Jobs or Mobs?

DC Whispers reports:

By nearly every possible metric the Trump administration is succeeding across the board—success which in turn is benefiting tens of millions of Americans all across the nation regardless of race, gender, religion, or political affiliation.

Meanwhile, Democrats now seem to only offer character assassination, threats of violence, actual violence, and promises of further chaos. 

Jobs not Mobs—coming to an election result near you…

So - today’s meme via Chicks on the Right:

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The Medicare-for-All Hoax

photo credit: magnoliabox.com

Cleveland Tea Party was one of many liberty groups and organizations that fought hard to prevent Obamacare from becoming law. We prepared and participated in delegations that visited offices of our representatives, made phone calls, organized rallies, etc. The GOP members of Congress have still not made good on their campaign promises (years of promises) to repeal Obamacare -- and now we are looking at yet another destructive proposal from the Democrat Party to take another wrecking ball to Americans’ access to their healthcare plan of choice.

Two days ago, President Trump published his op-ed and call-to-arms to stop the “Medicare For All” madness in USA Today. The mainstream media pounced on it, reproducing big chunks of it on their websites, so I decided to paste Trump's entire columns below (skip to the end if you’ve already read it to see links to the counter-counter arguments):

The Democrats want to outlaw private health care plans, taking away freedom to choose plans while letting anyone cross our border. We must win this.

Throughout the year, we have seen Democrats across the country uniting around a new legislative proposal that would end Medicare as we know it and take away benefits that seniors have paid for their entire lives.

Dishonestly called “Medicare for All,” the Democratic proposal would establish a government-run, single-payer health care system that eliminates all private and employer-based health care plans and would cost an astonishing

$32.6 trillion during its first 10 years. 

As a candidate, I promised that we would protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions and create new health care insurance options that would lower premiums. I have kept that promise, and we are now seeing health insurance premiums coming down.

I also made a solemn promise to our great seniors to protect Medicare. That is why I am fighting so hard against the Democrats' plan that would eviscerate Medicare. Democrats have already harmed seniors by slashing Medicare by more than $800 billion over 10 years to pay for Obamacare. Likewise, Democrats would gut Medicare with their planned government takeover of American health care.

The Democrats' plan threatens America's seniors

The Democrats' plan means that after a life of hard work and sacrifice, seniors would no longer be able to depend on the benefits they were promised. By eliminating Medicare as a program for seniors, and outlawing the ability of Americans to enroll in private and employer-based plans, the Democratic plan would inevitably lead to the massive rationing of health care. Doctors and hospitals would be put out of business. Seniors would lose access to their favorite doctors. There would be long wait lines for appointments and procedures. Previously covered care would effectively be denied.

In practice, the Democratic Party’s so-called Medicare for All would really be Medicare for None. Under the Democrats' plan, today’s Medicare would be forced to die.

The Democrats' plan also would mean the end of choice for seniors over their own health care decisions. Instead, Democrats would give total power and control over seniors’ health care decisions to the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

The first thing the Democratic plan will do to end choice for seniors is eliminate Medicare Advantage plans for about 20 million seniors as well as eliminate other private health plans that seniors currently use to supplement their Medicare coverage.

Next, the Democrats would eliminate every American’s private and employer-based health plan. It is right there in their proposed legislation: Democrats outlaw private health plans that offer the same benefits as the government plan. 

Americans might think that such an extreme, anti-senior, anti-choice and anti-consumer proposal for government-run health care would find little support among Democrats in Congress.

Unfortunately, they would be wrong: 123 Democrats in the House of Representatives — 64 percent of House Democrats — as well as 15 Democrats in the Senate have already formally co-sponsored this legislation. Democratic nominees for governor in Florida, California and Maryland are all campaigning in support of it, as are many Democratic congressional candidates.

Democrats want open-borders socialism

The truth is that the centrist Democratic Party is dead. The new Democrats are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela.

If Democrats win control of Congress this November, we will come dangerously closer to socialism in America. Government-run health care is just the beginning. 

Democrats are also pushing massive government control of education, private-sector businesses and other major sectors of the U.S. economy. 

Every single citizen will be harmed by such a radical shift in American culture and life. Virtually everywhere it has been tried, socialism has brought suffering, misery and decay.

Indeed, the Democrats' commitment to government-run health care is all the more menacing to our seniors and our economy when paired with some Democrats' absolute commitment to end enforcement of our immigration laws by abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That means millions more would cross our borders illegally and take advantage of health care paid for by American taxpayers.

Today’s Democratic Party is for open-borders socialism. This radical agenda would destroy American prosperity. Under its vision, costs will spiral out of control. Taxes will skyrocket. And Democrats will seek to slash budgets for seniors’ Medicare, Social Security and defense.

Republicans believe that a Medicare program that was created for seniors and paid for by seniors their entire lives should always be protected and preserved. I am committed to resolutely defending Medicare and Social Security from the radical socialist plans of the Democrats. For the sake of our country, our prosperity, our seniors and all Americans — this is a fight we must win.

Donald J. Trump is the president of the United States. Follow him on Twitter: @realDonaldTrump

The “fight we must win” means winning votes on November 6 for candidates opposed to “Medicare For All.” (The bill and related sites are here).

As soon as our President’s op-ed was published, the mainstream media leaped into action to point out all the inaccuracies and false information in his op-ed. Among them were NPR, LA Times, and Chicago Tribune. For example, the LA Times slammed the piece with “Trump's USA Today op-ed on Medicare is full of lies — and USA Today should not have published it.” Hmm. It was apparent just scrolling through the search results that these articles were in the same echo chamber in their mission to discredit Trump’s op-ed.

So I searched for Betsy McCaughey, who was my go-to resource when attempting to decipher the Obamacare legislation. Sure enough, she was on the job at Townhall last month. Here’s her take titled “The Medicare-for-All Hoax.” I’ll go with her and President Trump’s analysis over NPR's and the LA Times' any day of the week.

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Where was Jim Brown?

photo credit: fox4news.com

It’s all over the news – Kanye West’s visit to the White House. But almost none of the news coverage showed who was sitting next to West. Spoiler:

Video here. 

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Google memo 'The Good Censor'

image credit: spartareport.com

Yesterday’s blog was about the film Gosnell, free speech, and free markets. Now comes an American Thinker report by Thomas Lifson titled

“Stunning 85-page Google memo 

'The Good Censor' leaked to Breitbart”

Lifson's blog begins:

If you are not worried about the power of Google to shape debate and elections according to its leftist political bias, you're not paying attention.  I congratulate Breitbart.com for the scoop, and I urge everyone – I am looking at you, President Trump and Congress – to read and ponder the fate of the Republic unless this company is defanged, most likely by antitrust action, but possibly also via civil courts. 

He then quotes Allum Bokhari's introduction and summary of the memo here, including:

An internal company briefing produced by Google and leaked exclusively to Breitbart News argues that due to a variety of factors, including the election of President Trump, the "American tradition" of free speech on the internet is no longer viable. ...

[T]he 85-page briefing, titled "The Good Censor," admits that Google and other tech platforms now "control the majority of online conversations" and have undertaken a "shift towards censorship" in response to unwelcome political events around the world.

The briefing labels the ideal of unfettered free speech on the internet a "utopian narrative" that has been "undermined" by recent global events as well as "bad behavior" on the part of users. ...

It acknowledges that major tech platforms, including Google, Facebook and Twitter initially promised free speech to consumers.  "This free speech ideal was instilled in the DNA of the Silicon Valley startups that now control the majority of our online conversations," says the document.

The briefing argues that Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are caught between two incompatible positions, the "unmediated marketplace of ideas" vs. "well-ordered spaces for safety and civility."

Terrifying. The Breitbart scoop is here. Our household is exploring alternatives to Google, including Brave. Does anyone see an alternative to Facebook? 

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Gosnell, free speech, and free markets

image credit: thoughtsonfilm.com

The film about “America's all-time champion serial killer” Kermit Gosnell opens later this week at a few theaters, and its subject matter is outside Cleveland Tea Party’s core mission. But the topic of “free markets” is very much a core Tea Party value.

The film Gosnell has been an uphill battle from the start. It was difficult to produce, and efforts to market it are being thwarted as I type. If this film is emblematic of the closing of free markets and increasing censorship in the mainstream media and on social media, then it is very much on the front burner of the Cleveland Tea Party. How can one have free markets if a legal product is not allowed to be promoted in the marketplace?

Fox News is running paid ads, but NPR and PBS won’t run them, and Facebook has banned any ads promoting this film. It should not matter whether you are Pro Choice, Pro Life, or undecided. The issues of Roe vs Wade and abortion were hot talking points during the entire nomination process of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, so the film has a place in the current and ongoing debate. 

The other day I attended a presentation by the filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer followed by a private screening of Gosnell. Mark Steyn’s must-read blog on the film is here. The website for the film is here and it includes a drop-down which specifies theaters showing this film, listed by state. Only two were located in the greater Cleveland area (Valley View and Solon).

The goal of the two film-makers is to get enough venues and audiences to get this film to be eligible for NetFlix general access/release. If I understood them correctly, if they get enough showings and viewings in theaters this year, they can get a much wider distribution for this film via NetFlix, and they intend to categorize it as a crime drama along the line of, say, Law and Order, to reach an audience that might otherwise not choose to watch a film advertised as being about abortion per se. I thought that was a good marketing strategy. And if you are reading this blog, I hope you will consider seeing the film later this week, even if you don't think you'll like it.

From SteynOnline:

If making the film was hard, breaking through the societal omertà is harder: The Hyatt in Austin, for example, just canceled a screening at the behest of Planned Parenthood. So do be alert both to bookings of Gosnell at your local multiplex and to attempts to get it bounced. As producers and (with Andrew Klavan) screenwriters, Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer set out to tell a story none of the big studios would touch, and their doggedness deserves to find an audience.

In a free market, the producers would be free to buy ads. Facebook claims the ad does not meet their “standards.” No, Facebook just doesn’t like the film and doesn’t want any more exposure of the Gosnell case. That’s not what's supposed to happen to free speech in free markets. How can you function in a free market when you are muzzled because you have a different view? No, that’s censorship, and that is why I posted with these links.

Exit question: Who will be censored next?

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Cordray vs DeWine

Yesterday evening, Ohio gubernatorial candidates Richard Cordray (D) and Mike DeWine (R) debated each other at Cleveland State University. Cleveland.com reported (link not available) but the Cincinnati Enquirer included a few video clips, including one of a “testy” exchange. Link is here.

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WHY we celebrate Columbus Day

image credit: brainskewer.com

Mark Antonio Wright at National Review explains WHY we celebrate Columbus Day (h/t Chicks on the Right):

Let us dispense with any pretense that the indigenous peoples of the Americas lived in a peaceful idyll in harmony with their neighbors and with nature, and that the advent of Columbus destroyed a noble paradise. The great civilizations of the Western Hemisphere were indeed advanced, and yet, like Europeans, Asians, and Africans, the American peoples used their technology to subjugate. Anyone familiar with the expansionist and warlike cultures of the Aztec and Inca Empires should know that the tables would have been turned had it been the New World that “discovered” the Old and possessed the power to conquer it. Human nature, tainted with original sin, is what it is and has been — of that we can be certain.

Europeans, beginning with Columbus, treated the Indians pitilessly — that should not be whitewashed or forgotten — but, in the same way, we should not ignore the genuine good that has come down to us as a result of the course of human events — namely, the space for a unique idea to grow and flourish: the self-government of a free people, with an ever-expanding idea of who can partake of that promise.

How much is Columbus personally responsible for all of this — for the good and the ill? Only as much as any one man can be. As the historian William J. Connell has written, “What Columbus gets criticized for nowadays are attitudes that were typical of the European sailing captains and merchants who plied the Mediterranean and the Atlantic in the 15th century. Within that group he was unquestionably a man of daring and unusual ambition.”

Connell concluded that “what really mattered was his landing on San Salvador, which was a momentous, world-changing occasion such as has rarely happened in human history.”

Hannah at Chicks on The Right comments:

I’d also like to note that on Columbus Day, we’re not celebrating HIM as person. 

We’re not celebrating genocide or racism. The day marks a significant event. Big difference.

The current Columbus Day narrative only tells half of the story. It’s revisionist history. It’s all rooted in Western guilt.

ANYWAY. Trump tweeted about Columbus and got slammed on Twitter:

Christopher Columbus’s spirit of determination & adventure has provided inspiration to generations of Americans. On #ColumbusDay, we honor his remarkable accomplishments as a navigator, & celebrate his voyage into the unknown expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

You can read more here. Happy Columbus Day.

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