The Cleveland Air Show on Labor Day weekend

Always thrilling and very noisy.

  

Note: Final performances tomorrow.

# # #

Tech Giants War on Free Speech

art credit: pamelageller.com

Are we losing our First Amendment Rights?

In case you don’t follow Pamela Geller, she specializes in defending the right to free speech and, in particular, threats to free speech presented by jihad and sharia law. Geller is fearless, and she is under perpetual death threats.

Quite recently, subsequent to the Southern Poverty Law Center putting another target on her back, her access to PayPal was withdrawn. Enough readers complained, and PayPal backed down and restored access. Now it’s Google search drives and YouTubes that are limiting her right to free speech. 

If you do not bookmark her website, you might never hear about this. Jihad and sharia law may not be your particular focus, but your right to free speech is probably toward the top of your priority list. It would be for any Tea Party person. We already know that under the previous administration, the weaponized IRS targeted all sorts of conservative and liberty groups. It's getting worse.

Check out Pamela Geller’s chilling Sept. 2 report here. A few extracts:

My website and posts have been scrubbed from Google search. Fourteen years and over forty thousand posts. Google Adsense has banned my account. Google is blacklisting and has admitted to working with alt-left smear groups to silence opposition. And it’s not just me, it’s all criticism of jihad and sharia.

Facebook has blocked my news-feed. My twitter account is shadowbanned. I have been blocked from uploading videos to YouTube [as] punishment for 2007 video on jihad (and YouTube demonetized all of my videos). Paypal suspended me until an outpouring of condemnation and outrage forced a reversal.

Is this really America?

Read her full report here. Scroll down the article for readers' suggestions on what we can be doing to reverse these dangerous developments. It’s OUR problem!

And for Geller’s equally chilling report on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Aim in Life to Destroy These Groups Completely,” click here.

# # #

September 3: National Day of Prayer for the Victims of Hurricane Harvey

photo credit: Firenews

From the White House website:

President Donald J. Trump Proclaims September 3, 2017, as a National Day of Prayer for the Victims of Hurricane Harvey and for our National Response and Recovery Efforts.

Whether you are a church-goer or not, consider packing up a carton to send down to Texas of non-perishable foodstuffs, unopened toiletries, and other items needed by those whose homes are flooded. Details in a previous blog here. And I found one website with street addresses in Texas should you decide to ship yourself: click KBTX. It includes lists of items needed at each drop-off location.

# # #

Ways to help Hurricane Harvey victims

image credit: crowdrise

The Texas clean-up efforts, especially in the Houston area, are underway, and I found a helpful list of organizations on the Fox 8 Cleveland page that can help Northeast Ohioans help Hurricane Harvey victims.

Many of the efforts are still ongoing (the list was initially published on Aug 29). Note: A lot of the usual relief organizations, including the Red Cross, were requesting cash rather than in-kind donations. We chose the Mira Family Charity, even though they were so overwhelmed with donations that they could not (as of Friday) arrange pick-up of non-perishable food, clothes, etc., so a friend of ours drove the carload of goods to their Payne Ave. drop-off point.

Below are some of the places Fox 8 lists, where you can drop off items to help.

The Catholic Diocese of Cleveland has scheduled a special second collection, the weekend of September 9-10 at all Masses. The funds will be channeled directly to Catholic Charities USA which is on the ground and assisting the flood-ravaged area.

Mario's Barbershop at  7526 Broadview Rd. in  Parma is collecting water, diapers, and non-perishable food.

The City of Stow is helping the Texas Diaper Bank provide much-needed diapers to families. The city will accept donations of diapers or money at Stow City Hall on 3760 Darrow Road.   Stow will also collect at the annual Summer Blast Sept. 2 and 3 at Silver Springs Park. Stow City Council will be taking donations at the council booth.

Mira Family Charity - Operation Help Houston is holding a stuff the truck campaign Wednesday, August 30 through Friday, September 1. All donations can be drop off at Tenable Protective Services 2423 Payne Avenue. Cleveland Ohio 44114. Between 7am and 6 pm thru September 1st. If you need items picked up, call (216) 401-5148. [Note: Pretty sure this organization is scheduling a second Stuff-the-Truck next week. Give them a call.]

Middleburg Heights businesses (Sips & Such, Euphoria Vapor and M of Hope) have organized a drive for the following non-profit organizations in Texas: Houston Food Bank, The Texas Diaper Bank, Austin Pets Alive, SPCA of Texas. Drop off is at 7535 Pearl Road in  Middleburg Heights Wednesday through Saturday from 7 am - 9 pm. Click here to see a list of items they need.

The list at Fox 8’s page has more giving opportunities. The webpage suggests checking back for updates.

# # #

A Tea Party Salute to the Cajun Navy!

The Cajun Navy comes to the rescue in Houston. Below are extracts from an article by Sally Jenkins at the WaPo (hat tip American Thinker):

At a time such as this, you want the guys who can still thread a line when their hands are wet and cold. They’re descending on Houston in their fleets of flat-bottomed aluminum boats, the sport fishermen and duck hunters outnumbering the government rescuers by the hundreds, their skiffs sitting low in the floodwaters with their human catch in the back, clutching plastic-wrapped possessions.

The country is suddenly grateful for this “Cajun Navy,” for their know-how, for the fact that they can read a submerged log in the water, and haul their boats over tree stumps and levees and launch them from freeway junctions. There are no regulators to check their fishing licenses or whether they have a fire extinguisher and life preservers on board, which they don’t. They’re used to maneuvering through the cypress of Caddo Lake or the hydrilla and coontail of the Atchafalaya, where the water might be four feet or it might rise to 18, and the stinking bog is called “coffee grinds” because of the way boots sink in it. Spending hours in monsoon rains doesn’t bother them, because they know ducks don’t just show up on a plate, and they’ve learned what most of us haven’t, that dry comfort is not the only thing worth seeking.

. . .

They speak an oddly poetic language, of spinnerbait and jigs, chatterbait and Texas rigs, of palomar knots and turls. They have suspended their pursuit of bass and black crappies, blue gills and redfish, crawfish and panfish, to motor through subdivisions, shirtless in the rain. You can’t help but be struck by just how much they know how to do — and how much your citified self doesn’t. Trim a rocking boat, tie a secure knot, navigate the corduroying displaced water, and interpret the faint dull colors in the mist-heavy clouds.

Buster Stoker, 21, is a heavy equipment operator for R&R Construction in Sulphur, La., and spends the rest of his time in his 17-foot aluminum Pro Drive marsh boat, fishing for alligator-gar in the heat of summer and chasing fowl through water-thickets in the winter.

“The best day on the water is every day on the water,” he said.

He and several other construction colleagues met in the company parking lot Monday morning at 5 a.m., loaded up with gas and supplies, and headed toward Houston. They launched their little fleet of 14 craft from the intersection of Highway 90 and 526, and over the next several hours they pulled hundreds of people out of their flooded homes in subdivisions, hauling them aboard like gasping bass.

. . .

This Cajun Navy is a nebulous, informal thing. It has no real corps or officers. It’s “an intensely informal and unorganized operation,” says Academy Award-winning filmmaker Allan Durand, a Lafayette, La., native., who did a documentary on the “Cajun Navy” volunteer-boats following Katrina.

. . .

The same groups have by now acquired deep experience in storm-aid and are growing thanks to social media. They were critical in helping Baton Rouge residents during historic flooding there a year ago, when federal help wasn’t forthcoming. It’s a movement basically founded on the realization that large government agencies aren’t quick-moving.

According to Honore, they have become utterly essential.

“The first-responders aren’t big enough to do this,” he said. “You might have a police force of 3,000, and maybe 200 know how to handle a boat.”

Full story is here.

# # #

Labor Day weekend Air Show

This year it's the Thunderbirds!

The Cleveland Air Show runs this weekend, Sept. 2,3, and 4. If you live anywhere near the downtown area, starting today, you'll be able to see - and hear - some of the rehearsals. 

# # #

Must Read of the Day

image credit: FreedomWorks 

This little blog tries to find news, activities, action alerts, and ideas of interest to Cleveland Tea Party people. Over the weekend, Clarice Feldman at the American Thinker linked to a piece in The Federalist that analyzes the unchecked propaganda machines in the media and in our government. It’s long, so I’ve extracted the sub-headings to give an idea of the ground Stella Morabito covers. It explains, for example, why the "Antifa" groups are the opposite of what they claim to be. Forget the length, it’s still a Must Read.

The title: America’s Post-Charlottesville Nervous Breakdown Was Deliberately Induced: Americans are being emotionally manipulated to take up cause with those whose ultimate purpose is the repeal of the First Amendment and erasure of national memory.

·         Why Are We Being Assaulted With Fringe Concerns?

·         Element 1: Loading the Language

·         Element 2: Using Distorted Language to Rub Resentments Raw

·         Alinskyite Cultivation of Hatred

·         Element 3: Mass Manipulation Via Mass-Media Propaganda

·         Media Collusion with Rioting

·         The End Result: Division and Loneliness

Conclusion: because of the gaslighting tactics of power elites, we are actually in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

It’s doesn’t make for fun reading, but it may help explain the daily “news” broadcasts - including all the violent images that seem to be running in endless loops - or some of the world-views of friends and relatives. Full article here. 

# # #