A turning of the tide?

Leftists are in full meltdown over the announcement Justice Anthony Kennedy will step down from the Supreme Court July 31. This action provides President Trump an opportunity to nominate yet another Constitutionalist like Neil Gorsuch to the court. Should Trump serve two full terms, it is likely he will nominate the replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg as well.

The enemies of our Constitutional system are in abject terror over the possibility, now increased, the Court will undo decades of judicial activism. Unable to enact their agenda through the ballot box, the Left sought to impose it instead by abusive judicial fiat. But just as unconstitutional executive orders by Obama could be undone by corrective orders from Trump, the shredding of the Constitution can be reversed by a Supreme Court made up of Justices who respect it.  The impact of these nominations on the next 20 to 30 years cannot be overstated.  It’s vital to elect America First Constitutionalists (sadly, only a subset of the GOP) this fall, and ensure Trump’s reelection in 2020.  Things are going well for patriots lately, but as Glenn Reynolds frequently channels Han Solo, “don’t get cocky, kid.”

On other fronts:

-The Supreme Court, even with Justice Kennedy still on it, has issued a couple of key rulings, freeing pro-life crisis pregnancy centers from being forced to provide information on how to obtain an abortion, and denying unions the ability to force payments from non-members (which usually ends up in liberal political campaigns).

– The reputation of the FBI is hardly helped when Peter Strzok answers a Congressional subpoena to testify in a classified forum, but reportedly refuses to answer the most germane questions by claiming “it’s classified” or declining to answer “on advice of counsel.”  What are the FBI’s lawyers encouraging him to continue hiding?

– A former Hillary 2016 Campaign officer has been indicted for soliciting sexual access to children as young as two years old.  And from the “you can’t make this up” files, he was also chairman of the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict charity.  As they say, fishermen go where the fish are.

– Without Obama propping them up with pallets of cash, the Iranian regime is suddenly experiencing a popular backlash again.  The previous administration’s failure to support Iranian dissidents was inexcusable.  Worth noting: “Q” indicated a week ago Iran was about to get interesting again… another tick of credibility for those keeping score.

– The GOP seems to have a few more members with spines lately, as the latest attempt to pass an amnesty for illegal immigrants has been soundly defeated.  Eternal vigilance is required on this issue, however.

Keep praying hard!  If God can resurrect His Son or an army of dry bones, He can certainly revive our nation!  Let’s seek daily to have our nation bless Him, that He may show favor to us even at this late hour.

Fixed it for you

Time Magazine stands by its cover, which once again shows the corporate media is more concerned about narrative and emotional manipulation than proper context:

And yet they wonder why more and more Americans find the term “fake news” appropriately descriptive.

Seeing through common propaganda

Kurt Schlichter provides brief rebuttals to some of the more asinine liberal “arguments” (which he correctly refers to as “cheats”):

The Cheat: “Jesusplain Those Rubes!”

When in doubt, play the messiah card! It’s always a pleasure to have some atheist hipster explain to you how Christ was a socialist SJW who was ultra-open-minded about what bathroom people should use and who demands you give the government money so it can hand your cash over to deadbeats. I often wonder if this gambit ever works, if anyone ever thinks, “Gosh, I guess if @ImpeachTrumpHillarysHot says my Savior hates AR15s, then I better disarm myself in the face of liberal-enabled crime and liberal-supported tyranny.”

How to Beat It: You could explain the whole Christianity thing, but it’s easier to just tell the liberals to go pound sand.

((Preferably, try to explain the faith first, but whenever it becomes clear they’re only interested in twisting scripture to support their agenda, the “pound sand” option is the conclusion.  After all, even Jesus told His disciples to shake the dust off their sandals from towns that would not listen to them.  — Jemison))

The Cheat: “We are better than that!”

They like to try to weaponize our morality against us, which is hilarious since they hate morality almost as much as they hate us. They create some sort of moral test, usually out of thin air, and then announce you have failed it. One of the best was the recent “Splitting up families of undocumented workers is not who we are!” Except it is who we are. We split up the families of criminals all the time and we should – there’s no nursery in San Quentin for a reason.

What they want to do is well up those tears in your eyes so you don’t clearly see the truth – the problem is not the consequence of illegal aliens breaking into our country. The problem is the illegal aliens breaking into our country. The problem is always the misbehavior we are calling out, not the fact we are calling it out.

How to Beat It: Refuse to play this human shield game and tell the liberals to go pound sand.

Read the rest here.  It’s time to stop acting as if these “arguments” have any merit other than emotional sensationalism.

Slowing traffic both ways

Since the 2016 election Americans have been focused on the debate over whether to build a wall on the southern border to staunch the flow of illegal immigrants into the country.  (For those new here, this is a proposal I wholeheartedly support.)  The debate, however, usually fails to note the significance of what is leaving the country at the same time:

Asylum is in large part a colossal scam designed to provide Latin American countries with both a safety valve and a cash cow of foreign exchange.  In 2017, remittances sent back to Honduras totaled $4.33 billion and make up a significant part of the Honduran economy… Remittances comprised 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011, according to World Bank estimates, the second largest share of any country in Latin America or the Caribbean…

Overall,

Immigrants in the United States in 2016 sent home ((worldwide)) more than $138 billion – a sum that exceeds the entire gross domestic product of Kuwait – according to a new report from the Pew Research Center[.]

This is essentially involuntary foreign aid from the United States — on a scale three times larger than the official foreign aid budget! — to a host of nations that are less inclined to reform their basket-case economies because of this parasitical safety valve.

Since both flows — inward and outward — need to be addressed, today’s linked article makes a solid case for taxing these remittances to build the wall, noting one Congressman has already proposed to do just that:

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) sponsored a bill in March that would slap a 2 percent tax on all money transfers from the United States to Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America.

If Rogers expanded the idea to include all transfers to countries outside of the United States, it would generate $2.76 billion, based on the 2016 remittance totals.

“Over 10 years, there it is… There’s your wall.”

The means to achieve better national security and control of our own sovereignty exist.  The question is whether we will exercise the will to use them.  I don’t support building the wall because I hate foreigners (far from it).  I support it because I love my country, and can see what lawless immigration and economic colonization are doing to it.  I can also see how other nations in the world are less motivated to solve their own problems when they can simply shift their most restless populations to the U.S., all while taking a cut of their economic good fortune.  All of this needs to come to a stop, for everyone’s long-term sake.

 

Photo worth a thousand words

Ponder this:

Conditions are allegedly so bad in Honduras that a person leaves the country, travels over 1,000 miles to the edge of the United States (with no small amount of facilitation by Mexico), where he climbs the shoddy fence denoting the border.

Then waves the flag of the country he fled…

This isn’t about political asylum.  It’s not even about wanting to become an American and wanting to share in the so-called “American dream.”  It’s about raiding the larder of the richest country in the hemisphere, all while flipping the bird at U.S. sovereignty.  It’s about rejecting any adaptation and instead flaunting the cultural trappings of the country he left behind… a country that was supposedly so bad Americans are expected to welcome him without reservation.

I call BS.  This photo doesn’t depict immigration.  Even without visible weapons, it depicts invasion.

…and should be dealt with accordingly.  Seal the border, already!

Decision time

The United States must decide whether it is a sovereign nation with defined borders, or merely the “promised land” for anyone in the world who wanders, sneaks, or breaks in.  For more than a couple generations we’ve sent such mixed signals on this issue, that plenty of people are willing to make dangerous journeys in the hopes of having their status legalized later.  This is the result:

For five days now hundreds of Central Americans — children, women, and men, most of them from Honduras — have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite their being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them.

Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, bypassing not only authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants.

Organizers like Rodrigo Abeja hope that the sheer size of the crowd will give immigration authorities and criminals pause before trying to stop them…

So we have 1,200 or more people making their way en masse to the U.S. border, with Mexico’s complete complicity in allowing them to pass through from Central America. If 1,200 people (roughly the size of a U.S. Army battalion) showed up at our border with weapons and walked across, that would be considered an invasion. Is it any less of an invasion if they are unarmed but still uninvited when they cross? Is it any less of an invasion when recent years show the border is being probed and scouted in an increasingly aggressive and confrontational manner?

If the group traveling through Mexico arrives together at our border, what will be the nation’s response?  I’m certain the mainstream media will seek to tug heartstrings with accounts of what these people left, the challenge of their journey and what they “dream” of being in the U.S.  None of those same outlets will balance their stories with information about what illegal immigration costs the U.S. taxpayer, and how it affects employment and wage prospects for the most vulnerable of our own people.  None of them will confront the simple fact the U.S. physically can’t be a lifeboat for the entire world.  In short, the corporate news will act as a fifth column already within the gates, trying to convince us we don’t need gatekeepers at all.

What gets me is our nation spends north of $600 billion a year on our military… the traditional role of which is to secure our territory and interests.  Generations of Americans are used to seeing our military in action overseas, but I believe few could conceive of it garrisoning our own border as it once did.  And that’s regrettable, because this issue is kicking into overdrive, and the Border Patrol is ill-equipped to handle the problem.  It makes no sense to fund an overseas expeditions while leaving our own border undefended.  As commander-in-chief, Trump has the authority to order military reinforcements to the border.  The million-dollar question is, will he?

It would seem that in the next couple of weeks, we will either see a demonstration of renewed resolve to defend our sovereignty, or we will show the world conclusively that the U.S. border is simply a welcome mat for anyone who cares to show up.

Stay tuned.

On laws and the flouting thereof

Every day brings new evidence that the desired state of being “a nation of laws, not of men,” is no longer true of America:

Federal immigration agents arrested more than 150 people in California in the days after Oakland’s mayor gave early warning of the raids, it was announced Tuesday…

On Saturday, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warned residents that “credible sources” had told her a sweep was imminent, calling it her “duty and moral obligation” to warn families.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, about 800 individuals sought for arrest eluded the organized crackdown, most with criminal records and multiple previous deportations.  So how is the mayor’s warning not a case of obstruction of justice?  In fact, why isn’t the entire “sanctuary state/city” nonsense chargeable as conspiracy to obstruct justice?

While we’re talking about illegal immigrants, let’s note that Rahm Emmanuel’s Chicago has created a municipal identification card “for undocumented <read: illegal> immigrants and others” that will be considered valid ID for voter registration and voting.  Meanwhile, 12 States and the District of Columbia issue drivers licenses even to illegal immigrants who cannot provide previously required documentation such a Social Security card.  When you add this to the nationwide push of “motor-voter” laws, it’s easy to see how we could have tens or hundreds of thousands of foreigners voting in our elections each cycle.  Indeed, Pennsylvania currently faces accusations that about 100,000 illegal immigrants are registered to vote in that State.

Here’s the irony: the investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign is allegedly supposed to determine whether it “colluded” with Russian influence to win the election.  In other words, foreign interference is undesirable (on that, at least, we can agree).  But if that’s the whole point of the investigation, why are there not similarly prominent efforts to look into and prosecute the facilitation of foreigners living and voting illegally in the United States?

Immigration and naturalization are the purview of the Federal Government under the Constitution.  Any State or local official who deliberately interferes in these matters should be held to account.  Many do so today because such “virtue signalling” to our invaders and their domestic supporters carries a nonexistent personal cost.  Sure, a few would be willing to act as “martyrs” if we got serious about accountability, but the vast majority are crybullies who would think twice if others hit back.  It would send a tremendous signal if Federal agents arrested the mayor of Oakland for harboring fugitives with her warning of ICE raids.

Don’t worry, though — I’m not holding my breath that such true accountability will occur in these lawless times.  *IF* the rule of law ever returns to this country, it likely will only be after a harsh period of restoring discipline and individual accountability.  The pendulum has swung too far for it to be otherwise.

“You may say I’m a Dreamer…”

“…but I’m not the only one.”

I tuned in for the State of the Union speech last night and I’m glad I did, for several reasons.  First, watching the Democrats win the “Worst Performance by a Minority Party at a State of the Union Address” award was priceless.  You could see it on their faces: they expected at this point in history to be watching Her Hillariness make permanent the hard left agenda inflicted by Obama.  Instead, they’re watching the country back away from the cliff, for however long the reprieve lasts.

More pleasantly, Trump struck the right tones in his address, maintaining discipline in his comments and rarely seeming to wander from the script as he often does.  Sure, he’ll never be as polished a speaker as Ronald Reagan, but that doesn’t matter: he communicates effectively in his own way.  Reagan may have started the trend of inviting “showcase” guests to the SOTU address, but Trump took it to a whole new level last night.  He put faces to the issues of border security, economic reform, courageous service and American patriotism.  I’ve become as cynical as most when it comes to such stage shows, but it was hard not to feel something when the president introduced Ji Seong-Ho, who escaped the brutality of North Korea and now fights that regime as a broadcaster and aid to fellow defectors.  To all the Lefties who’ve preened they’re some kind of underground “#resistance” to Trump’s allegedly “fascist” administration, the president was saying “THIS is what real resistance to real tyranny looks like:”

The line that most struck me, however, was this:

My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans — to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream.  Because Americans are dreamers too.

In one swift moment, Trump yanked the term “Dreamers” away from the open borders advocates, reminding them there are people already in this country whose dreams are threatened by unchecked immigration, both legal and illegal.  It highlighted the many ways in which the Democratic party has put the interests of foreigners above those of the people they are elected to serve.  It was a masterful rhetorical stroke.

I came away from the speech optimistic.  Not necessarily because I think the administration will achieve everything they’ve set out to do.  Not because I think Trump is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  But because this unlikely president is doing something that’s needed doing for a long time:

He’s teaching the Republicans how to fight.  In doing so, he’s giving the country its best — and perhaps final — shot for recovering from its leftward drift toward becoming California writ large.

Is “diversity” good for America?

At every turn, we are assured by the media, too many politicians, and a whole host of activists that “diversity is our strength.”  Is it?  Some of the Founders would have dismissed such an idea.  John Quincy Adams, son of the second President, had this to say to his father in 1811:

“America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.”  (emphasis added)

In this he was not falling far from the tree, so to speak.  During and after the American Revolution, the elder Adams strongly advocated English as a common language for the new nation.  George Washington, in his Farewell Address, noted the conditions of the younger Adams’ later observations were already present:

“With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.” (emphasis added)

We’re told that American-style liberty and self-governance is the desire of every human being; that in everyone, there’s an American struggling to break out.  Is that really true?  If so, then why are second-generation immigrants participating in terrorism?  Why are some advocating the adoption of an alien Sharia law system in the U.S.?  Why are there alien enclaves here waving foreign flags (while burning the U.S. one) and looking more like the lands of their ancestors than part of the United States?  Most importantly, who benefits from this conscious policy and why?

Culture is the wellspring from which a nation’s institutions flow.  The culture that created the United States was steeped in the Christian faith, the history of British self-governance and Enlightenment thinking about limited government.  Even today, those are hardly universal foundations for societies.   Around the world there are plenty of examples of what results when any or all of those pillars are missing.  So why would we not demand they continue to predominate here?  

America is now decades into its multicultural fetish.  But there is a tremendous difference between enjoying colorful assortments of dress, dance and cuisine, and acting as if all worldviews produce the same positive results.  They clearly do not.  I couldn’t help but think of the multiculturalists when I recently read about the custom in Madagascar of literally dancing with the corpses of dead family members.  I guarantee there are doctrinaire multiculturalists who would demand we not frown on such a horrific practice; that instead we celebrate what they would emphasize as an expression of love.  The problem is, such things have predictable consequences, such as the spreading of disease.  In most of Latin America (especially Brazil), the annual “Carnival” celebration is a license for utter debauchery.  In much of Islamic Africa, the genitals of young girls are mutilated in an attempt to mute their sexuality, a practice now flourishing in immigrant communities such as Detroit.

So what do we expect to happen when we have “diversity lotteries” for admission to the U.S., resulting in people moving here in large numbers directly from societies with such practices?  Is it not strange we have elected officials more concerned with protecting illegal immigrants than U.S. citizens?  We have forgotten, to our own peril, that the U.S., and more broadly Western Civilization, is unique in human history and that most of the world’s story is a uniform one of various flavors of subservience and misery for the average individual.  Too few Americans have personally experienced how different life outside the “developed world” can be, so they have no idea what’s at stake.

At the rate we’re going, though, many are about to find out.  Western Civilization once had the audacity to proclaim universal truths and standards of right and wrong.  But today it thinks of itself as merely one voice among many, and nothing special worth defending.  I believe the “diversity drive,” coupled with the now-prevalent idea there is no objective truth, will be noted by historians as the fatal acid that ate away the foundations of the United States.  The key question at this point is whether any of the original culture of this country will be preserved in what follows its approaching demise, or whether, as Winston Churchill once warned of the Nazi threat, “the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” 

No more compromise. Period.

I guess the next two days will feature obligatory public pearl-clutching that the president asked why America would want immigrants from “s***hole nations,” instead of from more Western countries like “Norway.”

Yes, he absolutely shouldn’t have phrased it that way.  But I’ve traveled myself, courtesy of Uncle Sam’s Armed Forces, to a few “s***hole nations.”  Trump is imprudently making an important point that will be entirely overlooked: the only question that should drive policy in this area is:  ‘What does an unchecked flood of migrants from failed societies do for Americans already here?’ Answer: become a net burden.  Enough with the ‘diversity’ experiment.

The public displays of moral outrage over Trump’s latest remarks will push the real scandal off the front pages.  That scandal is that once again our lawmakers are proposing a compromise deal on immigration that is bad for America.  “Just let the Dreamers stay,” they preen, “and we’ll get serious about immigration enforcement this time.  No, really.”

They said that in the 1980s, too.  And the 1990s.  “Wiping the slate clean” as the 1986 law was supposed to do clearly didn’t solve the issue, because we have more illegal immigrants in America today than we did then.  And “amnesty” by any other name is just as unjust.  Lucy is simply preparing to yank the football away from Charlie Brown once more.  This is the best comment I’ve seen on the compromise proposals:

The basic problem with trading amnesty for so-called “Dreamers” (illegal aliens brought to America as children) for increased enforcement of laws against illegal immigration and greater border security is that those aims are fundamentally in contradiction…  (emphasis added)

So when it comes to the shell game negotiations now going on in Washington, as of now, I’m voting for gridlock.

Despite his appalling tendency toward diarrhea of the mouth, Trump’s administration has accomplished some noteworthy goals on behalf of America during this first year.  Some have compared him favorably to Saint Ronald of Reagan.  That should be a warning: Reagan’s two fatal errors were agreeing to the immigration compromise of his time, and not demanding spending cuts to offset the military buildup that allowed the U.S. to reengage the Cold War on a stronger footing after Vietnam.  The first created a demographic time bomb, the second a fiscal one.

As currently practiced, immigration to the United States changes our country more than it changes the immigrants.  We are expected to adapt to their norms, rather than the other way around.  And since norms in many of the countries of origin can be fairly described as producing “s***holes,” one wonders what future immigration advocates desire for America.

“Magic Dirt theory is a key component of immigration romanticism, too. Sure, Mexico and Central America are messed-up places, and presumably their inhabitants played some role in messing them up. If we just move thirty or forty million of those people to the U.S.A., though, our Magic Dirt will transform them into civic-minded Jeffersonian yeomen!”

I recently visited my parents, and some observations come to mind.  Their neighborhood has never been wealthy, but it has deteriorated noticeably over the four decades they’ve lived there.  The two houses across the street now each house multiple families of foreign origin who do nothing to keep their houses up, park semi-abandoned cars all over the yards, and party so loudly my parents have had to call the police multiple times.  One of the neighbors bragged to my father that he has 18 children by different women.

My formerly small-town home has seen wave after wave of migrants from all over the world, and I don’t see the “enrichment” such diversity was supposed to bring.  What I *do* see is the old YMCA where I took swimming lessons is now a Buddhist meditation center.  Large piles of trash litter the side of the road for a mile leading to the dump because avoiding the landfill fee is now common practice.  Similar disregard for the law manifests in myriad other ways as well.  My parents didn’t install a security system in their house until after I graduated college, and they now have concealed carry permits.  Sure, you can get authentic Thai, Mexican and Chinese food.  Few of the people I grew up with there would consider that a positive tradeoff.  In fact, few of the people I grew up with are still there.

For all of these and many other reasons, I will not support ANY compromise on DACA, which was an openly admitted executive usurpation of legislative authority by the former president.  We’ve been sold this kind of “relief” too many times, and our good-hearted nature has been used to play us for fools.  Those who come here illegally have already shown disregard for our laws.  What makes us think that attitude will change once they’re here?  Particularly if we so obviously don’t intend to enforce our laws?

Mr. Trump, you were elected in no small part because after half a century of constant betrayal, the “posterity” of those who fought the American Revolution have run out of places to flee from the effects of these policies imposed on us by our self-proclaimed “betters.”  Many of your supporters in 2016 overlooked your personality and character flaws in the hope that maybe, just maybe, you would listen to the concerns of what some of our those ‘betters’ now openly dare to call “deplorables.”  If you sell us out, too, there is likely no chance those concerns will ever be addressed.

At least, within the system we used to respect.  This country was founded on the idea that systems sometimes fail the people.  Something about “altering or abolishing” government when it becomes destructive of life, liberty and property.  Despite the best efforts of today’s education system Marxist indoctrination factories, some of us still remember that legacy.  It’s our heritage and birthright.  And we’ll defend it.

Your move.