The Left Amendment

                A couple of weeks ago the opposition newsletter I read—The Denver Post—ran an editorial on the threat they feel to their first amendment rights from the White House. Thursday of this week Tom Brokaw, or some liberal hack with no credibility of his or her own but some computer skills, tweeted his disdain (well, some of it) for the President stating:

                “I’ve been a journalist 50 years. Never met one who didn’t love USA.

                “Many risk their lives reporting on US values.

                “Cheap shot.”

                So I threw up a little bit in my mouth and why will become clear momentarily. I’m not sure Mr. Brokaw is the actual author because of the grammatical errors that a writer like him would have a reflexive inclination to correct but I do believe he shares the sentiment so we’ll run with it. (Attention CNN viewers, that is my opinion, not necessarily a fact and I know you have a hard time telling the difference.)

                I am ashamed I ever was a journalist, however briefly. The dishonest and irresponsible manner in which the media is reporting most things conservative and all things said by President Trump is nauseating.

                You don’t have to be a linguistic expert to recognize an op-ed on the front page where news stories should be. Journalistic standards such as attribution have gone by the wayside. Quotes from both sides, or in some cases, from either side have been replaced with assertions and opinions of petulant journalists who are apparently risking their lives by telling us what they think (yes, I know he meant war correspondents) rather than what is known. The use of anonymous sources and fictional strawmen have replaced any credible attribution they might have generated.

                Journalists have turned who, what, when, where, why and how into “What the hell are they talking about?”

                We get that your slant is to the left and we’ve been filtering that for decades. For goodness sake we elected a President in spite of and because of it. But this new brand of hysterical, lopsided and distorted journalism is breathtaking, and not in a good way.

                And the main street media’s (MSM) constant whining about the President accusing them of fake news is beginning to remind me of a misbehaving child throwing a kicking and screaming temper tantrum in an aisle at the grocery store.

                Guess what Buttercup, he isn’t the only one who thinks most of what you report is fake news. In the most recent poll I could find, 86% of republicans trust the president more than the media. Fifty two percent of independents do while only 26% of independents were more inclined to trust the media, which I guess left 22% of them not trusting either source.

                In fairness (something else you won’t get from CNN) 77% of democrats trust the media more than the President.

                Hmmm. I’m not sure if that’s in fairness or if it doesn’t help highlight whose side the media is on.

                Overall the poll found that 49% of all Americans trust Trump more than the media. Wait, don’t cheer yet, libs. Only 39% overall trusted the media more than President Trump.

                Additionally, 68% of all Americans feel the media is being harder on President Trump than they were on Obama. Eighteen percent feel the opposite and I would like to meet one of them just for the entertainment value. Even 42% of democrats think the media is harder on Trump than Obama while only 34% think the media is taking it easy on him. That leaves 24% of democrats who either think it’s about the same or they’d just rather order sushi.

                The media cannot stand the idea that we don’t take them seriously. Gee, golly.  Guess what? Conservatives aren’t especially happy the media doesn’t take them seriously. (That’s a strawman.) But if most, some or any conservatives are like me (not a strawman), they just don’t care that much anymore.

                The MSM has been so negative for so long that they have become background noise, in my opinion (had to add “opinion” to keep it honest). To me they’ve become Peter hollering “Wolf, wolf,” in that old Russian musical arrangement and children’s story.  (There’s your Russian connection!) I just honestly hardly look up when they scream now.

                Trump keeps threatening to throw the most flagrant of them out of his press conferences and they are crying foul like the proverbial (and emotionally satisfying) stuck pig. Somehow amnesia about Obama blackballing Fox News back when Rupert ran it and it stood for something is endemic among all those with microphone, pen or camera.

                Trump keeps tweeting, which is controversial on both sides. I would suggest that everyone consider that what may be controversial is that his delivery more resembles a bull in a china shop than a sitting president, not that his message is necessarily amiss.

                In an interview with Leslie Stahl before his inauguration Trump told her he did not intend to quit tweeting because when she and others in the media told lies about him he wanted the opportunity to present the truth. Stahl’s smile was so forced I swear it cracked her botox.

                Between Trump’s personal and presidential twitter accounts he reaches 51 million followers every single time he tweets. That is by FAR more than any single MSM outlet reaches in a week. If I were under attack by the media the way he is—the way 68% of America thinks he is—I wouldn’t give up the opportunity to deliver my side of the story either, no matter how boorishly it might come off.

                The left and their media are so full of their own narrative and belief (I’m on a roll here and none of this is anything more than my opinion, for any liberals who may have read this far) that they know everything worth knowing that, just like when they got their decorative rear jean pockets handed to them in the election, they still don’t hear us, acknowledge us or believe we exist.

                We are tired of government overreach. We are tired of being militarily vulnerable. We are tired of being financially taken advantage of by other nations, illegal immigrants, victim coalitions and our own government. We are tired of open borders that make us vulnerable to everything from random murders of our children by undetected criminals to that dirty bomb that could go off at a football game this fall while three guys are kneeling for the national anthem.

                We are tired of the corruption in Washington and sending representatives there to look after our interests who are more interested in coming home as millionaires. We are tired of lobbyists having more influence than voters. We are tired of high taxes. We are tired of children receiving poor educations to perpetuate a system with a union so strong it drowns out the voices of the disenfranchised with lame excuses about more money, more money, less education. We want more jobs.

                I could go on but you are in luck, I’m over 1000 words. So thank my friend Randy.

                And all of the above things are getting better.  They are getting better every day. They just aren’t getting reported.

                Fear not, tender liberal media warriors, no one wants to take away anybody’s right to the First Amendment. But don’t be so naïve as to think that means we have to believe you, listen to you or stop laughing at you.

 

                 And when we disagree with you we aren't suppressing you. Perhaps you have forgotten we are also entitled to the rights provided by the First Amendment.

                We aren’t after your First Amendment rights. Hells bells, you won us one presidential election and you’re likely to do it again.

A Post Racial Parable

                Racist: a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.

                We spent last weekend at a cabin in the mountains with friends—liberal ones even, of whom I am especially fond—where we had extremely limited cell phone service and absolutely no TV or radio. We had a great time not checking Facebook every few minutes and not watching any news whatsoever, opting for a fabulous ghost town-to-caved-in-tunnel hike along an old railroad bed and having an absolute riot with friends drinking beer and not talking politics.

                But on the way home, mostly in an effort to hear how the Rockies had done without us to cheer them on (not well), we tuned into some news. In addition to our sad sports update we heard that the nation had been ripped in two along racial lines by President Trump and it might take generations to heal and that something very bad had happened in Charlottesville, VA.

                Wow. Upsetting news indeed.

              
                As it turns out three different white supremacy groups had gotten permits to demonstrate against the proposed removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee (Lee never owned slaves by the way, as an aside and a curiosity).  When confronted by groups identified in most reports as blacklivesmatter members and the new Antifa (anti-facist is what it stands for, at least) violence broke out and eventually a young woman named Heather Heyer was deliberately struck by a car driven by Alex Fields, Jr. who must be one of the dumbest human beings on the planet. Ms. Heyer died at the hospital of her injuries and I hope Mr. Fields is punished to the fullest extent of the law.

                Tragic. Absolutely tragic.

                The media was aghast that President Trump had lent support to white supremacists. Republicans were distraught that their party’s leader had failed to heal a nation in shock.  The new and somewhat less improved Fox News said that the President had missed a golden opportunity to reach out to all Americans and make it a healing moment.

                I was beside myself to find out what horrible words President Trump had spewed that had the nation in such a tizzy. I found four You Tube versions of his speech on Saturday and watched them all, certain that I had missed something.

                Here is what he said—in all four accounts: “We condemn in the strongest way possible this egregious behavior on many sides.  The hate and the division must stop.

          
                “…We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation and true affection for each other…Above all else we must remember this truth: No matter our color, creed, religion or political party we are all Americans first.

                “…Our citizens must restore the bonds of trust and loyalty between each other. We must love each other, respect each other and cherish our history and our future together.”

                I was and still am thoroughly confused by the reactions I heard to those words. I kept googling to find out what huge chunk of the movie I must have missed. I found a recording of a group of counter protestors, some armed with clubs or tool handles, some wearing masks, who charged the group of other protestors and/or vice versa, it was actually hard to tell,  and an ugly fight broke out.

                So that wasn’t good, but I was still confused about the reaction to what I thought were very well-considered and forceful as well as healing words by the President. For those of you on the left, I am not making that up.

                I had to have it literally explained to me that the media and those they control like puppets were upset because Trump blamed all sides for the violence and failed to actually condemn the KKK, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists specifically. I guess I get that but he also didn’t blame #onlyblacklivesmatter, and Anti-fa by name either.

                So on Monday I heard the President specifically condemn the KKK, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists by name and not the other groups involved in the brawl. I heard him specifically offer his sympathies for the family of Heather Heyer (her tragic death occurred after his remarks above made on Saturday) and suggest that Alex Fields be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. He also said hate in any form must not be tolerated and that offenders on both sides need to change their ways.

 

                 Made sense to me.

                In response, the media again accused him of missing a healing moment. One of the Charlie’s (Rose, Todd…they all look and sound like Anderson Cooper to me) said he guessed that must have been an attempt to reassure the nation Trump was against hatred but Charlie didn’t think any Americans were convinced.

                There was also a point made that he didn’t condemn the white supremacist groups by name for 48 hours and only did so because of media pressure (don’t make me laugh) and did it by reading a speech written by someone else (because he’d be the first president to ever do that).

                They drew no comparison of that point to the fact that Barack Obama waited five days after a blacklivesmatter enthusiast shot four police officers to death in Dallas with a high powered rifle.

                The situation in Charlottesville was horrible. The KKK, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists are disgusting as is everything for which they stand. I can, have and will continue to say the same about #onlyblacklivesmatter and Antifa.

                “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.  

                “What do we want? We want ‘em dead.

                “When do we want it? Now!”

                Maybe you missed it but that was an #onlyblacklivesmatter march soundtrack shortly before the Dallas shootings.

                In no way does that justify anything the white supremacy groups say or stand for but it is one more block in the giant Jenga puzzle that establishes BLM and Antifa as hate groups.

                To blame Donald Trump’s seven-month presidency to date for the racist divide and outrage that exists today is the most incredibly thin and groundless accusation I have ever heard.

                After eight years of the “post-racial” Obama presidency during which he set this country back 50 years or more in race relations by his reaction to the cops stopping a black professor from breaking into his own home at two in the morning, to Trayvon Martin looking like his own son, to his thoughtless handling of events in Fergeson, St. Louis, Dallas, et al; and from his unfounded and statistically unsupported never-ending narrative of police oppression of black men I fail to see how anyone can place blame for racial tension anywhere but at the feet of that pretender of a president.

                There is not one unadjusted, untwisted, undistorted fact that supports the Obama narrative which is not the same thing as saying prejudice and racism didn’t exist in this country before his Nazi tactic of turning races against each other.

It did.

But not like it does today. And not like it did before a sitting president put it under his microscope and made it a burning and seemingly irreconcilable issue as long as anyone expects victim classes to take any responsibility for their own behavior.

“Until the police accept responsibility for their discriminatory behavior toward people of color, there can be no peace.”

                --Barack H. Obama

                “Our citizens must restore the bonds of trust and loyalty between each other. We must love each other, respect each other and cherish our history and our future together.”

                --Donald Trump

Which sounds more troublesome to you?

             If you really believe Donald Trump is the problem I have no words left.

I will not apologize, nor do I expect my President to apologize for believing that all lives matter and that all hate groups are bad.

I’m just that kind of racist. And you should be too.

  

 

 

Word Play

Illegal: As an adjective, contrary to or forbidden by law, especially criminal law.

             Legal: Of, based on or concerned with the law; permitted by law.

Immigrant: A person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence; a person who leaves their own country in order to settle permanently in another.

Most of us can splice illegal or legal together with immigrant to make a fairly sharp distinction between which is allowable and which is not. Yet it fairly staggers the imagination that we have reached a point in the discussion of our border security where a vocal segment of our society wants to equivocate immigrant and illegal immigrant as if there were no difference whatsoever between the two.

I am torn between wanting very badly to believe the liberal’s and their media are just that stupid or believing that they just think there are enough stupid people out there that can’t tell the difference that they can make up a story that doesn’t exist and expect to sell it.

Andrew Cuomo—the cartoon character they let govern New York—famously and emotionally spewed recently that, “Unless Republicans are all Native Americans then they are immigrants too.”

We can’t all be Elizabeth Warren but for most of us, our ancestors came here a generation or two or three or more ago and in most cases became citizens legally and when they gave birth to our parents, us, etc., we were also citizens. I feel like the stupid one for having to take time out to explain what should be as obvious as Governor Cuomo’s generous nose on his face but I keep hearing they don’t teach civics in high school anymore and that most of us wouldn’t recognize what passes for history.

In fact, Governor, if you want to take your example to the limits of its idiocy, Native Americans are actually Russian immigrants who came her about 14,000 years ago when it was just a long hike from Russia to Alaska right before the last global warming crisis.

The likes of Representative Luis Guitterez (D-CA) spewing his near militant rants about the rights of illegals doesn’t do more good than harm either. The rights of illegals?  Illegals?

And then we have braniacs like Geraldo Rivera weighing in and equivocating the equivocation  with statements  like “Illegals are not criminals. They haven’t broken any laws.” (Except maybe the one that made them illegal.)

As long ago as 2013 (and that’s all the further I felt like going back) a Rasmussen Poll showed that 80% of Americans supported stricter border controls. Sixty one percent of Hispanics supported stricter border controls in that same survey until illegal immigration was reduced by 90%. Fifty six percent of Hispanics opposed Federal benefits for immigrants going through the legalization process.

Things may be different in California, Rep. Guiterrez (I hope you laughed as hard reading that as I did writing it), but that is consistent with the way most of the Latinos I know feel about the subject.

In the 90’s I used to sponsor a floor covering installation training program. One of the courses we offered was a certification course for installers that afforded them some protection from jobs gone bad and offered our suppliers protection from bad installers, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, one of our largest accounts sent three crew chiefs to a certification course and we immediately had a problem when we discovered not a single one of them spoke more than a few words of English and my instructor was not bilingual. He asked one of our other employees—we’ll call him Juan because…that was his name—to come interpret the questions on the written portion of the test so the students had a chance to pass.

Juan refused. Angrily. I distinctly remember our conversation in which I hardly said a word and he told me that he hadn’t spoken English when he came here either but he learned it. And he became a citizen. And I could fire him if I thought he should help a group of guys here illegally take advantage of a system that allowed them to exploit it.

I, of course, did not fire him. Neither did his boss but it was nice of him to give me the chance.

If the left would stop screaming and demanding the impeachment and assassination of Donald Trump for a second, they might learn that they aren’t the only ones with ideas about immigration reform.

You’ll have to take my word for it but I know a lot of conservative type folks and not one of them is anti-immigration.  Every single one of them is anti-illegal immigration. And so are a majority of the people guys like that Guitterez moron claim to represent (unless he’s claiming to represent illegals but that would require an admission on California’s part that they actually do let folks who are not citizens of the United States participate in their election process).

The RAISE Act backed by President Trump sounds like a good starting point for discussion (remember how discussion works?) but I personally think it is too harsh and restrictive. If it were up to me I’d let everyone in who wants in and is willing to sign the guest book and allow us to vet them and make sure they are not guilty of any felonious crimes. Prior to President Trump enforcing the border security laws we weren’t stopping many of them from coming in anyway, were we?

I’d also let anyone who is here already stay if they would merely register themselves and allow us to go through the vetting process and then work toward citizenship or honor the time limits of their work visas.  If the MSM were honest enough to report it, President Trump has already done the same thing for 750,000 illegals and is willing to do it for millions more if Congress would quit worrying how it would look to help him and…help him.

If you can’t clear the vetting process, however, you are gone or you can’t come in in the first place. If you sneak in or don’t register your current presence we should only assume that is because you can’t clear the vetting process and we will hunt you down and send you back. If you commit a felony while you are here we will send you back.

Simple enough? Perhaps you should all breathe a sigh of relief that I am not in charge, but there are a lot of guys I hang out with (you know, scary conservatives) who feel the same way and if this nation ever believed in an open dialogue again instead of hysterical screaming maybe we could get some stuff figured out.

All we care about in this instance is border security.  We want to make it hard for the drug dealers to do business and we sure don’t want to let anybody through with a history of raping and murdering people. Sorry Luis Guitterez. Everybody else, come on down.

There’s more to say, of course—about the welfare burden, prison overcrowding, gang activity, the economy--it’s a complex issue and I’m already over 1000 words and I’m no expert anyway (when’s the last time a CNN airhead ever admitted that?) so have fun deconstructing my argument as you uncork a bottle of white wine. But I think you get my point.

Oh, and one last thing, stop throwing that stupid chart on Facebook of what a small sliver of America is actually murdered by illegals. You can’t be so stupid as not to realize that a nearly identical chart with an even smaller sliver of murder victims exists to describe people killed in random mass shootings.  Careful, gun control freaks.

If 3,000 people murdered on 9/11/01 isn’t enough for you, how about if it were your daughter?