Ohio anti-sanctuary law: Action Alert

image credit: pagop.org

From Cleveland Tea Party’s Ralph King on Facebook:

Via USATODAY.COM

Trump changes in immigration policy slowed, but states are cranking out their own new laws

As President Trump and Congress remain deadlocked on immigration legislation, a slew of immigration bills are moving through state legislatures.

More and more states are passing Anti-Sanctuary City laws. Ohio needs to get moving!!!

OH HB 169 Anti-Sanctuary City Bill in Ohio! HB 169 would require state and local authorities to cooperate with the federal government in the enforcement of immigration laws, to sanction those that fail to do so. HB 169 is in the Ohio House Criminal Justice Committee awaiting hearings.

Please contact Committee Chairman Rep George Lang (614) 466-8550 and politely request HB 169 be brought up for Committee Hearings.

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Why Mr. Instapundit cancelled his Twitter account

I’ve posted earlier links on this subject here. Glenn Reynolds’s (Mr. Instapundit) USA column today expands on why he cancelled his Twitter account. His opener:

I deactivated my Twitter account about a week ago. I was partly acting on impulse, because the social media site had just, for no obvious reason, “permanently banned” someone I follow, something that seems to be happening more and more. 

But I was also acting on my growing belief that Twitter is, well, horrible.

All social media have their issues. The “walled garden” character they create is the antithesis of the traditional Internet philosophy of openness. They are actually consciously designed to be addictive to their users — one company that consults on such issues is actually called Dopamine Labs — and they tend to soak up a huge amount of time in largely profitless strivings for likes and shares. They promote bad feelings and bad behavior: I saw a cartoon listing social media by deadly sins, with Facebook promoting envy, Instagram promoting pride, Twitter promoting wrath, Tinder promoting lust and so on. It seemed about right.

But as someone who spends a lot of time on the internet and whose social media experience goes all the way back to the original Orkut and Friendster, I think that Twitter is the worst.  

In fact, if you set out to design a platform that would poison America’s discourse and its politics, you’d be hard pressed to come up with something more destructive than Twitter. Twitter has the flaws of the old Usenet newsgroups, but on a much bigger scale.

The full column is here.

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Voter fraud in the millons

art credit: omnithought.org

At least 3.5 million more people are on U.S. election rolls

 than are eligible to vote. 

Investors Business Daily reports:

Elections: American democracy has a problem — a voting problem. According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It's a troubling fact that puts our nation's future in peril.

The data come from Judicial Watch's Election Integrity Project. The group looked at data from 2011 to 2015 produced by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, along with data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.

As reported by the National Review's Deroy Murdock, who did some numbers-crunching of his own, "some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America's adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud."

. . .

In his spread sheet, he listed Delaware county as the Ohio county with the largest number of “ghost” voters. Delaware County includes heavily red Columbus. His chart did not list Cuyahoga County, so I did a little search of my own and found the following at a blog called End of The American Dream, by a blogger named Michael Snyder, reporting on the 2012 election:

Barack Obama received more than 99% of the vote in more than 100 precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio on election day.  In fact, there were a substantial number of precincts where Mitt Romney got exactly zero votes.  So how in the world did this happen?  Third world dictators don’t even get 99% of the vote.  Overall, Mitt Romney received 30.12% of the vote in Cuyahoga County.  There were even a bunch of precincts in Cuyahoga County that Romney actually won.  But everyone certainly expected that Cuyahoga County would be Obama territory.  And in most of the precincts that is exactly what we saw – large numbers of votes for both candidates but a definite edge for Obama. 

However, there are more than 100 precincts in Cuyahoga County where the voting results can only be described as truly bizarre.  Yes, we always knew that urban areas would lean very heavily toward Obama, but are we actually expected to believe that Obama got over 99% of the votes in those areas?  In more than 50 different precincts, Romney received 2 votes or less.  Considering how important the swing state of Ohio was to the national election, one would think that such improbable results would get the attention of somebody out there.  Could we be looking at evidence of election fraud hidden in plain sight?

Perhaps if there were just one or two precincts where Obama got more than 99% of the vote we could dismiss the results as “statistical anomalies” and ignore them.

But there were more than 100 precincts where this happened in the most important swing state in the nation.

Maybe there is some rational explanation for the numbers that you are about to see.  If there is, I would really love to hear it.

What makes all of this even more alarming is that there were reports of voting machine problems during early voting in Ohio.  It was being reported that some voters were claiming that they tried to vote for Romney but that the voting machines kept recording their votes as votes for Obama…

Lots more here, including specific data on precincts in Cuyahoga County.

Some Cleveland Tea Party readers often volunteer at the polls as observers. Glenn Reynolds has argued for a return to paper ballots. I wish.

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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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Twitter Permanently Bans Alex Jones – Who’s Next?

image credit: savvygirls.ca

I don’t click very often at InfoWars, which is accessible on several aggregator sites [as of this posting, the website is still up, including reports of the censorship]. But that’s not the point. Mike LaChance at Legal Insurrection has a scary report “based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy”:

The deplatforming of Alex Jones by social media sites should disturb you whether you are a fan or not. I’ve never been a fan of Jones or his Infowars site. I’ve never gotten past the time Jones led an angry mob against Michelle Malkin in 2008. Still, if this can be done to him it can be done to anyone.

Twitter was the last holdout of the Jones purge, but announced their decision yesterday.

Eli Blumenthal writes at USA Today:

Twitter bans conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Infowars from social network for violating ‘abusive behavior’ policy

Alex Jones has been kicked off of Twitter.

The controversial founder of conspiracy website Infowars was banned from the social network Thursday afternoon. Both Jones’ personal account and that of his website were removed by Twitter.

“Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope,” Twitter’s official Safety account tweeted. “We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations.”

This strikes me as a violation of Jones’s First Amendment rights. As the headline says, “who’s next?” Read the rest of the Legal Insurrection account here.

UPDATE at 2:10PM via PJ Media: Alex Jones: "I’m the 'Beta Test' for Tech Companies to Start Censoring Conservatives."

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Trey Gowdy FAKE NEWS ALERT

ALERT! I wondered why the bigger blogs were not picking up this story. According to this Hoax website, the report below is 

FAKE NEWS!!! Sorry.

My blog post below went up this morning. I am re-blogging to correct the record. -Diana

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Image via C-Span

Trey Gowdy talks a great game, but just like all the other congressional investigations over the past eight years, the one he chaired (the Select Committee on Benghazi) went nowhere. A couple of days ago, The American News reported:

For five years, Trey Gowdy asked the Oval Office for the tools necessary to do his job properly, and for five years he was told “no” by the Obama administration.

One of the most difficult parts of Trey Gowdy’s job as congressional inquisitor is security clearance. When investigating people who held titles like “Secretary of State” and “Special Aide to the President” or even “President,” Gowdy runs into the issue of security clearance all the time.

“It’s a matter of national security” has become a term Mr. Gowdy hears far too often. It is the single-best excuse Hillary Clinton and her lawyers have been able to come up with when they don’t have an actual answer to his questions.

President Trump has just removed that blockade. By executive order, Trey Gowdy has been given the highest security clearance possible. He could now sit in on presidential intel briefings if he felt he needed to.

The first thing Gowdy did with his newfound ability to investigate is to re-open the Benghazi case. There was a 6-hour window that Clinton never answered for because she said she was in meetings with the president and joint chiefs that were highly classified. Gowdy will begin his investigation by revisiting those discussions and finding out exactly why four men were left to die.

Next, with his newfound freedom of information, he’ll look into just how far Obama went when he sent weapons and cash to the Muslim Brotherhood after they took Egypt by force.

Nothing about this wonderful new power is going to be good for Obama, Clinton or any other Demonrat that thinks they’re above the law.

Maybe now SOMETHING will happen. We live in hope.

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Trey Gowdy gets top security clearance UPDATE: FAKE NEWS

ALERT! I wondered why the bigger blogs were not picking up this story. According to this Hoax website, the report below is 

FAKE NEWS!!! Sorry.

Image via C-Span

Trey Gowdy talks a great game, but just like all the other congressional investigations over the past eight years, the one he chaired (the Select Committee on Benghazi) went nowhere. A couple of days ago, The American News reported:

For five years, Trey Gowdy asked the Oval Office for the tools necessary to do his job properly, and for five years he was told “no” by the Obama administration.

One of the most difficult parts of Trey Gowdy’s job as congressional inquisitor is security clearance. When investigating people who held titles like “Secretary of State” and “Special Aide to the President” or even “President,” Gowdy runs into the issue of security clearance all the time.

“It’s a matter of national security” has become a term Mr. Gowdy hears far too often. It is the single-best excuse Hillary Clinton and her lawyers have been able to come up with when they don’t have an actual answer to his questions.

President Trump has just removed that blockade. By executive order, Trey Gowdy has been given the highest security clearance possible. He could now sit in on presidential intel briefings if he felt he needed to.

The first thing Gowdy did with his newfound ability to investigate is to re-open the Benghazi case. There was a 6-hour window that Clinton never answered for because she said she was in meetings with the president and joint chiefs that were highly classified. Gowdy will begin his investigation by revisiting those discussions and finding out exactly why four men were left to die.

Next, with his newfound freedom of information, he’ll look into just how far Obama went when he sent weapons and cash to the Muslim Brotherhood after they took Egypt by force.

Nothing about this wonderful new power is going to be good for Obama, Clinton or any other Demonrat that thinks they’re above the law.

Maybe now SOMETHING will happen. We live in hope.

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Can federal agencies protect Cleveland?

photo credit: cleveland.com

Security and safety measures for downtown Cleveland during the Republican National Convention are planned and implemented by local, state, and federal agencies. Personnel from Cleveland Police Dept., Cleveland Fire Dept., Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Dept., state troopers from Michigan and Wisconsin, etc, are working with the Secret Service, the FBI, and FEMA, among other agencies. (Background reports are here and here.)

Just how effective are the federal agencies? Mr. Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, published a few sobering thoughts in his USA article “FBI's reputation crumbles with Clinton email fumble.” An excerpt:

the FBI is just one of many federal agencies whose reputation for professionalism has taken a hit during the Obama years. The IRS, complicit in targeting Tea Party groups for their political views, is one. The Secret Service, which has figured in numerous sexual scandals and failures to protect, is another. And, in fact, the notion of a “non-partisan” and competent civil service has taken quite a knock, as one agency after another has seemed ready, willing and able to be compromised by politics.

Politicians have a short-term focus, seldom looking past the next election. But for those of us with a longer view, this is a serious problem. As The Atlantic recently noted, trust in government is collapsing around the world. The reason for this, I’m afraid, is that government isn’t trustworthy. 

I will be going to the meeting next week at Cleveland Public Auditorium to hear the updates from law enforcement and other personnel. My list of questions already includes: does CPD intend to deputize, say, any Oath Keepers? Has there been any communication with the Ohio National Guard? Is Gov. Kasich prepared to activate the compact to request National Guard troops from other states?

Am I overly concerned? Well, I was living in Cleveland during the race riots of 1968 and passed armed National Guard troops in jeeps or on foot on just about every street corner heading into downtown. I remember feeling safer because of their presence. Maybe I am overly worried about everyone’s safety during RNC week, but some of the reports and the list of organizations sending in paid protesters make me think that, to paraphrase Miss Piggy, too much preparation is never enough.

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