with every Republican president. But for a guy less than 4 weeks out from the election, he’s doing awfully well.

Read more here.

"American conglomerates have embraced the “benefits” of globalization"

Jim Quinn writes at Director Blue,

Since the passage of NAFTA in 1994 and China’s decision to provide slave labor to foreign corporations around the same time frame, American conglomerates have embraced the “benefits” of globalization:

Close your plant in the U.S. and fire Americans.

Open a plant in Mexico or China and hire locals at slave wages to do the same job as the fired Americans.

Sell cheap products back into the U.S., undercutting the prices of smaller domestic producers and eventually putting them out of business – resulting in more American job losses.

American conglomerate Ivy League educated CEOs listen to the advice of criminal Wall Street bankers and use their excess profits to buyback their stock and drive their personal compensation to astronomical levels.

Capital investment by American conglomerates becomes virtually non-existent.

Meanwhile, China steals the American technology and product designs and eventually produces knock-off products, undercutting American conglomerates.

The Federal Reserve provides cheap and plentiful debt to Wall Street scum bankers, while Madison Avenue maggots convince Americans to accumulate debt to purchase the cheap foreign made goods.

The production jobs shipped to China and Mexico are replaced with low paying service jobs in the retail and restaurant sector, sustained by the Federal Reserve debt machine.

Many, if not most, of those voting for Donald Trump want less government in their lives. Trump railed against corruption, government favoritism, crony capitalism, and special deals. For the last eight years we’ve witnessed Obama favor green energy frauds like Solyndra, use taxpayer funds to save union jobs at GM and Chrysler, provide tax breaks to wealthy buyers of Tesla luxury cars, purposely destroy the coal industry, and not prosecute one Wall Street criminal banker. This Carrier deal is just a different version of the government carrot and stick game used by every president.

This high profile deal is a symbolic message to Trump voters and American corporations, but it can’t become the standard operating procedure for his presidency. Government picking winners and losers, aligning with particular companies or industries, or attempting to manage the economy is nothing but an expansion of the corporate fascism we’ve been experiencing for decades. Trump needs to create an economic climate which will convince American companies to expand, invest, and hire more workers. He has already documented what really needs to be done:

Reduce corporate and individual tax rates. If corporations are allowed to keep more of their profits, they are more likely to hire and invest in their facilities. Many new businesses are started by individuals, so lowering their taxes provides more resources for growing their businesses.

The regulatory nightmare strangles small business owners, giving an unfair advantage to conglomerates. Wiping out thousands of useless Federal regulations will save existing businesses billions and allow fledgling businesses to get off the ground.
Repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a more market oriented competitive healthcare system which reduces the outrageously high costs to companies and individuals would free up billions of investment or spendable funds for companies and individuals.
Existing trade deals need to be renegotiated to make sure global trade is truly free. Wage arbitrage cannot be the sole basis for why companies decide which country to build their plants. China makes it extremely difficult for American companies to do business in China from a tax and regulatory basis. Any fair trade deal would address these inequities.

Read more here.