Monthly Archives: September 2024

Rewarding The Hand That Feeds You

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There are people in America who will vote for Kamala Harris for many reasons–the idea of a woman President, the idea of a mixed-race President, and the idea that a Harris presidency will provide free money for a lot of people.

On Thursday, mrctv reported the following:

The union that represents the nation’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents announced Wednesday that it is endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris for president in this year’s election.

Vice President Harris has played a role in “one of the most pro-labor administrations in history,” the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) explained in a press release announcing its decision:

“The administration also delivered agency budgets that provide federal employees with additional staffing and resources, including significant new investments to rebuild the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act.”

Indeed, the Inflation Reduction Act, for which Harris cast the deciding vote to break a Senate deadlock, boosts the IRS budget by $80 billion, enabling the agency to hire an additional 87,000 employees – while increasing the union’s membership in the process.

However, the IRS expansion won’t just increase union membership, it’ll also help the agency to collect an additional $5 trillion of tax increases Harris wants, analysis by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) finds:

“Harris-proposed tax increases will kill jobs in the private sector but create jobs for IRS agents.

“Agents certainly appreciate her call to make the IRS even larger and more powerful if she wins the presidency. Agents will be hired and deployed to implement the $5 trillion of tax increases Harris wishes to impose over the next decade.”

ATR research also found that 97% of political contributions by the IRS agents’ union went to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle. In all, the union gave $635,170 to Democrats during that election cycle.

Nothing like supporting your local IRS agent.

Governor Cooper Has Vetoed The Expansion of Opportunity Scholarships Bill

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On September 21, The Carolina Journal reported that North Carolina Governor Cooper has vetoed a bill that fully funds Opportunity Scholarships, requires sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, and includes adjustments to the budget proposal. The North Carolina legislature is expected to override his veto.

The article reports:

Just a day before, Cooper spent most of his time as the keynote speaker Thursday at the Legislative Session of the 151st Annual North Carolina Press Association (NCPA) Convention blasting Opportunity Scholarships, insisting they will hurt public schools.

“That veto can be upheld if enough legislators in both parties tell Republican leaders that they don’t want to vote on a veto override this year,” he said at a press conference Friday.

Cooper noted at the NCPA Convention that he, his children (although at least one had gone to a private school), and more than 84% of the state’s students go to public schools, and as the pillars of the free press need to be safeguarded, so do public schools.

“Unfortunately, those public schools are facing the biggest threat in decades from the legislature that is pillaging taxpayer money from them and using it for private school vouchers that even the wealthiest families can use for children already in private school,” he said. “These hundreds of millions of dollars in vouchers come with no accountability.”

Cooper said that legislators plan to spend $4 billion on school vouchers over the next decade and that rural schools would be hurt the most because there are fewer private schools in those areas.

The article concludes:

Incoming Speaker of the House, Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, told CJ that while he couldn’t comment directly on Cooper’s comments since he arrived later in the session, he thinks parents ought to make their own decisions about where their children go to school, pointing to the 55,000 backlog of students waiting on the list.

“I think those results speak for themselves,” he said. “The money that we put towards Opportunity Scholarships is towards education because it’s to help those kids get to the school that their parents want them to go to. I’m proud of the program and glad to continue it.”

When asked about Cooper’s promise to veto it, Hall jokingly said he made that announcement for him last week, so it’s not breaking news. He added that the GA will override his veto sometime shortly, possibly before the election, if not shortly after that, and probably with some Democratic support, making it a bipartisan effort.

North Carolina needs a veto-proof legislature to protect the interests of its voters. Hopefully that pattern will continue.

Saving Money By Enforcing The Law

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On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the impact importing the people who are here illegally would have on the federal deficit.

The article reports:

A study by the Manhattan Institute’s Daniel Di Martino finds that mass deportation of the millions of unskilled, uneducated migrants who have flooded this country thanks to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s disastrous border policies would greatly improve the national deficit.

In his study, titled “The Lifetime Fiscal Impact of Immigrants,” Di Martino found that the onslaught of Biden’s unskilled, uneducated migrants is a net loss to the U.S taxpayer, costing up to $130,000 per migrant over the migrant’s lifetime should they choose to stay in the U.S.A., he explained in an op-ed published by Fox News on Friday.

I am perfectly willing to let people come into America if they do it legally and they plan to support themselves, but we can’t support people who are here illegally while we have Americans homeless on our streets.

The article concludes:

As to Trump’s plan to initiate mass deportations of unskilled, uneducated — and often dangerous — illegals, Di Martino says it would absolutely not be the disaster Trump’s critics claim it would be.

“I looked at whether the mass deportation program promised by former President Donald Trump would be the disaster that its critics claim,” Di Martino wrote in his op-ed. “My study shows that mass deportations would actually reduce the debt over the long run by over $1 trillion. But again, selectivity is better: Were a mass deportation policy combined with legalization of college-educated Dreamers, the U.S. could potentially reduce the federal debt by $1.9 trillion — nearly doubling its savings.”

Di Martino concluded, “As the federal debt keeps rising toward unsustainable levels and the border stays wide open, America cannot afford to ignore the fiscal consequences of immigration.”

If you are not familiar with the Cloward-Piven theory, now might be a good time to look it up.

Isn’t This Racist?

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On Wednesday, The Jewish News Syndicate reported that the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring Israeli presence to be illegal in any area over the 1949 armistice line. That’s interesting. Israel is one of the few countries in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have the same rights and are allowed to participate in the government of the nation. Why is the United Nations picking on the a non-racist country in the area rather than the countries where Jews are not allowed? Why–because there are now enough Muslim countries in the United Nations to begin to take over the organization and to align with the non-Muslim tyrants to attempt to make Sharia Law and Muslim dominance a feature of the United Nations.

The article reports:

More than 40 countries sponsored the resolution, which was the first that Palestinians filed after being granted unprecedented privileges, for a non-U.N. member, earlier this year.

The resolution calls on the Israel Defense Forces to withdraw completely from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip within 12 months, which means evacuating all Jewish communities beyond the armistice line, including Jerusalem’s Old City.

It also bans arms sales to the IDF of any equipment that would be expected reasonably to be used in the territory over the 1949 lines and calls for a boycott of all products produced by Jews in those areas.

The resolution text lacks any mention of Israeli security concerns, historic ties to the lands or Hamas’s terror attacks in Israel on Oct. 7.

Just for the record, this is the land given to Israel by the Balfour Declaration”

These are the borders for the Jewish state set up by the League of Nations:

The Arabs do not have a legitimate claim to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, or the Gaza Strip. Historically, all of these lands are Jewish and play a major role in both Jewish and Christian history.

The article at the Jewish News Syndicate concludes:

Arsen Ostrovsky and Nadav Steinman, CEO and board chair, respectively, of the International Legal Forum, stated that “today, simply put, the United Nations has become the diplomatic arm of Hamas” and that the resolution “is just the latest in a litany of obscenely one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. since Oct. 7.” 

“All it does is reward the murderers, rapists and abductors of Hamas while pouring further fuel on worldwide antisemitism and eroding whatever remaining credibility of the already problematic and politicized International Court of Justice, upon which this resolution is meant to be based,” they added. “Ultimately, peace will only prevail when Hamas is defeated and the hostages are released, not through tiresome antics and pyrrhic Palestinian ‘victories’ at the U.N.”

Giving land to terrorists has never worked in the past. There is no reason to believe that it will work in the future.

Preventing Voter Fraud Before It Happens

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On Wednesday, The Federalist reported that Arizona has found 100,000 non- citizens on its voting rolls.

The article reports:

In Arizona, voters need to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in statewide elections. Those who do not provide proof are registered as “federal-only” voters, which allows them to cast a ballot only in federal elections. But the state says it discovered nearly 100,000 voters on the rolls who did not provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote but were nonetheless tagged as eligible to vote in both state and federal elections.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer flagged an “erroneous voter registration record” to Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs on Sept. 7. A green card holder who, as a noncitizen, is legally prohibited from voting, had ended up on the voter rolls as a full-ballot voter, according to VoteBeat.

Why are non-citizens being allowed to vote in federal elections?

According to ballotpedia:

…in 1996, the U.S. Congress passed a federal immigration enforcement bill called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA). Section 611 of IIRAIRA criminalized noncitizen voting in federal elections, but the law did not explicitly prohibit noncitizens from voting in state or local elections in accordance with state constitutions and local ordinances.

…In 2018, North Dakota became the first of several states to ban noncitizen voting by changing their constitutions. North Dakotans for Citizen Voting, the group that sponsored Measure 2, supported the ballot measure in posts on its website

The Federalist reports:

Hobbs says her team “identified and fixed an administrative error that originated in 2004, and affects longtime residents who received a driver’s license before 1996” but that “out of an abundance of caution, [the secretary of state’s office and the motor vehicle division] will be implementing an independent audit to ensure that MVD systems are functioning as necessary to support voter registration.”

One hundred thousand votes are enough to make a difference in an election. All states need to clean up their voter rolls.

Political Or Good Policy?

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At a time when Americans are still dealing with inflation, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by half a percentage point.

On Wednesday, Breitbart noted:

The Federal Reserve moved to cut interest rates by a half percentage point—the first reduction since the central bank cut rates to near zero when the pandemic struck in 2020—in a vote of confidence that inflation will continue to moderate and an attempt to fend off a further increase in unemployment.

“Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has continued to expand at a solid pace. Job gains have slowed, and the unemployment rate has moved up but remains low. Inflation has made further progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective but remains somewhat elevated,” the Fed said in a statement.

…Fed officials have also said that they now view the risks to their mandate to maintain full employment to be greater than the risks of a resurgence of inflation. Earlier this summer, the unemployment rate tripped the Sahm Rule threshold by rising more than a half a percentage point above its recent low, typically a signal that the economy is already in a recession. Claudia Sahm, whose research is behind the rule, has said she does not think the economy is currently in a recession but worries that restrictive monetary policy could unnecessarily increase unemployment even more.

The article concludes:

The longer-run projection for the fed funds rate rose to 2.9 percent, four-tenths of a point above the 2.5 percent the Fed had consistently projected from 2019 through the end of last year. In the June projections, officials had indicated an expectation for a longer run rate of 2.8 percent.

On the other hand, unemployment is now seen as going higher. When the Fed last released projections in June, officials forecast a four percent rate of unemployment at year-end. The new projections have unemployment rising to 4.4 percent. Next year, unemployment is seen as staying at 4.4 percent, up from the earlier estimate of 4.2 percent. Similarly, the median projection for economic growth ticked down to two percent from 2.1 percent this year.

Eleven officials voted for the rate cut. One Fed governor, Michelle Bowman, dissented, preferring a quarter-point cut.

I am not an economist, so I don’t have a lot to say about this. However, I do think inflation has continued to be a problem that cutting interest rates might exacerbate. I am hoping that the Federal Reserve has made the right decision for the right reasons and that this is not a political move.

Legal Immigration Is A Good Thing–Illegal Immigration Is Not

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On Wednesday, Just the News posted an article about how Americans feel about illegal immigration.

The article reported:

A majority of Americans favor the mass deportation of illegal aliens a recent survey has revealed, presenting a potential window for former President Donald Trump to make headway with one of his signature campaign pledges.

In a Scripps News/Ipsos survey released Wednesday, 54% of respondents supported mass deportations. A further 62% expressed support for allowing law enforcement to detain illegal aliens. Sixty-nine percent backed restricting the number of migrants who may claim asylum while 68% support a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens who arrived as children.

Immigration featured among the top concerns for voters, with 39% placing it among the most important issues. Only inflation ranked higher, with 57% choosing that option.

We need to fix our legal immigration system. However, we need to close the southern border quickly while we still have a country. We have no idea who is coming through that border, and we may regret that at some time in the near future. The people coming here illegally have partnered with the Mexican cartels to get here. They have not respected our laws in coming here, and may not respect our laws once them get here. Many of the people crossing our border are from cultures alien to western civilization. It will be difficult for them to assimilate. Let’s control our immigration and give newcomers a chance to assimilate and become Americans.

What It Takes To Be A Never-Trumper

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On September 19th, Don Surber at Substack posted an article explaining what you have to believe to be a never-Trumper. He totally captures the spirit of the movement.

The article explains:

If after a full term of a Trump presidency and nearly four years of this one, you are a Never Trumper, then this is what you really believe.

You believe abortion not only is a constitutional right but one superior to all other rights. The federal government send protesters at abortion clinics to prison for years. Contrast and compare with the catch-and-release of illegal aliens.

You believe liberals should be running the judiciary. President Trump’s appointment — and a Republican Senate’s confirmation — of three justices ended Roe, overturned Chevron and reined in the EPA. Without Trump, Merrick Garland would be a lifetime justice abusing his power for political purposes.

You believe censorship is constitutional because we must protect butt-hurt feelings and stop people from receiving disinformation — also known as the truth.

You believe the government should be allowed to pay Twitter and others to block a sitting president’s account to prevent him from communicating directly to the people.

You believe that Elon Musk buying Twitter is bad because no one man should control the flow of information; the deep state should.

You believe NATO is unworthy of consultation. The surrender of Afghanistan not only made meaningless the deaths and disabling of thousands of American soldiers, but desecrated the lives of thousands of U.S. allies.

You believe we should protect the borders of Ukraine but not the borders of our own country. Maybe America should do a GoFundMe to pay off Hunter and get a few hundred billions of dollars to build walls north and south, and kick the invaders out.

You believe Israel should stop killing terrorists but Ukraine should fight Russia until the last drop of blood.

You believe that a small town in Ohio should be forced to accept 15,000 immigrants from Haiti (a nation that eradicated its white population in 1804) but Martha’s Vineyard should not take in any of the 52 illegal aliens sent there.

You believe that assassination is justifiable because Trump is just an object that is a danger to the world just as Hillary said. You wanted Hillary to win in 2016. Her reaction to Assassination Attempt No. 2 was, “The late great journalist Harry Evans one time said that journalists should try to achieve objectivity. The object in this case is Donald Trump. His demagoguery. His danger to our country and the world.”

You believe that borrowing money and paying it back with interest constitutes fraud.

You also believe that taking out a loan to pay for college (including travel to Spain and elsewhere) and not paying it back constitutes victimhood and deserves to have the loan forgiven.

You believe we should ban gas stoves, as well as gas-powered cars, as well as plastic straws, as well as pipelines, as well as drilling for oil not because of the debunked climate change myth but because the oil industry is too capitalistic for your tastes.

You believe the only way to keep the economy afloat is by fudging unemployment numbers and flooding the nation with money that comes from thin air.

You believe that men should enter the girls’ bathroom, shower with girls in the locker room, and beat the crap out of a woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

You believe that boys should be castrated and girls have their breasts removed in the name of transgenderism.

You believe that people should be fired or jailed (or both) for calling a man sir or calling a woman ma’am.

You believe that rioters are peaceful protesters while peaceful protesters are insurrectionists unworthy of their constitutional rights to a fair trial.

You believe in everything that Hillary, Biden and Kamala believe in because you worked to elect them over Trump.

Above all, the one thing that you do not believe is that America should be great again.

Wow! Please follow the link to the article for further details.

The Logic Of This Escapes Me

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On September 19th, The Daily Caller posted an article about a recent vote in Congress regarding non-citizens who commit violence against women.

The article reports:

One-hundred fifty-eight House Democrats voted Wednesday against a resolution put forward by South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace that would designate noncitizens convicted of sex offenses or domestic violence inadmissible to and deportable from the U.S.

Two-hundred fifteen Republicans voted in favor of the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, with no one in the party opposing it. Meanwhile, only 51 Democrats voted in favor of the resolution, with 158 voting against it. Mace, who introduced the resolution, told the Daily Caller that “158 Left-wing members of Congress just voted against deporting rapists, pedophiles and murderers of women and kids.”

How many times have we heard Democrats say, “If banning guns saves only one life…?” Well evidently saving women from rape and murder by people who came here illegally is not as important.

The article reports some of the arguments against the bill:

Meanwhile, Democrats have been largely silent on their vote against the resolution. In May, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler explained his opposition to Mace’s resolution, saying the bill is “dangerous.”

“By layering immigration consequences onto the existing challenges of talking about domestic abuse, this legislation will almost certainly create a chilling effect in immigrant communities with regard to the reporting of crimes of domestic violence. Further, this bill attempts to create a new ground of inadmissibility for domestic violence which does not require a conviction and does not have any of the exceptions that currently exist in the deportability grounds,” Nadler said during a May hearing.

We have laws against Americans who commit violence against women; shouldn’t we be able to deport people who commit violence against women? Do illegal aliens have special privileges?

The article concludes:

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson praised Mace for introducing the bill and slammed the Biden-Harris for the ongoing border crisis.

“The Biden-Harris border crisis has made daily life less safe for American women. They engineered this crisis, ignored efforts to solve it, and have refused to deport those who commit heinous crimes against American citizens,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told the Daily Caller.

“As crime by illegal aliens continues to rise, I commend Rep. Mace’s proactive leadership in ensuring the rule of law is followed. H.R. 7909 will keep America safe since the Biden-Harris Administration will not,” Johnson added.

The Senate can now retake up the bill or propose a different version.

Why do we want to protect violent people from deportation? Don’t look to your government for protection. If you are a woman, you are on your own.

I Am Impressed

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It has become obvious that neither President Trump nor JD Vance are welcome in Springfield, Ohio. Heaven forbid we should find out exactly what is going on there. However, Vivek Ramaswamy is planning on holding a rally there. Just for the record, I have two reports from people there saying that the Haitians there that practice voodoo are continuing their practices–which include animal sacrifice.

On Wednesday, Hot Air reported:

Vivek Ramaswamy will be there tomorrow, and he is ensuring that it won’t just be a bitch session aimed at Haitian immigrants. He is inviting people from all walks of life to attend, and I expect that he will do an outstanding job representing the Republican ticket there.

I love Vivek; although I am unconvinced he is the kind of guy who would succeed in the job of being chief executive of the country. Frankly, he is too smart for the job and too intellectual in particular. He is smart, quick on his feet, makes the political and policy cases for our cause extremely well, and appeals to people like me because of it.

But what I am not certain of is whether a quick-talking intellectual is the sort of guy Americans can identify with. He is so smart that you kinda wonder whether he is “just like me” when it comes to empathizing with our day-to-day concerns.

The article notes:

And Springfield may turn out to play an outsized role for a couple of reasons: there are allegations that the mayor is making bank on the influx of migrants as he appears to have recently invested in rental housing in a big way, and despite denials from local officials that there is any truth to the rumors of pets being killed, recent footage from a town meeting shows that at the very least the city manager knew of the allegations and of reports that they were.

There are a number of people profiting from the migrant influx. Taxpayer money is given to NGO’s to bring people into the country and provide housing, medical care, etc. with American tax dollars. Landlords and hotel owners are evicting Americans because the government pays them more to house legal and illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, we have homeless Americans who are getting none of these benefits. This is not rational policy.

Caught!

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On September 18th, Hot Air posted an article about the Hezbollah pagers that exploded yesterday. There were some very interesting people who had those pagers.

The article quotes The New York Times:

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, lost one eye and severely injured his other eye when a pager he was carrying exploded in a simultaneous wave of blasts targeting wireless electronic devices, according to two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps briefed on the attack.

The Guards members, who had knowledge of the attacks and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Mr. Amini’s injuries were more serious than Iran initially reported and that he would be medevacked to Tehran for treatment.

Hossein Soleimani, the editor in chief of Mashregh, the main Revolutionary Guards news website, confirmed the extent of Mr. Amini’s injuries in a post on X. “Unfortunately the injuries sustained by Iran’s ambassador were extremely severe and in his eyes,” Mr. Soleimani wrote.

Why was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon carrying a Hezbollah pager?

John Hinderaker at Power Line reported on the news that on Thursday handheld radios were exploding.

The article at Power Line notes:

Apparently fires have broken out in seemingly random buildings, and loudspeakers are telling people to take the batteries out of their phones. I haven’t seen any reports, however, of exploding cell phones.

The usual suspects are up in arms over yesterday’s pager attack:

The United Nations Security Council will convene an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss Israel’s wave of attacks in Lebanon, according to Slovenia, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month.

How many emergency meetings have they held over Hezbollah’s rocket bombardment of Israel, which has gone on for months?

The United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, has criticized the pager attack as a violation of international law and called for those behind it to be held to account.

So, does sending thousands of rockets into Israel violate international law? What does the U.N. propose to do about it?

Nothing, of course. Hence the need for Israel to defend itself.

That is the current state of the United Nations.

 

Where Does Protesting End And Law Breaking Begin?

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On Monday, Breitbart posted an article about Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) objecting to a new law proposed by the L.A. City Council to bar anti-Israel protesters from the entrances to synagogues. Why should churches or synagogues be forced to let protesters into their facilities? Just for the record, CAIR is the lawfare division of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The article reports:

The proposal is a response to a rise in antisemitism in the city associated with anti-Israel protests, especially several incidents in June in which pro-Palestinian activists targeted local synagogues, obstructing entrances in one case.

City Council members Katy Yaroslavsky and Bob Blumenfield demanded action in June, calling for more resources for safety. They are the authors of the new proposal, which would require an eight-foot “bubble zone” around synagogues and other religious institutions.

The Los Angeles Times described the proposal in August, reporting that it “would make it a misdemeanor for protesters to intentionally block the entrances of healthcare facilities, schools or religious institutions — or demonstrate within 8 feet of anyone trying to get inside. The protective 8-foot “bubble” would be required within 100 feet of a facility’s entrance.” It would apply to mosques as well as to synagogues.

CAIR has objected to the proposal, alleging that it intentionally targets pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activists

If we have bubble zones around abortion clinics, why can’t we have them around religious institutions to protect the people going there?

The article concludes with some additional information on CAIR:

CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said that he was happy at the terror attack of October 7, 2023.

In addition, as Breitbart News has noted in the past:

In 2007-8, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. That case, in turn, led the FBI to discontinue its work with the organization. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the government “produced ample evidence to establish” the ties of CAIR with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. The United Arab Emirates labeled CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014 (a decision that the Obama administration opposed).

CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter also offered to help the family of two Islamic terrorists in nearby San Bernardino in 2015.

These are not people who care about America or the American Constitution.

 

Injustice for Homeschools

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

Recently, the NC General Assembly passed significant additional funding of taxpayer money for the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) which provides stipends to parents who send their children to private schools. Some of the funding for this program comes from the budget for public schools, but most comes from new taxpayer money. The funding for the OSP has expanded significantly in the past couple of years and is justified as part of expanding school choice for parents. The scholarships vary from $3,300 to $7,400 per student each year. There is a serious problem with this program, and that is that parents who choose to home-school their children receive not one penny of assistance. How can our elected representatives claim to support school choice when they ignore homeschooled children who actually represent the highest number of non-public school students in North Carolina?

As someone who has had my own children in public schools, private schools and homeschooled, I can assure you that the sacrifice and commitment to the education of a child is greatest when homeschooling. According to the state Division of Non-Public Education, there are at least 158,000 home school students in North Carolina which is significantly more than the number of students in private schools. At the current rate of spending for each student in public schools of approximately $10,000 per year, theoretically, by homeschooling their children, parents are reducing the public school budget of $18 billion by over $ 1 billion per year. Home school parents not only have the expenses of typical school supplies, but also spend significant sums on home-school books and instructional material. They also have to pay for field trips and other educational activities that are free for public and private school students. Of course, the largest financial burden is foregoing employment so they can provide the home-school instruction.

Now it should be recognized that all families pay taxes that support the public school system which includes federal, state and local taxes regardless of which educational option they choose for their children. Home-school parents are the only ones who do not receive any of this taxpayer money to support their children’s education. I have been told that some home-school parents would be reluctant to accept state funds for fear of having educational requirements imposed. However, this objection could be easily handled by limiting/prohibiting the state from imposing such requirements and ultimately by making the reception of any funds voluntary. As far as student performance goes, Parentscience.com reports that homeschoolers score at least one grade level above public school students on 5 of 7 academic subjects tests.

It is past time that the General Assembly include home-schoolers in the OSP and correct this obvious injustice. They should also limit the issuing of scholarships to citizens only which is currently not the case. Failure to correct this situation will ultimately lead to a class action lawsuit by the parents of home-schoolers against the state. Seems well deserved. What is more American than allowing parents to educate their own children instead of exposing them to the woke agenda in most public schools. Freedom requires free choice.

Don’t Mess With Israel

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Israel has not yet taken responsibility for this event, but most sources are suggesting that Israel is behind the event.

On September 17th, The New York Post reported:

Hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists were seriously wounded on Tuesday when the pagers they used to communicate exploded around their belts and pockets – with officials claiming a hacking attack by Israel triggered the blasts.

Hezbollah officials confirmed the wide-range attack on its operatives, including fighters and medics, with one member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, calling it the “biggest security breach” since it began its daily attacks on Israel on Oct. 8.

Videos uploaded to social media show several incidents where seemingly unaware men had devices in their pockets blow up, with the victims crying in pain as bystanders ran away.

…The devices that detonated were all the latest models acquired by Hezbollah in recent months and distributed to its members, with the devices suspected of being tampered with, three security sources told Reuters. 

Through the use of malware, the devices could see their lithium batteries overheat and explode. 

One Hezbollah official told the Wall Street Journal that some members felt their pagers heat up and disposed of them before they detonated.     

The terror groups’ leader, Hassan Nasrallah had previously warned his fighters not to carry cell phones or pagers, telling them they could be used to track their movements or carry out some kind of targeted strike. 

The exact cause of why the pagers exploded have yet to be revealed. 

Reuters journalists witnessed ambulances rushing through Beirut with the wounded terrorists amid widespread panic over the explosions. 

The article concludes:

Although Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said no deaths have been reported as of Tuesday morning, he expects several casualties given the wide range attack.

Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in near daily attacks over the border since the terror group began attacking the Jewish state in solidarity with Hamas.

There are many ways to fight a war.

The Joys Of Communism

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On Monday, Yahoo News reported that Cuba has cut the size of its daily breat ration because of a shortage of ingredients.

The article reports:

The bread, one of a handful of still subsidized basic food products in Cuba, will be reduced from 80 grams to 60 grams (2.1 oz), or approximately the weight of an average cookie or a small bar of soap. Its price, too, was slightly reduced, to just under 1 peso, or 1/3 of a cent.

Still, many Cubans, who earn around 4648 pesos a month, or around $15, can scarcely afford to shop for more expensive bread on the private market, leaving them with few alternatives.

“We have to accept it, what else can we do?” Havana-resident Dolores Fernandez told Reuters while she stood outside a bakery on Monday. “There’s no choice.”

Cuba last week said it had run short of the wheat flour it needs to produce the bread, a predicament the government blames on the U.S. trade embargo, a complex web of restrictions that complicates Cuba’s global financial transactions.

The Caribbean island nation is suffering from extreme shortages of food, fuel and medicine, shortfalls that have primed a record-breaking exodus of its citizens to the nearby United States.

Cuba’s ration book, or “libreta,” as it is known among island residents, was once considered a hallmark of Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, providing a range of deeply-discounted products to all Cubans, including bread, fish, meat, milk, and cleaning and toiletry supplies.

This is one example of what happens when the government controls the price of food. Price controls create scarcity.

Knowing History, Religious Practices, And Cultural Norms Can Save Your Life

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On Monday, Hot Air posted an article reporting that a group called the New Tolerance Campaign has offered $1,000,000 to any LGBTQ advocacy organization to hold a gay pride parade in Gaza or the West Bank! As of now, no one has accepted the offer.

In Iran, another Muslim-controlled area, people who belong to the LGBTQ community are thrown off of buildings with their hands tied behind their backs. In some Muslim countries they are stoned. Under Sharia Law, it is illegal to be gay.

The article notes (rather tongue-in-cheek) that no group has accepted their offer:

It’s a mystery because so many of these groups have expressed solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinian authority. You would think they would be chomping at the bit to show their undying (pun intended) support for their brothers and sisters in arms.

The article concludes:

Obviously, I don’t want anybody to actually go to “Palestine,” because I don’t want anyone killed just to make a point. But making the offer is a good way to remind these idiots that their “solidarity” with people who want to kill them is stupid.

Even if it were true–and the opposite is true–that both Palestinians and alphabet people were equally “oppressed”–it makes no sense for “Queers” to align themselves with the terrorists of Hamas. Their interests diverge in almost every way.

But they don’t see it that way because both hate America. It really is that simple. Hating America is the great unifying force of the radicals.

Kumbaya.

Maybe it’s time to remind some people how much freedom we have in America and to encourage them to be grateful for that.

Who Is The Threat?

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In 1787, Benjamin Franklin responded to a question about the new Constitution with the phrase “a republic, if you can keep it.” Our Founding Fathers envisioned a country with a weak central government and strong state governments. In the early 1900’s a number of things happened that paved the way for a strong central government and weak state governments. The year 1913 was a banner year for those who wanted a strong central government—federal income tax was passed, the federal reserve was created, and the direct election of U.S. Senators was passed. The direct election of U.S. Senators meant that the Senators were no longer subject to recall by their states if they did not represent their state. If a Senator sponsored a bill that would harm his state in some way, the state legislature would recall him. Woodrow Wilson was President when these three things happened. Signing these three things into law significantly shifted the balance of power in America from the states to the central government. The Inflation Reduction Act would never have passed the Senate if Senators were appointed by their states rather than elected.  One illustration of the growth and centralization of government is the fact that in 2023, twenty-five percent of all jobs created were government jobs. We are also in a situation where the majority of our laws are not laws—they are regulations passed by unelected bureaucrats. Any law passed by Congress was probably written by lobbyists. Our tax code is a shining example of what lobbyists can accomplish. According to the Tax Foundation, “There’s the literal statutes that Congress has passed (Title 26 of the U.S. Code). The Government Printing Office sells it spread over two volumes, and according to them, book one is 1,404 pages and book two is 1,248 pages, for a total of 2,652 pages. At perhaps 450 words per page, that puts the tax code at well over 1 million words. (By way of comparison, the King James Bible has 788,280 words; War and Peace runs 560,000 words; and the Harry Potter series is just over 1 million words.)”

The bureaucracy that has been ensconced in America in the past one hundred years or so does not want to give up the power it has co-opted. The biggest current threat to that power is President Donald Trump. He won’t be able to undo a hundred years of unconstitutional behavior in four years, but he will be able to make a beginning. President Trump is a serious threat to our own entrenched bureaucracy, and they are not going to give up their power easily.

President Trump has been accused of being a ‘threat to our democracy.’ First of all, we are a Republic–not a democracy. Secondly, the only threat that President Trump poses is a threat to the entrenched bureaucracy that has perverted the ideas that our Founding Fathers tried to enshrine in our government.

Words Have Impact

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On Sunday, Miranda Devine at The New York Post posted an article about the attempted assassination of President Trump. She mentioned the rhetoric the political left consistently uses to describe President Trump. Aside from the fact that at least three quarters of what the media says is false, almost all of it is inflammatory.

The article reports:

Donald Trump was targeted Sunday in a second apparent assassination attempt in as many months.

An eagle-eyed Secret Service agent reportedly spotted the barrel of a gun in bushes a few hundred yards from where the former president was playing golf and shot at the would-be assassin, who was later arrested.

It’s a frightening development that highlights the recklessness of the hateful rhetoric constantly aimed at Trump by his political opponents, even after he was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania in July.

Last week, Kamala Harris falsely accused Trump of calling Nazis “fine people,” promising a “bloodbath,” and being responsible for “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

She and Joe Biden and their surrogates constantly exaggerate the J6 Capitol riot and use it to frame Trump as a “threat to democracy.”

Biden has labeled Trump and “MAGA Republicans” as “semi-fascists” and domestic terrorists.

Tim Walz called Trump a “fascist” and a “threat to Democracy” who will “put people’s lives in danger.”

On Saturday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) described Trump as “a candidate explicitly running on the promise of political violence.”

The article concludes:

CNN host Dana Bash even accused Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, on Sunday of “causing the hospitals, the schools, the government buildings to be evacuated because of bomb threats” in Springfield.

What will it take for these demented partisans to lower the temperature?

Whoever said, “Accuse others of what you do,” would have been very happy in today’s Democrat party.

Stealth Jihad vs. Kinetic Jihad

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There are two basic types of jihad–stealth (can also be called cultural) and kinetic. Kinetic is the one that involves acts of terrorism. Stealth jihad is done through lawfare, propaganda, and cultural changes. Generally stealth jihad continues until the jihadists have enough of a majority to overthrow a society or government; at that point, you generally see kinetic jihad–acts of terrorism.

On September 12th, The Times of Israel posted an article about the recent elections in Jordan.

The article reports:

Jordan’s leading Islamist opposition party has won 31 out of 138 seats in the kingdom’s parliament, tripling its representation in legislative elections dominated by frustration over Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.

The Islamic Action Front (IAF), a political offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, came ahead of other parties and factions in the legislature after Tuesday’s vote, but was far from clinching a majority, according to official election results released on Wednesday.

The result is a historic win for the Islamists and their largest representation since the Muslim Brotherhood in 1989 gained 22 out of the 80 seats that existed then.

The article concludes:

Jordan in 1994 signed a peace treaty with Israel, becoming only the second Arab state to do so after Egypt, but regular protests have called for the treaty’s dissolution since the war erupted on October 7 when Palestinian terror group Hamas led a devastating attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas in Gaza and free 251 hostages who were abducted by terrorists in the Hamas attack.

Oraib Rantawi, head of the Amman-based Al Quds Center for Political Studies, described the Islamists’ gains in the election as “astonishing in their magnitude.”

The Islamists won “nearly half a million votes,” a figure he said was unprecedented in their history in Jordan.

“Gaza played a major role in this,” he added, as well as a feeling among voters that other competing parties “were created in haste… to reduce the chances of success of the Islamic Action Front.”

The people of Jordan are not part of the terrorist movement. In the 1970’s the Palestinian Liberation Organization was kicked out of Jordan after they tried to overthrow the government. In recent years Jordan has supported Israel. Unfortunately, if the Islamist presence in Jordan’s parliament increases, it will pose a threat to possible peace in the Middle East.

The Real Debate Is At The Kitchen Table

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On Friday, The American Thinker posted an article about the real debate in this presidential election cycle–it wasn’t on television–it is at the kitchen table.

The article reports:

ABC staged a debate this week.  A presidential debate.  Ostensibly between former president Donald J. Trump and former senator Kamala Harris, but in actuality between Trump and the partnership of Harris and ABC.

There is always media bias.  To some extent, unconscious media bias is unavoidable.  But we don’t expect it to be blatant; the viewer doesn’t expect antics like we saw this week, when the ABC moderators repeatedly declared Mr. Trump’s statements lies, and never called out Ms. Harris’s blatant lies. 

We call it “fact-checking” today, a term coined in social media for when our high-tech overlords punish a writer for stating something with which the gurus disagree.  But it’s not really fact-checking, is it?  It’s an invasion of a conversation, a denial of free speech, a thumb on the scale.  In the case of a presidential debate, it’s electioneering.

And it virtually invalidates the value of our constitutionally protected free press in this process.  ABC’s refusal even to try to act as an impartial host rendered this debate useless.

So let’s look instead at the other debates — millions of them — going on in America, both that day and every day in 2024.

Across the country, there are millions of families shopping in their local grocery store.  More of them must choose the discount grocery compared to five years ago; more must use coupons, or activate their store’s discount app on their cell phones today.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. When we vote on election day, we need to remember the impact the change of administration in 2020 has had on almost all Americans. Some of the ‘celebrities’ who are supporting Kamala Harris have not been impacted by the economic policies of the past three years–so until everything collapses, the economy is not a concern of theirs. However, the rest of us will be living with the results of the coming election.

The article concludes:

There are many more such debates taking place across America, in the family car, over the kitchen table, or in the bedroom after the kids are asleep, as hardworking everyday American couples try to compromise on some way to get through these hellish years of Bidenflation.

It’s not one mistake, one policy choice, one single culprit. It’s the entire Biden-Harris regime — their executive orders, their agency regulations, their foreign policy, and their general incredibly thoughtless wastefulness, in everything they touch and everything they do.

Every American knows that the election of Kamala Harris would mean four more years of all this.

These are the debates that matter to the American public this week.

These personal, private, tragic debates — as the cost of living has gone up by three, four, five times as much as salaries have — are the debates on the minds of American working families, and small business owners, and retirees, and young adults desperately trying to look ahead to a future that can’t possibly seem promising.

Forget the debate that ABC ruined on Tuesday.

These other conversations, these other tough choices and compromises — these are the debates to which we should be paying attention.

The Same Thing Happened At The Debate

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Do you remember what happened at the debate when Kamala Harris was asked how she would make life more affordable for Americans? She told us about her middle-class upbringing. I have a problem with that concept–her father was a college professor and her mother was a biomedical scientist. That doesn’t sound very middle-class to me. I don’t begrudge anyone wealth, but it appears that Kamala is not being entirely truthful with that statement.

On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article about an interview with Kamala Harris with the same question and a similar non-answer.

The article reports:

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked in a Friday interview with 6ABC Philadelphia’s Action News how she plans to make life more affordable but quickly diverted into a rambling discourse about her middle-class upbringing and lawns.

During the interview, anchor Brian Taff questioned Harris on her strategies to enhance affordability for Americans, but her response diverged into a recollection of her middle-class roots without offering specific policy details. Harris proceeded to recount her childhood, emphasizing the hard work of her mother and the aspirations of her community, focusing particularly on the symbolic importance of well-kept lawns.

“I’ll start with this. I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard, she was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people, you know, construction workers and nurses and teachers,” Harris told Taff.

…Eventually, Harris mentioned in the interview the concept of an “opportunity economy” aimed at facilitating small business startups, but without delving into the mechanisms or strategies to achieve this goal.

Kamala Harris has worked in government her whole life. She has never run a business and as an adult has only worked in government jobs at various levels. She is not delving into the mechanisms or the strategies because she does not know what they will be. It’s time to throw the politicians out and elect a few businessmen to clean up the mess in Washington!

Waking Up

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On Friday, The New York Post posted an opinion piece by California Democrat Gloria Romero who has walked away from the Democrat party.

The opinion piece states:

I walked away from the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans.

I will vote for Donald Trump for president.

I’ve been a true-blue Democrat, a former California state senator who chaired its Senate Democratic Caucus and served as Senate Majority Leader.

I was a Democratic National Convention delegate for Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, and state co-chair for President Obama’s re-election.

But I’ve said goodbye, adios, I’ve had enough.  

This is not the Democratic Party I once championed. I don’t recognize it anymore.

The so-called “party of democracy” eradicated 14 million votes, including mine, to install Vice President Kamala Harris as its nominee.  

Just for the record, the reason those 14 million votes were eradicated was that the party had been totally dishonest about the mental state of the candidate for the past three years. They didn’t eradicate the votes as much as they refused to give the voters a choice.

The piece continues:

Like a banana republic, the dedazo was used by political elites to tap the candidate they chose.  Essentially, they executed a political coup. 

As California’s attorney general, Harris was unimpressive.

She made an intentional choice to hitch herself to the powerful teachers’ union and was clearly being coddled by a power elite that was even then shaping her political future.

Her manipulated rise is in line with the Democratic Party’s giant leap toward authoritarianism and censorship.  

President Ronald Reagan warned that if fascism comes to America it will come as liberalism, and he was right: I have witnessed individual freedoms being trapped, silenced, censored. 

The piece concludes:

I watched the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel with horror. 

The Democratic Party has forsaken our ally to placate the pro-Hamas wing and win a swing state.  

I have seen the best of America: a nation that went to the moon and beyond. 

But our American landing has become like quicksand under a Democratic Party that is sinking the hopes and lives of Americans.

So I finally walked away. I stayed for as long as I could: I tried reforms, I spoke out, I voted. 

Today, I turn toward the future — an America that still shines, despite inequities that need change; a blessed land of opportunity — and join the party of the greatest American, Abraham Lincoln. 

The challenges of rebuilding our republic will take all of us.

I join the Republican Party to make America great again.

I am free at last.

We CAN rebuild our republic, but we won’t be able to if Kamala Harris is elected.