A short reader quiz for regular readers of Wheeling "newspapers"

The government needs a spending bill by the end of the week to prevent a shutdown. The Republicans control both the Senate and the House of Representatives. According to an editorial in this morning's Intelligencer, who should we blame if the government must shut down at the end of the week?

• a. Republicans
• b. President Trump
• c. liberals
• d. all of the above

Obviously, it's c. From the editorial:

As usual when they are refusing to engage in even a tiny bit of compromise, liberals in Congress are playing the “government shutdown” card.

Yes, a couple of dozen liberals (whose votes apparently count 20 or 30 times more than non-liberal votes) are going to be the reason our government shuts down on Friday. Their crime, this time, is that they are unwilling to compromise on Trump's wall.

Didn't they read the news?

It probably doesn't matter because liberals are always at fault for everything, but I would suggest that the Intelligencer editorial writers read some real newspapers before publishing editorials. Events yesterday afternoon rendered this editorial irrelevant. According to the Washington Post:

Trump showed even more flexibility Monday afternoon, telling conservative journalists in a private meeting that he was open to delaying funding for wall construction until September, a White House official confirmed.

And so funding for Trump's wall, which is the reason for the Intelligencer editorial, was moved to next fall for consideration. Hey, but why waste a good rant against liberals and Democrats?

How's that Trump presidency doing?

I didn't expect to see it in today's morning paper but numerous news sources printed the Associated Press' assessment of Trump's first 100 days in office:

Trump's road to the White House, paved in big, sometimes impossible pledges, has detoured onto a byway of promises deferred or left behind, an AP analysis found.

Of 38 specific promises Trump made in his 100-day "contract" with voters — "This is my pledge to you" — he's accomplished 10, mostly through executive orders that don't require legislation, such as withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

(It's interesting that Trump's few accomplishment have come via executive orders which the locals regularly labeled as illegal and a power-grab under Obama's "imperial" presidency.)

The Trump assessment was probably squeezed out by other, more important front-page news like Ogden favorite and Secretary of State Mac Warner's visit to the Northern Panhandle:

Mac Warner Visits County Clerks in Panhandle

Keeping us informed as always.

(Update 4/26) More hypocrisy on executive orders

This morning, many newspapers are carrying this Associated Press story:

President Trump Touts Executive Orders He Once Lambasted

The story notes:

White House aides said that Trump will have signed 32 executive orders by Friday, the most of any president in their first 100 days since World War II. That's a far cry from Trump's heated campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against President Barack Obama's use of executive action late in his tenure when he faced a Republican Congress. Trump argued that he, the consummate deal maker, wouldn't need to rely on the tool.

"The country wasn't based on executive orders," said Trump at a town hall in South Carolina in February 2016. "Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can't even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. It's a basic disaster. You can't do it."

Needless to say, this AP article was not in the morning Intelligencer.