About that wall

Art credit: raymondpronk.wordpress

About that wall...

Over at Conservative Treehouse we read that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is outraged at GOP candidate Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall at the southern border of the US. The Prince

has called Donald Trump a disgrace to the United States following his call for a ban on Muslims entering the country, and demanded the Republican front-runner withdraw from the U.S. presidential race.

. . .

“You are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America,” Prince Alwaleed, the chairman of Kingdom Holding, said on his Twitter account, addressing Trump and referring to the Republican Party.

Screen shot of the Twitter Feed is at the link here.

This report links to The Jerusalem Post here:

Just over a week ago, IS militants launched an attack on a Saudi border post, killing a senior Saudi general and two border guards, marking the first direct IS assault on Saudi grounds, The Telegraph reported. 

In an effort to defend itself from the IS threat and further attacks, the [Saudi] kingdom launched a massive project to construct a "Great Wall" along it's northern border with Iraq, where IS presence is heavy. 

Proposed in 2006, the border zone entails five layers of fencing, supplemented by watch towers, radar cameras, night-vision security, and a heavy presence of extra Saudi troops, according to the report. 

The wall is set to extend nearly 1000-km and will combine fence and ditch barriers along the northern Saudi border. 

Riyadh hopes that the completed project will fend off IS threats and keep the relatively closed kingdom, closed indeed.

Hypocrisy.

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Dec 7 Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

Photo credit of the Arizona: Pat J Dooley

[Wikipedia]: National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, which is observed annually in the United States on December 7, is to remember and honor the 2,403 victims who were killed in the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. On August 23, 1994,United States Congress . . .designated December 7 of each year as National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.^[1] National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is also referred to as Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day or Pearl Harbor Day. It is a tradition to fly the Flag of the United States at half-staff until sunset in honor of dead patriots.

It is even more important that we remember these patriots when we are perpetually informed that the biggest threat we face today is global warming.

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For those who don't "do" PC

This image has been making the rounds on FB and elsewhere ... in case you missed it.

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Giving thanks for abundance is giving thanks for free enterprise

Photo credit: en.wikipedia.org

Republished from this blog site in 2013:

What Thanksgiving really means To Americans

A couple of years ago, Jerry Bowyer, writing in Forbes Magazine, recounted the real significance of Thanksgiving, a significance that is too often lost among the turkey dinners, football games, and stories about Indians who befriended the early settlers.

In 1620, the Plymouth pilgrims based their original community on Plato’s Republic, a collective model that appealed to their religious convictions and morality. But the communal model didn’t work for them. After over two years of failing harvests and resulting malnutrition, disease, starvation, and deaths, the pilgrims replaced the communal model with a model based on private property. The ensuing harvest was abundant, with surpluses available for trade.

Their Thanksgiving celebrated the triumph of the individual, private property, and incentive, over collectivism. At first, the pilgrims were guilty because they were putting self-interest over the seeming altruism of socialism. Yet the devout survivors had learned two lessons: 1) that a theoretical and utopian collective society fails, and (2) in real life, private property and capitalism produce prosperity. For them, God, not Plato, knew best. Accepting the principles of private property and self-interest was God’s way of harnessing self-interest to the greater good. We know all of this because an elder of the Plymouth plantation, William Bradford, kept a journal and it survives today. Mr. Bowyer’s earlier article, with additional historical background, is here.) 

Here’s Bowyer's “How A Failed Commune Gave Us What is Now Thanksgiving.”

It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace freedom. One of the earliest and arguably most historically significant North American colonies was Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. As I’ve outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons From a Capitalist Thanksgiving), the original colony had written into its charter a system of communal property and labor.

As William Bradford recorded in his Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had formerly been known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and unproductive. Resources were squandered, vegetables were allowed to rot on the ground and mass starvation was the result. And where there is starvation, there is plague. After 2 1/2 years, the leaders of the colony decided to abandon their socialist mandate and create a system which honored private property. The colony survived and thrived and the abundance which resulted was what was celebrated at that iconic Thanksgiving feast.

As my friend Reuven Brenner has taught me, history is a series of experiments: The Human Gamble. Some gambles work and are adopted by history and some do not and should be abandoned by it. The problem is that the human gamble only works if there is a record of experimental outcomes and if decision makers consult that record. For many years, the story of the first failed commune of Plymouth Bay was part of the collective memory of American students. But Progressive Education found that story unhelpful and it has fallen into obscurity, which explains why (as I alluded to before) a well-educated establishment figure like Jared Bernstein would be unaware of it.

I’m often asked why our current leadership class forgets the lessons of the past so often. They are, after all, very smart men and women. Don’t they know that collectivism will fail?

No, they don’t. Not anymore. For much of our history, our leaders were educated in the principles which were to help them avoid errors once they have joined the ruling class. They studied to learn how to not misuse power. Now our leaders learn nothing of the dangers of abusing power: their education is entirely geared to its acquisition.  All of their neurons are trained on that one objective – to get to the top. What they do when they get there is a matter for later. And what happens to the country when they’re done with their experiments is beside the point: after all, their experiments will not really affect them personally. History is the story of the limitations of human power. But the limits of power is a topic for people who doubt themselves and their right to rule, not the self-anointed.

That’s how it is now, and that’s how it was in 1620. The charter of the Plymouth Colony reflected the most up-to-date economic, philosophical and religious thinking of the early 17th century. Plato was in vogue then, and Plato believed in central planning by intellectuals in the context of communal property, centralized state education, state centralized cultural offerings and communal family structure. For Plato, it literally did take a village to raise a child. This collectivist impulse reflected itself in various heretical offshoots of Protestant Christianity with names like The True Levelers, and the Diggers, mass movements of people who believed that property and income distinctions should be eliminated, that the wealthy should have their property expropriated and given to what we now call the 99%. This kind of thinking was rife in the 1600s and is perhaps why the Pilgrim settlers settled for a charter which did not create a private property system.

But the Pilgrims learned and prospered. And what they learned, we have forgotten and we fade.  Now, new waves of ignorant masses flood into parks and public squares. New Platonists demand control of other people’s property. New True Levelers legally occupy the prestige pulpits of our nation, secular and sacred. And now, as then, the productive class of our now gigantic, colony-turned-superpower, learn and teach again, the painful lessons of history. Collectivism violates the iron laws of human nature. It has always failed. It is always failing, and it will always fail. I thank God that it is failing now. Providence is teaching us once again.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A specific plan to defeat ISIS?

Photo credit: GettyImages

As a Cleveland Tea Party Patriot, I receive regular emails from Tea Party Patriots’ national office and also their PAC, Tea Party Patriot Citizen Fund. Today, the email from the Citizen Fund reported on Ted Cruz’s efforts to win support from evangelicals; Jeb Bush’s message on national security; and Rubio's plan to defeat ISIL [ISIS]. The section refers the reader to Senator Rubio’s plan, published on the Politico blog here. 

I would also refer the reader to Ed Straker’s take on Sen. Rubio’s plan over at American Thinker here. Its title is “Marco Rubio wants to defeat ISIS by arming ISIS and fighting its enemies,” and here is an extract (Rubio's words appear in gray highlight):

Marco Rubio has a plan for defeating ISIS.  . . .

As president, I would demand that Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government grant greater autonomy to Sunnis, and would provide direct military support to Sunnis and the Kurds if Baghdad fails to support them.

Guess who is currently supporting ISIS, lock, stock, and barrel: the Sunnis!  Rubio would arm them directly.

Cutting off oxygen to ISIL also requires defeating Assad in Syria. I would declare no-fly zones to ground Assad’s air force and coalition-controlled “safe zones” in the country to stop his military

If Assad is defeated, can you guess who will move in and take over his territory?  I'll give you a hint: the group's name begins with the letter "I."

. . .

Marco Rubio is not a brilliant foreign policy strategist.  . . .  When Politico starts publishing his press releases, you know you're reading the words of an establishment Republican.

Cleveland Tea Party Patriots is nonpartisan and does not endorse or contribute to any candidate, but it does want to contribute to debates on major issues, in this case, a strategy to defeat ISIS. 

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There will be more out-of-control immigration

Art credit: thepoliticalforums.com

A meaningless bill to put some "safeguards" 

into immigration background checks

From cleveland.com:  

Northeast Ohio Democrats Tim Ryan and Marcy Kaptur were among 47 Democrats who joined with the majority of House Republicans on Thursday to pass a controversial bill that would increase government background checks done before Syrian or Iraqi refugees are admitted to the United States.

All Ohio's Republicans backed the bill, which passed by a veto-proof vote of 289 to 137.

But the bill is toothless. From Conservative Treehouse:

House Votes On Meaningless Refugee Bill – “SAFE Act” Passes With Veto Proof 289-137 Support….

Under the Paul Ryan approved bill -American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act of 2015– the FBI director would be required to certify the background investigation of each refugee from Iraq and Syria.  And only refugees from Iraq and Syria.  And if you are Syrian and you walk into Turkey to begin applying for refugee status, presto, the bill doesn’t cover you.

The SAFE ACT requires the FBI, along with the secretary of Homeland Security and the director of National Intelligence, to certify to Congress that each refugee is not a security threat. The legislation also requires the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s Office to independently assess the refugee approvals.

However, the bill is largely meaningless and well beyond toothless. Senator Sessions (R-AL) noted refugees and migrants from nine different countries have been implicated in terrorism incidents over the past year.  “Ignoring this reality, the American SAFE Act allows the president to continue to bring in as many refugees as he wants from anywhere in the world,” Sessions said previously. 

There is nothing in the bill to prevent refujihadis from crossing our borders. Just more Kabuki theater from Congress.

UPDATE Nov-20 4:30 pm: Cleveland.com reports that

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson this week joined dozens of other mayors of major U.S. cities in affirming that Syrians seeking refuge from their war-torn homeland are welcome here.

"The City of Cleveland has always opened her arms to refugees, regardless of where they are from," Jackson wrote Wednesday in an emailed statement.

Jackson joins Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings -- who all said they would help resettle Syrian refugees in their cities, despite the recent wave of panic among politicians about the perceived connections between Syrians, the Islamic State and last week's terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people.

Mayors of 18 other cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago also signed a letter sent to President Barack Obama in September, pledging to work with the administration to help resettle Syrian refugees in their towns.

But like many of those mayors, Jackson's views on the issue depart from those of his state's governor.

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Kasich refuses Syrian refugees - but the Obama Administration doesn't care

art credit: IndyThisWeek

Cleveland.com reports that Gov. Kasich went on record to refuse to admit Syrian refugees into Ohio, but over at neoneocon.com, we find that the 16 (and counting) governors who want to refuse admitting “refugees” probably can’t block the feds. Some refugees are already here, of course. Rush has a map here (scroll down a tad).

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