RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s mourning in leftist-crazy Fashionworld — Hillary Clinton lost — and black crepe is the new black. The New York Times may well have included a question mark in the headline — “Is Fashion’s Love Affair with Washington Over?” — but there is zero doubt. So nutsy-cuckoo are these creative critters that they are convinced that the election of Donald Trump, which brings to the White House a handsome family of gorgeous fashion models and fashion brands, is the end of Everything Fashion.

The thought of not having to come up with four years’ worth of jewel-tone pant suits, Mao jackets and oven mitts actually has them blubbering into their schmatas. Why? Because the Left lost power.

All they have left are their barbs.

Thus, beneath the headline of a striking photo of the Trump family on Election Night — with Melania Trump, draped in floor-length ivory something, the focal point of the group shot — the caption, so help me:

On election night, Melania Trump wore Ralph Lauren (a white jumpsuit). The outfit was, according to the brand, one she had bought off the rack, as opposed to one that she had worked with the designer create.

Dab of South American frog poison optional.

In case a reader missed it, the text of the story also flails former international fashion model and jewelry designer Melania Trump for general non-fashionness in buying her election night outfit “off the rack [sniff]” — more evidence of “her distance from the industry.”

The ridiculousness is just so much hissy-fitting over the end of the fashion titans sewn-at-the-hip political relationship with Democrat Inc.

More than any other industry, fashion had pledged its troth to Mrs. Clinton. Vogue magazine formally endorsed her, the first time it had taken a public stand in a presidential election. The W magazine editor, Stefano Tonchi, declared his allegiance in an editor’s letter.

Anti-Trump protests are ongoing, with hundreds still gathering around the country to denounce the results of the 2016 election. This may just be the beginning: The Daily Mail reports that a “women’s march on Washington” is being planned to coincide with the inauguration in January. Within 24 hours of the announcement of the effort, more than 35,000 people had signed on to participate.

Protests and demonstrations have a noble history in the United States, and have been used effectively to awaken people to worthy causes and issues. When done right, they can encourage others who share the protesters’ concerns, but who are reticent to speak up, to join them, thereby building momentum for action.

The Americans planning to march on Washington to protest the incoming president must be hoping to build on this tradition. Yet strategic thinkers on the left ought to consider what these protests will accomplish, and whether they are likely to advance — or might actually hinder — their larger cause.

After all, protests have become increasingly common in recent years. Students on college campuses now regularly stage demonstrations. Many of these protests seem to be an end in themselves, with students rallying against innocuous administration policies or for higher wages on campus, but mostly seeming to enjoy the experience and camaraderie of the protest itself. Yes, some protests are seriously undertaken with the intention of bringing about results: Take the 2015 protests — which include a student hunger strike — at the University of Missouri against the university’s policies related to race and their response to racial incidents on campus, which resulted in both the president and chancellor stepping down.

While that protest succeeded in bringing about changes that the protesters were calling for, they failed to build support among the public. In fact, a poll taken in Missouri after the protest found that “by a fairly wide margin, the state’s public does not view the University of Missouri’s recent protests and associated events very favorably.” Twice as many Missourians disagreed with student protesters’ message as agreed with them. Sixty-two percent disagreed with student protesters’ actions, while just 20 percent agreed.

The Democratic party handed Donald Trump a rare opportunity to make radical changes to the electoral map that could last for years to come.

First, the Democrats gave Trump a great gift by completing the ongoing radicalization of their party under President Obama. After 2008, it was no longer a party of the working and middle classes, but a lopsided political pyramid.

On top were the cynical elites who turned up in the WikiLeaks John Podesta e-mail trove: self-important media members, Ivy League grandees, Silicon Valley billionaires, Wall Street plutocrats, and coastal-corridor snobs. They talk left-wing but live royally. They court minorities to vote in lockstep, then deride them in private. The vast lower tier of the party comprises government employees, the poor, minorities, and the millions dependent on state and federal assistance. The Democrats in between were ignored, and so they kept fleeing the party. Look at the red/blue map of the election. Democratic strength retreated to the inner cities and the rich coastal suburbs.

The Democrats also, in suicidal fashion, stoked racial chauvinism, or the notion that one’s tribe should transcend all other affiliations. After pandering to various minority groups, Hillary Clinton apparently believed that they suddenly would forget her emphasis on race and ethnicity to vote for her, a 69-year-old white multimillionaire.

But the Democrats learned a bitter lesson in 2016: Obama’s left-wing, rich/poor ideological agendas do not appeal to most of the country. Despite a hard progressive agenda, Obama was able to win two terms by relying on racial and ethnic solidarity, earning record numbers of Latino and black votes.

The logic of such a formula could not be easily transferred to a non-minority Democratic candidate. So Clinton lost key blue states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because minority turnout in cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee fell off from 2008 and 2012.

Worse for Democrats, by pandering to tribal solidarity, they polarized the white working classes. When physical similarity is touted as the best argument to vote for someone, it green-lights everybody to do the same — including huge numbers of less affluent whites who voted for Trump.

Trump took advantage of these openings. By reformulating the old Republican messages to include so-called fair (rather than free) trade, by leaving Social Security alone, and by promising to create more jobs, Trump plucked millions of lower- and middle-class voters from the Democratic party.

Republican elites may have been appalled that Trump blasted global trade agreements and promised to punish corporations that outsourced jobs overseas. But those who have been left out of the globalized economy flocked to that message after not warming up to John McCain and Mitt Romney in earlier presidential elections.

In what is certainly sure to draw ire from some, if not many, in the Hollywood community, two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks opted for grace and class when speaking about President-elect Donald Trump. After a week of hysteria-laden open letters and Twitter rants from entertainment industry liberals like Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon, Hanks’ calm demeanor and response really stood out. The actor was being honored at the Museum of Modern Art in New York when he offered a refreshing dose of perspective.

We are going to be all right because we constantly get to tell the world who we are. We constantly get to define ourselves as American. We do have the greatest country in the world. We move at a slow pace. We have the greatest country in the world because we are always moving towards a more perfect union. That journey never ceases, it never stops. Sometimes, to quote a Springsteen song, it’s “one step forward, two steps back,” but we still aggregately move forward. We, who are a week into wondering what the hell just happened, will continue to move forward. We have to choose to do so, but we will move forward because if we do not move forward, what is to be said of us?

Then Hanks said something that would probably be career suicide for a less established actor:

“This is the United States of America. We’ll go on. There’s great like-minded people out there who are Americans first and Republicans or Democrats second,” Hanks told THR. “I hope the president-elect does such a great job that I vote for his re-election in four years.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Like all dictators, the Democrats believe in democracy only until they lose an election.

And then they lose their minds.

The last time a national mental breakdown this severe happened was sixteen years ago when Bush beat Gore. The Democrats reacted gracefully to their defeat by insisting that they didn’t really lose because Bush stole the election. Psychiatrists were soon tending to lefties suffering from depression. Others protested outside the Florida Supreme Court, President Bush’s home and their parents’ basement.

Jesse Jackson accused Republicans of a “coup.” Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson warned that “without justice there will be no peace.” Thousands protested Bush’s inauguration waving signs like, “We want Bush out of D.C.” and “You’re not our president.”

The Congressional Black Caucus tried to obstruct the certification of the Electoral College vote. Then when Bush won again in the next election, they did it all over again. Expect them to try it one more time.

Because they don’t believe in democracy. They believe in their own absolute entitlement to power. Any election that they win is legitimate. Any election that they lose is illegitimate.

But if Bush Derangement Syndrome was bad, Trump Derangement Syndrome is even worse.

Will the donkey lie down with the elephant?

Two days after the election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the AFL-CIO executive council, “I will work with” Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders: “I and other progressives are prepared to work with him.”

The Washington Post: “Pelosi says Democrats are willing to work with Trump.”

That was easy. Someone should tweet the news to the Occupy Trump Tower mobs on Fifth Avenue.

Of course this burst of Trumpian bonhomie comes with the word “if” attached: They’ll work with Donald Trump . . . if he becomes one of them. Which is to say, if he adopts the progressive policies and attitudes that just got the Democratic Party wiped out, from the presidency down to dogcatcher.

“If Republicans want to force through massive tax cuts,” thundered Sen. Warren, “we will fight them every step of the way.”

Even by the normal standards of postelection schadenfreude, it is hard not to be agog at the spectacle of Democrats trying to figure out what hit them and what to do about it.

A personal favorite is that Democrats must now distance themselves from “wealthy donors.” Party check-writers from Barbra Streisand to Jay Z put it all out there for Hillary, and this is the thanks they get—Bernie Sanders denouncing them to Stephen Colbert as “the liberal elite.”

A conclusion has emerged that the party forgot the forgotten man. In the past week, Trump voters have become the biggest archaeological dig in journalism, with the New York Times last weekend outputting three reports on lost tribes in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

President Obama paused during his trip to Greece to admit Mr. Trump won because of voter “anxiety” over the economy. That is the emerging Democratic consensus: The party needs to rediscover the economic well-being of the kind of people who voted Democratic from FDR to Bill Clinton. It is a good question how a party could forget an 80-year constituency.

Nancy Pelosi’s leadership of House Democrats is now under challenge, we are supposed to believe, from members who seethed in silence for years as the party became defined by the Streisandian elites on the East and West Coasts.

Ohio’s Rep. Marcy Kaptur and fellow Ohioan Tim Ryan are both considering an attempt to overthrow the party’s most-famous San Francisco Democrat after Thanksgiving.

Will the progressive websites publish their annual advice column, “How to talk to your uncle at Thanksgiving dinner”? Maybe this year they should just listen.CONTINUE AT SITE

President Obama spent his final six years in office—and especially the last two—governing largely by executive fiat. He issued executive orders, and his administrative state issued tens of thousands of pages of new regulations that took on the force of law. He called it rule by pen and phone.

This infuriated millions of Americans and contributed to Donald Trump’s victory, and one irony is that this also means that Mr. Obama’s policy legacy is less durable. Mr. Trump will now have the chance to reverse these orders and regulations often without new legislation. Here are three ways he and Republicans can proceed:

New executive orders. Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute counts more than 250 executive orders signed by President Obama, plus more than 230 “executive memoranda.” These did everything from creating a new investment vehicle called MyRA, which seeks to encourage new savers to invest in government debt, to directing federal agencies to demand new data to investigate pay disparity by race and sex at government contractors. The Trump transition should review every one so the boss can rescind them if he wishes.

A related category are orders issued by federal agencies without a formal federal rule-making. Mr. Obama’s regulators made an unprecedented practice of issuing “guidance” that allowed agencies to duck rule-making while still forcing targets to comply—or risk enforcement action.

A classic of this genre is the Education Department’s rewrite of Title IX telling universities how they must handle accusations of sexual assault. Other examples run from auto lending to drug discovery to housing rentals. The President’s order legalizing four million illegal immigrants that is currently tied up in court can also be dropped at the stroke of a pen.

Mr. Trump can instruct his new cabinet secretaries to immediately void all such Obama guidance or else put it through the lawful rule-making process. He can also order federal agencies to immediately cease work on regulations in process or due to be sent for publication in the Federal Register.

Congressional Review Act. This legacy of the Gingrich era allows Congress to kill the many last-minute regulations now making their way through Mr. Obama’s agencies. For items enacted in the last 60 working days of this Congress—which probably will mean since late May this year—lawmakers can consider them in January without threat of a Senate filibuster.

That’s how Republicans dismissed Bill Clinton’s last-minute ergonomics rule in 2001. GOP lawmakers put four of these resolutions on the President’s desk during this Congress, but he vetoed them.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/16/bill-de-blasio-calls-for-more-disruption-to-protest-donald-trump.html

Liberal New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is calling for more “disruption” to protest the election of Donald Trump.

“We have to recognize that all over this country, the more disruption that’s caused peacefully … the more it will change the trajectory of things,” he said in a radio interview on Monday, adding that Trump did not have a mandate to implement his agenda because he failed to win the popular vote.

De Blasio also pledged that New York City would not comply if Trump sought to restore “stop-and-frisk,” a controversial policy that was deemed unconstitutional by a U.S. district court judge in 2013. “They can threaten to take away money, but they cannot tell us how to police our streets,” he said.

The Democratic mayor, who aspires to be a standard bearer for the left, criticized members of his own party for failing to address the concerns of working-class voters, who “have every right to feel cheated.”

The Islamic Society of North America was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding Hamas. It was linked to two Hamas funding fronts, the Holy Land Foundation and KindHearts. ISNA’s checks were made payable to the “Palestinian Mujahadeen” or “Holy Warriors” which was a name used by Hamas.

ISNA’s co-founder Sami Al-Arian was the local head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Mousa Abu Marzook, a top Hamas official listed by the Treasury Department as a Specially Designated Terrorist, received tens of thousands of dollars from ISNA.

This should have come as no surprise as both ISNA and Hamas are arms of the Muslim Brotherhood.

But the American Jewish Committee has decided to team up with the financiers of the murder of Jews to oppose Trump. The left wing Jewish group and an Islamist organization that wrote out checks to Islamic terrorists enabling them to kill Jews have formed the “Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council”.

Statements from both ISNA and the AJC made it clear that this was a reaction to Trump’s win.

“We are uniting to help the administration navigate in the proper constitutional manner, to uphold freedom of religion and constitutional rights for all American citizens,” Eftakhar Alam of ISNA said.

“It is a reaction to some of the bigotry and hate speech that came out of the campaign,” Robert Silverman, the AJC’s director of Muslim-Jewish relations said. “We’re concerned about the public discourse in the whole country. We’re also concerned about messages that originated within the two communities. The Trump phenomenon is only going to make it come together more quickly.”