Trump blimp photo

Reports of the Trump blimp "dominating the London landscape while Trump is in England" seem to be, er, over-inflated. Spot the giant "baby Trump" blimp in downtown London:

image credit: powerline blog 

Two more photos here.

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Bad news from the UK: Brexit is dead

image credit: kapustafinancial.com

Over the weekend, while the media and chattering classes have been hyperventilating over President Trump’s scheduled announcement this evening of his Supreme Court nominee, there was an ominous development in the UK. It’s bad news for those who share the core Tea Party values of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free [and fair] markets. 

James Delingpole reports today at Breitbart London:

Brexit is dead –  strangled at the weekend by Prime Minister Theresa May and her cabal of Remainer cronies.

It was a brilliant coup, masterfully conducted with a sadist’s attention to detail.

All the ministers in the Cabinet were hauled up to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence, where their phones were confiscated, as though they were naughty children. Then the stubbornly pro-Brexit ones who were rightly disgusted by the shaming sell-out deal May had cobbled together with her virulently Remainer civil servants were given the same choice Rommel was in 1944: cyanide pill or slow career death.

. . .

In June 2016, 17.4 million people — more than had ever voted for anything in British history — voted Brexit to free themselves from the clutches of that Remainer establishment. Now the Remainer establishment has responded as only it knows how: by ignoring the democratic will and shoring up its power base by whatever means necessary.

. . .

Delingpole’s full report is here. 

President Trump is scheduled to visit the UK at the end of this week, despite planned protests (but at least the anti-Trump balloon over Parliament will now have to share the spotlight with the anti-Mayor Khan balloon).

Exit question: will President Trump be meeting with Nigel Farage this Friday?

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Unemployment up?

art credit: lindavernon.com

Good point from Stephen Green at Instapundit:

WINNING: U.S. gains 213,000 jobs in June; unemployment rises to 4%.

When unemployment goes up while the economy is adding jobs at a healthy clip, it’s great news. It means that people who had dropped out of the labor force and had stopped being counted as “unemployed,” feel confident enough to start looking for work again.

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Independence Day celebrations

Image credit: notoverthehill.com

This week we’ll be gathering for backyard BBQs and watching fireworks. The blog DC Whispers sums up what it is we are celebrating:

282 years ago this week 56 brave met to deliberate and in doing so they risked everything. A recent decree from King George declared them traitors. If they did not cease any and all attempts to thwart the authority of British rule they were to be put to death – effective immediately. These men did not cease. Instead, they voted and then signed what was both a Declaration of Independence and a declaration of war against the greatest military power in the world. 

If the rebellion failed they would surely hang.

America was born. 

Happy Independence Day.

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Pastor Darrell Scott and Henry Davis

photo credit: foxbusiness.com

The first time I saw Pastor Darrell Scott was in March 2016,when he introduced Donald J. Trump as a GOP candidate for President out at the IX Center. Pastor Scott was a showstopper at the Cleveland Tea Party “Spirit of America” rally in support of President Trump in March 2017. 

Pastor Scott is really something, and so is a man named Henry Davis from Missouri. Mr. Davis loaded up a 2-minute Twitter video of himself expressing his gratefulness and pride as a black man living and witnessing today the extraordinary accomplishments of the Trump presidency and what it means for minority employment, opportunity, and the possibilities for the future.

After Pastor Scott saw the video, he tweeted a message -- not just in support of Mr. Davis, but also promising to invite him to the White House to discuss joining the Urban Revitalization Team. Then he picked up the phone and called Mr. Davis to make the arrangements.

Vivek Saxena has the story and a link to the video here at BizPacReview. 

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Cleveland Terror plot foiled

photo credit: myajc.com

Fox News at cleveland.com reports:

A man who pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda sought to kill members of the military and conducted reconnaissance in downtown Cleveland for a planned attack on July 4 -- but the Independence Day plot was foiled after a months-long investigation, federal officials said Monday.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen Anthony said Demetrius Pitts, also known as Abdur Raheem Rahfeeq, was arrested at 10 a.m. Sunday by the joint terrorism task force. Authorities were initially notified about Pitts in 2017, when he lived in Cincinnati and allegedly made statements supporting Al Qaeda and advocating violence against U.S. military members.

. . .

Besides the alleged plan to attack on July 4, officials said Pitts wanted to also harm military members and families of service members. Herdman said Pitts discussed giving remote control cars packed with shrapnel to children of military members. 

When he was asked by the undercover FBI agent if he was worried about injuring children, Pitts said, "I don’t care and I have no regrets," according to Herdman.

Anthony said the arrest came after multiple conversations showed that Pitts had a desire to do harm. Pitts was born and "radicalized" in the U.S., and wanted to commit violence in the name of Al Qaeda, he added. Pitts faces up to 20 years in prison.

Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said while the alleged plot was foiled, the public should still contact authorities if they notice anything suspicious.

See the rest of the report here.

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Steve Hilton on the genius of America's founders

image credit: floridatoday.com

We celebrate our Independence Day this coming Wednesday. Steve Hilton published a thoughtful piece on what we love about America entitled “I didn’t get the true genius of America’s founders till I moved here. Here’s what worries me now.” The full article is here, but below are a few excerpts:

It wasn’t until I actually lived in the U.S. that I started to understand the true genius of America’s founders and what they put in place two-and-a-half centuries ago. I saw it in the way that contemporary political debates are conducted with reference to the framers’ intent. I saw it in the huge importance of Supreme Court rulings – reported and debated with a prominence commensurate with the judiciary’s status as a co-equal branch of government – but totally alien to someone familiar with the British system.

And I saw the genius of the Founding Fathers most vividly of all in a family visit to Philadelphia a couple of years ago. While there, I took my two sons to the National Constitution Center, a truly wonderful place that all Americans should visit if they can.

The highlight of the Constitution Center is a regular live performance telling the story of the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the years leading up to the Constitutional Convention – and then of the momentous deliberations that produced the U.S. Constitution itself.

That performance literally moved me to tears as it brought to life in the most immediate and powerful way the beautiful idea at the heart of America: liberty under the law, an idea that had never before been expressed and guaranteed by any nation.

From that idea, and from those incomparable founding documents, come all the things that are special about America – things that are so different to (and, frankly, so much better than) what you find where I grew up, in England. And of course vastly better than what my parents experienced where they grew up in Communist Hungary.

. . .

The melting pot; decentralized government; a republic of equals; a Constitution enshrining the precious ideal of people power. It is all under threat this Fourth of July – and we need to fight for it.

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