Month: January 2019

Okay, he lost a battle with Pelosi/Schumer on funding for the wall. Has he lost the war? Hardly! Let’s look at all of the data . . . all of President Trump’s accomplishments in the two years since he has been in office. What has he accomplished other than driving Democrats into a state that is approaching apoplexy? Does he have anything to show for his first two years in office? Because the Democrats will pooh-pooh just about all of positive things that he has done thus far, I have decided to detail what has been accomplished – first from the perspective of the American people in general (Part I), and then second, from the viewpoint of conservatives (Part II). A lot of what follows comes from 1600 Daily. From my perspective the following accomplishments can only be viewed positively by just about everyone.

1. President Trump’s pro-growth policies are unleashing economic growth and providing opportunities to workers across the country.

Who can possibly be against any of the following: 

-GDP over 3% for the last four quarters

-More than 5 million jobs have been created

-Unemployment rate continues below 4%

-Unemployment Rate for African Americans is the lowest on record at 5.9%

-4.6 million people have been lifted off food stamps

-The women’s unemployment rate recently reached its lowest rate in 65 years, and his administration helped launch the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, which could leverage more than $1 billion to support women entrepreneurs.

2.  President Trump mobilized his entire Administration to combat the opioid crisis that has devastated communities across the country.

Who can possibly be against combatting the opioid crisis in this country? All Americans are on the side of the President in this battle.

-The President helped secure a record $6 billion in funding to fight the opioid epidemic.

-President Trump launched an Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse and Reduce Drug Supply and Demand.

-The Administration pursued scientific solutions to prevent and treat addiction through the Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative.

-The Administration secured first-ever indictments against Chinese nationals for fentanyl trafficking

3. President Trump is rolling back costly regulations that have burdened hardworking Americans and stifled innovation. 

Certainly the majority of Americans would agree to get rid of unnecessary and burdensome regulations:

-President Trump has followed through on and exceeded his promise to roll back two regulations for every new one created. In 2017 this ratio was 22/1, and in 2018 it was 12/1. Spectacular!

-Since taking office, President Trump’s deregulation efforts have achieved $33 billion in regulatory savings. In 2018, these efforts alone delivered $23 billion in benefits to American families and business owners.

-President Trump signed an executive order to streamline the permitting process for infrastructure projects with a goal of cutting approval time from up to 10 years to an average of 2 years.

4. President Trump is honoring America’s commitment to our veterans by ensuring they receive the quality care they have earned.

We as a country have promised certain things to our veterans, and Americans believe that we should honor these commitments.

-President Trump secured a record $73.1 billion in funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide quality medical care for our veterans. This funding included $8.6 billion for mental health services, $400 million for opioid abuse prevention, $206 million for suicide prevention, and more

-The President signed the VA MISSION Act, revolutionizing the VA healthcare system and reforming numerous services for our veterans

-President Trump signed the Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, making it easier to fire failing employees and protect whistleblowers. Under President Trump, the VA has removed, demoted, or suspended more than 4,300 employees for poor performance.

You may be hearing about a number of these numerous accomplishments for the first time as the Main-Stream Media has not and will not speak about them, because touting them goes against its anti-Trump agenda. In Part II I will elaborate on President Trump’s accomplishments that are viewed positively primarily by conservatives. Stay tuned!

On the one week anniversary of Martin Luther King Day, I had a dream. This morning when I woke up, I had a vivid recollection of what I supposed was a dream. No, it was not a nightmare similar to the many that I have had concerning our Looney-Tunes-like state of California. Although some of the details of the dream were a bit fuzzy, there was an unusual clarity in some respects as actual numbers were involved. Get ready! Fasten your seatbelts! I dreamt that the state of California, or rather its Attorney General, announced that 95,000 individuals registered to vote in the Golden State had been identified as “Non-US Citizens,” meaning they are illegally registered to vote. Further evidence brought forth by the Secretary of State confirmed that 58,000 of these individuals have broken the law and voted in “one or more” recent elections. “Every single instance of illegal voting threatens democracy in our state and deprives individual Californians of their voice,” the Attorney General said in a statement. “My Election Fraud Unit stands ready to investigate and prosecute crimes against the democratic process when needed. The Sec. of State discovered a total of approximately 95,000 individuals illegally registered to vote after a year-long evaluation of California county voting registrars. Today, his office announced that 58,000 of these individuals actually voted in one or more elections. Integrity and efficiency of elections require accuracy of our state’s voter rolls, and my office is committed to using all available tools under the law to maintain an accurate list of registered voters. Our agency has provided extensive training opportunities to county voter registrars so that they can properly perform list maintenance activities in accordance with federal and state law, which affords every registered voter the chance to submit proof of eligibility,” the Sec. of State told the media. The Sec. of State immediately provided the data in its possession to the California Attorney General’s office, as the Secretary of State has no statutory enforcement authority to investigate or prosecute alleged illegal activity in connection with an election. Wow! Double and Triple Wow!!

As I got out of bed, something hit the floor. It was my i-pad. I had apparently fallen asleep last night while reading “Townhall.” Oops! My “dream” was apparently a juxtaposition of a Townhall article by Timothy Meads, and fantasy, as the state that actually had looked into illegals registering to vote and then voting was Texas. Perhaps it was 58,000 illegal votes that made the recent O’Rourke-Cruz Senate race appear closer than it actually was? 

Let’s think a bit more about my California fantasy dream. In 2014 according to Pew Research Data statistics there were 1,650,000 illegals living in Texas, whereas there were 2,350,000 illegals living in California. If we extrapolate these recent Texas numbers to California, it means that there would be about 82,600 fraudulent votes by illegals in each California election! But to even make matters even worse, a recent 2018 study out of Yale and M.I.T. said that the estimate of 11.1 million illegals living in the U.S. is much too low. They said that a more realistic number is 16.7-22 million, and this implies that there are more than 2.35 million in California . . .  how many more fraudulent illegal votes does this mean in California? OMG ! Until there comes a time when California gets serious about the actual number of illegal votes in the state, my vote as well as yours, mean very little.

 

Gomoku, also called Five in a Row, is an abstract Japanese strategy board game that is traditionally played with black and white pieces. The object of this game is to get five pieces in a row. Five in a Row is a winner. Last week five in a row was what ignited an explosion from the left. Here, however, five in a row was a big loser. Let me explain:

I am talking about the ludicrous incident involving a high school student in D.C. For those of you who are not aware of what happened, let me summarize what the left spewed out on social media: 

To paraphrase, “A white high school student, while wearing a M.A.G.A. hat, accosted a Native American Vietnam War veteran in Washington, D.C. The student, who was in Washington to attend an anti-abortion rally, attended Covington Catholic H.S. in Covington, Kentucky.”
Because the story had five different “offensive”, “this is war” words, the left ran with it. Yes, the student was wearing a M.A.G.A. hat (1), and he was from a Catholic H.S. (2). He is white (3), and he was face to face with a Native American man (4), and even worse the student was in Washington attending an anti-abortion march(5)! 

The problem with this slanted narrative is that it was wrong on the key detail, which was brought out when the full video was seen. In actuality the Native American came up to, and got in the face of the high school student –  not the other way around, and to top it off, the “war veteran” spent four years in the military as a refrigerator repairman, was never in Vietnam, never left the U.S., and was discharged as a private. Four years, and still a private! . . . that’s pretty hard to do!

The consequences of this “fake news” were  threats to the student and his family, and the temporary closing of Covington Catholic H.S. because of safety concerns. Thus far the only good thing is a libel suit brought by the student and his family. Although I am usually not a fan of lawsuits, I hope that family from Kentucky take the spreaders of this fake news to the cleaners, or perhaps, I should say “to the bank!”

At first I was aghast when I read the following about some politicians on Townhall, “The narrative must be preserved at all costs – even the cost of truth.” Wow! This implies that some do not tell the truth (la verdad), and really do not care (no me importa). Could this be? I started to think about some things that have happened recently.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said, “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct (la verdad), than about being morally right (no me importa).” An isolated example?? . . . not hardly.Stephanie Ruhle, an MSNBC reporter, recently tweeted, “ . . . suggests that Lindsay Graham is being blackmailed by Trump over an extreme secret.” Similarly, Ilhan Omar (D,MN) recently said, “Lots of Americans agree with me that Trump is blackmailing Sen. Lindsay Graham over his sexuality.” A lot of innuendo, but no proof of anything (la verdad ?), but certainly neither cares about veracity (no me importa!).

That same Ilhan Omar came out and slandered the Covington Catholic students at the center of a made-up controversy with false claims . . . another example of no la verdad, without a subsequent apology (¡no me importa!) Not to be topped by Ilhan Omar, Ocasio-Cortez warned us earlier this week.”The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” and then referred to the Bible as the source of her inside info. (no la verdad). Maxine Waters (D,CA) recently said, “it’s time to go after him; impeachment is about whatever Congress says it is” . . . meaning la verdad, no le importa, as there is no pretense here that truth is of any importance!

Finally Joy Behar from ABC’s The View summed it up concisely when Whoopi Goldberg asked why they kept making the same mistake when they were fooled by the initial short video of the Covington Catholic fake news. Behar said, “Because we are desperate to get Trump out of office.” Finally la verdad, and me importa!

Judge Wendy Beetlestone on 1/14/19 halted the implementation of a revised set of rules that allowed employers with religious or moral objections to opt out of providing their employees with health insurance that covers birth control. Ms. Beetlestone is a U.S. District Judge from Pennsylvania, and you guessed it, she was appointed by . . . Barack Hussein Obama. According to the Wall Street Journal, she wrote that the rules likely violated constitutional principles, including that they were too broad and were implemented using improper procedures. Translation: “I don’t like Trump, and so I will rule against this because his administration implemented it.” I thought that prostitution was legal only in Nevada!
Then the next day, 1/15/19, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman “ruled” against Wilbur Ross, President Trump’s Commerce Secretary, who wanted to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. Judge Furman “ruled” against asking about citizenship on the census. He said that while a citizenship question is constitutional, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross failed to follow the correct procedure to include it in the forthcoming census. “Secretary Ross’s decision to add a citizenship question in the 2020 census — even if it did not violate the Constitution itself — was unlawful for a multitude of independent reasons and must be set aside,” Furman wrote.Translation: “Judge Furman is an Obama guy all the way, and so doesn’t like Donald Trump.” The question which Ross sought to add reads: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” A question of such nature has appeared before on the census, the last time back in 1950. Reacting to the “ruling,”Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky, said federal law gives Ross the authority to select which questions should appear on the census. Judge Jesse Furman is a U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, and you guessed it, he was appointed by . . . Barack Hussein Obama, and BTW his brother, Jason Furman  served as an economic adviser to President Barack Obama.  I thought that prostitution was only legal in Nevada!

I do not agree with either of these judges’ “rulings,” but what I really do not understand is how a non-elected judge in a District Court can make a “ruling” that applies to the entire country. If the “ruling” is to apply to only her/his district, then I can reluctantly go along with that . . . but to the entire country . . . by a non-elected “Judge?”     Both of these cases will end up in the Appeals Courts, and ultimately they will go to the Supreme Court. Note that neither of the above two “rulings” were made by a judge in the Ninth Circuit, so ultimately neither will go through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is important because, if perchance, an obvious politically slanted “ruling” were to come from the Ninth Circuit, which includes Nevada, I might have a modicum of understanding as prostitution is legal in Nevada!

The formal basis for the State of the Union (SOTU) Address is from the U.S. Constitution:

The President “shall from time to time give to Congress information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Article II, Section 3, Clause 1.

So it seems that Speaker Pelosi is under no obligation to go through with the scheduled January 29 date in the House, as the Constitution says “from time to time.” Including President Donald J. Trump’s 2018 address, there have been a total of 95 in-person Annual Messages/State of the Union Addresses. Since President Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 address, there have been a total of 83 in-person addresses. In 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt did not personally give the address, but rather his address was read to a Joint Session of the House and the Senate. So it seems that Speaker Pelosi is not totally wrong when she told President Trump that he could send a written State of the Union, and not personally appear himself . . . for security reasons! Senator Rand Paul had an interesting idea.”I think it is an affront to the president and to the office of the presidency, really, for [Pelosi] to have the gall to say, ‘No State Of The Union.’ I can’t imagine they’ll try to follow through with it, but if they do, my suggestion to Sen. McConnell would be to invite [Trump] to the Senate,” Paul said. In modern practice, the State of the Union Address is delivered in the House Chamber. Prior to the Capitol’s move to Washington, DC., the Annual Message was often delivered in the Senate Chamber. So there is precedence for the President giving the State of the Union address in the Senate Chambers. The problem with this location is that there is not enough room for all of the members of the House. 
So to those in the media it appears that Speaker Pelosi is winning this round. But . . . not so fast Ms. P.!  Be careful what you wish for, as President Trump is no ordinary opponent. In fact, I believe that Ms. Pelosi has painted herself into a corner. She has forced herself into a no-win situation. If she allows the SOTU Address to proceed on January 29, it will be perceived that she has caved. If she follows through on this breaking of precedence, she will be remembered as the female Harry Reid, when future Republican Houses cancel the SOTU Address of a Democratic President. But more importantly if the SOTU Address to the House and the Senate is cancelled, I predict that after January 29th has past, President Trump will bring the SOTU Address directly to the people, either from the Oval Office or in a huge campaign-like rally in a domed stadium. Can you imagine the SOTU Address being give in the Superdome or in AT&T stadium where the  Dallas Cowboys play. If you don’t think that the Trump people haven’t thought about this alternative, you are as naive as Speaker Pelosi. 

The competition between President Trump and Speaker Pelosi is akin to a tennis match between the experienced pro, Nancy Pelosi, and the newcomer, Donald Trump.
The commentary, as put out by the Main Stream Media, is that Pelosi is the favorite, based on her experience and cunning. However one has to wonder as she has never faced an unconventional opponent similar to Mr. Trump in the past. Up to this point in time the match has been even, and Speaker Pelosi is serving.

Serve: Talks screeched to a halt last week when Trump asked Pelosi point blank in the White House Situation Room whether she would negotiate over border wall funds if he re-opened the government.
Return: After Pelosi replied that she would not, Trump said “bye bye” and walked out.
Ms. Pelosi and her coach, Chuck, complained to the media that the unconventional Mr. Trump was playing unfairly!
Point: Trump!

Serve: On 1/16/19, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi played a new card in the shutdown battle. Pelosi sent an open letter to President Trump demanding he reschedule his State of the Union address until after the government had been reopened.

“Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address,” she wrote, “or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to Congress.”

A sad attempt at a political stunt! Initially, no response was received. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen dismissed any security concerns, “The Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service are fully prepared to support and secure the State of the Union.” At this point in the match, Pelosi’s supporters cheered, “What a stroke of genius,” they said in unison!

Return: President Trump responded to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s effort to postpone the State of the Union address by canceling her planned overseas trip and suggesting she fly commercial instead.

Trump wrote to inform Pelosi that her overseas trip that she was planning on making “to Brussels, Egypt and Afghanistan has been postponed. In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I’m sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate,” Trump wrote.

A blistering return of a tricky Pelosi political service. Ms. Pelosi is now glaring at her coach, Chucky and mouthing “what shall we do now?”

Point: Trump!

Is it possible for a state to have more registered voters than citizens old enough to vote? Is it possible for a county to have more registered voters than it has citizens old enough to vote? If you answered “No” to either of these questions, “wake up, and welcome to reality.”According to the Washington Free Beacon, the state of California has many more registered voters than it has citizens old enough to vote, and Los Angeles County, with more than 10 million residents, has a registered voter count of 112% that of its citizens old enough to vote. These numbers are from an article in the Washington Free Beacon that was reporting on a successful suit brought by Judicial Watch against both the state of California and Los Angeles County. As a result of this suit California has to purge one-and-a-half million voters from its rolls.

How can there be so many more registered voters than actual citizens living in a county or a state?  Are you an optimist or a pessimist? If you are an optimist the astronomical number of potential phantom voters in California and in Los Angeles County is merely due oversight, followed by more oversight, followed by more . . . you get the idea. Oversight implies that whatever has occurred is just an innocent mistake, or in the case of the state of California about one-and-a-half million innocent mistakes! If you believe this whole bugaboo is just a lot to do about nothing, then you are living in a Democratic dream world, as they would typically nonchalantly say, “People move and people die . . . how can anyone keep track?” 

If you are a pessimist these phantom potential voters, whether they have moved or died, have been purposely not deleted from the voting rolls. An oversight? . . . “No!” Skullduggery? . . . At least, and more likely an attempt by some, who feel that they have the Ocasio-Cortez-like “moral high-ground,” in order to insure that the best Democratic candidate wins. Here in California, no one at the polling place ever says, “I thought you moved to Arizona,” or “Aren’t you dead?” One does not have to show any form of I.D. to vote in California. If Mr./Ms. X is on the voting roll, all one has to do is to identify him/herself as Mr./Mrs. X, and he/she is handed a ballot.  In fact individuals who volunteer to work at polling places in California on Election Day cannot work in their own neighborhood polling place, and thus could never ask, “Aren’t you dead?”,  because they would never know about a voter at that particular polling place who has died as they are not in their own neighborhood.

A final piece of irony: In order to get or renew a library card in San Diego, an individual must bring a picture I.D. and proof of residency, like an unopened phone bill. I guess that the city library is more concerned about dead people taking out books than California is concerned about dead people voting!

(You’ll notice that I did not mention the problem of illegals voting. This was not an oversight as I plan to address this issue sometime in the near future.)

0.001 seems like quite a small number to me. Is there anyone who does not agree? This very small number, one-tenth of 1%, is what the present brouhaha over border wall funding would actually cost in terms of the annual budget. Is this worth not paying 800,000 federal workers for now going on 3+ weeks? President Trump spent the Christmas holiday in Washington D.C. (other than those days when he visited some U.S. troops in Iraq and Germany). Rep. Pelosi spent the Christmas holiday in Hawaii. Who wanted to negotiate? Hint: Not the one with the lei!  

Ms. Pelosi has called the border wall immoral . . . well I think that it is immoral for her to continue her posturing while not paying these federal workers! If I were to ever have the misfortune of meeting Ms. Pelosi, I wold ask her if President Obama was acting immorally when he oversaw the construction of over 100 miles of fences and a wall in 2009.

Ms. Pelosi and Sen Schumer, as if reading from the same script, both called a wall “ineffective” and “expensive.” (It’s always nice when your talking points have been written by the same pen!) Nice to say that walls are “ineffective,” but what does history actually demonstrate? In places along the U.S.-Mexican border where a wall has been built,  illegal border crossings have dropped dramatically. In San Diego, a decrease in illegal crossings of 92% since it was completed; in El Paso, a decrease of 95% in the 22 years since that Wall was built; in Tucson, a decrease of 90% in 15 years; in Yuma, a decrease of 95% in 9 years. Yes, Chuck and Nancy, if your barometer of success is set at 100%, then I suppose that 90-95%  is “ineffective!”

Have walls been built anywhere else? A generation ago, 16 countries had man-made barriers separating their borders. Today, that number has swelled to 65.
Have they been effective? Are they expensive?

Ask Hungary about the effectiveness of fence along its Serbia and Croatia borders. ( Illegal immigration there has plummeted.)Ask Israel about the effectiveness of the wall in the West Bank that was built to prevent Palestinians from committing acts of terror inside Israel. [After the wall’s construction, suicide bombings dropped from 73 in the West Bank (between 2000 and July 2003) to 12 (from August 2003 to the end of 2006).]Turkey is presently building a 550 mile wall along its border with Syria. Expensive ? Probably, but Turkey and the European Union, that partially funded it, seem to think that it is worth it.

India has erected a 2500 mile fence along its entire border with Bangladesh in order to minimize illegal immigration and narcotics smuggling. Ah, illegal immigration and narcotics smuggling . . . does this sound familiar?! Was it expensive? Probably, but this did not stop India . . . perhaps because Nancy Pelosi does not live there.

There are also multiple other walls around the world, e.g. between Saudi Arabia-Iraq, Greece-Turkey along the Everos river, in Cyprus between the Greek and the Turkish sides, and in Morocco fences surround the two Spanish cities in Africa, Ceuta and Melilla. I may have missed it, but I do not recall hearing Ms. Pelosi calling them immoral!  

What do the American people think on this issue? Is the tide turning? Is support for President Trump growing? According to Washington Post-ABC News poll, support for building a wall on the border, which is the principal sticking point in the stalemate between the president and Democrats, has increased over the past year. Today, 42 percent say they support a wall, up from 34 percent last January. A slight majority of Americans (54 percent) oppose the idea, down from 63 percent a year ago. Again I say, the only immoral ones here are those Democrats who are depriving 800,000 federal workers of a paycheck just for the sake of 0.001 in a Pelosi-pissing contest!

Recently I had an interesting conversation with my friend, let’s call him Lew. Lew is staunchly conservative and wise beyond his years, but what made this especially fascinating was that it was about the experiences of his brother-in-law, let’s call him Anders. Now granted most conversations with, or about, brothers-in-law are not what one would call “riveting,” but Anders is a State Senator in California, a Republican State Senator – an endangered species in a vast wasteland, but not yet extinct.

Anyway Lew related that he was asking Anders why his fellow Democratic Senators don’t understand the sorry plight that California is in as far as the future is concerned.  Anders sighed and said, “I have repeatedly brought up the fact that California is losing an incredible number of families to other states. I quoted a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal that stated that middle income families are leaving because of high housing prices fueled by onerous zoning regulations, and that since 2010, 710,000 residents have left California for other states. The response that I got from various Democratic Senators was ‘I don’t believe you or the Wall Street Journal’!”

Lew then said that Anders continued, “Last week I was trying to point out that jobs and businesses are leaving California in droves. I quoted Joe Vranich, a business relocation consultant, who stated that approximately 1800 businesses shifted jobs or capital out of California in 2016, and in the last ten years 1300 companies have left California taking with them  $76.7 billion in capital and 275,000 jobs. At first I thought from their facial expressions that they were genuinely concerned, but my optimism fizzled when they replied, ‘We don’t believe you or Joe Vranich’!”

“Initially I was shocked,” Lew said to me, “but then I recalled the recent comments of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D,CA) at a meeting at the White House where the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen was trying to present statistics which are the result of our present border policy – ‘In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 violent killings.’ Finally, according  to those present at the meeting, Rep. Pelosi, after multiple rude interruptions, essentially said that she didn’t believe either the Secretary of Homeland Security or her ICE statistics.” 

Lew then continued, “At first I thought that maybe this “non-believing” was a California thing – that is until, according to the Washington Post, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D,NY) said that it was okay to ‘spew lies’ if you are morally right!” (Wow! This AOC is like manna from heaven . . . for Republicans!)

After this conversation with Lew, my eyes were opened. Now I get it! Apparently all Democrats have to say is, “I don’t believe that,” and, wallah, everything is hunky-dory.!! My question to Democrat politicians: Is saying you don’t believe something when you know that it’s true, the same as “spewing?”
1/10/19