Friday, April 21, 2017

Dave Brat, R-Va. of the House Freedom Caucus: New health care bill can be done in a week

Via Billy

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., a member of the House Freedom Caucus whose conservative GOP members derailed the Republican health care bill last week, leaves a closed-door strategy session with Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., and the leadership as they try to rebuild unity within the Republican Conference, at the Capitol, in Washington, in this Tuesday, March 28, 2017, file photo. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) ** FILE **

Rep. Dave Brat said Friday the GOP can get the new health care bill done in a week.

“It’s not really a new bill,” Mr. Brat, Virginia Republican and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said on CNN’s “New Day.” “We’re still waiting on the official text.”

Mr. Brat said that after the Republicans’ failed attempt at putting together a replacement plan for Obamacare last month, Vice President Mike Pence came together with House Republicans to work out the issues from the last bill.

“Vice President Pence came over and met with all of us. He had a great compromise. That’s what we’re working on right now is the text of what he said. And if that goes into play, we’re all at yes” Mr. Brat explained.
 
Mr. Brat said the bill isn’t that hard to craft the language for since it’s not all that different than the bill that failed to be voted on last month.

“*It just allows the states to opt out of some of the regs,” he said.


*"Liberals will be horrified!"

Comment on Originalism vs. the Living Constitution, the Filib...

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If I may, there is a linkage between the current mindset that the Constitution is a "living document" and demise of the Judeo-Christian world view. We currently live in a culture that has abandoned the concept of objective "Truth". There are no such things as absolutes, standards or even truth itself. Everything is relative to the person viewing or experiencing it. People are rejecting the biology of two sexes. Sex as in male or female has been substituted with gender, with your "gender" being what ever newly invented term you wish to use, including new gender pronouns of your choice.

If I state that "identify" as a one-eye one-horn flying purple people eater, and my preferred pronouns are fe, fi, fo and fum, then magic happens and I become what I identify as, demanding that reality and society conform to my wishes. The distinction between sane and insane is blurred. Now, by stating the Constitution is a living document, means one can change at whim the meaning of words both in how a word is defined, and its implied meanings. It allows a judge to expand the use of government power rather than limiting it via object truth. It allows for a judge to say; the Constitution says what ever I say it says. It allows for finding new rights. It allows for Supreme Court Justices to make new laws when a court case is brought before them, or to negate a law if they personally don't like it. By ruling on what is "Constitutional" the nations overall culture and moral values can be changed. Examples?

Reading the Bible and using its teachings in the public class room is unconstitutional (know that commandment, You shall NOT commit murder). It has been ruled constitutional for a woman to murder her unborn child for any reason what so ever and to demand that others pay for it. Therefore, if you wish to have your political world view imposed on others then you need a living constitution. If your world view is of limiting what others may do to you and what power they have over you, then you need to have an original constitution.

--Anonymous

Most Excellent: Reflections of a Ghost

 

Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the, symposium I’ll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive vice-president of the University of Illinois, and myself, a writer and reader of fiction. I don’t presume to speak either for Warren or Lanier, and I don’t know how to address myself to myself in the past tense. Perhaps I am not here at all. Secretly I’ve had the feeling I was killed at the Battle of Brice’s Cross Roads, taking the bullet meant for General Forrest. You understand it was Forrest who, if he’d been let, could have been decisive in winning the War of the Northern Rebellion. Too often Confederate forces won the field only to retreat later on. Brice’s Cross Roads, fought in Mississippi, was a perfect battle.

Whoever wins an internecine war writes the history of that war. And, the textbooks as well. Lost in diaries and obscure histories there were too many stories about the settlements in Middle Tennessee, both of Indians and Americans, which would have told our young of stamina and courage. The attack on the stations around Nashville, the skillet and the kettle at a bend in the Tennessee River, or an account of that one man Spencer who lived in the arm of a hollow sycamore, alone during the hardest winter that country had known, with only half a skinning knife for protection and food. It must have been some tree, for he was so big a man, a French trader seeing his footprints jumped into the Cumberland River and swam away. He thought he was fleeing a monstrous bear. Later at a militia muster Spencer intervened between two young men who were fighting. One tried to get rough with him, whereupon he picked him up and threw him over the nine foot fence surrounding the stockage.

The man called back, “If you will just throw my horse over, Mister Spencer, I’ll be getting on my way.” There are a number of these tales, and they carry the truth about a history, the quality of a tradition, as well as more formal documents.

Originalism vs. the Living Constitution, the Filibuster, Executive Orders, and the Regulatory State

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The untimely passing of Justice Scalia and the nomination and confirmation of Justice Gorsuch to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court has raised several interesting constitutional and legislative issues. 

Originally intended to be the court of last resort for constitutional cases relating to our founding document, the Supreme Court has become a third legislative body that reflects the power structure in the Senate and the Executive Branch.  Rather than examine the legal scholarship and honesty of the nominee, senators on both sides of the aisle attempt only to determine whether he or she will support a specific political agenda. 

To most lawyers, the written word matters, especially in a contract that spells out the obligations, restrictions, and permissions that bind those who sign it.  An individual would be ill-advised by counsel to sign a “living” contract . . . one with terms that could change at the whim of the interpreter at any given time. Legally, the entirety of a binding contract resides within the four corners of the paper on which it is printed.   Representatives of the thirteen original states who signed the Constitution, as well as the citizens of each state through their ratifying conventions, had the very real expectation that those words would be honored and adhered to as the basis of the rule of law, applicable to all, equally, unless amended or revoked according to its terms.

There are common sense, fact-based ways to fix immigration in U.S.

 willing workers illustration

Taxpayers are subsidizing big business and a desire for cheap labor at a massive cost to society. 

 Our media is inundated with political narrative, misinformation and myths on immigration. A few examples]

 Reducing immigration is “anti-immigrant” and “right-wing.”

Reducing immigration is no more “anti-immigrant” than birth control is “anti-children.” We limit our family size to give our children advantages. Reducing immigration protects jobs and wages for everyone, including legal immigrants. That’s why the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by civil rights icon Barbara Jordan, told Congress to severely reduce legal immigration. And The New York Times reported that President Bill Clinton proposed a one-third reduction in 1995. “Right-wingers”?

How to Talk Like a Social Justice Campus Crybully

Via Iver

 

 

It’s not the end of free speech, it’s just the end of speech that is free. 

 

We spent the second half of the last century in a long war with a bunch of leftists who wore funny clothes and shouted a jargon of incomprehensible slogans.

These days you can only find them in North Korea and on your local college campus.

As free speech disappears from campuses faster than beer during Hell Week, here’s your guide to understanding what the people taking away your free speech are saying while they pepper spray you.

Free speech is actually not at all endangered on campus, according to the Wellesley News which defines free speech as any speech that protects the underprivileged. The only free speech is left-wing speech. Any other speech is a form of oppression against the underprivileged who have the privilege of calling it out by harassing anyone who engages in it to protect their existence from your existence.

More @ Front Page

The Appalachian Messenger. April 21, 2017


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This week’s edition of the Appalachian Messenger has articles by:

Robert Gore
No Need to Ask

Samuel Culper
Executive Intelligence Summary

Francis W. Porretto
Predictability: Threat Or Menace?

Click here for the April 21, 2017 edition.

French Presidential Election: Remarkable Growth in Police and Military Support for Marine Le Pen

Via Billy

A largely overlooked study by French pollster, IFOP, shows a dramatic surge in support for Marine Le Pen amongst police and security forces over the past five years, with a large majority set to support the Front National candidate on Sunday’s first round of voting.

Analyzing data from communities with concentrations of police, military and prison guards, the study’s authors were able to plot the dramatic rise in support for the Front National and its president over the past three election cycles and to measure voting intent for the 2017 presidential election.

French security forces have been on the front line of the country’s state of emergency since the Paris terror attacks of November 2015 and under pressure to maintain order in an explosive period which has witnessed seemingly endless and violent protest movements, the spread of Islamic extremism and a growing sense of lawlessness which the French refer to in daily parlance as ‘’ l’insécurité’’.

Nanterre, home to a barracks of the gendarmerie’s republican guard, provides a snapshot of the Front National’s progression. Data from a polling station in the Parisian suburb show Le Pen scoring 37.5% in the 2012 presidential election, with her party, the Front National, increasing to 49.3% by 2014’s European elections. In 2015’s regional elections, 51.8% of votes at the same polling station – which serves members of the guard and their families – were cast for the party. The republican guard protects state buildings, supplies guards of honor for military ceremonies and supports law enforcement in Paris.

Trump raises stakes on government shutdown, demands border wall funds in spending bill

Via Billy

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The White House said Thursday that it wants to see money for President Trump’s border wall included in the spending bill Congress must pass next week — a demand Democrats said sours negotiations and makes a government shutdown more likely.

The demands mark a reversal for the administration, which had been saying it found enough money to build prototypes this year and wouldn’t need a major infusion of cash until next year.
But White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that the wall and the money for more immigration agents are priorities.

“We know there are a lot of people on the Hill, especially in the Democratic Party, who don’t like the wall, but they lost the election. And the president should, I think, at least have the opportunity to fund one of his highest priorities in the first funding bill under his administration,” Mr. Mulvaney said.

US steelmakers applaud White House's anti-dumping probe

Via Billy

 

The long-suffering U.S. steel industry applauded the Trump administration's announcement Thursday that it was opening an investigation into whether steel imports were hurting national security.

Steel Manufacturers Association President Philip K. Bell said it was "gratifying to see both steel companies and organized labor taking a solution-focused approach to address this issue."

"By invoking this portion of U.S. trade law, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, to determine if imports of steel into the United States should be restricted on national security grounds, the president appears to be using every tool in his presidential toolkit to support 21st-century steelmaking," Bell said. The association represents 25 steelmakers that account for 75 percent of U.S. steel production.

Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers union, said the investigation has the potential to "re-energize" domestic production, adding that it was "about time that action like this was initiated."

EPA begins Trump's process of weeding out workers

Via Billy

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The Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with President Trump's plan to begin cutting staff at the agency by the end of the fiscal year, according to an internal memo.

A special task force has been created to oversee the process, with workforce reductions, including an employee buyout program, slated to go into effect by the end of September, according to a memo issued by EPA Deputy Administrator Michael Flynn.

"Streamlining and reorganizing is good government and important to maximizing taxpayer dollars," said EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman. "This includes looking at developing opportunities for individuals to retire early."

Steve Harvey: Donald Trump is ‘keeping his word’ on HUD

Via Billy

Image result for harvey trump carson 

“Family Feud” host Steve Harvey said President Trump has been “keeping his word” on promises he made during their controversial meeting in January.

Mr. Harvey sparked a wave of backlash from the black community in January after he met with Mr. Trump at Trump Tower to discuss affordable housing with now-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. The comedian defended the meeting on his radio show at the time, saying “the only way we can heal the divide in this country is through conversation.”

Now, Mr. Harvey said Mr. Trump is making good on his promises to help America’s inner cities.
“As far as doing what he promised me he would do, he is doing it,” he told TMZ  Tuesday. “I’m working with HUD. I’m going to get some housing for underprivileged people. We’re going to set up some centers around the country. I’ve met with HUD. It’s going really well. God willing, it will work out.”

Judicial Watch Sues State Department and USAID for Records about Funding and Political Activities of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation – Macedonia

Via Billy

Image result for Judicial Watch Sues State Department and USAID for Records about Funding and Political Activities of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation – Macedonian

Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for records and communications relating to the funding and political activities of the Open Society Foundation – Macedonia.  The Macedonia organization, part of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, received nearly $5 million from USAID from 2012 to 2016. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:17-cv-00729)).

The suit was filed after both the U.S. Department of State and USAID failed to respond to a February 16, 2017, FOIA request seeking:

France: Anti-Le Pen demonstrators clash with police in Marseille

Via Billy


Special Report Confirmed: John Brennan Colluded With Foreign Spies to Defeat Trump

Via Billy


An article in the Guardian last week provides more confirmation that John Brennan was the 
American progenitor of political espionage aimed at defeating Donald Trump. One side did collude with foreign powers to tip the election — Hillary’s.

Seeking to retain his position as CIA director under Hillary, Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump’s candidacy. He used their phony intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people.

John Brennan’s CIA operated like a branch office of the Hillary campaign, leaking out mentions of this bogus investigation to the press in the hopes of inflicting maximum political damage on Trump.

An official in the intelligence community tells TAS that Brennan’s retinue of political radicals didn’t even bother to hide their activism, decorating offices with “Hillary for president cups” and other campaign paraphernalia.

Police officer(s) and gunman die on Champs Elysees in attack claimed by Islamic State (Video)

Via Billy
The Champs Elysees after the attack

A Two policeman was shot dead on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on Thursday night in an apparent Isil-inspired terror attack.

The shooting, in which the gunman was also killed, was carried out by French national Karim Cheurfi who was under preliminary investigation for terrorism but “let go”.

The attack raised questions over how yet another Islamist extremist known to police was able to bring terror to the heart of the French capital.

More with video @ The Telegraph

Census: More Americans 18-to-34 Now Live With Parents Than With Spouse

Via Billy


Four decades ago, in the mid-1970s, young American adults--in the 18-to-34 age bracket--were far more likely to be married and living with a spouse than living in their parents’ home.

But that is no longer the case, according to a new study by the U.S. Census Bureau.

“There are now more young people living with their parents than in any other arrangement,” says the Census Bureau study.

“What is more,” says the study, “almost 9 in 10 young people who were living in their parents’ home a year ago are still living there today, making it the most stable living arrangement.”

More @ CNS News

Marine Le Pen vows to suspend immigration to 'protect France'

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Front National leader proposes moratorium on long-term visas and tax on hiring foreign workers

Marine Le Pen has claimed she will “protect France” with a vow to suspend immigration and defend the country against the threat of “savage globalisation”.

With just days to go until the first round of voting in the presidential election, the far-right leader said she would mobilise thousands of reservists to guard French borders if elected.

“We are not a free country if we cannot control our territory,” Ms Le Pen told RTL radio.

More @ Independent

Lost city found: Etzanoa of the great Wichita Nation

Via Billy

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Make note of the name Etzanoa, a long-lost city. Donald Blakeslee says he’s found it.

The discovery could put south-central Kansas on the map as the second-biggest settlement of Native Americans found in the United States, Blakeslee said. And it’s now, finally, the known location of a 1601 battle pitting outnumbered Spaniards firing cannon into waves of attacking Indian warriors.

More with video @ The Wichita Eagle

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks has the same mission as The Post and the Times

Via Frank

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Quite simply, our motive is identical to that claimed by the New York Times and The Post — to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the U.S. Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media. And we strive to mitigate legitimate concerns, for example by using redaction to protect the identities of at-risk intelligence agents." 

More @ INFO