Happy Independence Day

 

At Front Page, Don Feder offers 17 ways to celebrate America’s birthday.  Here’s his closing:

Never give up! – America wasn’t started or safeguarded over the course of 245 years by quitters. Think of Valley Forge, the string of defeats the Union Army suffered in 1861-62, Belleau Wood and Bastogne. To pledge allegiance to the flag means that you will fight to keep it waving, regardless of the odds.

We are in a war for America’s survival, every bit as desperate as the Revolution, the Civil War or the Cold War.  It includes the metaphorical equivalent of house-to-house fighting.

We are fighting for the preservation of free speech, religious liberty, private property, limited government and public safety. If the Founding Fathers could pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, the least we can do is to risk our reputations and jobs to stand up to the cancel culture and other types of leftist tyranny.

Happy Fourth of July.

Read all 17 ways to celebrate here.

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Josh Mandel's Senate campaign: not a good look

 

American Greatness has the update:

More Trouble For Josh Mandel:
Fundraising Staff Quits Over “Toxic Environment”
Created By Staffer Mandel Is Dating 

As the Republican senate primary in Ohio heats up, there’s more trouble for candidate Josh Mandel. Several women working on his campaign fundraising team have quit citing a “toxic environment” created by the fundraising director Rachel Wilson. Campaign manager, Scott Guthrie, says that the Mandel and Wilson have been dating since August, 2020.

Mandel is still fielding awkward questions arising from a messy divorce last year. The divorce was settled some time in 2020 (Mandel had the record sealed by the court) so it’s unclear if Mandel was dating Wilson while he was still married to his former wife, Ilana Shafran Mandel. Either way, women on his finance staff say that working for his girlfriend was untenable.

. . .

The report concludes:

Mandel’s base of support has been with social conservatives especially in northeast Ohio around Cleveland. Many have already had enough and have aligned with other candidates. The combination of a rolling series of personal problems – many believe that the problems that led to his divorce were behind him dropping out of the senate race in 2018 – and fundraising staff leaving en masse only complicate matters for Mandel in a competitive race.

Full report is here.  This blog has previously posted on Mr. Mandel and candidates Jane Timken and Mike Gibbons, here, here, and here.

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Best and Worst Run Cities

 

And Cleveland is on the list. Scott Keinhofer at Western Journal has the report:

WalletHub recently released its list of the 150 best-run cities in America. Surveys of this type usually do a better job of creating some publicity for the company sponsoring the survey than they do settling any arguments about what truly is the best or worst of anything.

And while there’s plenty of room for argument as to the statistical methodology WalletHub used to create its survey, there is one finding from this survey that, upon closer inspection, can’t be argued.

Of the 150 cities ranked by WalletHub, 15 of the bottom 16 have something in common: They are run by Democratic mayors.

WalletHub didn’t list the political affiliations of each city’s mayor. In fact, there’s no reference to any specific individuals or  political parties in the survey.

But a quick check of the cities and their respective mayors’ political affiliations paints a pretty harsh reality.

. . .

Of the cities ranked by WalletHub, Washington D.C., ranks dead last, slightly ahead of New York City and Detroit.

Also falling near the bottom of the survey are cities that have been longtime Democrat strongholds such as St. Louis (ranked 136th out of 150), Atlanta (137th), Los Angeles (138th), Chicago (140th), Cleveland (142nd), Oakland (145th), and San Francisco (147th).

Sigh. The full report is here.

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My Kind Of Pushback

Brett T at Twitchy:

‘I won’t be pathologized for being White’: Man resigns from school district over ‘white privilege’ training

This is quite a letter to the Manchester School District, aka “The Temple of Equity,” from Daniel Concannon, who addresses his resignation letter to “Human Wedgie McGee,” the program director of something called the 21CCLC Program.  . . .

 

And here it is:

Click to embiggen or go here to read on the Twitchy link.  Wow.  Posted here for inspirational purposes.

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On the Pledge of Allegiance

 

At American Thinker, Charlotte Cushman explains why students should have the opportunity to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom:

. . .

Should the Pledge be recited?  And should children be taught the Pledge of Allegiance?  Here is what I wrote to a group of teachers who were discussing whether or not a child should learn the Pledge of Allegiance:

There are a lot of lies being told about the United States and its history right now.  The goal is to get people to hate our country, divide us, and make our country and Western civilization fall.  (I have literally heard people say this.)  Our country was the first country on Earth that was created that recognized individual rights — that each individual had a right to pursue his/her own happiness as long as the rights of others were respected.  Before the creation of this country, people had to live their lives for a king or some other authority.  Slavery was common at that time in history, and while it took time for change to happen (as it always does), it was the idea in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal that led to the Civil War and ended slavery in this country.

I understand that some people think that teaching children the Pledge is a form of indoctrination.  Indoctrination is repeating an idea or belief to someone until they believe it.  As this idea or belief is repeated, no proof is given for it, and no questions or discussions are allowed.  The Pledge is not indoctrination if children are taught the accurate history of our country and understand the meaning of the pledge to our flag.  The United States flag is a symbol for freedom, and freedom is essential to life.  It stands for individual rights, and individual rights are essential in order to pursue happiness.  When I pledge to the flag, in my mind I know that I am pledging to the original ideals put forth by the founding fathers: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Therefore, it is logical to say that you're teaching children about the fidelity that the Pledge represents — the fidelity of the concept of individual rights.

By reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, Americans promise to be true to these ideals, not to take freedom for granted, and to remember the countless men, women, and children who have given their lives through the centuries so Americans can live peacefully today.  When children recite the Pledge, they are given the opportunity to think about their roles as citizens, the founding principles of their country, and may be incentivized to think more about the meaning and significance of the Pledge.  The Pledge can stir up curiosity regarding their country and the desire to learn more about early American history.

Only when a person understands the significance and profound meaning of freedom that America has provided can one feel a stab of pride and patriotism.  However, patriotism cannot be forced upon anyone.  Therefore, the recitation should not be compulsory, which means no punitive action should be taken against children who do not recite the Pledge.

. . .

She makes good points.  Full article is here.

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Gov. DeWine: low marks

 

Bonchie at Red State:

Ohio's Governor Perfectly Illustrates
What Republican Impotence Looks Like

Ohio GOP Gov. Mike DeWine has been the perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with the Republican Party for a while now. His handling of COVID has been marked by an inconsistent, overly cowardly approach whereby he was behind the curve on everything from lockdowns to mask mandates.

Unlike Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has fought oppressive mandates at every level, DeWine didn’t take an objective look at what was working and what wasn’t. Rather, he sought to protect himself, putting in place oppressive mandates and restrictions that appear to have amounted to nothing at all. In fact, Ohio and Florida ended up with nearly identical COVID death rates despite their wildly different policy decisions in regards to the pandemic.

DeWine has been so bad that he didn’t even lift his state’s mask mandate until June 2nd, months and months after it became clear masks weren’t anywhere close to a silver bullet. Worse, he actually encouraged schools to keep masking children up –something that lacks any scientific justification, at this point, with teachers largely being vaccinated.

But it’s not just COVID where DeWine has curled up into the fetal position, looking for CNN approval more than doing what’s right. On the transgender sports issue, he’s already promised to veto any legislation sent to him by Ohio’s GOP legislature that deals with the issue.

There’s more here.  And with Jim Renacci running for Gov., well, that’d just be more of the same.

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President Trump’s statement about former AG William Barr

 

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse published President Trump’s statement about Deep State RINO AG William Barr. He introduces the statement:

After being duped, played and ultimately conned, by the duplicitous and Machiavellian deep state apparatchik known as former AG Bill Barr {Go Deep Here} it is no surprise to CTH why President Trump would be a level of angry that’s almost unfathomable.

Here’s some of Mr. Trump’s statement:

“RINO former Attorney General Bill Barr failed to investigate election fraud, and really let down the American people. Even the scam that took place in Georgia of ballot stuffing on camera, he couldn’t see what was wrong with it.

Just like he failed to understand the Horowitz report and let everyone down with respect to getting a timely investigation (where’s Durham?) on all of the corruption of the Obama-Biden Administration.

It’s people in authority like Bill Barr that allow the crazed Radical Left to succeed.

. . .

If there was no fraud, why are Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and other States spending so much time and effort on exposing the fraud? We already know that:

•101,789 “obsolete” voters on the rolls in Georgia, including 18,486 dead people

•Ballot batches off by up to 17.5 percent in Maricopa County, Arizona

•“Massive” chain of custody problems with drop boxes in Georgia, missing hundreds of thousands of records for months after the election

•Thousands of ballots “wheeled in through the back door” in Fulton County days after the election

•“Double feeding” ballots in Fulton County, Georgia

•Nearly 200,000 illegal “indefinitely confined” votes in Wisconsin that violated Voter ID law

•“Cash for votes” scheme in Nevada

•Illegal alien votes

•Election law changes were not authorized by the State Legislatures, which is mandated by the U.S. Constitution

There’s more here.  It was always going to be an uphill battle against the Deep State, especially getting a conservative and principled nominee for AG – one that was not already compromised by Deep State membership.  Such a nominee would probably never have gotten confirmed by the Senate.  Still, it is frustrating to see how much effort it takes just to pull back the curtain.

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