Democrats Want “Smart” Border Security Or Something

By William Teach December 26, 2018 – 7:11 am

See if you can pick out exactly what’s wrong with this Democrat talking point, which many are using (video available at the link)

Dem Rep. Cicilline: ‘Democrats Support Border Security’ — ‘In a Smart Way’

Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) during an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News Channel argued Democrats support border security when it is done “in a smart way.”

Instead of a wall at the border, Cicilline suggested using the best technology available to protect the border, which he said would be a better use of taxpayers’ money.

“Democrats support border security,” Cicilline told host Maria Bartiromo. “We appropriated in the last two years $1.6 billion for border security, and Democrats support that. We just think it should be done in a smart way — use technology, use sensors, use drones, use more personnel; use it in a way that’s effective.”

“Let’s secure the borders in a cost-effective way, using the best technology that will keep our borders safe,” he added.

The problem here is that other than personnel, those methods do not actually stop anyone from coming across the border, they just alert us that something, maybe a human, has crossed the border. We have a lot of that now, and sometimes the Border Patrol and other law enforcement gets the illegals, more often not. If you have no front door and rely on a security camera while you’re at work, does this stop anyone from coming in and taking what they want? Oh, the police will come when the alarm goes off? Too bad, the nearest police are 20 minutes away.

The border wall, along with personnel, in San Diego reduced the flow of illegal aliens from half a million a quarter century ago to 32,000 in 2016. We do not need a wall along the entire border: in certain specific areas it is necessary. We saw it stop most of the migrant caravan, did we not?

Democrats really do just want open borders.

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“Journalism”: NY Times Is Just Wondering If A Queens Podiatrist Helped Trump Avoid Vietnam

By William Teach December 26, 2018 – 6:49 am

One could mention that the NY Times and other leftist outlets had zero problem with Bill Clinton getting out of Vietnam, not too mention other Democrats. We could also note that the NY Times couldn’t be bothered to look at things that happened during the Obama administration years, such as Fast and Furious, IRS targeting, Hillary’s server, and so much more, much less look back at Obama’s pre-presidential history, such as his relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Heck, they couldn’t be bothered to investigate his years in school, such as Columbia U. But, they can pull this

Did a Queens Podiatrist Help Donald Trump Avoid Vietnam?

In the fall of 1968, Donald J. Trump received a timely diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to his medical exemption from the military during Vietnam.

For 50 years, the details of how the exemption came about, and who made the diagnosis, have remained a mystery, with Mr. Trump himself saying during the presidential campaign that he could not recall who had signed off on the medical documentation.

Now a possible explanation has emerged about the documentation. It involves a foot doctor in Queens who rented his office from Mr. Trump’s father, Fred C. Trump, and a suggestion that the diagnosis was granted as a courtesy to the elder Mr. Trump.

The podiatrist, Dr. Larry Braunstein, died in 2007. But his daughters say their father often told the story of coming to the aid of a young Mr. Trump during the Vietnam War as a favor to his father.

“I know it was a favor,” said one daughter, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, 56, who along with her sister, Sharon Kessel, 53, shared the family’s account for the first time publicly when contacted by The New York Times.

Elysa Braunstein said the implication from her father was that Mr. Trump did not have a disqualifying foot ailment. “But did he examine him? I don’t know,” she said.

So, this is all based on what, the feelings of his daughters? Here are the most important paragraphs of the “article”

No paper evidence has been found to help corroborate the version of events described by the Braunstein family, who also suggested there was some involvement by a second podiatrist, Dr. Manny Weinstein. Dr. Weinstein, who died in 1995, lived in two apartments in Brooklyn owned by Fred Trump; city directories show he moved into the first during the year Donald Trump received his exemption.

Dr. Braunstein’s daughters said their father left no medical records with the family, and a doctor who purchased his practice said he was unaware of any documents related to Mr. Trump. Most detailed government medical records related to the draft no longer exist, according to the National Archives.

It’s like telling a tall tale to your friends about going to Scotland and seeing the Loch Ness monster, then one of them demanding evidence, including the tickets for your flight, because they knew you were sitting at home playing video games all weekend.

This is some of the worst of journalism. When McCain was running, the NY Times ran a story twice where they were “just wondering” if McCain was actually eligible to be president, as he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Other outlets ran just wondering articles, which are really just uncorroborated hitjobs featuring no evidence, using the tried and true maxim “people read the first three paragraphs or 30 seconds on the Internet.” How many Times viewers will see the headline and decide that Trump pulled something shady to get out of Vietnam, or just make it through 3-5 paragraphs, never getting to the part about “no paper (or any other) evidence”?

And they pull this stuff, yet when they aren’t protecting Democrats over issues, they refuse to investigate them.

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Merry Christmas! (sticky for the day)

By William Teach December 25, 2018 – 8:39 am

Merry Christmas to all my readers and their families. Hope it is a wonderful day full of love and friendship. And some new pinups!

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How Did “Silent Night” Become Such A Christmas Classic?

By William Teach December 25, 2018 – 8:32 am

I like the song. It’s catchy, it’s not overblown, I haven’t heard a “today’s hot music” artist ruin in. It tends not to play on most business music systems, so you aren’t overloaded by listening to it again and again and again. How about you? Do you like it? (I also have an ulterior motive for this)

How ‘Silent Night’ became the most popular Christmas song of all time

The gentle, familiar lyrics will emanate across the world on Christmas Eve, at church services, across radio airwaves and through living room speakers.

Silent night, holy night.

It’s a song that experts say transcends generations, cultures, even religion. “Silent Night” — first performed in a small Austrian church 200 years ago today — has not only stood the test of time, but found its own place in history. More than 300 translations exist worldwide, with recordings spanning nearly every genre.

Time magazine in 2014 declared “Silent Night” “the most popular Christmas song ever,” based on an analysis of U.S. Copyright Office records dating to 1978. In the past four decades alone, artists have recorded more than 730 versions, nearly twice as many as No. 2 on the list, “Joy to the World.”

So how did a six-stanza poem become the most popular Christmas song of all time?

Experts point to the song’s universal simplicity, and note that it bridges secular and non-secular Christmas music. Plus, they say, it’s easy to record — the song has long existed in the public domain, and artists have partnered its lyrics with a range of vocalists and instruments. In addition, it had the benefit of being circulated during the 19th century by missionaries and traveling singing groups.

But perhaps just as important is the song’s original message of hope and peace — one that still resonates today.

“It spoke about circumstances that are just inherently human, and adaptable to all people,” said Sarah Eyerly, an assistant professor at Florida State University and an expert on historical songs. “The song has a message of hope in the midst of suffering that I think almost anyone can identify with, regardless of their culture.”

The poem that would become “Silent Night,” written in 1816 by Joseph Mohr, came to life amid regional conflict, natural disaster and — yes, even 200 years ago — climate change.

The climate change being referred to is the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, which created quite a bit of cooling which lasted for years and affected places around the world. But throwing the phrase climate change in there like that is supposed to increase the fears of utter ecological doom from Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles, a wonderful message for Christmas, eh?

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Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Clause

By William Teach December 25, 2018 – 8:11 am

Every Christmas, once everyone is up, Christmas greetings were made, hugs were exchanged, the presents were opened, and breakfast was being made, I would read this first in the paper (ye olde parental units get an actual paper, and they live in NJ). It is a Christmas classic that has always touched my soul. While some people outside of the Tri-State area have heard of it, rarely do papers outside of the NY-NJ-Conn area see it in print, and I always direct them to read it online. I humbly bring it to you, and hope it touches you as much as it touches me:

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

And a Merry Christmas from deep down in my heart to all my friends and visitors out there.

If you would like to know the background on the letter, you can go to the 2004 posting of this.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

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U.K. Needs To Radically Transform Society And Economy To Fight ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach December 24, 2018 – 3:59 pm

Funny how it always seems to come down to things like this. And carbon taxes

Labour would ‘radically transform economy’ to focus on climate change

A future Labour government would oversee an economic revolution to tackle the climate crisis, using the full power of the state to decarbonise the economy and create hundreds of thousands of green jobs in struggling towns and cities.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary who is driving the party’s climate agenda, said the UK’s “entire society and entire economy” needed to be refocused to meet the looming challenge of ecological breakdown.

“It could not be made clearer to us and people are starting to realise how incredibly dangerous this situation is,” said Long-Bailey, a close ally of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the shadow chancellor John McDonnell. “There is no option but to radically transform our economy.”

And how to accomplish this? Major government control. Surprise?

But in an interview with the Guardian she said the crisis was also an opportunity to bring well-paid, highly skilled jobs and economic regeneration to some of the most marginalised communities in the country.

Funny that this rarely materializes except via government funding, and those jobs disappear the moment government stops dumping massive amounts of taxpayer money into the “businesses.”

“If you knocked on a door in Salford, where I am from, although most people care about climate change it is not going to be top of their list of priorities. Most people just want to know how their life is going to be improved.

“So it is important for us to position ourselves as a party that is going to tackle climate change but turn that into an economic opportunity for the vast areas of this country that have seen decades of underinvestment and provide jobs for the future and provide that revitalisation that communities want to see.”

In other words, lie through their teeth.

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 24, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a world flooded from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Blazing Cat Fur, with a post noting that SJWs now want the next 007 to be gender confused.

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‘Climate Change’ Is Causing An Ever Growing Emotional Toll Or Something

By William Teach December 24, 2018 – 10:30 am

It’s the time of the year where we should take pity on people who have been brainwashed into a doomsday cult and attempt to lead them back from the brink. Or laugh at them. Whichever

‘Climate grief’: The growing emotional toll of climate change

When the U.N. released its latest climate report in October, it warned that without “unprecedented” action, catastrophic conditions could arrive by 2040.

For Amy Jordan, 40, of Salt Lake City, a mother of three teenage children, the report caused a “crisis.”

“The emotional reaction of my kids was severe,” she told NBC News. “There was a lot of crying. They told me, ‘We know what’s coming, and it’s going to be really rough.’ “

She struggled too, because there wasn’t much she could do for them. “I want to have hope, but the reports are showing that this isn’t going to stop, so all we can do is cope,” she said.

The increasing visibility of climate change, combined with bleak scientific reports and rising carbon dioxide emissions, is taking a toll on mental health, especially among young people, who are increasingly losing hope for their future. Experts call it “climate grief,” depression, anxiety and mourning over climate change.

Perhaps the Cult shouldn’t be pushing utter doom daily from a tiny increase in the Earth’s average temperature, something that happens off and on

A 10-STEP PROGRAM FOR CLIMATE GRIEF

After the U.N. report was released, Jordan looked for a way to help her children cope. She saw a sign at her church for a support group that deals with the issue, the Good Grief Network.

Founded by Aimee Reau, 30, and LaUra Schmidt, 32, Good Grief offers a 10-step program to help people deal with collective grief — issues that affect a whole society, like racism, mass shootings and climate grief.

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‘Climate Change’ Is Soon To Cause “Earthset” Or Something

By William Teach December 24, 2018 – 8:22 am

Not only is this bit of moonbattery involve the Christmas season, but the Warmist uses a great event to push the Cult (this apparently came off the CNN wire originally)

50 YEARS AFTER ‘EARTHRISE,’ WE ARE RACING TOWARD ‘EARTHSET’

Fifty years ago, astronaut Bill Anders captured an iconic photo of Earth. Looking out a window of the Apollo 8 spacecraft on Christmas Eve, 1968, he glimpsed a splash of blue beyond the lunar surface. After a fumbling exchange in zero gravity, his crewmate Jim Lovell extended a roll of 70 mm color film. At 16:39 Universal Time, 240,000 miles from home, Anders aimed his Hasselblad camera and brought our world into focus in one of history’s most famous photographs.

“Earthrise” transformed the first crewed mission to orbit the moon from a nationalistic bid for prestige in the Cold-War-era space race, into something more profound: a dawning appreciation of humanity’s common destiny on a fragile planet in the vacuum of space.

The sight of Earth, bursting with color against the inky darkness of space and a barren moonscape, was “the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” Anders told Andrew Chaikin, a writer who later recounted the photo’s fascinating history for the Smithsonian. And the view was “totally unanticipated,” Anders said, because the mission had been so focused on going to the moon.

A beautiful event, brought to the world by the United States Of America. But…

Unfortunately, our oasis has begun to fade. And the fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. Rather than being wise stewards of Earth, we have despoiled it to the brink of environmental catastrophe.

Consider the recent, harrowing report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even if global temperature increases are limited to 2 degrees Celsius — the Paris climate agreement threshold, which the world is nowhere close to achieving — the impact will be calamitous.

Without a drastic course correction, we will face deadly heat waves, rampant wildfires, food insecurity, water shortages, violent storms, rising sea levels and disappearing coral reefs. The US government shares this bleak outlook (at least outside the White House and other climate-denying precincts). Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned Americans to prepare for devastating impacts on their economy, health and environment. (snip)

That was the unmistakable message at the acrimonious global climate conference in Katowice, Poland, in December. With Earth hanging in the balance, the Trump administration redoubled its retrograde support for fossil fuels at the climate conference. Delegates finally agreed on a set of fundamental transparency measures, but only after an all-nighter in which they put off the most contentious issues until next year. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions continue to accelerate “like a speeding freight train.”

A mere half-century after Earthrise, we are racing toward Earthset.

These cultists attempt to ruin everything. Yet they refuse to give up their own use of fossil fuels and walk the talk. Huh.

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Migrants Blast Caravan Organizers For The Risky Journey

By William Teach December 24, 2018 – 8:08 am

Remember when this whole migrant caravan was a grassroots affair organized within?

Caravan organizer Pueblo Sin Fronteras blasted by migrants over risky journey

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group of activists escorting the migrant caravan of thousands of Central Americans traveling to the U.S., is being blamed by many — including the migrants themselves — for encouraging such a risky trek.

The group, which is comprised of about 40 U.S. and Mexican activists, gave the caravan an option in October. The migrants were asked whether they wanted to continue to the U.S. southern border or stop in Mexico, where the government offered to let them stay.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, warned the migrants the offer might be too good to be true and called on a voice vote — to which the crowd yelled to keep moving toward the U.S.

Since then, former allies and some migrants have said the group downplayed the risks involved, particularly for those with families and small children.

The organizers also were accused of misleading caravan migrants about how long they would have to wait on the Mexican side of the border to apply for asylum.

The U.S. government told them not to come. They were not invited. Perhaps they should stop listening to activists who really do not care about the migrants, they only care about their own political positions.

Adelaida Gonzalez, a member of the migrant caravan who traveled with her son and neighbor from Guatemala City, said she wished she’d accepted Mexico’s offer to stay and work in the southern state of Chiapas.

“We were never told along the way that it would be this hard,” Gonzalez, 37, said after she saw the border wall topped with razor wire and the long waiting list for asylum seekers.

What did she think she would find, an open arms welcome for a group that was, and still is, attempting to force their way into the U.S.? Invading? Attempting to force the U.S. to take care of them instead of our own citizens?

(Breitbart) Agents assigned to the Ajo Border Patrol Station came upon a group of 242 migrants while they were patrolling the border on December 19 about 15 miles west of Lukeville, Arizona, according to information obtained by Breitbart News from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. The following morning, Casa Grande Station agents came upon a group of 64 migrants while patrolling the border in the Tohono O’odham Nation. Both groups of migrants surrendered to the agents without incident, officials stated.

The agents reported both groups consisted mainly of family units — including juveniles and pregnant women. The groups came to the U.S. mainly from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Officials did not say if these groups broke away from or were connected to the so-called caravan migrants.

Hence the reason we need a wall in certain areas.

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