Cartoon of the Day

Cartoonist Gary Varvel at Townhall:

image credit: Townhall 

Lots more laughs at the GOP website announcing winners of President Trump's 2017 Fake News Awards, starting with Paul Krugman. Link is here. 

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Sparta Report’s Biggest Fools Of The Year

cartoon credit: joyofjello.com

Sparta Report announced its Winners Of The 2017 Fools Of The Year Contest, determined by over 1,000 of their readers. My kind of contest.

The big winner is NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The other winners were CNN’s rudest moron, Jim Acosta (includes video of his arrogant and unprofessional meltdown in front of President Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan; and Hillary “Felonia von Pantsuit” Clinton.

Fun commentary / photos / video are here.

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Keep the immigration enforcement/no amnesty calls flowing

art credit: beforeitsnews.com

From our friend Steve Salvi at Ohio Jobs & Justice Pac :

The backlash that Pres. Trump has gotten from immigration activists is moving him away from his "I sign anything" stance just days ago. Keep the immigration enforcement/no amnesty calls and social media posts flowing into the White House and US Congress! We're still far from stopping an amnesty let alone any end to chain migration, visa lottery, and funding for border protection.

So here are two recent CTP Action Alerts, re-posted:

#1   Take Action 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 the unconstitutional DACA program.

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. 

This blog also linked to additional facts and background information about the DREAMers amnesty. Click here.

#2   DACA Amnesty Alert from NumbersUSA:

CAN YOU HELP STOP THIS? The bi-partisan Senate proposal is a DACA amnesty that

(1) continues Chain Migration

(2) rejects E-Verify

(3) gives green cards to TPS, and

(4) rewards parents of DACA with lifetime of work permits

In other words, the Senate proposal is the opposite of the House of Representatives DACA bill -- H.R. 4760 -- that NumbersUSA is endorsing.

Your senators need to know that their voters see the so-called balanced senate amnesty deal as a scary joke.

Phone Sen. Sherrod Brown at (202) 224-2315

Phone Sen. Rob Portman at (202) 224-3353

Pick one or more numbered items from above that you oppose and tell the Senators' staffers that is why they should make it clear that they want nothing to do with that "Durbin-Flake amnesty proposal" presented to the White House Thursday.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

photo credit: alcalde.texasexes.org

The above pictures monument of Rev Martin Luther King, Jr. is at the University of Texas; it was installed in 1999. It captures the inspiration of the man. 

Then there is the The Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial monument in DC, which was dedicated in 2011. At that time, blogger Aaron Worthing at patterico’s pontifications had this to say:

However, there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Critics have openly asked why a black, or at least an American, artist was not chosen and even remarked that Dr King appears slightly Asian in Mr Lei’s rendering.

And of course the actual work was mainly outsourced:

Mr Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader’s son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha.

More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons, were then shipped from Xiamen to the port of Baltimore, and reassembled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project.

Personally, I think to focus on the ethnicity of the man kind of misses the point of Dr. King’s legacy.  If the best sculptor doesn’t happen to be black, what of it?

Wanting to have it made in America isn’t wrong, however, but let me posit this.  If it should be a source of national pride for the Chinese that one of their own made this, then perhaps it will encourage the Chinese to learn more about the man.  They will learn in his belief in freedom, and equality of opportunity.  They will learn of his courage, and he will tell them forthrightly from the grave that it was his faith that gave him that courage.  Is that such a bad thing?  It seems the Chinese could use some of his philosophy.

So my only objection is, well…  look at it.

Photo credit: AP via Patterico’s Pontifications

The monument is intended to honor a great American, but instead it brings to mind the role of cultural Marxism in expressions of art, architectures, etc., and, in this case, statuary. Jay’s Analysis has a summary of that school of expression:

It is a frequently misunderstood notion that "modern" and "abstract" art was an organic development that arose from grassroots battles against "oppression" and the "folk art" of the lower classes. In fact, ugly, degenerate art arose from Soviet and communist circles as a means to attack aesthetic beauty. I often remark that "Bauhaus" architecture is communist to the surprise of listeners, but the facts are, "modern art" is almost wholly a communist and Soviet invention of weaponized culture. To understand this, one must look at the Frankfurt School of Marxism, tasked primarily with social engineering and destroying culture.

Weaponized culture was a key tool for destroying the West's social values and social structure. This is also true of the modern transformations of "art" into its own internal nihilist critique of meaning itself  . . .

It’s in the same family as what Olivia Mull described as “Brutalist buildings” in London. Big, clunky, and just plain ugly. Well, that's my take, anyway.

Here’s a link to photos of two dozen monuments to the Reverend. Most of them strike me as a more appropriate tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King than the one in DC.

Here's the background on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

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Could the false alarm in Hawaii happen here?

NORAD provides airspace surveillance to protect all states in the lower 48, including Ohio. But like Hawaii, Ohio also has its own Emergency Management Agency.

RIck Moran at American Thinker reports:

The false alert yesterday that informed Hawaiians a missile was inbound and told for residents to seek shelter was caused by an employee of the Emergency Management Agency pushing "the wrong button" during a shift change.

. . .

It should be noted that some empty headed leftists are blaming Trump for the SNAFU, but that's just ignorant. The [Hawaii] EMA is wholly a state agency and the responsibility for issuing alerts rests completely with the state government.

Those of us in Ohio probably don’t feel as vulnerable as Hawaiians to incoming missile attacks, but Moran raised the point:

Today, I have no doubt that the other 49 states in the nation are looking at their notification systems under a microscope. But what should they look for? What happened in Hawaii?

. . .

Hawaii says the alert was sent out because of a mistake made by an employee. Currently, we have no reason to doubt that explanation. But would Hawaii - or any state - announce to the public that the system had been hacked and the entire EMA system was vulnerable to intrusion?

As in, hacked by the Russians?

Seriously, the Ohio Emergency Management Agency’s website’s most recent postings concern extreme weather alerts and information. It has a page with information about the three nuclear power plants constructed in Ohio. The only other reference to anything “nuclear” at the website is a link to the “Center for Rad/Nuc Training at the Nevada National Security Site Program,” so the agency does not appear to have incoming nuclear missiles or improvised nuclear terror attacks on its priority lists. Still, those potential events could be covered by The EMA Watch Office:

The Ohio EMA Watch Office is one of the newest branches of the agency and is a key component of the state emergency management system. This office aims to help facilitate a quicker, more informed decision-making process for the preparation for, and response to hazards and incidents impacting Ohio. 

Just FYI.

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Trump craziness

Glenn McCoy cartoon via trump-conservative.com

Last week, Conrad Black wrote a column on the Trump presidency and the continuing temper tantrums on the left. It was published by the New York Sun with the colorful title “Trump’s Foes Beat Retreat To a Rat-Infested Trench And Wave 25th Amendment.” Mr. Black contrasted Michael Wolff’s recent “demonography” [Fire and Fury] and concomitant media pronouncements concerning Trump’s mental incapacity, with President Trump’s negotiations with members of Congress about illegal immigration – live in front of the TV cameras. Mr. Black’s column concludes:

To appreciate what has happened, a little perspective is needed: Mr. Trump’s candidacy was a joke; then he was unelectable, then his election could be invalidated, then he could be impeached, and then he could be removed for past harassment of women, or violating the Logan Act, or obstruction of justice, and now mental incapacity.

Donald Trump is a strange cat and an acquired taste, but he is one of the most vivid, and one of the most astoundingly successful figures of American history. I predict that a year from now, David Brooks and Bret Stephens will be at least closet supporters, even if they have socio-cultural clothespins on their noses.

Black’s column is here. And in related comments on social media about how crazy Trump is: 

             The people calling Trump “mentally ill”:

·         Dress like genitalia to protest Trump [see below: Eye Bleach caution alert]

·         Scream at the sky

·         Think there are 63 genders

·         Think that cutting off your genitalia is normal

·         Need “safe spaces” to protect their feelings

Photograph credit: dailywire.com

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Did Trump even say that bad word?

image credit: uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com

Josh Dawsey at the Washington Post reports on Trump's offensive, obscene, racist remarks in a meeting with some Senators:

. . . according to several people briefed on the meeting.

“Why are we having all these people from $#!+hole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to countries mentioned by the lawmakers.

Cue: media freak out. But did Trump actually say that? According to Jim Treacher’s brief analysis at PJ Media:

Take a closer look at Dawsey's construction there. He got this from "several people briefed on the meeting." Oh, okay. So these people, whose names we do not know, were told that Trump said this bad word by somebody who was actually in the room at the time. We're getting it third-hand.

So, who are these unnamed people? Any hints? MSNBC's Kyle Griffin gives us one.

NBC News has confirmed Trump's "$#!+hole countries" remark with a Democratic aide briefed on the meeting.

So it's been confirmed by... a Democrat. Who wasn't even in the room.

Hey, what more proof do you need?

As Treacher agrees, maybe Trump said it. Or maybe it’s Fake News, in compliance with the new standard: “If it rings true, it is true.”  

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