Wall St Journal contributor Kimberly Strassel has a good article on the swamp-draining that needs to occur if the government leviathan is ever to be made manageable.

Long story short, 2017 demonstrated the Deepstate stranglehold in place within our unwieldy (and demonstrably Left-leaning) bureaucracy…it’s obvious change is in order.

A good place to start the process is to hit them in their wallet…these bureaucrats are overpaid as it is, and nothing makes one consider a career change like pay-cuts.

The Holman Rule, reinstated last year, is a great way to begin. An archaic law that allows pinpointed government employees to get their pay reduced, Republicans got it added to a bill last year, and was set-up to sunset in a year unless voted to extend.

Renew the Holman Rule…and let the Swamp-Draining games begin.

Hearing – now – that classified government passwords in unsecure emails were hacked by foreign agencies during the Obama years, it begs a serious question…

…where the hell was our NSA and DIA?

We pour billions into intelligence agencies every year – shouldn’t they have intercepted those potentially-damaging (and illegal) emails so cavalierly used by Obama officials?

It defies logic that such serious breaches of classified etiquette weren’t discovered…

…or reported to the powers-that-be as they occurred…in REAL-TIME.

Which begs a second question…why would Obama turn a deaf ear to these violations?

If there was ever proof a Deepstate exists…and saturates the fabric of government…

…the deafening silence on this issue alone tells us all we need to know.

Officially, the Chinese New Year starts Feb 16, designated ‘Year of the Dog’.

We’re hoping the Justice Department will start it sooner, as the Year of the Pitbull.

First…

Most honest Democrats will admit Hillary played fast-&-loose with national security by using a private email server to cover her tracks serving Obama as Secretary of State.

And any honest lawyer will tell you attorney-client privilege cannot be invoked when the attempt is to protect communications used in furtherance of crime, fraud, or civil wrong.

But the FBI – specifically, Comey and his cohort – allowed attorney-client privilege of that nature be used as a veil to obscure chicanery going on throughout Hillary’s tenure.

Second…

It’s becoming obvious an unsubstantiated Democrat-bought opposition research paper was used by Obama’s Justice Dept. to get FISA warrants to surveille the Trump team…

…before and after the election. That’s election-tampering…writ large.

This is a blatant abuse of law enforcement power by the highest official in the land, and is very clearly a criminal conspiracy that goes right up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

There’s only one way to restore confidence in our federal law enforcement agencies:

Attorney General Sessions should unleash a team of Pitbulls to investigate abuses so casually dismissed during this Hillary-Obama reign of unconstitutional activity.

Let the Year of the Pitbulls begin.

Any reasonable American will acknowledge 8 years of Obama saw the economy drain into fat-cat corporate and union coffers, while performing at a sub-par rate.

Daniel Greenfield has a great article that deserves your attention:

“FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE’S MAN OF THE YEAR: PRESIDENT TRUMP”

Money-quotes: “Americans are realizing that maybe we don’t have to just get used to dividing up the last torn shreds of a failing economy between leftist crony billionaires and their officially entitled victim groups…The Obama revolution paid out its benefits in stolen money. Trillions were stolen from taxpayers, homeowners, car owners, workers and small businessmen and redistributed to his friends and political cronies, to migrants and the welfare class, to Iran and other Islamic terrorists, and to the Green Mob.”

President Trump is the author of that realization…despite the best efforts of Democrats, the FakeNews media, and establishment GOP Never-Trumpers arrayed against him.

We suggest that, more importantly, the most significant accomplishment of Mr. Trump is his exposure of the FakeNews media for what they are, and have been for a long time.

A healthy skepticism has set in, and with it – for the first time in a long time – people are questioning the ‘conventional wisdom’ of a now-exposed self-serving elite.

For all that and more: Thank you, Mr. President.

President Trump points out that a year-end Rasmussen poll has his approval rating at approximately the same as Barack Obama had on Dec 28th, 2009 – at 47%.

That’s an extraordinary achievement, when you consider the negative coverage that he has been hit with during his presidency, to date…which is to say…over 90% negative.

If the media affects polling by 10-15 points, as some claim, he’d be in the 60%+ range.

Maybe the best indication of Trump’s popularity can be found in this headline:

“RNC Set to Raise Record $130 Million in 2017″

Does anyone think – by any stretch of imagination – such a GOP fundraising amount would’ve been possible if Trump were as unpopular as media would have us believe?

“He named a terrific jurist, Neil Gorsuch, to the Supreme Court and is busy reshaping the rest of the federal justice system; he deregulated vast swaths of the U.S. economy; he pushed through a massive tax cut that will fuel growth going forward; he crushed the Caliphate and has almost eliminated ISIS; and he killed off the ObamaCare mandate, the most odious provision of the national health care plan.“

Would Obama or Clinton get negative coverage with this kind of achievement?

Would McCain or Romney be hated by their own Party leaders, with such achievement?

Andrew McCabe doesn’t even deserve being referred to as an FBI official…in his official capacity he probably used his office to create and weaponize the Fusion GPS dossier.

The guy is a Democrat partisan hack of the worst kind, and deserves to be fired.

Why give him the opportunity to retire with a fat pension, after his misdeeds?

Are you unhappy with pension funds, your retirement funds, and other assorted and sundry 401k plans getting a strong boost from the burgeoning stock market?

Are you unhappy with robust economic growth, and a powerful prosperity here at home that creates jobs, increases take-home pay, and makes us stronger abroad?

Don’t like the idea of Making America Great Again?

Then, obviously, vote Democrat…and keep America in the doldrums.

But know this – state pensions are underfunded by some $6 trillion dollars. They’re just now in a position to start cutting into that underfunding, through various stock investments, if the Republican-fed stock market keeps up its strong performance.

As usual, poorly led (typically, Democrat) state governments have allowed this serious under-funding to mushroom…if that’s okay with you, keep voting Democrat…

…but we can assure you, those forced to pay the consequences will not be happy.

As crazy as they sound, we wonder just how many Democrats will refuse the increase to their paychecks that are a result of the tax-reform package passed by Republicans?

After all, if it’s such a bad thing, they’d be hypocritical to benefit, right?

Some 65.8 million (legal and illegal) Democrats voted for Hillary last November…

…so, if we use the average ‘$2140 tax-cut per-person’ that IBD estimates will result, we’re looking at a huge $141 billion that those Democrat voters can collectively refuse to accept, and return to the Big Government coffers they so devotedly support.

Over ten years, that’s $1.4 trillion, virtually neutralizing the 10-year deficit projection.

C’mon, Democrats…step up.

Senator Tim Scott was just called a black sellout by a Huffington Post contributor.

Considering the fact that a new Republican majority and President have jump-started the economy and achieved historic low jobless claims for blacks, we’re suggesting that the real black sellouts are Maxine Waters and her ilk in the Democrat Party…

…who, FOR DECADES, have provided not one iota of opportunity for black Americans.

Since the ’60’s, welfare, poverty, out-of-wedlock births, and failed education policy has destroyed the black family unit…even while black Democrat politicians thundered their class warfare rhetoric from the heights of campaign platforms to the floors of Congress.

When will black voters finally wake up?