Super Bowl, competition, and politics

Ira Stoll's "Patriots Ignite Political Debate On Success" at The NY Sun on the Super Bowl:

American politics at the moment can pretty much be explained by what you make of the record sixth Super Bowl victory by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, coach Bill Belichick, and owner Robert Kraft.

One view of it is to marvel at, and celebrate, the hard work, risk-taking, and skill that produced the achievement. That’s the more conservative view of it.

Another is to complain about it and wish the winning were more evenly distributed. That’s the more left-leaning view of it. . . .

There is more with which to agree and disagree here.

# # #

Illegal aliens and national security

From our friends at Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 31, 2019

Is U.S. State Department Burglary suspect a known Mexican Illegal Alien?

Cleveland, Ohio – Steve Salvi, Founder of Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC today is calling for a federal investigation regarding serious breaches of security in January at State Department buildings in Washington, D.C and Arlington, VA. The two State Department buildings were burglarized January 3. A suspect, Joel Enriquez-Bueno was later arrested by the Arlington Police Department. Salvi believes the suspect now in detention at the Arlington County Detention Center may be the same Mexican illegal alien felon he has been recently investigating.

Salvi, who has conducted immigration policy and national security research since 2001, stated that he has federal criminal court documents for a Mexican illegal alien defendant also named Joel Enriquez-Bueno. Salvi says that that Joel Enriquez-Bueno is a convicted felon and has an arrest record dating back to 2003.

“If the two Joel Enriquez-Bueno's are one in the same, an investigation needs to find out how he has been able to remain free in the U.S. For so long. According to court records, he is an illegal alien with no known address, no money, but able to get multiple past arrest charges for assault from 2013 dismissed in New Jersey. In 2016 he was caught in possession with an illegally issued New York State Benefit card and U.S. Social Security card. Any individual, prosecutor, or city found violating the law by providing him sanctuary, should be prosecuted,” said Salvi.

“How is it possible that anyone, especially an illegal alien felon, is able to gain access to two U.S. State Department offices and walk off with dozens of government cell phones and other electronics that may contain sensitive if not classified information? There's more to this story than we currently know and what has reported in the press, “ Said Salvi.

Salvi's investigation of the Department of State burglaries uncovered a January 18, 2016 U.S. District Court Criminal Complaint for the Western District of Texas. That criminal complaint charged a Joel Enriquez-Bueno with violating Section 1326 of Title 8 of the United State's Code.

According to Salvi, Section 1326 offenses generally relates to aliens who have previously attempted illegal entry into the U.S. and or previously removed from the U.S. by the Department of Homelands Security. He said that Enriquez-Bueno had already been removed from the U.S. four times according to federal court records.

“Any breach of security is bad. If State Department security was breached by a foreign national, it doesn't get worse. This breach could have resulted in espionage, a shooting, or bombing in addition to theft of devices that may contain sensitive if not classified information.”

“This should be a wake up call not only for State but those who also oppose border infrastructure, call to abolish ICE, and create sanctuaries for criminal illegal aliens like Joel Enriquez-Bueno. ”

“It's time our public officials stop ignoring the lessons of 9-11 and take homeland security and immigration law enforcement seriously,” said Salvi.

-30-

Ohio Jobs and Justice PAC website: click here.

Undeclared Civil War

cartoon credit: anticap.wordpress.com

Steve McCann published a provocative essay at American Thinker titled “The Ruling Class and an Undeclared Civil War.” Tea Party people are part of his scenario:

. . . the current social structure has evolved into a near impregnable three-tier categorization in which the ruling class, that sits astride the social order, has revealed, thanks to the election of Donald Trump, open and unabashed disdain for the two lower classes and the unleashing of a radicalized army of malcontents.

The citizens who provide the primary labor and resources for the economic engine of the country constitute the second tier.  The third is comprised of those who have been betrayed by a self-serving education system and are conditioned to be totally dependent upon a government dominated by the ruling class.

. . .

There is at present an undeclared and non-violent civil war being waged in this country.  The underlying factor of any civil war is an elite ruling class desperate to maintain power at odds with a majority of a population seeking change.   Also prevalent in most civil upheavals is the unleashing, by those determined to retain power, of the radicalized and ultimately uncontrollable dogs of war who more often than not devour their sponsors.  Both elements are currently in play.

While the ruling class publicly obsesses over Donald Trump and denigrates the vast majority of the population, they have planted the seeds, by their actions, for a takeover of the country by a radical element that will turn on them as they are presently doing within the Democratic Party.

The American people must understand that the current ruling class will not willingly exit the stage or take on their mercenary army.  Donald Trump, while perhaps accomplishing a significant degree of change, cannot induce their demise.   This threat can only be marginalized through the determined utilization of political process which will encompass a number of political cycles and the long-term willingness to not be intimidated or cowed into submission.  The future of the nation as founded is at stake.

The full essay is worth reading; click here.

# # #

Voter fraud update

image credit:thedailysheeple.com

It's better than stuffing the ballot box. Investors Business Daily picked up the report:

Voter Fraud: When President Donald Trump brought up the idea that non-citizens were casting ballots in elections, the reaction was fast and furious. Such a thing, if it exists at all, is exceedingly rare, we were told. But when one state decided to take a close look, it found something quite different.

After a yearlong voter-fraud probe, Texas discovered that, lo and behold, 95,000 people identified as non-citizens had voter registrations. What's more, 58,000 of them voted in one or more Texas elections.

When Attorney General Ken Paxton led the state's investigation, he noted that Texas had already found 165 non-citizens in four counties who had cast 100 illegal votes in two years.

But wait. Isn't all this stuff about non-citizens voting a load of bull? When Trump appointed a voter-fraud commission in 2017, Democrats and the press howled in protest.

Sure, Trump almost certainly exaggerated the number of non-citizen voters. But in response, Time magazine declared that we "know that ineligible non-citizens do not vote in American elections." Vox.com, the "explanatory" news site, derided Trump as "indulging the long-standing myth of the non-citizen voter." Harvard researchers said that there is "no evidence" that non-citizens vote.

Less than a year after he put it together, Trump disbanded his commission, not because it didn't find anything, but because it faced a fusillade of lawsuits and stonewalling from state election officials.

More here. What about Ohio? Eric Eggers at Breitbart reported on the most recent election cycles:

Republican Troy Balderson clings to a narrow margin in last night’s special election for Ohio’s 12th Congressional district, underscoring the impact voter fraud can have in key elections around the country.

The separation of 1700 votes, or less than one percent, highlights the recent attempt by Democratic activists to fight efforts to prevent voter fraud from occurring.

For the past four years, George Soros has spent millions of dollars trying to weaken Ohio’s election security by funding efforts to both block its implementation of Voter ID and prevent the state from removing inaccurate registrations.

Soros pledged $5 million to fund Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias’s efforts to fight voter ID laws in Ohio and two other states ahead of the 2016 election. 

. . .

Consider that 170 registered voters listed as being over 116 years old still existed on the rolls of Ohio’s 12th Congressional when GAI accessed the data last August. That’s 10 percent of Balderson’s current margin of victory, pending provisional ballots. And 72 voters over the age of 116 who “live” in Balderson’s district cast ballots in the 2016 election.

But the Left hasn’t given up trying to create conditions favorable for voter fraud in Ohio. As former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has pointed out, “hyper-partisan liberals…have their eyes on Ohio.” Electing a Democrat as the state’s top elections official would undoubtedly roll back the hard-won safeguards Ohio has implemented. And as Blackwell points out, as goes Ohio, so goes the Presidency.

And it does not look good. Just two days ago, Peter Skurkiss at American Thinker reported:

Ben Stein, a once on-again, off-again conservative, now associates himself with a left-wing advocacy group called Policy Matters Ohio as a "staff associate."  Stein's affiliation with this non-profit came to light when he recently authored an opinion piece in the Akron Beacon Journal titled "Make it automatic for the people." 

Make what automatic?

Why, make voter registration automatic.  As if voting laws and policies haven't been weakened enough, there is now a drive across the country to make voter registration automatic.  It goes under the name Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), and 15 states have already enacted it in one form or another.

AVR works basically like this.  When a person has an interaction with a state government agency (say, Department of Motor Vehicle or a welfare agency), the data he gives will automatically be transferred to the Election Board.  And – presto – that person is registered to vote, unless choosing to opt out.  

Stein is disingenuous when he says AVR would screen out those ineligible to vote, such as non-citizens.  The fact is, there's no reliable way to ensure that all registrants are citizens.  

Read the rest here.

# # #

Speaking of Fake News

Here's chuckle from Powerline's The Week In Pictures: Epidemic Fakery Edition:

And in case you couldn't embiggen the image to read the caption:

"We're getting an unconfirmed report from anonymous sources making unverified claims in an out-of-context video, which -- if true, is huge news, and if not -- utter horse hockey."

Cartoon by Rick McKee  

# # #

Long term: getting along

photo credit (raid on Michael Cohen's office): freespeechden.com

Everyone has watched the media manipulate the Covington students harassed by the faux Vietnam vet beating his drum. Everyone watched the CNN footage of the FBI storming Roger Stone’s home at 6am. The corruption of the FBI, the DOJ, & the media is blatant. It's every day. But half the people I know don’t see it. Those who do see it are swimming against the current. And it is difficult to imagine that things will end well. John Hawkins at PJ Media pondered the problem in a thoughtful piece which concludes that

the basic response came down to, “He’s a smiling white kid wearing a MAGA hat, therefore he deserves everything he gets.”

It would be nice to make it into a joke by calling it what it really is, a “hat crime,” but it’s not funny. If you’re willing to falsely brand a kid as a racist, a Nazi, and a horrible person because he stood there and smiled while some weirdo beat a drum in his face, where do we go from there? . . . If Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination in 2020, is it acceptable to try to destroy the lives of random liberal teenagers for wearing “I’m With Joe” shirts?

This is the world liberals are dragging us into with their myopic vision, unquenchable hatred for people who disagree with them, and their raging intolerance. Is this good for the country? No way. Will it produce a better America? No. Is it entirely possible that this sort of thinking could lead to increasing amounts of political violence? Absolutely, because you can’t live in harmony with people who think there’s no punishment too great for people who wear hats designed to support their political opponents. 

Then again, maybe those Covington students represent hope for the next generations.

# # #

NewsGuard's Media Blacklist

art credit: inforrm.wordpress.com

Microsoft Teams with Establishment ‘NewsGuard’ to Create News Blacklist:

Without consulting with its users, Microsoft has installed an establishment media browser extension, purportedly designed to rate the accuracy of news websites, as a default setting on mobile versions of its Edge browser. In practice, it creates a news blacklist by warning users away from sites including Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail.

The browser extension, called “Newsguard,” presents users with a red warning label if they navigate to a website that it judges to be unreliable. A “green” rating is given to websites that NewsGuard considers trustworthy.

A number of pro-Trump websites, including Breitbart News, are given a “red” rating by the extension.

NewsGuard itself is not new, but its installation by Microsoft is. In a related Breitbart story titled “Bill Kristol Correctly Describes NewsGuard: ‘Establishment People’ Like ‘Establishment Websites’”:

In a March 2018 interview with NewsGuard Executive Editor James Warren, establishment conservative Bill Kristol correctly noted that NewsGuard, an app and browser plug-in which allows users to avoid what it considers “fake news” websites, would face skepticism since “establishment people” like “establishment websites.” NewsGuard has added Breitbart News, the Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail to its “fake news” blacklist.

. . .

NewsGuard lists Breitbart News, the Daily Mail, and the Drudge Report as fake news websites, but gives the all-clear to CNN, Buzzfeed, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Vice News, despite recent high profile fake news stories from a variety of these approved sites.

CNN? Buzzfeed? New York Times? Good grief. Who is making the decisions about what is and is not Fake News. Yet more media and social malpractice.

UPDATE 8:35pm on 1/23: A reader posted this as Reply #3 at the Lucianne aggregator:

While I think this is terrible, it is only on the phone version of [Mircrosoft's] Edge. Since the three users of that browser work for Microsoft I am not sure that anyone will notice. 

# # #