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.

# # #

Judge Roy Moore vs RINO Mitch McConnell and the Uniparty

image credit: sol1776.blogspot.com 

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. 

# # #

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.

# # #

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.

# # #

Trump storms

Image credit: cowgernation.com

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.

# # #

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.

# # # .

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

# # #