Tea Party Patriots Ordinary citizens reclaiming America's founding principles.

Sunday, January 7, 2018

More info on DACA / DREAMers amnesty

art credit: beforeitsnews.com

Re: Amnesty for DREAMers, I’ll be re-posting the Action Alert from last week, starting tomorrow, Monday (DC weather prevented most calls from being answered last week). But over the weekend, several blogs, especially American Thinker, have reported on some facts and developments that relate to DACA.   

From American Thinker blogs: Are most of the DREAMers “valedictorians and Medal of Honor-level military heroes” or are they “functional illiterates” and “underachievers”? Thomas Lifson reports here. And in another blog, Lifson sums up the dilemma for the Democrats pushing for DREAMer amnesty, and asks whether Sen Chuck Schumer can risk a government shutdown:

President Trump engineered this dilemma for Schumer by rescinding Obama’s executive order creating the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, but giving Congress until March 2018 to come up with an alternative approach. That trap is now closing in on Schumer. He has 10 Democrat senators up for re-election in November in states that voted for Trump. Will Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, John Tester of Montana, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri be willing to tell their voters that they think amnesty for a group that includes MS 13 members is so important that the government ought to be shut down? Or, if President Trump and the GOP offer some form of amnesty that does not include chain migration (thereby rewarding the parents that illegally brought their children here) but does include border wall funding, are they willing to vote against it?

We are watching another negotiation-in-process.
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Saturday, January 6, 2018

Progressive vs conservative solutions

 
A. F. Branco cartoon at legal insurrection

Ever since their Feb. 2016 issue dedicated to “Conservatives Against Trump,” I have been wary of National Review online. But historian Victor Davis Hanson recently published an essay on “The Great Experiment” at the NRO website, and he concludes:  

The true test of conservative solutions is to see how things are after four years of a strongly conservative president, with at least two years of a Republican Congress.
. . .
Antidote One, of unapologetic progressivism under Obama, did not lead to an economically robust and growing America, one safer abroad in a more secure world, and more cohesive, united, and stable at home — at least if that truly was the leftist agenda rather than the more hushed opposite goal of more equal but poorer Americans, America as just another nation among many, and a cultural revolution aimed at accentuating rather than assimilating race, class, and gender identities.

We shall see if the subsequent Antidote Two, of unregretful conservatism under Trump, will provide what conservatism has always promised: greater prosperity, security, and unity.

The engines of prosperity are already revving up, yet we still see anti-Trump foot-stamping, temper tantrums, and hysteria on display in the media (see cartoon at top), in academia, in the entertainment industry, and in groups like BLM and Antifa. No unity there. Yet. Perhaps when take-home pay increases due to the tax cuts, some of the hysteria will start to subside. Anyway, you can read the rest of Hanson’s essay here.

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Friday, January 5, 2018

Action Alert: No Dreamer Amnesty




 Image credit: aldawood81.wordpress.com

Action Alert: No DACA  No Dreamer Amnesty!

UPDATE: Callers are getting either a busy signal or a message that due to inclement weather, the office is closed and the caller is requested to try again on the next business day. I'll re-post this on Monday. 

Our friend Steve Salvi at Ohio Jobs & Justice Pac sent out this Action Alert:

Take Action this minute and call the White House:
White House comment line: 202-456-1111
What to say:
Ask the President to oppose any illegal alien DREAMER amnesty and to immediately end his unconstitutional DACA program.
Be polite but firm.

Need talking points or background before you make your call? The Cleveland Tea Party blog citing Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) on DACA is here. Our blog citing Mark Steyn, with link to Ann Coulter, both on the priority of stopping illegal immigration, is here. 


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Thursday, January 4, 2018

Ohio Division of Liquor “Out of” Control

 headline from 1933:

image credit: mafiapedia.wordpress.com


 headline from 2018:

Ohioans Are Going to Have a Hard Time 
Buying Their Favorite Vodka in 2018

John Ellis at PJ Media reports on a development at the Ohio Division of Liquor Control:

Ohio's Orwellian named Division of Liquor Control is forcing many Ohioans who want to enjoy their favorite flavored vodka to spend their money in neighboring states thanks to its decision to place new limits on liquor sales.
. . .
Making the decision for consumers, Ohio's Division of Liquor Control has decided that over 700 liquor brands will no longer be sold in the state. According to a spokesperson [via Cincinnati Business Courier], this decision was made to, "to free up shelf space for more popular products as well as new-to-market products."

Our household doesn’t consume much in the way of liquor, but undoubtedly some Tea Party people will not be happy about this. PJ Media provides the list of banned liquor:

If you're interested in seeing the complete list of now-banned alcohols in Ohio, click here.

Read the entire report here. Out. Of. Control.
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Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Healthcare in 2018


cartoon by Jake Fuller via caymancompass.com

Residents in Geneva, New York have been promoting single-payer (i.e., government-run) healthcare as better than healthcare provided by the private sector:

Those supporting an effort to get universal health care in New York — including members of a fledgling organization in Geneva — hope to convince state legislators of the need through the stories of their constituents.
. . .
The goal is to gather information with these surveys to help lobby lawmakers to support the New York Health Act, which would provide comprehensive, universal health coverage to all state residents, and which would replace private insurance coverage.

Coverage would be funded through a graduated tax on payroll and non-payroll taxable income, based on ability to pay. 

These people should be careful what they wish for. Even with the Obamacare mandate eliminated, repealing the entire Obamacare bill remains a legislative priority for President Trump. It should be a priority for McConnell and Ryan, because this is what government-run healthcare looks like (posted at Hannity.com on Jan-03-18):

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service announced this week that it was canceling all “routine operations” until February, saying all “non-emergency” procedures will be delayed after a flu-outbreak left hospitals overcrowded and under-funded.

According to the Telegraph, the nation’s government-run health services axed over 50,000 operations in every hospital in the UK following claims by doctors that patients were being treated as if they were in “third world countries.”
. . .
The chaos comes as prominent Democrats and liberal legislators like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders advocate for a similar, single-payer healthcare system in the United States. Left-wing advocates often point to Canada and the United Kingdom as an “ideal” vision for the future of America’s health industry.

The NHS is closing clinics, cancelling surgeries, the hospitals are overcrowded, they are even “running out of corridor space,” and there are ambulances lined up outside

At present, the Senate does not have enough GOP votes to repeal Obamacare (see here). The elimination of the mandate was a good start, but just a start. I still think that if the exemption from Obamacare currently enjoyed by members of Congress were eliminated, they'd find a way to get the job done.

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Tuesday, January 2, 2018

It can happen. Hillary to Trump.


It can happen. During the election cycles when Hillary (that’s “Felonia von Pantsuit” to you, Kurt Schlichter) was a potential or actual nominee for President, there was a website called “Hillary is 44" – and it promoted Hillary in every way possible. Then, in 2016, something happened to the website. On the 2017 anniversary of the November 2016 election, "Hillary is 44" published this:

On November 11, 2016 we traveled from being the premier Hillary Clinton website to an endorsement of Donald J. Trump for President.

On November 4, 2016 we predicted that Donald J. Trump would win the election. We provided a map of a state by state analysis. We declared on that Friday before the Tuesday elections three states “too close to call”. Those states? Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, all of which Donald J. Trump won.

Since then, the website has morphed into an informed and perceptive resource for those attempting to follow and understand the developments and dynamics of the Trump administration, his strategy to drain the swamp, and so on. If you had told me in October 2016 that this pro-Hillary website would flip to one that celebrates our “MAGAnificent” President, I’d have laughed out loud.

It can happen. 
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Monday, January 1, 2018

Fake News Propaganda – a Case Study


art credit: Henry Payne cartoon at Townhall 

Happy New Year! I’m starting off 2018 with a close-up look at how the media manufactures Fake News.

Frank Miele publishes news commentary in the Daily Inter Lake, a Montana newspaper. On Dec. 30, he ran an editorial about an AP wire report, the misinformation it contained, and his subsequent efforts to wrench a correction out of the AP higher-ups (h/t Thomas Lifson). It is a bit of a read, but I am linking to it, because it provides a look inside a newsroom and how “Fake News” gets so widely disseminated. It is also a classic illustration of Trump Derangement Syndrome infecting the media pushing progressive propaganda. The Russian Collusion phony baloney is starting to collapse of its own weight, and Miele’s report is related to that, insofar as Andrew McCabe is one of the cast of characters at the FBI. Miele’s report starts off:
I took a rare shift as news editor last Saturday, which gave me an unexpected chance to put my finger in the dike holding back the flood of fake news caused by those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. 
As I was sifting through the Associated Press news report looking for wire stories worth putting into the Sunday paper, one story on the news digest caught my attention right away: “President Donald Trump reacts to reports about the retirement of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by retweeting falsehoods about McCabe’s wife.” 
“Oh no,” I thought. “What has Trump done now?” Because even though I am a Trump supporter, I’ve learned that Twitter can be a cause of trouble in the Trump administration as well as a frequent force for good.
But when I looked up the story, I discovered that my worries were unfounded. So, unfortunately, was the story.
When I read AP reporter Darlene Superville’s story, it was immediately obvious that she had either misunderstood Trump’s tweet or intentionally lied about it. She also plainly didn’t know the meaning of the verb “retweet,” since Trump had tweeted an original statement, not a quoted one.
Getting to the truth will take a bit of context, so here goes . . .

And he goes on from there in some detail. He eventually gets a correction from the AP, but here’s his conclusion, and one which I will put in my mental file for the next time I have a conversation with a liberal on media propaganda:
It was a small step, but an important one. Yes, I felt like the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike to stop the floodwaters, but it may be a hollow victory in the war on fake news. I have to wonder about all those hundreds of editors who put the same erroneous story in their newspapers or websites last weekend without question. Didn’t anyone other than me question the accuracy of the report? Besides, with the power of the Internet, the damage may be irreparable. I checked on Tuesday and found out that the fake version of the story was listed in a Google search 7,790 times whereas the corrected version only appeared on 5,710 websites.
Let the reader beware. 
You can read the rest here. It’s an uphill battle, so please pass it on!

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