Yet another reason not to watch today's Super Bowl

This lovely report is by Colin Flaherty at American Thinker:

Everything you need to know about the Super Bowl can be found in the rap hit “Dreams and Nightmares,” by Meek Mill. But which more truthfully could be named after a line in the song: "The Murder Game" or "All I Know Is Murder."

Everything about how far professional football has fallen and how the NFL celebrates the obscene, the vulgar, the dangerous, and the foolish will be on full display as that song blares as the Eagles take the field.

This song that the Eagle players have chosen is about guns, drugs, money, bitches, and murder, over and over and over. Just like the rest of Meek Mill songs, which also include a healthy dollop of the evils of the white man.

We do not know whether the Eagles will be kneeling prior to the big game as they have during the season. Or whether they will be following the dictates of their union which, after accepting $100 million from the owners, decided that white racism and police brutality were not so bad after all.

Meek Mill will not be there. He’s in the joint. The slammer. All for a violating his parole over and over and over. All for committing crimes over and over and over.

The Eagles don’t think that is fair. Don’t you know that crime is the new black entitlement? The mayor and district attorney of the City of Brotherly Love certainly do: That was their platform during their recent elections.

. . .

The rest of Flaherty’s report is just as bad.

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Memo fallout

 image credit: eutimes.net

Which is worse?

The Media response to “The Memo” as reported by George Neumayr at The American Spectator (Obamagate : Confirmed”)

The media’s response to the release of the Nunes memo surpasses the level of Pravda covering a Soviet show trial. No sooner had the memo appeared than journalists immediately began throwing sand into their audience’s eyes. The story, according to the media, is not that Obama’s Justice Department/FBI snookered FISA court judges and used Hillary’s purchased Steele dossier to spy on Trumpworld. No, the scandal is that the evil Republicans exposed this outrage, and that Trump, the ultimate target of this espionage, has the gall to defend himself. How dare a defendant in our kangaroo trial defend himself with the truth — that’s the upshot of all the media’s bleating.

or Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s initial reactions:

         “No department is perfect”

and this headline at Sparta Report:

Jeff Sessions Today: [FISA Fraud] Rod Rosenstein Represents‘The Kind Of Quality And Leadership That We Want In The Department’

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"Americans are Dreamers, too!"

image credit: 989thewolf.net

I thought President Trump's State of the Union speech was outstanding, and most of the commentary I've read is positive. I especially appreciated a few short takes by Don Surber:

Trump forced one of his nagging critics, Chris Cillizza, CNN's editor-at-large, to concede the brilliance of the move.

"Perhaps not surprising for someone who has lived his life in the spotlight and who built a life on image and brand, the stagecraft of Trump's first State of the Union was outstanding. From the families who lost loved ones to the MS-13 gang to Otto Warmbier's parents to the North Korean defector and his crutches, the visuals -- and the stories they told -- were haunting and memorable," Cillizza wrote.

The photograph that won the night was not President Trump, but rather Ji Seong-ho holding his crutches aloft. He escaped North Korea in 2006, and now lives in South Korea helping others escape.

Here’s the photograph of Ji Seong-ho:

I did not know Ji Seong-ho’s story, and it is harrowing. Here’s the link to the page on Wikipedia. Surber continues:

His presence was testimony to the appreciation of President Trump's efforts to confront Kim Jong Un, which may lead to the departure of Kim, and the unification of the two Koreas.

Incorporating the victims of MS-13 and the heroes of America made his message theirs. And they are more credible to those who are not as Trumpian as we are. They sold his policies.

To be sure, [there] was the co-opting of the Democratic Party line. The line of the night was "Americans are Dreamers, too!"

For the rest of Don Surber’s SOTU commentary, go here and here.  

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State of the Union and more!

photo credit: cnn.com

Your television viewing guide for this evening (Tuesday, Jan. 30):

President Donald J. Trump’s first State of the Union address is tonight at 9pm on all major news networks.

Massachusetts congressman Joseph Kennedy III will present the Democrat party’s official response following the SOTU.

After the SOTU address, Rep. “Auntie Maxine” Waters (D-CA) will probably renew her demand for impeachment on BET TV. According to the HuffPo:

Waters will deliver her remarks on the BET program “Angela Rye’s State of the Union,” 

a program that is not at present showing up on the Cleveland Spectrum listing. 

UPDATE: The BET program is on Weds., Jan. 31 at 9pm.

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Good bye to Chief Wahoo

vintage official scorecard

Good bye to Chief Wahoo (because, you know, it’s r-a-a-a-a-cist)

ABC News reports:

Divisive and hotly debated, the Chief Wahoo logo is being removed from the Cleveland Indians' uniform next year.

The polarizing mascot is coming off the team's jersey sleeves and caps starting in the 2019 season, a move that will end Chief Wahoo's presence on the field but may not completely silence those who deem it racist.

The Associated Press was informed of the decision before an official announcement was planned for Monday by Major League Baseball.

Yet another casualty of political correctness. I grew up with this logo and am sorry to see it go. 

PS I always thought choosing a mascot carried with it a compliment. Indians were worthy warriors. Who would want to be cheering for The Cleveland Worms? 

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Today’s scary read: the moving dictatorship

Image credit: trump.news

Daniel Greenfield redefines the “Deep State” and it’s scary. The full transcript of his speech to the  South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention in Myrtle Beach is also posted at Zero Hedge (h/t Instapundit).   Here are a few extracts:

the Democrats have rejected our system of government

…

You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.

Your very own dictatorship.

The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to the left, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate.

The attacks on Trump show that elections don’t matter to the left.

. . .

It’s the moving dictatorship. It’s the tyranny of the network.

You can’t pin it down. There’s no one office or one guy. It’s a network of them. It’s an ideological dictatorship. Some people call it the deep state. But that doesn’t even begin to capture what it is.

To understand it, you have to think about things like the Cold War and Communist infiltration.

A better term than Deep State is Shadow Government.

Parts of the Shadow Government aren’t even in the government. They are wherever the left holds power. It can be in the non-profit sector and among major corporations. Power gets moved around like a New York City shell game. Where’s the quarter? Nope, it’s not there anymore.

The shadow government is an ideological network. These days it calls itself by a hashtag #Resistance. Under any name, it runs the country. Most of the time we don’t realize that. 

. . .

Civil wars swing around a very basic question. The most basic question of them all. Who runs the country?

Is it me? Is it you? Is it Grandma? Or is it bunch of people who made running the government into their career?

America was founded on getting away from professional government. The British monarchy was a professional government. Like all professional governments, it was hereditary. Professional classes eventually decide to pass down their privileges to their kids.

America was different. We had a volunteer government. That’s what the Founding Fathers built.

This is a civil war between volunteer governments elected by the people and professional governments elected by… well… uh… themselves.

In the intro, Greenfield acknowledges and thanks “anyone and everyone still fighting the good fight.” Including Tea Party people volunteering in their communities. Read the rest here.    # # #

Unraveling Obamacare bit by bit

Steve Breen cartoon via strangefunnies.blogspot.com

Today, Mr. Speaker Gingrich posted at Fox and to his newsletter list his assessment of the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to bring down healthcare costs, chip away at what remains of Obamacare, and gradually introduce better options for all Americans. Here is part of his posting:

President Trump has also moved beyond opposing Obamacare and has begun to develop a better system for the future. What replaces Obamacare is at least as important as voting to repeal it.

Replacing Obamacare requires a lot of specific steps to return to a market-based, decentralized system in 50 different states. The Trump Administration and its Republican allies in Congress have been working diligently in that direction.

At the Department of Labor, Secretary Alexander Acosta issued proposed rules which would dramatically expand the availability of Association Health Plans. These plans could be national and regional, allowing for the sale of insurance across state lines, but critically still maintain state autonomy in regulating insurance – which will help police against fraud. Some of the details of the rules may need to be improved to prevent insurance companies from cherry-picking healthy customers, but overall this represents a potentially game-changing reform that could have huge cost saving implications for small business owners and the self-employed.

The Trump Administration has also allowed insurers to continue offering “grandmothered” plans created prior to Obamacare, maintaining these lower cost plans for long-time customers. This saved many small businesses and self-employed people a lot of money and anxiety which would have been caused by the Obamacare plan to force them into the government system even if they were happy with their current plan.

In addition, the Trump Administration fixed a number of loopholes in the Obamacare enrollment rules, which some customers had been using to game the system to avoid paying their premiums and wait until they got sick to get coverage, by claiming they qualified for a “Special Enrollment Period.” This fraud drove up prices for everyone. The Trump Administration issued new rules that fixed a number of these problems.

President Trump also made it easier for people to shop for health insurance without using the Healthcare.gov website. For 2019 enrollment, customers can fully use the insurer websites, as well as aggregators like ehealthinsurance.com. All of this increases convenience, expands choice, and makes lower costs possible.

Finally, just last week, Congress enacted a key reform which flew almost completely under the media’s radar. The Continuing Resolution passed to reopen the government this week suspended the health insurance tax for one year, the device tax for two years, and delayed the Cadillac tax until 2022, all of which were part of Obamacare. All of these taxes were simply passed on to patients in the form of higher premiums, so each of these steps will save patients money.

“Replacing Obamacare requires a lot of specific steps to return to a market-based, decentralized system in 50 different states.” So here is related news:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Concerned about soaring health care costs, Idaho on Wednesday revealed a plan that will allow insurance companies to sell cheap policies that ditch key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

It's believed to be the first state to take formal steps without prior federal approval for creating policies that do not comply with the Obama-era health care law. Health care experts say the move is legally dubious, a concern supported by internal records obtained by The Associated Press.

Idaho Department of Insurance Director Dean Cameron said the move is necessary to make cheaper plans available to more people. Otherwise, he said he fears the state's individual health insurance marketplace will eventually collapse as healthy residents choose to go uninsured rather than pay for expensive plans that comply with the federal law.

Hope to see more of this. The rest of Newt’s article is here.

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