Happy New Year ~ 2018

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from the Cleveland Tea Party

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Rep. Dave Brat on immigration – THE issue in 2018

R McKee cartoon credit: teapartyamerica.blogspot.com

Rep. Dave Brat spoke to Breitbart about the immigration issues ahead of us in 2018. Brat (R-VA) is the one who beat Eric Cantor, then the House Majority Leader, in the primary – and his upset victory put the amnesty bill on hold. But amnesty is the creature that wouldn't die.

Brat discussed Congress’s considerations to codify the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy into federal law.

Congress must prioritize four repairs for the immigration system before contemplating any DACA-style amnesty negotiation, said Brat: 1. Ending chain migration and the visa lottery; 2. Mandating employer use of E-Verify; 3. Construction of a southern border wall; and 4. Interior enforcement of immigration law.

The four aforementioned “permanent fixes” must precede any DACA negotiation regarding amnesty for illegal immigrants, said Brat: “It shouldn’t be about trusting or hoping, the permanent part has to come first, you see in that place and then you negotiate later.”

The rest of the report is here.

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Mark Steyn on illegal immigration

We can expect a lot of work in 2018 to do what we can to block the passage of DACA, start building the wall, and end chain migration. My fave, Mark Steyn, guest hosted for Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and his segment on illegal immigration and The Wall were reported at both Breitbart (“Mark Steyn: In the End, Trump Presidency ‘Will Stand or Fall on How He Tackles Immigration’”) and on Steyn’s blog page (“The Wall Is All”). The transcript report by Jeff Poor at Breitbart is below.

“[T]here’s a lobby — there’s lobbies for everything in this country,” Steyn said. “And there’s a strong lobby for illegal immigration. There’s a strong lobby for refugees, which again is a completely fraudulent operation by and large. Trump won because a significant [number of voters] were serious about building a wall, about ending illegal immigration and about doing something about people who walk into this country illegally, stay here illegally, take jobs illegally, get driver’s licenses illegally, use Social Security numbers illegally. And at some point … I would have liked him to hold the inauguration ceremony on the southern border and for it to culminate after the oath of office with him ceremonially laying the brick in the wall. But in the end, his presidency will stand or fall on how he tackles immigration.”

Steyn pointed to how low-skilled mass immigration has impacted the American economy, and there is a demand for low-skilled workers. He added that it isn’t just policy for Trump that is important [but] shifting “attitudes” as well.

“In the end, the Trump presidency I believe will stand or fall on how permanently he manages to shift not just the number of people coming into the country, but how he manages to shift attitudes towards remorseless unskilled mass immigration,” Steyn added. “That’s what got him elected, and that’s what [will] actually be the basis on which his presidency is judged.”

Steyn’s page is here. Ann Coulter recently published an article along the same lines, at Townhall and Human Events here. Her take is that if the United States does not stop illegal immigration, then all other issues are essentially academic. 

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Serious course correction on the S.S. Trump

Ben Garrison cartoon credit: governmentpropaganda.net

Kurt Schlichter does not take prisoners. He does not mince words. His latest column at Townhall, titled “Trump Ends 2017 Residing In His Enemies’ Heads” is an optimistic preview for what’s to come in the New Year:

Slowly, it’s dawning on Trump’s enemies – on our enemies – that this isn’t just an unfortunate, temporary bump in the road to the Californiaization of America, but a U-turn. The people who elected Donald Trump were something his allegedly conservative Never Trump opponents never were: serious about being conservative.

It’s easy to grift the donors with big talk about culture wars and policy initiatives when you never expect to be in a position to actually pull them off. But the Normals finally got sick of election year bomb-throwers morphing into pliable puffboys once their reps crossed into the Beltway. And that’s how you got Trump.

Schlichter’s description of Trump’s election as “a U-turn” reminded me of Mark Steyn’s reaction when Barack Obama was re-elected, since it suggested that the American electorate lacked the will to effect a “serious course correction.” And that is surely because the GOPe ran another RINO candidate, in that instance, Mitt Romney. A lot of conservatives stayed home on Election Day. 

Now here we are on board with President Trump, making the U-turn, making the serious course correction. The rest of Schlichter’s column is here.  

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Mr Speaker on Fake News

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Speaker Newt Gingrich’s latest emailing is titled “The Republican 2018 Surprise: Victory.” A short extract:

[Scott] Adams, the author of Dilbert, has a list of 20 political opinions and predictions made about President Trump and his Administration, which were just plain wrong. He suggests if you were wrong about 15 or more of these assertions, you might quit talking about politics while Trump is in the White House. By Adams’s standard, most elite "analysts" would have to be quiet, because they have been so consistently wrong about Trump.

As I listened to the end of the year "analysts," I was struck by how little they know, how little they have questioned their own mistakes, and how mutually reinforcing their false information has been.

These are not analysts. These are liberal propagandists. Much of what they assert is just plain wrong. Fake news is, sadly, an accurate term. And the topic about which they have been the most fake is the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Newt predicts a GOP win in the midterms. But that would not be enough. I can’t help but hope that in the process of draining the swamp, members of the UniParty, including those with an (R) after their name, are exposed as the corruptocrats that they are. 

Newt’s column is online here.

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Three on the Fox bench

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Subtitle: Hosts who don’t interrupt

Over the Christmas break, the pinch-hitters are guest hosting most of the prime time news and opinion broadcasts at Fox. In some cases, the bench team outperforms the regular hosts.

Guest host for Sean Hannity is David Webb. He is intelligent, he listens, and he asks follow-up questions. Webb is calm and collected and measured, never strident or frenetic.

Guest host for Tucker Carlson is Mark Steyn. Disclosure: Mark Steyn is my favorite online commentator/blogger. But Steyn as host, even when saddled with a ghastly line-up of guest talking heads, is informed, incisive, and FUNNY. (And when he is a guest on Carlson's show, he usually has Tucker in stitches).

Daytime host Brian Kilmeade subbed for Hannity or maybe it was Laura Ingraham, and not once did I reach for the mute button. He also has co-written a book about Andrew Jackson and The Battle of New Orleans and hosted a recent Sunday night special on the subject. It was excellent, and I hope Fox re-runs it.

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Handy tax chart from Powerline

Steven Hayward at the Powerline blog just published a “handy tax chart to annoy your liberal friends”; it highlights provisions in the recent GOP tax reform bill compared to the previous tax code.

If you have trouble embiggening the chart with a click, just go to the Powerline blogpost here and scroll halfway down.

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Merry Christmas from the Cleveland Tea Party

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Conrad Black on “Trump’s Whirlwind Year”

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Conrad Black has a great wrap-up of Trump’s presidential campaign, election and first year as POTUS. He begins with Trump’s candidacy:

Trump was attacking the entire political establishment, the whole Washington sleaze factory, all factions of both parties, all the Bushes, Clintons, and Obama, the national media, the lobbyists, Wall Street, Hollywood, and the limousine Left from the Hamptons to Silicon Valley. Of course the Trump campaign was insane and impossible, and was doomed to be a ludicrous fiasco, a gigantic, comical clown act that misfired horribly.

On Election Night, Nobel prize–winning (for economics) New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said the stock market would “never recover” from the Trump victory. (It has set a new all-time high more than 90 times since.) . . .

This year [Trump] has won over the congressional Republican party, which had almost entirely opposed him, to toil in the enactment of his program. Together they have achieved the greatest tax reform and reduction in over 30 years, largely emasculated Obamacare, put a rod on the backs of those states that elect incompetents like Jerry Brown and the Cuomos and lay the resulting state income taxes off on the whole country, repatriated trillions of dollars of corporate profit, exonerated over half the people from personal income taxes, reduced the return of 80 percent of taxpayers to a postcard, and produced conditions for 4 percent GDP growth next year. . . .

Considering the sustained assault of 90 percent of the media, in which the normal honeymoon for a new president has been replaced by a daily media assassination squad, he has done well. 

The article is at the National Review website here.

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The final tax bill

cartoon by Nate Beeler at the Columbus Dispatch

Help for the middle class or Armageddon and lots of dead people? I found a concise summary of what's in the bill at Reuters; click here.

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Blogging for the Cleveland Tea Party

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Everyone is doing their Year-End round ups, think pieces, retrospectives, and so on. Here is mine.

Back in 2009, I signed on to the Tea Party because I agreed with its 3 core values:  [1] Fiscal Responsibility (don’t spend more than you have);  [2] Constitutionally Limited Government (big government is not the solution; keep the accountability as close to your backyard as possible); and  [3] Free Markets (as little regulation as is possible)

But for me, there is another motivator. And I go back to President Trump’s historic address in Warsaw, in which he talked about America’s role in global society: one of things he said was “we write symphonies.” Some of the media had no idea what he was talking about, but his comment struck me right where I live. 

The great divide in America is now a crisis: it's about the magnificent culture of Western Civilization versus a nihilistic movement to destroy that Western Civilization. We (today’s generations) can’t claim any credit for its development, but Rome and Greece are not at the forefront today, Europe is collapsing, and America is the de facto or default flagship and guardian of Western Civilization. Or at least it was.

But how long can America lead the Free World if our citizens do not acquire the skills of critical thinking and logic; learn our language and history; and embrace the American culture? The collectivist left has infiltrated, quite successfully, our major cultural institutions: academia, Hollywood, and the media. And it is weakening our once robust can-do culture. It may even be that in 50 years’ time, classical music will be performed only in the Far East, not in Europe or the United States. I am thinking here of Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, etc. and dwindling support for the orchestras.  

I spent many years in the trenches employed by various performing and cultural arts organizations, and most of my erstwhile colleagues would be in the “left’ to “hard left” categories. I identify as a fiscal conservative. Not as a Republican, but as a fiscal conservative. Until I stood up and signed up for the Tea Party, I thought I was in some sort of socio-political Siberia. That changed with the emergence of the Tea Party.

All this ties into my thoughts about the cultural collapse of America, the disintegration of behavioral self-restraint, and why I am grateful beyond words that our President is Donald J. Trump. He treasures a culture that writes symphonies, and he wants to ensure that future generations inherit that culture. 

When you have a media that calls FLOTUS Melania’s Christmas decorations at the White House a “nightmare” that would scare little children, despite the grade-schoolers flocking to her for hugs, there is, I would say, something seriously wrong with that media and those who agree with their “narrative.” I am one of many observers who think we are witnessing some form of mass hysteria. When Morning Joe warns his viewers that Trump is "mentally unstable," Joe is exhibiting the phenomenon of projection: Accuse those with whom you disagree with what you yourself are doing.

What has all this to do with my cultural concerns? In the past several years, I’ve been involved in some projects that aim to preserve our cultural assets -- much as the early Catholic monks did. They labored in many ways, and some of them sat there in seclusion, attempting to preserve the artistic, intellectual, and literary accomplishments of their cultural heritage (not to say literacy itself), out of fear that the barbarians at the gate would destroy the flowering civilization.

Archival projects today tear off a page from those monks. Maybe the Golden Age of Musical Theater (think Rodgers and Hammerstein) is not your thing, but The Musical Theater Project here in Cleveland is dedicated to such preservation. Maybe your thing is the visual arts. Cleveland has a world-class Museum of Art that offers free admission. Maybe your thing is classical music. The Cleveland Orchestra excels in performing and preserving that repertory. Maybe you’ve heard them for free at Public Square on the Fourth of July. My work over the last 20 years involved research on Shakespeare and his biography. I am so lucky that we live in close proximity to the Cleveland Public Library – it is another cultural treasure trove. 

The point is: How long will these world-class institutions survive, whether in Cleveland or anywhere else in the United States? Where are their future audiences and readers? Many schools no longer require that students read any Shakespeare or Charles Dickens. Mark Twain’s masterpiece Huckleberry Finn is banned in many schools. I weep.

I was in a conversation about some of this recently with a friend and colleague who leans liberal, but we found ourselves on common ground when it came to our cultural history and traditions. I expressed some of my concerns, and he mentioned the monks. I took his point and mentioned them above. It is frightening to even have to think that we need those monks now.

So-called "Safe Spaces" are increasing, especially on campuses. The "Snowflake" population continues to insulate itself and reject critical thinking in favor of emotional self-gratification. Identity Politics are everywhere, and as groups like BLM and Antifa turn to violence, our cultural heritage is being destroyed. Attacked. Erased. Our historical monuments -- representing our very history -- are being destroyed. Literally.

Look at what’s happening to the legacies of George Washington; Christopher Columbus; and Robert E. Lee. We expect that sort of historical erasure from ISIS – destroying Palmyra’s sacred antiquities. But we do not expect it in the United States. Except that it is happening NOW before our very eyes. Even our language is being corrupted.

So I continue with my little contribution to the Cleveland Tea Party. Most of what I blog on is related to the three Tea Party core values, often to post Action Alerts for legislative initiatives at the local, state, and federal level that affect those three core values. But for me, it also impacts the heritage that has been entrusted to us, and I speak as a senior citizen who is so grateful to our forebears for our cultural inheritance.

I stand for our National Anthem. I recite the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag. And I blog for the Cleveland Tea Party (deferring always to Ralph King, who is my mentor on whatever is going on in the political world). For me, being a Cleveland Tea Party blogger is also about a devout reverence for our Judeo-Christian traditions and values; a profound gratitude for our freedoms; and a sense of responsibility to preserve and pass on to future generations our cultural endowment, history, and yes, symphonies.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

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Losers and more empty seats

Making the rounds . . . 

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Action Alert: Amnesty Again

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RE: H-2B visas for 2018 and DACA amnesty

NumbersUSA sent this Alert out today:

NumbersUSA has learned that Congressional Leaders may include an H-2B visa increase in the year-end spending bill. The H-2B visa is the low-skilled guest worker program used to fill seasonal or temporary jobs in landscaping, food service, hospitality, and more. This program adds extra job competition for low-skilled American workers and adversely affects the wages for these jobs.

In past year's spending bills, Congress has exempted returning workers from the H-2B program, having the potential impact of quadrupling the number of these guest worker visas issued each year. For FY2017, Congress didn't exempt returning workers, but gave the Department of Homeland Security authority to issue visas beyond the annual cap. DHS ultimately increased the number of visas available by 15,000.

This new threat adds to the continuing threat of a DACA amnesty being part of the spending bill. Despite rhetoric from leaders of both Parties, Congress could still include this amnesty in the must-pass bill.

The ALERT:

Please call your U.S. Representative and two U.S. Senators and tell them to oppose a DACA amnesty and an H-2B visa increase in the must-pass, year-end spending bill.

Sen. Sherrod Brown  ~  (202) 224-2315

Sen. Rob Portman  ~  (202) 224-3353

Rep. Marcia Fudge  ~  (202) 225-7032

If Marcia Fudge is not your Representative, call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 255-3121 to reach your Rep.

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2017 official White House Christmas Portrait

Via Conservative Treehouse: 

The White House released the official Christmas Portrait – President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump are seen . . . in their official 2017 Christmas portrait, in the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington, D.C.

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Judge Roy Moore vs RINO Mitch McConnell and the Uniparty

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Mark Steyn is a favorite of mine, and here are a few of his post-election thoughts:

[Judge Roy] Moore lost narrowly enough to suggest that it wasn't the accusations that did him in. He could have survived those, just about. What killed him was that he was running against both the Democrats and the Republicans - including Alabama's own senior senator, Richard Shelby. (Trump post-Billy Bush was in a similar position, as the likes of Paul Ryan, Kelly Ayotte, etc, stampeded to distance themselves.) But Roy Moore was the nominee only because the smart guys over-invested in Luther Strange (just as in 2015 they over-invested in Jeb Bush). In the first round of primary voting, Mitch McConnell's priority was to prop up Strange by taking out what he regarded as his principal threat, Mo Brooks. Congressman Brooks would have made an excellent senator, and would have been elected in a walk, and he can also claim more plausibly than Moore to be a populist conservative aligned with the Trump agenda. But McConnell didn't want him in the Senate and, as he saw it, once Brooks was gone, Luther Strange would have no trouble walloping Moore in the run-off.

Unfortunately, Strange owed his eminence in Alabama to the patronage of a corrupt and discredited governor. As I wrote three months ago, given the disposition of GOP primary electorates in the Age of Trump, they were unlikely to turn to "a creature from the Alabama swamp ...to drain the Washington swamp". So, thanks to McConnell and the ten million bucks he blew through, Moore won the run-off and became the candidate. And thus, of all preposterous outcomes, Alabama is now a blue state.

. . . 

A final thought on Moore: Yes, he's a kook, and an insufficiently nimble one to dodge the incoming schoolgirls. But as I wrote three months ago:

Whatever one feels about Roy Moore, he's principled enough to be willing to lose his job over the Ten Commandments and same-sex marriage. That's unusual in American politics.

Read Steyn’s full column here. I think he is correct to place blame on Mitch McConnell and the GOPe Uniparty. 

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Catching up on last week’s news: Mike Gibbons running for U.S. Senate

map image credit: cleveland.com 

Last week, Jeremy Pelzer at cleveland.com reported (h/t Ralph King):

COLUMBUS, Ohio--U.S. Senate candidate Mike Gibbons was endorsed by the Franklin County Republican Party on Wednesday by an overwhelming margin, giving the Cleveland-area businessman a high-profile win in his underdog bid to snatch the GOP nomination from Treasurer Josh Mandel.

The county party's central committee vote was 85-16, according to Gibbons. It's the first time Gibbons has been endorsed by a county party; the Cuyahoga County GOP previously endorsed Mandel.

Read the rest here. Mr. Gibbons's website is here.

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Army-Navy Game Puts National Football League to Shame

photo credit: cbssports.com

Tom Joyce reports at Lifezette on yesterday’s Army-Navy game:

The Army, which honored the 10th Mountain Division with their uniforms on Saturday, ran for 221 yards on 49 carries while the Navy, which honored the Blue Angels, ran for 294 yards on 46 carries. . . .

Thanks to the team's win and its victory over the Air Force Falcons earlier in the season, the Army received the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy, which is given to the top military football school annually. . . .

President Donald Trump himself tweeted earlier in the day that he would be watching the game. Following the results, he offered congratulations to the Army's Black Knights. . . 

No matter what the teams' records are coming into the game or which one comes out on top, the American people are still happy to support these two sides. Without them and the rest of the military academies and the military overall, there would be no United States, in which citizens are free to enjoy things like football.

The game, quite frankly, makes the NFL anthem kneelers look even worse than they already do.

Joyce’s full column, with the President's Congratulatory tweet, is here.

UPDATE: Here's a video of the National Anthem before the game.

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Trump storms

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Need a little pick-me-up? David Prentice at American Thinker has some thoughts on President Trump's accomplishments in his first year in office, despite a corrupt and hostile media that lies about him every day, despite the GOP elites that obstruct his agenda every inch of the way, despite the howling from environmentalists, the academic community, etc., etc. Prentice’s question: “how in the hell is Trump doing this?” Below is a short extract from his article proposing some answers:

The art of building is an underestimated skill.   It requires a combination of deep intelligence, blue collar toughness, a mind capable of great focus and flexibility.   Walking onto a construction site is like walking into a washing machine.  Everything is moving; machines, people, tools, and lots of noise.  Lots of noise.  All being driven to a finish line of time, money, and hopefully the integrity of a job that will endure.  It’s the Wild West of being in business, and you’d better be prepared to live your life in a storm that doesn’t stop until each project is complete.  After which you are fired.  Well, not really, but you are terminated with your final payment, and if you’re good, you get to start another job all over again because you won a bid against other companies that want the same job.   The storm never ends.

. . .

It’s a storm that invigorates you to succeed, or drives you to fail.  You push, you press to figure out the process and master it.    Or go home.  Donald Trump loved this process early on. It was his early training, it was what molded his outlook, it was what tested him.  His life was a storm.  He used the storm of New York building to vault his company to the top of the heap.  He used the storm while building nationwide, and worldwide to propel it even further.

This is a man whose whole life has been lived within storms.  He thrives on them, welcomes them, and uses them to achieve his goals. 

It’s clear Trump’s political career is following the same course.  Whoever tries to engulf him within a storm loses.  The left has been calling on storm after storm, and they are still losing.  They don’t get it yet.  Return to that list of accomplishments cited earlier.  He is implementing his promises one at a time, the whole time the left conjures multiple deluges, dark ones, like the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

It’s amazing to watch.

Read the rest here. And yes, it is amazing to watch.

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UPDATE on Amnesty (A "No Action Needed" Alert)

NumbersUSA sent out this newsletter earlier today:

Thirty-three Republican U.S. Representatives want to put young illegal aliens who received the unconstitutional DACA amnesty ahead of the interests of American workers, according to a letter they all signed addressed to House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier this week.

The letter signers urged Speaker Ryan to immediately pass legislation that would grant a permanent amnesty to approximately 700,000 illegal aliens before the end of the year.

While they did mention their desire to improve border security and to fix the "broken immigration system", they offered no specifics. And they did not suggest that those fixes or any other immigration-related provisions be paired with DACA legislation.

We write in support of passing of a permanent legislative solution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients before the end of the year. ...

We are compelled to act immediately because many DACA recipients are about to lose or have already lost their permits in the wake of the program's rescission. ...

We must pass legislation that protects DACA recipients from deportation and gives them the opportunity to apply for a more secured status in our country as soon as possible. Reaching across the aisle to protect DACA recipients before the holidays is the right thing to do.

You can read the full letter here: https://www.numbersusa.com/news/34-house-republicans-call-daca-amnesty

The letter's signees -- led by Reps. Scott Taylor of Virginia and Dan Newhouse of Washington -- fail to address any of the unintended consequences that would result from passing amnesty-only legislation. They ignore interior enforcement, including a requirement for all employers to use E-Verify for all new hires, that would cut off the jobs magnet and significantly reduce future illegal immigration. An amnesty without E-Verify would only guarantee demands for future amnesties for the new illegal aliens who would be enticed to come.

The letter fails to address Chain Migration, which if not ended, would multiply the size the amnesty, adding millions more foreign workers to the labor market to compete with unemployed and underemployed American workers. Pres. Trump, himself, has said that an end to Chain Migration must be part of any DACA deal, but the letter signers instead refer to an outdated quote from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that leaves out Chain Migration.

The full list of the letter signers is at the link above to the full letter, or click here. I am pleased to say that none of the signatories are from Ohio, so there’s no Action Alert today to get on the phone to them.

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Remembering Pearl Harbor on December 7 * Gallery #2

Today marks the 76^th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Below are photographs taken a few years ago by Cleveland Tea Party’s Pat Dooley Photography at Pearl Harbor.

Gallery #2

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