NY Times: Expand Your World, Hit The Beach In Alabama

The NY Times opinion pages have given a platform to comedian W. Kamau Bell, the host of The United Shades Of America on CNN, to write what might be one of the best opinion pieces I’ve read in the Times in I cannot tell you how long. It is primarily aimed at the Liberals who read the NY Times and bob their head in a “yes” manner with all things slamming Trump and agreeing with people like Bernie Sanders. But, it should resonate with Republicans/Conservatives, as well

Expand Your World, Go to the Beach in Alabama

My dad and stepmom live in Mobile, Ala., and spend their vacation time an hour’s drive away in Orange Beach, Ala. This means that, throughout my life, I have regularly vacationed there as well.

Whenever I tell people in Berkeley, Calif., where I live, that I’m headed to the beach in Alabama, they are shocked. Most people outside of the Gulf Coast have no idea that Alabama has beaches….

I often try to convince my wife, Melissa, that we and our two daughters should vacation in Orange Beach more often. I try to persuade friends to come, too. It is the perfect fun-and-sun vacation. We stay across the street from the beach, which is perfect for my wife. The resort has an old-school arcade room with one of those claw machines, which is perfect for our older daughter, even though she has never won anything from it. And it has a lazy-river pool, where you can sit in an inner tube and let the underwater jets push you around while thinking that you may be experiencing the pinnacle of human achievement. That’s perfect for me.

But no one has taken us up on the invitation yet, because of one problematic word: Alabama. Nobody I know from the Bay Area has any interest in purposefully spending time in Alabama. Florida, maybe, but Alabama? Nah, that’s a hard pass.

You can see where Mr. Bell is going here, can you not? The snobbishness of Liberals when it comes to heading towards “flyover country” for a vacation. Unless it’s Florida. Even though, of course, these same Liberals head towards flyover country when they’ve become tired of the high taxes, crime, high cost of living, and domineering government, among others. But, this isn’t about that kind of stuff. It’s about understanding each other.

I have discovered that when you are black, saying “I’m headed to the South” to someone, especially a white person who is not from the South, is like saying, “I’m headed to my own lynching and I decided to bring the rope just to make it easier on the Klansmen.”

It is one of my enduring frustrations with this country. People live in their part of the Union, and if they don’t travel a lot, then there is a tendency to believe that the other parts of America couldn’t possibly be as American as their part. You can see it in the way people in the South scrunch up their faces when they hear words like “New York,” “Chicago” and “challah.” And you can also see it in the way people on the coast narrow their eyes when they hear words like “Louisiana,” “Kentucky” and “pork rinds.”

It’s a great point. There are so many wonderful parts of this country, so many things to consider and experience. I’ve lived primarily in North Carolina since starting at East Carolina U. in 1985. But, I still love New Jersey. People seem shocked that I say that. Even people from New Jersey who live here (and there are a lot). The Jersey (Joisey) Shore. You can head to the Pine Barrens and see the beauty, or up to the mountain areas in northwest Jersey. If you’ve never had corn or tomatoes from the state, you do NOT know what you are missing.

NYC? As much as I might denigrate it as a liberal haven, it’s a great town. Lots to do. I love going to D.C. and seeing all the museums and such. My visit to Los Angeles a few years ago was worth every penny. Fun, great sights. Great people.

Why are we all discounting each other and the places we live simply due to where people live? My parents, who are base Republicans (not Conservatives), love visiting San Francisco. I know another person who loves to go to Chicago. I have a very liberal friend, a person with a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, who loves going to places like Wyoming to fish. Another who goes to the deepest of Georgia and Alabama to fish.

Mr. Bell once did a piece for his CNN show on the Ku Klux Klan

When the episode aired back in a distant time called April 2016, the major criticism I heard was: “Why are you giving the K.K.K. a platform? We already know the K.K.K. is awful.” Well, my mom taught me that there is no such thing as too much knowledge. And as gobsmacked as my liberal friends were by Donald Trump’s victory, they now know that they definitely didn’t know as much about America as they thought.

And if there was ever a time that we all should take a trip to the other parts of America and spend some time to get to know the people there, it is now.

So, who wants to come with me to Orange Beach?

Perhaps, we should stop imparting Bad Things to places simply due to who lives there. This was the big complaint about Liberals denigrating non-Liberal areas as FLyover Country (and even worse names). And it applies back to liberal areas. When I flew into L.A. and went to pick up my rental car, I had hours to kill till check in at 4pm. The lady at the counter said to avoid Venice Beach, because of all the weirdos. I wasn’t wearing anything that would identify me as a Conservative, and I have very little in the way of a Southern accent. You can’t keep one in Raleigh. I actually still have my more neutral mid-Jersey accent, with a smattering of Southern dialect and words. But, I went there on my last day while killing time before the flight out. You know what? It was great. The weirdos were cool. The art and such. It was a great experience. We could all use a bit of broadening.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. And, I’m up for a trip to Orange Beach. Who wants to head to Malibu?

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: NY Times: Expand Your World, Hit The Beach In Alabama »

College Republicans Have BBQ Near Fasting Snowflakes

Troll level: expert (via Twitchy)

https://twitter.com/gabrielwinant/status/858053426961416192

More at Gabriel’s Twitter machine. Which, of course, caused

https://twitter.com/emmaroller/status/858122239828525056

 photo crying-baby-girl_zpsd3ghznpn.jpg

The fast is mostly symbolic, anyhow.

Read: College Republicans Have BBQ Near Fasting Snowflakes »

If All You See…

…is a sea that will soon rise dozens of feet all at once, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Diogenes’ Middle Finger, with a post on courageous snowflakes on a hunger strike.

Read: If All You See… »

Bummer: EPA Removes Hotcoldwetdry From Its Website

On the eve of all the hyper-political climate change marches (hilariously, there will be snow at many), the EPA has done something to make all the “let’s take a fossil fueled trip to a march demonizing fossil fuels” Warmists even more upset

(The Hill) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) removed several pages – including those related to climate change – from its website on Friday as part of an update to “reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt.”

EPA officials removed the page relating to the Obama administration’s main emissions regulation for power plants, which now directs to an article about an executive order Trump signed in March undoing Obama’s climate agenda.

The agency’s pages relating to climate change, climate science, the impacts of climate change and what readers can do about climate change are all gone from the live site, each replaced with a banner headline saying “this page is being updated.”

The latter should freak out Warmists even more, because there is no telling what the updates might be.

“As EPA renews its commitment to human health and clean air, land and water, our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency,” said J.P. Freire, the agency’s associate administrator for public affairs, in a statement.

“We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”

What you can bet will go away will be most of the yammering about the current warm period being mostly/solely man-caused.

But, hey, have fun with your little march, Warmists.

Read: Bummer: EPA Removes Hotcoldwetdry From Its Website »

Good News: Trump’s Crackdown On Illegal Aliens Is Well Underway

Yes, President Trump has made a few mistakes, had a few misses in his first 100 days. But, the ledger tilts heavily to Great Job when considering two things: the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and this, which is obviously not consider a good thing by leftist supporters of illegal aliens, nor Politico and writers Ted Hesson and Seung Min Kim

Trump’s immigration crackdown is well underway

President Donald Trump has systematically engineered a major crackdown on immigration during his first 100 days in office — even as courts reject his executive orders and Congress nears a spending deal that will deny him funding for a wall along the southern border.

The number of arrests on the U.S.-Mexico border plummeted in March to the lowest level in 17 years — a strong suggestion that Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric is scaring away foreigners who might otherwise try to enter the United States illegally. In addition, part of a lesser-known executive order that Trump signed in January gave federal immigration agents broad leeway to arrest virtually any undocumented immigrant they encounter. (snip)

“Even without putting down one single brick,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors lower immigration levels, “Trump has dramatically altered the flow across the southern border.”

There’s another group that has provided quite a bit of help to Mr. Trump in this endeavor. We’ll get to them in a minute

Businesses that use foreign workers, worried they’ll get singled out by federal agents during a visa review, are starting to explore the possibility of recruiting domestic labor. Trump’s enforcement policies are affecting higher education, too, with early signs suggesting foreign students are less likely to apply to U.S. colleges and universities. Nearly 40 percent of colleges and universities surveyed by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers reported a decline in international applications, and almost 80 percent said they fielded particular concerns from students in the Middle East. International students are, among other things, an important source of revenue for colleges, since typically they pay sticker price on tuition and fees.

You can thank Democrats and their compliant media for providing all the necessary fear-mongering and for constantly mentioning that “immigrants” are in total fear on a constant basis for a reduction in illegals. They’ve provided a lot of help to the Trump administration with all that fear-mongering. And, if you want to assign blame for the reduction in foreign student applications, students who would be here legally, look towards the Democrats and the media for mixing legal immigration with illegal immigration.

That said, if, as the first sentence suggests, that businesses are looking towards using legal American citizens for jobs rather than illegal aliens, that’s a good thing.

“The agents that I’ve talked to over the past few months have said that they feel that they can go out and enforce the law again, whereas they had many limitations on them over the past eight years,” said John Torres, chief operating officer at the consulting firm Guidepost Solutions and acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the George W. Bush administration. “If they encounter someone who is out of status, even though they are not targeting that person, they can now take them into custody.”

In other words, agents are now allow to, get this, enforce the law. Which is rather the government’s job, is it not? To enforce the law without prejudice? That they can’t pick and chose who to apply the law to?

The threat of deportation even hangs over Dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That initiative, enacted by Obama in 2012, allows undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. at a young age to apply for deportation relief and work permits.

It’s writing like that which helps stoke fears in illegal aliens, and all who are opposed to people being unlawfully present in the United States, soaking up our services, taking spots in schools, all while DEMANDING (yes, in all caps) that they and their families be given citizenship, money, healthcare, housing, education, and so forth, should be thanking the media for this. They are providing invaluable assistance to reducing illegal immigration, and they do not even seem to know it.

When it comes to sanctuary jurisdictions, despite his order on taking away money from them, it’s still been a success. While some have dug in and hardened their positions, which exposes their love of law breakers and will see more illegal alien criminals stream to those areas, others have renounced their sanctuary for illegals status, so, overall, a win.

The Trump administration has also taken on certain types of legal immigration. The president signed an executive order last week that singles out the H-1B guest worker program, which allows companies to hire specialized foreign workers temporarily. Trump’s executive order, which called for a review of all employment visa programs, precipitated no immediate action. But the number of petitions for H-1B visas fell by 16 percent this year, the first decrease in five years.

One miss for Trump, though, seems to be the number of illegals who have overstayed their visas. While many are certainly caught up by ICE, it would be worthwhile to make sure that they know they are not safe, in order to reduce the number who overstay their visas. Perhaps a targeted crackdown would help, since it is estimated that around 40-45% of illegals are overstays. The leftist media will surely help in broadcasting all the fear in that community.

Read: Good News: Trump’s Crackdown On Illegal Aliens Is Well Underway »

Do Liberals Show Anti-Trumpism Reflexively? Yes

If these college snowflakes are any indication of the rest of Democrat voters, then the opposition, the #Resistance, if you will, is simply Trump Derangement Syndrome

From the article

Throughout the year, Campus Reform has shown how liberal professors and students across America have been quick to oppose the President’s actions—often without understanding important details about them.

Hoping to tease out whether such reflexive opposition to Trump is based on policy disagreements or simply distaste for Trump himself, Campus Reform headed to George Mason University to ask students their opinions about the first 100 days.

Except, the “Trump accomplishments” we referenced were actually all things President Obama had done during his first 100 days in office.

Would they agree with the actions because they were actually liberal policies enacted by President Obama, or would they shoot them down because of their perceived association with Donald Trump?.

You can guess what happened, right?

When disguised as something Donald Trump did, for instance, what did students think of President Obama’s “Apology Tour?”

Why, that’s “dangerous” and “overstepping his bounds,” they cried.

What about Obama’s stimulus package?

When credited to Trump, they found the idea reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

And President Obama’s order to loosen statute of limitation laws to make lawsuits easier?

That’s just a secret ploy to make Trump more money.

Remember, we’ve been told time and time again from Democratic Party voters that they are the Most Informed People, and all you Republicans are just stupid. Yet, this kind of thing crops up again and again. Remember the video of Obama supporters hating his policies when assigned to Romney? There’s more out there from 2012. This happened during the 2008 election, too, where Palin and McCain were blasted for the policies and sayings of Obama and Biden.

Watch the video at Campus Reform.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Do Liberals Show Anti-Trumpism Reflexively? Yes »

Why, Yes, There Is Another ‘Climate Change’ March Saturday

Isn’t it fantastic that lots of Warmists will take fossil fueled trips, use lots of energy, kill lots of trees to make signs, etc?

(Climate Central) For the second weekend in a row, Washington, D.C. will be home to people clamoring for policies based on science. But unlike the March for Science, this weekend’s People’s Climate March will be overtly political and put a sharp focus on climate change and justice.

Wait, if last weekend’s wasn’t overtly political, what with all its “pussy hats”, Trump Derangement Syndrome, social justice this and that, among others, I can’t imagine how political this one will be.

One goal of the march will be to remind the president that those rollbacks don’t represent what the majority of Americans want when it comes to climate change. The march route will circle the White House, serving as a visual reminder to its occupants that the public is watching what happens within its gated grounds.

The march is focused on politics, but driven by science that shows climate change impacts are becoming increasingly clear even as the time to stave off the worst impacts is running perilously short. It’s the strongest link to the March for Science, which took place on Earth Day.

So, they’ll take lots of those aforementioned fossil fueled trips to complain. Think Trump will even pay attention? Heck, he might not even be there.

“April 30 is more important than April 29,” Getsos said. “One of the goals of this week is to get people energized and excited and in relationships so they are going back to their community to take on fights and campaigns around climate and climate justice.”

And they’ll use lots of fossil fuels to spread awareness and annoy everyone.

Read: Why, Yes, There Is Another ‘Climate Change’ March Saturday »

If All You See…

…is heat created snow, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on Portland’s Rose Parade being cancelled because of the threat of Leftist violence.

Read: If All You See… »

Raleigh N&O: It Rained A Lot, Hence, ‘Climate Change’ Doom Or Something

How much rain did we get in Raleigh?

https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/857940730970505217

Those buckets are full. The gray one is something like a 3-4 gallon bucket. According to the Editorial Board of the Raleigh News and Observer, this means pure doom

After the deluge, worries about climate change

The relentless rain that flooded parts of the Triangle earlier this week is gone and the waters have receded, but a worry should remain: the climate is changing.

The Triangle and the nation are experiencing extreme weather more often. The fluke event is not so much of a fluke.

On Monday, rain gauges at Raleigh-Durham International Airport recorded 4.51 inches of rain. The previous record for that day – April 24 – was 1.55 inches, a record that had stood since 1944. The deluge also shattered the record for any day in the rainy month of April – 3.37 inches on April 26, 1978. The area is on track to finish the month with twice the normal rainfall.

And it’s not just rain that’s abnormal. On Feb, 17 in Raleigh, the temperature hit 83 degrees. The previous record was 75 in 1999. The average temperature in February was 59.9 degrees, the warmest ever recorded. It broke a record that had stood since 1890.

A couple points: first, this is in no way proof of anthropogenic climate change/global warming. Actually, that’s the only point that matters. Few are debating that there hasn’t been global warming. As I say again and again, the debate is on causation. The N&O EB doesn’t even attempt to provide proof that Mankind is responsible.

Weather events happen. There will always be records set. But, when it comes to “extreme weather”, the data actually shows that it’s declining and/or near record lows.

Oh, and what happened to the meme from members of the Cult of Climastrology that weather isn’t climate?

Read: Raleigh N&O: It Rained A Lot, Hence, ‘Climate Change’ Doom Or Something »

Texas House Passes Strong Anti-Sanctuary Jurisdictions Bill

Democrats have been caterwauling about Texas making this push for quite some time, throwing out the word racist, going on hunger strikes for a few short days, and just creating their normal mayhem as they attempt to defend law breakers and invaders. But, this is Texas

(The Texas Tribune) After more than 16 hours of debate, the Texas House of Representatives early Thursday morning tentatively gave a nod to the latest version of a Senate bill that would ban “sanctuary” jurisdictions in Texas.

The 93-54 vote fell along party lines and came after one of the slowest moving but most emotional legislative days at the state Capitol. (snip)

Members voted on the bill after adding back a controversial provision that extends the scope of the bill and allows local peace officers to question the immigration status of people they legally detain. The original House version of the bill only allowed officers to inquire about status during a lawful arrest. (snip)

The bill keeps a provision that makes sheriffs, constables and police chiefs subject to a Class A misdemeanor for failing to cooperate with federal authorities and honor requests from immigration agents to hold noncitizen inmates subject to removal. It also keeps civil penalties for entities in violation of the provision that begin at $1,000 for a first offense and swell to as high as $25,500 for each subsequent infraction.”

This is probably the strongest anti-sanctuary jurisdiction bill in the country. Many Republican controlled states are pushing ones which would strip some funding from cities and counties which protect illegal aliens. Some, like the one in North Carolina, will not be enacted, due to having a Democratic Party governor.

Before debate on actual policy started, Democrats tried their best to tug at Republican heartstrings in hopes of diluting what they labeled an “intentionally” racist proposal.

State Rep. Ana Hernandez, D-Houston, recounted through tears how she was undocumented for years after her visa expired when she was growing up.

She was followed by state Rep. Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, who’s been fasting in protest of the bill since she last attended church on Sunday. She said she’s received hate mail telling her to “die” and “starve.”

Get the Whaaaa-bulance. Why is it that Democrats are taking the sides of people who are here in violation of the law, and many who commit more violations of the law which often harm U.S. citizens and legal residents? Hernandez and Neave and the rest should resign, as they are failing to uphold their oaths of office to follow the law and Constitutions of the US and Texas.

Either way, Democrats said they intend to keep fighting. During his floor speech, the usually mild-mannered Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, warned Republicans: “Do not mess with us today.”

They’ll keep fighting for law breakers. What’s in it for Democrats? That’s the question. And the answer is more voters. Think they actually care about illegals? Of course not.

The House version has a provision that forces college campus administrators to comply with the bill, which Democrats have argued could get college students deported for relatively minor offenses such as being a minor in possession of alcohol.

We shouldn’t have people unlawfully present in the United States attending college on the legal taxpayer’s money to start with.

The changes to the bill are enough that it will have to go to conference with the Texas Senate before going to Governor Abbott’s desk, where his is sure to sign it.

Read: Texas House Passes Strong Anti-Sanctuary Jurisdictions Bill »

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