Elections have consequences

In January of 2009, Barack Obama -- the soon-to-be president -- famously boasted: "Elections have consequences -- and at the end of the day, I won."

Yes, elections sure do have consequences and the democrats in congress don't like what the election of President Donald Trump has meant for today's world. Foot dragging, delay, delay, delay is their adopted tactic led by Senator Chuck Schumer. I am sure they are frustrated because they envision a future of change. They are no longer in charge and thus unable to preserve the world view that they shaped. It is only human nature to fear change but that is how we are hard-wired.

The current dustup is large crowds of demonstrators at larger airports disrupting operations in a big way.

I can only feel sorry for the airport employees that are undoubtedly trying to assure an orderly flow of passengers. It would be utterly frustrating to try to board a long-scheduled flight to go on vacation or the myriad destinations that we ordinary travelers have in mind. Were it me I would harbor a grudge against such demonstrators.

Glad that I'm not traveling at the moment.

The media is showing the demonstrators obviously objecting to President Trump's executive order to slow the importation of refugees who might also be including potential Islamic Jihadist Terrorists. Somehow there has been no information from the media about who those demonstrators are and who is behind so many showing up to demonstrate and disrupt. It is hard to believe that it is all spontaneous. Somebody or some organization has to be behind the whole sorry endeavor. Hopefully, time will give us more information.

My friend, a prominent business man in McCook, voiced a great suggestion. He opined that authorities should get the name and address of every protester and then settle the refugees from those war torn countries next door. I suspect that the crowds would vanish if that was the promise.

President Trump's executive order calls for a 90 day cooling off period of the refugee flow in order to do more intensive vetting of the immigrants.

"Vet: verb gerund or present participle: vetting: make a careful and critical examination of (something). "proposals for vetting large takeover bids." Synonyms: check, examine, scrutinize, investigate, inspect, look over, screen, assess, evaluate, appraise."

A current article by James Carafano, a member of the Heritage Foundation helps put President Trump's executive order in perspective.

The worry is that as ISIS is being squeezed from their territory in Iraq "many of their foreign fighters could well try to flow to the West, principally using visas or posing as refugees. When they get to the West," that includes us, "they could carry out terrorist acts. We know that because they already have -- specifically in Western Europe. They haven't come to the U.S. -- yet. Right now, our primary threat is Islamist-related terror plots that are organized by terrorists who are already here."

Carafano goes on to admit that the precautions covered in the executive order are unfair and creating hardships. That criticism is fair enough but terrorist's attacks like those at the Bataclan in France by the followers of ISIS create unbearable hardships as well.

As in all things, it is this old columnist's opinion that it better to error on the side of precaution than have to react to a disaster in our own dear country.

Ah the Women's March on Washington D.C. the day after the Inauguration. A friend's comment was that the March originally was planned to be a victory celebration for the Coronation of President Hillary Clinton. That didn't work out and many of them already had their tickets bought so they came anyway repurposed to object to President Trump. I didn't watch much of the media coverage but was totally unimpressed with Madonna's rant.

As I've stated before it is this old columnist's opinion that government should stay out of the decision of a woman to have an abortion. It somehow doesn't seem constitutional to provide tax funds to the giant Planned Parenthood abortion provider.

Then too it is a bit ridiculous to envision purple haired women dressed in pink vagina costumes lecturing us on morality as was displayed front and center on the media coverage of the Woman's March. Our country is much better than that!

It has been interesting to read fellow columnist Mike Hendricks last two "Mike at Night" columns. It almost sounds like Mike is swearing off his allegiance to his beloved Democrat Progressive Party and maybe converting to become a Republican. Welcome aboard friend Mike.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail