Happy Labor Day weekend

Art credit: Kewlgraphics.com

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Winning on trade

art credit: moziru.com

News Gingrich’s latest message includes a short summary of President Trump’s trade deals:

The breakthrough in trade negotiations with Mexico is, to use one of President Trump’s favorite words, huge.

Most of the so-called experts had said the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) couldn’t be renegotiated. They insisted Trump had offended Mexicans so much with his harsh language that the Mexican government wouldn’t come to the table. They asserted building the wall would alienate the Mexican leadership. They were just plain wrong.

President Trump’s progress on NAFTA sends five big signals:

1.    Making good on a big, disruptive pledge that set his 2016 campaign apart from every other candidate, President Trump kept his word and is forcing a difficult negotiation toward success.

2.    President Trump proved, once again, that tough language and tough negotiating can actually lead to breakthroughs. Unlike most politicians, Trump is willing to endure heat to achieve success.

3.    As a result of his seriousness on trade, other countries are now approaching Trump about trade negotiations (note German Chancellor Merkel’s call this week for trade talks).

4.    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to be clever when he ambushed and attempted to embarrass President Trump during a press conference at the G7 Summit in Canada. Trudeau is now discovering that Trump has a good memory. Canada now has virtually no leverage in trying to play catch up with the U.S.-Mexico negotiations.

5.    The Trump Administration’s continued attention to economic matters – despite the liberal media’s daily efforts to get him and his team off balance through dishonest reporting and smear stories – is paying off. The average American sees the economy getting better and better. And the average American increasingly thinks the success is due to President Trump.

Mr. Speaker’s full message is posted at Fox here.

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Moon over Cleveland

Photograph by Cleveland Tea Party's roving photographer Pat J Dooley. More to come from this weekend's Air Show.

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Jim Brown on President Trump, our national anthem, and race

Photo credit: mmqb.si.com

I’m old enough to remember football legend Jim Brown playing for the Cleveland Browns back in the 1960’s. He is still "the greatest football player of all time." And he is speaking up about President Trump, taking a knee, and the black community. Brian Kilmeade interviewed him on Fox and Friends. I missed it, but Steven Beyer at Western Journal reported on the interview:

NFL legend and social activist Jim Brown appeared on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning and delivered a charge to the “black community” by asking it to take responsibility over shifting the blame onto President Donald Trump.

The former star running back started the interview by heaping praise on Trump for being “accessible.”

He told Fox’s Brian Kilmeade, “I have access to the president, and anytime I have access to the president, and he will listen to my thoughts, that’s all I can ask of him.”

“This president is accessible,” Brown said. “He’s different. He’s challenging, and he pays attention to what I say.”

Brown then turned his attention to the black community, telling Kilmeade, “We should look at ourselves first before we look at the president.”

Kilmede asked him if he felt Trump was doing a good job of “producing” for the black community.

“Well, I tell you it’s very hard to produce for the black community in a certain way,” Brown replied. “The black community, and I’m a part of the black community, has a responsibility regardless of what the president does. If you have a homicide rate in your black community, then it’s not the president that’s created that homicide rate. It’s the black community itself that needs to address it.”

“So I don’t want to put everything on him, and I’m sorry to say the black community is not doing what we should do, and that includes myself,” Brown added.

Kilmede asked Brown if he believed the president to be a racist.

“I’m so glad you asked me that,” Brown replied. “Of course not. Is America racist? Of course not.”

Brown went on talk about the national anthem protests saying, “We should never denigrate our flag and our national anthem. We should always be Americans first and we should work our butts off to do the right thing and make it a better country.”

“But to not respect your flag and national anthem is something I’d never do,” he added.

The video interview is embedded at the link here.

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Navy Week in Cleveland

Cleveland.com reports:

Navy Week, featuring a variety of events here to celebrate that branch of the service, will formally open with a 5 p.m. ceremony on August 28 at the Cuyahoga County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on Public Square.

The free event will include remarks by Vice Admiral Forrest Faison III, and performances by the U.S. Fleet Forces Band and Navy Ceremonial Guard Drill Team.

For Navy Week, which runs through Sept. 2, the monument has created a special display focusing on three admirals who were Northeast Ohio natives.

More info and schedule of Navy Week events, including the Air Show, is here.

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What is their endgame?

image credit: theburningplatform.com

I go hot and cold on Mark Levin. But his column yesterday was the lead link at Doug Ross’s Director’s Blue blog, and it’s a good one. Here’s his conclusion:

Challenge socialists on this single point: What is their endgame?

When is enough government control enough? Why won’t socialists -- or Democrat Socialist -- share their blueprint for society? What industry is a “bridge too far” for socialism? Why can’t they tell us what their limits are on taxation, control of industry, and how much of society should be dependent upon their handouts?

Conservatives know their endgame: it is called the United State Constitution. These four pages of wisdom, condensed instructions gleaned from thousands of years of human experience, ended up germinating the most magnificent nation-state yet to arise from humanity’s tumult.

And a great percentage of our fellow citizens neither recognize nor appreciate the magnificent society with which they have been bequeathed. They take for granted this unique and precious anomaly in the context of human history.

Only education can help them. Not all of them, to be sure, but many: those who possess both open minds and a willingness to learn.

He asks a good question, one which my ultra-liberal friends and relatives might have difficulty responding to. The full article is here. 

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Social media, surveillance, and your vote

image credit: picstopin.com

Breitbart has reported on the "the extent to which major technology companies such as Google are surveilling their users." But the segment that I hope everyone will watch (it’s less than 4 minutes) is Dr. Robert Epstein’s appearance on Tucker Carlson from (apparently) a few months ago and re-broadcast last Friday. 

Video credit: YouTube [another platform for surveillance] via thelibertydaily.com

Here’s a partial report and transcript from The National Sentinel: 

Dr. Robert Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, joined Carlson to discuss an upcoming presentation on “The Search Suggestion Effect (SSE): How Search Suggestions Can Be Used To Shift Opinions and Voting Preferences Dramatically.”

The researchers looked at the power of Google and Facebook to influence elections over a period of five years and came up with powerful results.

“I can tell you we should be paranoid because what Google and Facebook can do is really mind-boggling,” he told the host.

“For example, if Mark Zuckerberg on election day last year, if he had chosen to press the enter key early in the morning and just sent out a message to Hillary Clinton supporters only saying, ‘Go out and vote,’ that would have sent her an additional 450,000 voters that day with no one knowing that this had occurred. And that’s just Facebook,” he added.

“What Google can do is really off the scale. Our studies show that Google can take a 50-50 split among undecided voters and change it into a 90-10 split with no one knowing they had been manipulated and without leaving a paper trail,” the research continued.

“It has to do with those search suggestions. Literally from the very first character that you type into the search bar you are being manipulated,” Epstein said. “And we’ve done 16 months of experiments. We’ve done all the research now and we know exactly how this works… The threat is absolutely, positively profound.”

Read the rest here or watch the video. Please share with all your social media friends.

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