Sunday, December 31, 2017

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP: YEAR ONE OF MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

“From now on, America will be empowered by our aspirations, not burdened by our fears; inspired by the future, not bound by the failures of the past; and guided by our vision, not blinded by our doubts.”

– President Donald J. Trump

HIGHLIGHTS TOP 10 YEAR-END ACCOMPLISHMENTS 
____________________________________

1. Passed the most sweeping tax reform in 30-years

A typical family of four earning $75,000 will save more than $2,000 in income tax cuts.

Repealed the Obamacare Individual Mandate.

After 40 years of fighting, opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) to exploration and development of oil and gas.

2. Declared war on the regulatory state

Surpassed the 2:1 ratio mandated in President Trump’s Executive Order, eliminating 22 regulations for every new regulation and saving $8.1 billion.

3. Revved up the U.S. economy 

The New York Federal Reserve estimates the U.S. economy will grow at an annual rate of nearly 4 percent in the fourth quarter, after increasing at or above 3 percent for two quarters in a row for the first time in three years.

Nearly 1.7 million new jobs have been created and the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.1 percent, the lowest rate in nearly 17 years.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average index has hit record highs more than 60 times under President Trump, including closing higher than 24,000 points for the first time in its history.

4. Appointed well-respected, conservative judges

Justice Neil Gorsuch was named to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Set a record for the most circuit court picks confirmed in a president’s first term, at 12.

5. Defeated ISIS: Physical caliphate will soon be extinguished

Unrolled an aggressive new strategy that empowers commanders with broader authority, which has produced dramatic results.

Liberated Mosul and Raqqa; D-ISIS Coalition has recaptured over 95% of territory previously held by ISIS in Iraq and Syria; historic liberation of millions of people from ISIS.

6. Restored U.S. leadership on the World Stage

The President hosted 43 world leaders at the White House in 2017. 

In total, he engaged or met with 149 world leaders at home and abroad.

Regarding phone calls, the President spoke with leaders from 51 countries for a total of 183 calls to Heads of State/Government. 

7. Directed policy to restore American energy dominance

Approved Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines; plans to auction off leases for nearly 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling – the largest offering ever.

Ended the war on coal -- U.S. coal exports are up 70 percent year-to-date through September.

Exited the Paris Climate Agreement.

8. Recognized Jerusalem the capital of of Israel and initiated plans to relocate the U.S. Embassy there

9. Declared a Nationwide Public Health Emergency to address the opioid crisis

10. Focused on defeating the MS-13 gangs that threaten our communities

The DOJ has worked with Central American partners to arrest and charge about 4,000 MS-13 members so far this year. 

The Department of Homeland Security arrested 796 MS-13 gang members and associates in FY 2017, an 83 percent increase over the previous year.

TO SEE PRESIDENT TRUMP'S EXPANDED LIST OF 2017 ACCOMPLISHMENTS, CLICK HERE.

Saturday, December 30, 2017

2018 is an election year: Those who don't vote elect the wrong candidates

Bottom of Form

Shutterstock photo

Top of Form
Bottom of Form
“Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.”
– George Jean Nathan

At times, a group of people with differing opinions must come together to make a decision between several options.

This happens in business, social organizations and politics.

In business, those left out of the process fight back.

In social organizations, those not allowed a voice in selecting officers, planning events or spending demonstrate their displeasure by quitting or changing the bylaws.

In America, everyone registered to vote has an equal voice in the republican process.

Yet only on rare occasions do half of them show up. Those who stay home show no concern after the damage done by electing the wrong person.

“When fewer votes are cast, every vote counts more.”
– Alex Macon

After the two elections of Barack Obama, every American is aware all political races in our nation depend on whose supporters vote.

A Census Bureau report shows a higher percentage of African Americans than whites voted in the Obama elections for only the second time in our history.

The driving force in 1968 was an anomaly to political or ethnic polarity since it was the first election after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Over 70 percent of blacks voted in the Obama contests, and the Hispanic vote increased by 9.4 percent. Only 64 percent of white voters made the effort.

“You can fool some of the people some of the time and that's enough to make a decent living.”
– WC Fields

Democracies around the world hold elections to reboot their nations. Some register everyone and it is mandatory to vote. Others shame those who don’t.

But turnout in American elections is fraught with a pattern of shrinking participation. We are lucky to get half of our voters to the polls during a presidential race and 10 percent for local elections!

There’s no democracy where every seat in a legislative house is up for grabs every two years where so few votes are cast. This is routine in every midterm election.

“Every election in America has been determined by those who don’t vote.”
– Carl Williams

According to recent data from the U.S. Census, our voter turnout is the lowest in the free world.

There are more than 240 million voting-aged Americans, yet nearly 130 million consistently don’t vote.

And why do Americans take the sacramental duty to vote so lightly?

They have more excuses than the guy who got busted for shoplifting at Walmart.

Those who seldom vote claim: “My vote doesn’t count, why vote.”

This is a typical excuse for not voting in the presidential election.

Although the Electoral College does elect the president, these voters are a bit confused: They elect the Electoral College who must support their candidate.

“Stupid is as stupid does.”
– Forrest Gump

 […]

The price we pay for freedom is responsibility.

It's a debt we’ll never pay off.

Not voting sends a clear message of disrespect for the lives of many people who died fighting for these rights.

It’s uncanny to think of where America would be if our founders, activists, and soldiers felt the same way as so many pacifist voters do today.

No one gave them a mandate to do what they did for America in the face of far more difficult times than many of us have ever encountered.

Not voting can lead to the destruction of an entire nation if the wrong candidate wins.

[…]

William Haupt III is a retired professional journalist, author, and citizen legislator in California for over 40 years. He got his start working to approve California Proposition 13.


Friday, December 29, 2017

America’s New Year Looks Bright, While Europe Faces A Dark Future

Commentary

By Frances Rice

As we prepare to ring out the old and celebrate the beginning of a new year, it is worth taking a pause to reflect on how President Donald Trump is working to make our country secure and prosperous again.  A demonstration of how President Trump keeps close to his heart those of us who served our nation in the military is the Christmas Card he sent to me pictured here that was taken in my home.



Meanwhile, the actions of European leaders are putting their citizens in national security and economic peril.


Below is an article that provides an analysis of how European nations were on the brink of extinction during World War II and was saved by one man, Winston Churchill, who stood up against the powerful forces aligned against him and prevailed. Western civilization owes him a debt of gratitude.
__________________________

Civilization's 'Darkest Hour'

By Victor Davis Hanson


Portrait of Sir Winston Churchill by Adam Sherriff Scott

The new film "Darkest Hour" offers the diplomatic side to the recent action movie "Dunkirk."

The story unfolds with the drama of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill assuming power during the Nazi invasion of France in May 1940. Churchill's predecessor, the sickly Neville Chamberlain, had lost confidence of the English people and the British government. His appeasement of Adolf Hitler and the disastrous first nine months of World War II seemed to have all but lost Britain the war.

Churchill was asked to become prime minister on the very day that Hitler invaded France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The armies of all three democracies -- together larger than Germany's invading forces -- collapsed within days or a few weeks.

About a third of a million British soldiers stranded in a doomed France were miraculously saved by Churchill's bold decision to risk evacuating them by sea from Dunkirk, France, where most of what was left of the British Expeditionary Force had retreated.

Churchill's greatest problem was not just saving the British army, but confronting the reality that with the German conquest of Europe, the British Empire now had no allies.

The Soviet Union had all but joined Hitler's Germany under their infamous non-aggression pact of August 1939.

The United States was determined at all costs to remain neutral. Just how neutral is emphasized in "Darkest Hour" by Churchill's sad phone call with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR cleverly assures Churchill that in theory he wants to help while in fact he can do nothing.

Within days of Churchill taking office, all of what is now the European Union either would be in Hitler's hands or could be considered pro-Nazi "neutral."

"Darkest Hour" gets its title from the understandable depression that had spread throughout the British government. Members of Churchill's new War Cabinet wanted to sue for peace. Chamberlain and senior conservative politician Edward Wood both considered Churchill unhinged for believing Britain could survive.

Both appeasers dreamed that thuggish Italian dictator Benito Mussolini might be persuaded to beg Hitler to call off his planned invasion of Great Britain. They dreamed Mussolini could save a shred of English dignity through an arranged British surrender.

Not Churchill.

In one of the few historical lapses in an otherwise superb film, Churchill is wrongly portrayed as seriously conflicted and about to consider the deal with Mussolini -- until he takes a subway ride and rediscovers the defiance of the average Londoner. The subway scene is pure fantasy.

The movie also sometimes portrays Churchill as less than robust, when in fact he was the most traveled and physically daring of all World War II leaders.

Alone, Churchill saw a pathway to victory against overwhelming odds. As the film notes, Hitler may have had the world's greatest army in the spring of 1940, but he still had no way of transporting it across the British "moat" of the English Channel, given overwhelming British naval mastery.

The German Luftwaffe never could defeat the Royal Air Force.

Churchill assumed that if Britain and its overseas Empire could hold out, then a frustrated Hitler might turn elsewhere -- and thereby gain new enemies (and new British allies).

That is exactly what happened in 1941. A blundering and frustrated Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Later, he would declare war on the United States. By December 1941, Germany was at war against the world's largest economy (American), largest navy (British) and largest army (Soviet) all at once.

Germany and its allies could never win such a global war.

"Darkest Hour" takes place almost exclusively indoors during Parliament sessions, private meetings and scenes between Churchill and his equally brilliant wife, Clementine. But the dialogue is riveting, the acting superb.

Actor Gary Oldman's masterful Churchill should be a sure Academy Award-winning performance. Oldman reminds a generation of amnesiac global youth that nearly 80 years ago, the dogged defiance of a 66-year-old Victorian Englishman -- portly and not much over 5-foot-6 -- saved Western civilization from Nazi barbarism.

Americans should watch "Darkest Hour" for reasons beside its engaging acting and plot. We rightly believe that American industry and Soviet manpower won World War II. Yet too often, Americans forget the critical third allied ingredient: British leadership, courage and military professionalism.

Churchill led the only major nation to have fought Hitler alone. Only Britain fought from the first day to the last of World War II. It alone entered the war without attacking a country or being attacked, but simply on the principle of helping an independent Poland.

The world as we know it today owes its second chance to Winston Churchill and the United Kingdom. Without them, civilization would have been lost in the darkest hours of May 1940.


Trump Triumphs in 2017!





______________________________


The Wall Street Journal 


The ‘Stupidity’ of Donald Trump

By William McGurn


This time one year ago, the assumption dominating political coverage was that the only people more stupid than Donald Trump were the deplorables who elected him.

Since then, of course, President-elect Trump has become President Trump. 

Over his 11 months in office, he has put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and four times as many judges on the appellate courts as Barack Obama did his first year; recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; withdrawn from the Paris climate accord; adopted a more resolute policy on Afghanistan than the one he’d campaigned on; rolled back the mandate forcing Catholic nuns, among others, to provide employees with contraception and abortifacients; signed legislation to open up drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; initiated a bold, deregulatory assault on the administrative state—and topped it all off with the first major overhaul of the tax code in more than 30 years.

And yet that Mr. Trump is a very stupid man remains the assumption dominating his press coverage.

[...]

Almost all GOP presidents are stereotyped as not very bright. Ask Ike, or George W. Bush, or even Lincoln. 

[...]

Perhaps the best advice for anti-Trumpers comes from one of their own, a Vermont Democrat named Jason Lorber.  Way back in April, in an article for the Burlington Free Press, the retired state politician wrote that “while it may be good for a chuckle, calling or even thinking someone else stupid is virtually guaranteed to give them the last laugh.”

Is that not what Mr. Trump is now enjoying at the close of his first year?


___________________________

POWERLINE


Happy Tax Cut



Watching the Democrats rend their garments over allowing people to keep more of their own money rather than letting politicians spend it for them recalls the late great political scientist Aaron Wildavsky, who once tallied up the victim classes of liberalism, and calculated that 375 percent of Americans are certified victims!

Start with consumers, who Ralph Nader says are all victims, and you begin with 100 percent of the population. 

Now add in women, and you’re up to 150 percent before you even get to racial minorities, etc.

Democrats are saying the tax cut will kill people, but haven’t Republicans already killed off the entire population with the repeal of net neutrality and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord? 

What am I leaving out?

I know many Democrats think Americans are zombies, but just how many times can you kill everyone?


       ___________________________



Trump Ends 2017 Residing In His Enemies’ Heads




As 2017 comes to a close, tumbleweeds roll down the empty Lido Deck while the Republican base answers the question, “What if Conservative, Inc., gave a cruise and nobody came?” 

The Democrats fled Washington under cover of darkness, desperate to keep their slobbering socialist wing from forcing them to commit ritual suicide by closing down the government over Christmas because the GOP Congress (for now) won’t hand a couple million illegal aliens citizenship. 

Robert Mueller’s Keystone Kop Korps started off with “unquestioned integrity” and ended the year with totally questioned integrity. The mainstream media abandoned the principle of objectivity in favor of shrill advocacy, yet it is baffled that most Americans now consider its members like just another bunch of partisan hacks.

In the White House, where everyone who was anyone told us Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit would reign, President Donald Trump finished the year by signing a tax reform bill that punished conservatives’ enemies and rewarded their friends. 

The Democrats get to go tell their base of blue state coastal swells, “Uh, sorry about losing those state tax deductions cuz we were too busy resisting to actually negotiate and thereby get a seat at the table.” Cue the Sad Trombone

Trump plays for keeps, unlike the squish-cons who play for media hugs and invitations to the kool kidz’ parties.

He was supposed to lose the primary, but he didn’t. He was supposed to lose the general, but he didn’t. He was supposed to fall victim to the covert schemes of leftist bureaucrats and the overt obstruction of The Resistance, but he didn’t. 

Instead, Donald Trump has prospered as the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan. And it’s breaking the souls of his enemies. Deliciously.

The elite keeps losing to the guy they tell us is dumb. The elite keeps losing to the guy they tell us is a clown. The elite keeps losing to the guy who doesn’t meet their bottom line standard to be worthy of governing – being one of the elite. So, what’s that make the elite?

He just refuses to lose. He just refuses to submit. He just refuses to give a damn about what they say or what they think. And that infuriates them. He won’t take a knee, but he will offer them a finger.

Brick by brick, he is disassembling the rickety edifice of Barack Obama’s transformed America. Regulations? Slashed, even as the screams of the professional expert class echo across the District of Columbia.

ISIS? Dead, with our military unleashed to hunt down our enemies without hesitation or mercy. 

The Courts? Packed, not with squishy wimps ready to bend to the will of the WaPo and the Georgetown cocktail crew but with true conservatives determined to fight for the Constitution.

Trump’s enemies are getting tired of all the winning.

[...]


That’s why they hate Trump. He didn’t make them irrelevant; he just showed the world that they were irrelevant. And that’s unforgiveable.

[...]


They are all about Trump, 24/7. CNN, and its silly Don Lemons and Tater Stelters, need Trump. They obsess over him, for without Trump they are nothing. 

The Resistance? They have nothing but Trump to fill their empty lives, getting giddy every time some media outlet reports that someone who knows somebody who heard somebody say that maybe Mueller is investigating someone who met Trump once for felony jaywalking. 

[...]

Trump owns his foes. They are mere satellites orbiting around him, and his gravity is all that keeps them from spinning off into space. They have willingly submitted to the reality of a Trumpocentric political universe. It’s hilarious.

[...]


And Trump rolls on, not seeking their approval, not conforming to their demands, ignoring them when he isn’t mocking them on Twitter. 

He refuses to acknowledge their superiority, their right to rule over us Normals. 

[...]

[W]hile Trump makes a wonderful avatar, he is really only that – a symbol, a representation of something more terrifying to the elite than any one man. 

Trump represents Normal Americans, the ones the elite on both the right and the left look down upon with contempt and fear. 

They don’t really hate Donald Trump. They hate who he represents. They hate us. And they hate that they can’t do a damn thing about it.


_________________________


ISIS Has Lost Nearly All of Its Territory—Mostly Under Trump



The Islamic State has lost 98 percent of the territory it once controlled, thanks in large part to President Trump's changed strategy in dealing with the terror group.

Half of the territory of ISIS’s ‘caliphate’ was recaptured under Trump because “onerous” rules in place under the Obama  administration were lifted. 

“The rules of engagement under the Obama administration were onerous. I mean what are we doing having individual target determination being conducted in the White House, which in some cases adds weeks and weeks,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, the former head of U.S. Air Force intelligence, reports FoxNews.com. “The limitations that were put on actually resulted in greater civilian casualties.”

He also said the gains against ISIS could’ve been accomplished sooner had Obama not “micromanaged” the war.

“We could have accomplished our objectives through the use of overwhelming air power in three months not in three years,” he said, according to FoxNews.com.

The latest American intelligence assessment says fewer than 1,000 ISIS fighters now remain in Iraq and Syria, down from a peak of nearly 45,000 just two years ago. U.S. officials credit nearly 30,000 U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and regional partners on the ground for killing more than 70,000 jihadists. Meanwhile, only a few thousand have returned home.
The remaining ISIS strongholds are concentrated in a small area along the border of Syria and Iraq. ISIS, at one point, controlled an area the size of Ohio. (FoxNews.com)

While the terror group’s losses are certainly worth celebrating, its radical ideology remains. ISIS continues trying to recruit sympathizers around the world to carry out attacks.

“ISIS became a brand, and a lot of pre-existing terrorist groups — you’ve seen this in the Sinai, for example — start to raise the flag of ISIS, mainly to recruit foreign fighters and other things,” Brett McGurk, Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS at the U.S. Department of State, told reporters last week at the State Department.

_____________________

It’s Official: Nikki Haley Announces Cuts to the UN Budget



Just days after warning the United Nations the United States doesn't pay to be  disrespected, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has announced a $235 million cut to UN Budget. The news comes after more than 100 countries voted to condemn the U.S. for officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol city of Israel. More from Fox News

Calling it “a big step in the right direction,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Sunday night announced a historic reduction in the U.N. biennial operating budget.

Haley said the plan calls for a $285 million cut for the 2018-19 fiscal year.

“The inefficiency and overspending of the United Nations are well known,” Haley said. “We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of or remain unchecked."

She added, “This historic reduction in spending – in addition to many other moves toward a more efficient and accountable U.N. – is a big step in the right direction.”

The U.N. budget now covers a two-year period, beginning in January of an even-numbered year.

The announcement comes after negotiations with the UN Secretary General, who also proposed an additional $200 million in cuts.

The United States was seeking a $250 million cut to the U.N. budget for 2018-19, on top of $200 million in savings already proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Agence France-Presse reported two weeks ago.
Earlier this year, President Trump gave a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York City and called for reform of the international body.