April 13-21, 2019
Apr 13 12:58 To redact or not to redact? Apr 14 02:46 Ilhan's Democrat friends Apr 14 12:39 2020's red wave? Apr 16 03:03 Are House Democrats in trouble? Apr 17 10:15 Democrats' Pot Meet Kettle moment? Apr 19 17:33 The DFL, Tim Walz, Joe Radinovich & the IRRRB Apr 20 19:03 Democrats still pushing scandal Apr 21 00:40 Happy Easter!!!
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To redact or not to redact?
For the better part of a few weeks, Democrats, starting with Jerry Nadler and Adam 'Pencil-Neck' Schiff, have insisted that Attorney General Barr must release the Mueller report without redactions. Democrats are betraying their civil libertarian instincts. I could show you Democrats, including Mr. Nadler, insisting that grand jury testimony be kept out of Ken Starr's report but I won't because that's just a distraction to the substantive conversation that we need to have about why it's imperative to keep that testimony out of the report.
A grand jury is impaneled to gather information. The prosecutor asks tons of witnesses what they've heard or observed. At a certain point, the prosecutor asks the grand jury to decide whether to indict a person of interest. If the grand jury decides that the prosecutor hasn't presented enough evidence to even warrant a trial, much less get a conviction, that person's identity shouldn't be in any report. Period.
- The witnesses in a grand jury proceeding aren't cross-examined.
- The grand jury only hears one side of the story -- the prosecutor's side.
- Defense counsel can't present witnesses or forensic evidence that might exonerate the target.
Where's the fairness in that process? The grand jury process is integral to the investigatory process but revealing grand jury testimony is a mine field to say the least. People that aren't indicted shouldn't become part of a nationwide gossip factory. (If they're indicted and stand trial, that's a different story.)
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Mr. Nadler isn't interested in civil rights. He's only interested in President Trump's scalp. Now that the Mueller investigation has apparently come up dry, Mr. Nadler is thrashing around, praying he'll find something .
That's what happens when you put partisan politics ahead of common sense and patriotism. Democrats don't wear the look of desperation well. Now that's all they've got left.
PS- Nadler will get shot down if he appeals to get the grand jury material unsealed. Think of this as another desperate attempt by Democrats.
Posted Saturday, April 13, 2019 12:58 PM
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Ilhan's Democrat friends
After Rep. Omar's speech at a CAIR event went viral, Rep. Omar's Democrat friends jumped to her defense. After that initial pushback, Rep. Omar posted this tweet :
This is dangerous incitement, given the death threats I face. I hope leaders of both parties will join me in condemning it.
My love and commitment to our country and that of my colleagues should never be in question. We are ALL Americans! pic.twitter.com/foTZMpiZKv
- Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 10, 2019
Criticism of Rep. Omar's commitment to the US is totally legitimate. According to Wikipedia , "Omar entered the United States in 1992. After first arriving in New York, her family settled in Arlington, Virginia. Her family sought asylum in the U.S. in 1995 and moved to Minneapolis. Omar's father worked initially as a taxi driver, later as a postal office worker. He and Omar's grandfather emphasized during her upbringing the importance of democracy, and she accompanied her grandfather to caucus meetings at age 14, serving as his interpreter. Omar became a U.S. citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old."
Thus far, her term in office is filled with controversy. She's repeatedly trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes. She's dismissed 9/11 as "some people did something." Since getting criticized for her insensitive statements about 9/11, her friends have come to her defense :
'Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President's explicit attack today,' Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Friday. '@IlhanMN's life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress. We must speak out.'
She also shared an image of the words of "First they came : ," the famous poem by German theologian Martin Niemoller that was inspired by the tragedies of the Holocaust. (The words are mounted on a wall at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.)
The poem reads:
'First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a socialist.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a trade unionist.
"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a Jew.
"Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.'
Criticizing a windbag politician for trivializing 9/11 isn't inciting violence. It's criticizing a windbag politician who traffics in anti-Semitism. Further, and possibly more important, is the fact that Rep. Omar's flippant remarks about 9/11 weren't the comments of an ill-informed foreigner who'd just arrived on our shores. They're the comments of a woman who became a US citizen the year before 9/11 .
When AOC defends Omar, that's her right. It's just disingenuous. It's an attempt to shut down this criticism of Rep. Omar. The good news for Republicans is that, if they work hard over the next 2 years, they'll return to the majority in the US.
Posted Sunday, April 14, 2019 2:46 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 14-Apr-19 06:46 AM
Omar only loves this country because of the rights the constitution grants her to spew her hatred. Of course she'd like to change other parts of the constitution she doesn't agree with such as 2A but hey, she's an American so you don't get to question her. She needs to be questioned every time she opens her mouth because no one vetted her before she was elected so no one knew who she really was/is. Kind of like the guy who occupied the white house from 2008 - 2016. Never did a thing before they were elected and rocketed to positions of prominence.
She is a disgusting human and sadly she'll keep her seat until she decides to move on to something else because she checks of all things progressives love except the LGBT box.
2020's red wave?
With the Democrats' Resist Movement crumbling on a seemingly daily basis, little signals are starting to point to red wave in 2020. Salena Zito, the best retail political reporter in the business, wrote this article reporting of an election in Wisconsin that's apparently not getting enough attention. In the article, Ms. Zito writes "Less than a month ago, conservative Judge Brian Hagedorn was a dead man walking. As he raced against liberal Judge Lisa Neubauer for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the local press portrayed him as an anti-gay extremist and bigot. They called out the Christian school he founded for its code of conduct stipulating 'no sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman.' Never mind that this code of conduct is common practice at private religious schools across the country."
How did that election turn out? Ms. Zito wrote:
Conservative activist Mary Magdalen Moser, a poll worker for the Republicans, sensed a turn in the tide. She was infuriated by the media's treatment of Hagedorn, and she knew the populist coalition that put Trump in office would be electrified. "Wisconsinites have always been a very open bunch," she told me. "As long as you stay out of our way, we let you do your own thing. People were incensed that Neubauer went after Hagedorn's faith." Against all odds, Hagedorn won the state, including two Democratic-leaning counties, Racine and Kenosha, just like Trump did in 2016. "Trump and Hagedorn won because they didn't back down," said Moser, a 56-year-old who lives in Kenosha. Though she grew up in a Democratic home and has never registered with either party, she calls the treatment of Hagedorn a tipping point.
Ms. Zito isn't the only one noticing signs of a red wave building. Brandon Judd noticed it, too:
President Trump's shrewd governance, along with unforced errors by the Democratic Party, has the president positioned to not only win the White House for a second term but also to win back the House and make gains in the Senate.
One of the mistakes that the Resist Movement made is saying no to any initiatives put forth by President Trump. People hate it when politicians are obstinate. This is a vulnerability that Republicans are preparing to exploit:
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Anyone that thinks that illegal immigration plays in the Democrats' favor is kidding themselves. It doesn't . Picture this visual: while President Trump and Sen. Graham put centrist proposals on the table that would fix the crisis, Democrats say (and vote) no to everything. That'll play as well as a fart in a quiet church. This isn't the type of visual Democrats can afford to maintain.
If Pelosi's Democrats in the House either shoot Sen. Graham's proposal down or if they just don't act on his initiative, they'll get steamrollered in 2020. This isn't just a federal issue. This unabated flood of refugees into our country also get shipped to other states besides border states. Wherever they show up, be it in Minnesota, Tennessee, Florida or elsewhere, these illegal immigrants put incredible pressure on school districts, clinics and hospitals. That means they put tremendous pressure on taxpayers and state governments.
If Democrats won't work with Republicans to solve this illegal immigration crisis, they'll soon be eligible to work in the next Democrat presidential administration. That won't be until at least 2024.
Posted Sunday, April 14, 2019 12:39 PM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 14-Apr-19 12:53 PM
If there is not a red wave or at least a GOP takeover in 2020, this country (and state) is far worse off than I thought especially with the crackpots running on the democrat ticket.
Are House Democrats in trouble?
Tom Emmer, my congressman, states in his op-ed for Roll Call Magazine that "Nancy Pelosi's optimism over 2020 is misplaced." While I've disagreed with Rep. Emmer from time-to-time, I agree with him 100% this time. This video isn't silly:
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It's beyond absurd. The average American doesn't care about diversity. They care whether politicians, in this case Democrats, intend to fix America's problems. At minimum, they want politicians not to screw things up too much.
In the first 100 days, the socialist Democrats managed to call for over $100 trillion in new spending, but are so dysfunctional, they refuse to propose a budget outlining the payment plan for their radical agenda. Ridiculously, these socialists have spent weeks continuing to attack President Donald Trump's budget proposal. Talk about hypocrisy.
While they couldn't develop a budget plan, House Democrats did find a way to tax Americans into oblivion, introducing a host of socialist policies that threaten America's foundation and the values we hold dear: freedom and liberty.
That isn't all. If Democrats think that they can get re-elected by constantly vilifying President Trump and offering counterproductive initiatives, they're heading for a wave election -- again. Then there's this:
If that wasn't scary enough, nearly half of the Democratic Caucus co-sponsored a bill mandating a $32 trillion government takeover of the health care system. Their plan would eliminate private insurance, make it illegal for businesses to offer health insurance to workers, destroy the current Medicare system that America's seniors have paid into for decades, and make a trip to the doctor feel like a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
In 1995, after Republicans took over the House majority for the first time in 40 years, they spent the first 100 days passing the Contract With America :
- require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress;
- select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
- cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
-
limit the terms of all committee chairs;
ban the casting of proxy votes in committee; - require committee meetings to be open to the public;
- require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
- guarantee an honest accounting of the Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.
This might be the most important paragraph of Rep. Emmer's op-ed:
The first 100 days have made it crystal clear that the socialist Democrats are not up to the task of leading our country. So in the next 100 days, Republicans will continue recruiting a diverse group of candidates to take back the majority. We are already making tremendous progress, thanks to the hard work of Rep. Susan Brooks, recruitment chairwoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Thus far, we have met with over 110 women, 50 veterans and 60 minorities considering a run for office.
Thus far, House Democrats have been a profile of the Do-Nothing Congress. That won't last long. The American people will throw House Democrats out fast enough.
Posted Tuesday, April 16, 2019 3:03 AM
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Democrats' Pot Meet Kettle moment?
Last Friday, the leader of the free world taught the Democrats a lesson in trolling while exposing Democrats as border security hypocrites. Last Friday, President Trump turned the tables on Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' presidential candidates and the messaging leaders of the House Democrat Conference, aka AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
That moment hit when President Trump told reporters that he was considering giving sanctuary cities what they want . Specifically, he told reporters that he was considering shipping illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities when they were released or when CBP ran out of bed space for these illegal aliens.
That set off howls from Democrat hypocrites like Nancy Pelosi:
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That's rich. A woman who's spent her entire life in San Francisco and Washington, DC, is telling people in Rust Belt states about American character. Right. Further, she's insisting that elitist Democrats, not entrepreneurs, blue collar workers or the taxpayers whose property taxes keep going up thanks to the massive influx of illegal immigrants into their schools, know what's best. Right.
Let these windbags deal with the crisis they're at least partially responsible for. Their cities are going to hell in a handbasket. Homeless people (literally) litter their streets with drug needles and worse. Still, these elitist Democrats insist that they know what's best for America. These elitist Democrats insist that they're responsible for defining America's values and priorities.
Mr. President, ship these illegal immigrants to San Fran Nan's neighborhood and to Gavin Newsom's new digs. Send some to AOC's neighborhood, too. Then tell her constituents that she invited these illegal immigrants to NYC but chased Amazon from NYC.
Let's face it. Democrats are trying their best to play a terrible hand that's filled with even cards. (Cribbage players know what I'm talking about.) Cher gets it:
I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+??Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can't Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More
- Cher (@cher) April 14, 2019
Unfortunately, AOC and Pelosi don't.
Posted Wednesday, April 17, 2019 10:15 AM
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The DFL, Tim Walz, Joe Radinovich & the IRRRB
Saying that the IRRRB is corrupt is understatement. Thanks to this investigation , that corruption has gotten exposed.
The article starts by saying "For more than 20 years, Sandy Layman, of Grand Rapids, has worked to convince lawmakers in St. Paul that the Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation is more than a revolving door of political patronage for Iron Range DFLers. Layman, now a Republican House member, first served on the IRRR board in the 1990s and later became commissioner of the agency under Gov. Tim Pawlenty. 'One of my goals has always been to depoliticize the agency,' said Layman during a recent interview with the Timberjay. 'It has a highly partisan reputation in St. Paul.'"
It goes further:
Which is why Layman says she is so frustrated with the agency's recent hiring of Joe Radinovich, the unsuccessful 2018 DFL candidate for the U.S. House in Minnesota's Eighth District. Radinovich was hired in early March to a highly-paid, permanent position that IRRR officials appear to have created specifically for him. While political appointments are not unusual in state government, and are typically temporary, the kind of job created for Radinovich, known as a "permanent classified" position, is supposed to be nonpolitical and is subject to state hiring guidelines designed to ensure a fair and competitive process in which state workers are hired on merit rather than politics.
Yet an investigation by the Timberjay found substantial evidence that the IRRR's process, in this instance, fell short of that goal, and that top agency officials sought from the beginning to offer Radinovich a plum new position, with a salary of $100,000 per year in addition to the state's handsome benefits package. In so doing, the agency sought exemption to sharply limit the posting of the position and appeared to pass over a female candidate for the position with far more relevant experience and education than Radinovich brings to the job.
Radinovich's hiring comes on the heels of the appointment of Jason Metsa as the agency's deputy commissioner, which is considered a political appointment and was not subject to the typical state hiring process. Metsa is an Iron Range DFLer who ran unsuccessfully for his party's nomination for the Eighth District seat.
If that sounds like it's on the up-and-up, then you're likely from Chicago. This definitely doesn't sound like everything was on the up-and-up:
IRRR Commissioner Mark Phillips acknowledges that he sought early on to hire Radinovich at his agency and initially considered hiring the Crosby native as deputy commissioner. 'It really was down to Jason or Joe to be deputy,' he said. When the job went to Metsa, Phillips began exploring options to offer Radinovich a different position.
Gov. Walz, what's your reaction to this? Will you fire Commissioner Phillips? Will you excoriate Rep. Radinovich for being that corrupt? As a former DFL state legislator, Rep. Radinovich knew civil service laws and the IRRRB. Hell, he was a member of the IRRRB board as a member of the Iron Range legislative delegation.
Politically speaking, Radinovich is damaged goods now that he's identified as gaming the system. He's bounced around from being a DFL legislator to being the chief of staff for one of the Twin Cities mayors to running Rick Nolan's congressional campaigns to running for Nolan's seat before losing to Pete Stauber.
Posted Friday, April 19, 2019 5:33 PM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 20-Apr-19 05:41 PM
No surprise to anyone that the DFL is corrupt. I mean when you have no morals (killing babies whether in the womb or actually born alive and then killing them) is corruption that big of a deal. Sadly they will get away with it because the MSM will find something else to latch onto and this story will fade away like it never happened.
Democrats still pushing scandal
The "Media Wing of the Democratic Party", aka the MSM, is painfully, albeit only partially, admitting that they might've gotten the Trump-Russia collusion story wrong. Other Democrats, especially Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters, haven't admitted the obvious. It isn't likely they will.
Nonetheless, articles have surfaced that give us clear-eyed analysis. One such article was written by John Kass . He writes "When the report was released, if you walked past a news screen, you would have heard them babbling. CNN had several panels of experts channeling Blanche DuBois, and none of them said anything about depending on the kindness of strangers. Instead they damned Attorney General William Barr, a longtime friend of Mueller's, as a creature of evil."
He continued, saying:
Some of the more tribal residents of the left might want to condemn me for conservative thinking. But it's not about left or right. It's about reality. And the journalist Glenn Greenwald is not a conservative by any measure.
Greenwald's article is both detailed and devastating to Democrats:
The key fact is this: Mueller, contrary to weeks of false media claims, did not merely issue a narrow, cramped, legalistic finding that there was insufficient evidence to indict Trump associates for conspiring with Russia and then proving their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That would have been devastating enough to those who spent the last two years or more misleading people to believe that conspiracy convictions of Trump's closest aides and family members were inevitable. But his mandate was much broader than that: to state what did or did not happen.
That's precisely what he did: Mueller, in addition to concluding that evidence was insufficient to charge any American with crimes relating to Russian election interference, also stated emphatically in numerous instances that there was no evidence , not merely that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a criminal conviction - that key prongs of this three-year-old conspiracy theory actually happened. As Mueller himself put it: 'in some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event.'
By this point, Democrats should have started crying "No mas, no mas" in the finest tradition of Roberto Duran in his 2nd fight against Sugar Ray Leonard.
Then there's Andy McCarthy's article :
Democrats claim Barr's determination on obstruction was the equivalent of acting as Trump's defense lawyer. But the only way for any prosecutor to assess the question of whether a suspect had corrupt intent is to catalogue the evidence that cuts against it - since, if corrupt intent cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, there can be no criminal case. Barr did not claim that Trump had conducted himself admirably; he said that proving corrupt intent would have been difficult, if not impossible, thanks to (a) the president's extensive cooperation with the investigation (making White House witnesses available, disclosing over a million documents, asserting no claim of privilege) and (b) the non-corrupt thinking that fueled the president's frustration (i.e., his belief that his presidency was being destroyed by a bogus collusion allegation). That Democrats do not like this outcome does not make it wrong.
The Democrats' accusations aren't terribly persuasive. How can you obstruct when you're cooperating? President Trump didn't attempt to forbid his staff from being interviewed by claiming executive privilege. President Trump didn't claim executive privilege to redact parts of Mueller's report.
Finally, if President Trump fired Jim Comey for being corrupt and incompetent, which Comey was, obstruction all but disappears. If Democrats want to continue beating this dead horse, they have the chairmanships to do it with...for now. I wouldn't predict that they'll have them much longer, though.
Posted Saturday, April 20, 2019 7:03 PM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 21-Apr-19 08:36 AM
How can you obstruct an investigation that was started on the basis of a fake dossier? Trump should not have cooperated with this lynch mob but he did and he makes them look even more foolish when they came up with squat.
Meanwhile the economy is humming along and all the other side can do is push socialism. Trump 2020.
Happy Easter!!!
Nothing crystallizes a Christian's mind like Easter. Easter morning is the day when Christ's victory over the grave ends. As glorious as that day was for Christ's closest followers, the days leading up to it were far from glorious. On Good Friday, the day Christ was crucified, Christ was separated from His Heavenly Father :
Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
To most people, the thought of Christ being separated from His Father is difficult to imagine. Paul's second letter to the church in Corinth provides the explanation:
21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Right before He died, Christ, the Man who never sinned, had all of humankind's sins placed on His shoulders. At that moment, theologians think that God the Father couldn't look at His Son because of our sins.
God didn't owe us a pathway to eternal life, far from it. In his letter to the church in Rome, the apostle Paul wrote "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Later in that same letter, Paul wrote "For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life."
We deserved eternal separation from Christ's love. God chose to not give us what we deserve. That's called mercy. Instead, thanks to Christ's death on that cruel Cross at Calvary, Christ gave us a pathway to eternal life in God's presence. Christ gives us the opportunity that we don't deserve . That's called grace and it's a magnificent thing.
For me, the most emotional part of the salvation story is the story of 2 thieves who were crucified with Christ. Here's that story :
39 Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, 'If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.' 40 But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, 'Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.' 42 Then he said to Jesus, 'Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.' 43 And Jesus said to him, 'Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.'
Let this picture remind you that you, like the second criminal, can be with Christ in Paradise if you trust in Christ as your Savior:
Happy Easter, everyone. If you haven't invited Christ to be your Savior, I pray that you'll invite Jesus into your heart to be your Savior. There's no time like the present.
If you've already accepted Christ as your Savior, Halleluiah. Today is the best day for celebrating.
Originally posted Sunday, April 21, 2019, revised 23-Apr 6:20 AM
Comment 1 by Gretchen L Leisen at 22-Apr-19 11:29 AM
Halleluia, He is Risen! Thank you Gary.
