Category: General

Since Dylann Roof’s horrific murder spree against people of color at a church in South Carolina, he has been a poster boy for both the pro and anti gun movements (read more here,  here, and here). In truth, we don’t need more gun laws; we just need existing gun laws to work.

However, an important point was revealed during Roof’s subsequent FBI interview that supports the position that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens may well prevent such attacks. It turns out that he selected his target in part based on whether or not they could defend themselves. From an AP article in the Statesman about Roof’s FBI interview:

“He thought about attacking drug dealers, but they might shoot back.”

Note that he changed his target from a group who would be armed and able to defend themselves to that of an unarmed, helpless group that he was free to slaughter. If that’s not an argument – straight from the horse’s mouth – for arming the populous against such killers, than what is?

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.,and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio are blocking the advancement of legislation through the senate, ostensibly over health benefits for miners (as in coal – not minors, as in children). They (and others) want Americans to pay up to $3 billion over the next 10 years into the health care and pension funds for miners via the “Miners Protection Act”. What they don’t tell you is that this is essentially a bail-out of the miner’s union-run pension fund using public (that’s you and me, folks) money. Read more about this issue here.

This is a very dangerous precedent, and essentially sets the stage to use tax money to bail out union-run pensions. It is an end-run around the move towards defined contribution plans (over defined benefit plans), since it allows the union to overpay benefits while forcing the public to bail out the resulting insolvent union retirement programs.

I urge you to contact your senators and advise them to kill the Miners Protection Act. Don’t reward poorly managed pension plans by bailing them out!

Interesting: The Obama administration has made a “secret” deal  for the U.S. to accept some 2500 refugees awaiting settlement in Australia. Public details are lacking, although the countries of origin of these refugees have been confirmed to be Iran, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Sudan, as well as some deemed “stateless.”

My first question: Why weren’t these refugees acceptable to Australia? My second question: Why the secrecy? We should all be concerned about back-door, secretive agreements regarding refugees rejected by other nations.

Transparency from the Obama administration? Yeah, right.

From The Times Herald in Norristown, PA:

“We know that Donald Trump won the vote of machines in Pennsylvania. We want to know who won the vote of the people,” Maazel said.

This was a quote from Jill Stein’s campaign attorney, Ilann Maazel. Here’s another one of his insights:

“The Republican Party is saying that over 27,000 people in 9,000 districts have to request a recount or there can’t be a recount anywhere. What kind of system is that? That is a disgrace.”

No, it’s the law that requires (only) three voters from each district to request a recount; Republicans have no say in the matter. Can’t get three voters from each district to request a recount? Just 27,000 out of over 6 million votes cast? Less than 1/2 of one percent? Then maybe it shouldn’t happen…

Apparently, that doesn’t bother the Center for Immigration Studies:

“When they say half of all criminal prosecutions are immigration related, I say ‘so what’,” said Jessica Vaughn, a policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies.

Read about it here.

… that predicted a win for Trump?

A piece on Federalism and how it may protect sanctuary cities is provided on the Washington Post website. It makes the following claim:

Election exit polls suggest that mass deportation is not a popular policy, with 70% of the public believing that undocumented migrants working in the US should be offered permanent residency, and only 25% indicating they should be deported.

Really? Are these the same exit polls that suggested a Clinton victory in the last presidential election? Maybe we should reconsider the results of such a poll.

I can understand the requirement for police officers to be U.S. citizens. After all, if we allow someone to wield police powers then they ought to have a genuine vested interest in upholding the constitution, the document from which all our laws flow.

However, the U.S. Justice department has decided otherwise. They have fined the Denver, Colorado police department for making citizenship a condition of hire.

Fareed Zacharia, a Hillary advocate and Trump detractor at CNN, is cited in a recent article as saying that racism played a part in the election results. I agree, but not in the way that Fareed intends.

Accusations of racism, that’s what cost Hillary the election. In a nutshell, the Democratic party’s message was that if you don’t agree with Hillary, you’re a racist. Don’t agree with giving amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants, no matter the economic cost? Racist! Want better border control to be part of our immigration plan so we can prevent the illegal border crossings that got us into this mess? Racist! Concerned about the vetting process related to refugees from an area of the globe particularly hostile to American interests? Double whammy: Racist Islamophobe!

Instead of addressing the fears and concerns of these voters, the Hillary campaign chose to bully them into voting for Hillary or suffer the brand of racism. Unfortunately for Hillary, their strategy backfired: instead of driving votes towards Hillary, it drove them towards Trump. Turns out insulting the American public by calling them racists for their legitimate concerns is not such a good idea.

Someone should fire their strategists.

Since immigration has been on the mind of many Americans this election season, let’s take a moment to discuss this important issue. It would have been difficult to have this conversation during the election cycle, as vote shaming and opinion bullying have prevented meaning dialogue. Hopefully, civil-tongued post election discussions are now possible.

On the left, illegal immigration is treated as a humanitarian effort. From the perspective of Hillary Clinton and her supporters, these poor people need to escape their corrupt and violent countries and we have a humanitarian obligation to take any who want to come. Hillary has stated that she favors amnesty and a path to citizenship for all illegal aliens, arguing that these are hard-working people who pay taxes and contribute to our society.

I disagree. Strongly. For a whole lot of reasons. Let’s investigate a few… Continue reading “Immigration”