90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, December 7, 2017

IS THE DEEP STATE ATTEMPTING A COUP?

That is a question I never thought I would need to ask. But, via InstaPundit, law professor Randy Barnett makes an alarming point:

Barnett was responding to this tweet:

Administrative employees are nominally subject to the control of those appointed by politicians who have won elections, but Democrats embedded in the federal bureaucracy have proclaimed themselves part of the “resistance” to President Trump, and are using their positions to undermine his administration. Bureaucrats thus frustrate the will of the voters. President Trump has been...

Tennessee Legislature Epically Trolls California Over Travel Ban

Driving Directions To Hotel California..

Expanded Health Benefits for Illegal Alien Kids in California

Carly Fiorina – California Drought Emergency Caused By Liberal Enviro-Nazis Willing To Sacrifice Other People’s Lives..

Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare To Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums By 64-146%

Toyota Leaves California For Texas

160 Things Trump Has Done to Make America Great Again Since Taking Office

“Trump is failing, and the White House is covering it up with lies” — The Washington Post, October 2017.

“Donald Trump’s first six months in office have been a spectacular failure” — The New Republic, July 2017.

“Trump is falling apart, and nobody knows what to do about it” — Salon, October 2017.

Wow. From the sounds of things, 2017 was the year Donald J. Trump replaced alcoholic, sniveling, slavery-enabling Democrat Franklin Pierce as America’s worst president. That’s pretty bad. No wonder every media outlet not named Fox News is screaming about presidential Armageddon (or something akin to it, like, I don’t know, a fourth hour of “Morning Joe“).

What this all obscures is the fact that, love him or hate him, Donald Trump’s first year has actually been incredibly productive.

Sure, he didn’t get health care reform and we have to wait to see on the tax bill, but there are plenty of things Trump-wary conservatives can be thankful for this holiday season. One-hundred and sixty of them, in fact, compiled by the wonderful people at WND. We’re reprinting it here because we think it serves as an important rebuke to a media who thinks the president’s only accomplishment is boosting Twitter stock.

Let’s go by month, shall we?

January:
Ending the Trans Pacific Partnership via executive order, prioritizing Christian refugee settlement, instituting the first version of the travel ban (which would have to be revised a few times), resuming criminal prosecution of individuals who had illegally crossed the border for the first time, expediting environmental reviews on infrastructure projects, reducing regulatory burdens on manufacturers, supporting the March for Life and sending Vice President Mike Pence to attend (first VP to ever go to the pro-life march, introducing task forces within government agencies to end “job killing regulations” and thusly increase “economic opportunity,” helping launch the United States-Canada Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, expanding deportation priorities for those who “have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense,” signing a memorandum promising to rebuild and expand the military, ordering a hiring freeze on federal employees, signing an executive order that said for every one new regulation, two must be cut, reinstating the “Mexico City Policy” on not funding organizations that promote abortions worldwide, donating his salary, meeting with tech giants like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

February:
Eliminated a Dodd-Frank rule that mandated oil companies publicly disclose taxes and fees paid to other governments, saving energy companies $385 million a year; ordered a review of both Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s purview; countered Russian propaganda outlets like RT by launching American-run Russian-language broadcasters; purchased new F-35 jets at a considerably reduced price, a savings of $725 million compared to what was was paid earlier in the program; refusing to fill government positions he felt were unnecessary; signing three executive orders strengthening law enforcement protections; reversing the Obama administration’s policy on transgender bathrooms in public schools; repealing an Obama administration rule that took away Second Amendment rights from certain senior citizens.

March:
Signed an executive order that would review our trade deficits, condemned an anti-Israel U.N. report by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, which ended with the commissions executive director resigning; homebuilder confidence highest in almost 12 years; Trump administration negotiated a G-20 statement that did not mention climate change nor opposed economic protectionism; signed an executive order mandating an audit of executive branch agencies.

April:
Neil Gorsuch nominated and appointed to the Supreme Court, government announced illegal border crossings were down 40 percent in first month of the Trump administration and 73 percent by the president’s 100th day in office, signed an executive order expanding offshore drilling for gas and oil as well as a leasing program that developed energy resources off the coast, announced an investigation into Chinese trade policies regarding steel and aluminum exports, announced the “Buy American and Hire American” executive order, which reformed visa waivers and loopholes; ordered the Department of Agriculture to examine regulations and eliminate unnecessary ones; refused to sign the G-7 statement on energy because “the other nations could not agree to include support for nuclear and fossil fuels without support for the Paris climate agreement,” thus leaving the G-7 without a joint statement; refused waivers for companies who wanted to deal with sanctions-laden Russia; the Department of Justice announced efforts to speed up illegal immigrant deportations, including announcing the hiring of 125 immigration judges within two years; announcing an executive order slashing funding for sanctuary cities, announced that deportation of criminal aliens and gang members were up 38 percent over the final year of Obama’s term, with roughly 6,000 members of the ultra-violent MS-13 gang arrested in the first several months of the administration; Trump gave Defense Secretary Mattis the authority to set troop levels in the fight against the Islamic State group, a key factor in virtually wiping out the terrorist group; Trump used the “Mother of All Bombs” on the Islamic State group in Afghanistan; the president signed the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act of 2017, which authorized additional funds for private treatment for veterans more than 40 miles from a VA facility; Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a review of Obama-era “agreements” with local police departments which restricted their ability to fight crime; Trump ordered Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to conduct a review with an eye to returning power to states and local governments; Trump signed a “bill into law annulling a recent Obama administration regulation that would have prohibited states from discriminating in awarding Title X family planning funds based on whether a local clinic also performs abortions; the administration eliminated funding for the United Nations Population Fund, a pro-abortion agency with links to China’s one-child policy; the administration appointed Dr. Charmaine Yoest as the assistant secretary of public affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services. Yoest is a former president of Americans United for Life and replaced a Planned Parenthood advocate. Two other pro-life advocates with the Family Research Council also received appointments to key positions.

May:
President Trump visited the Middle East, visiting Saudi Arabia (where he signed a $110 billion arms deal with a further $350 million in the coming 10 years; further deals with American businesses were also finalized); Trump helped strengthen alliances with Arab allies and Israel during the trip, as well, with a speech about security and regional relations to the Arab Islamic American Summit. Income rose 0.4 percent in the United States in May, which beat estimates of 0.3 percent; housing sales doubled over the same period the previous year; Mexico agreed to cut back its exports of sugar to the United States, a major trade win for the United States; Trump announced his intention to renegotiate NAFTA; the president ordered air strikes on Syria after President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own people; the number of unaccompanied child illegal immigrants entering the United States fell under 1000 fir the first time in several years; the president established a commission to investigate voter fraud; The Trump administration announced its intent to create a school choice plan which states can opt into; on the National Day of Prayer, Trump signed an executive order which eliminated the Johnson Amendment, which had severe IRS restrictions on the political activities of tax-exempt religious groups; the administration expanded the Mexico City policy “to restrict funding to any international health organization that performs or gives information about abortions, expanding the amount of money affected from $600,000 to nearly $9 billion.”

June:
Trump approves Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL projects; inflation reduced to 1.6 percent, an eight-month low; American beef imports returned to china for the first time in 14 years; Trump announced a rollback in relations with communist Cuba, partially ending Obama’s rapprochement with the country; Trump signed executive order increasing apprenticeship programs; Trump expands property rights by ending Obama’s Waters of the United States rule; DHS announces new tracking system to see whether or not visitors have left the country; Trump pulls out of the Paris Climate Accord; at Trump’s urging, NATO members increase their share of defense in the organization by a total of $10 billion; the administration implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, sanctions aimed at Russian oligarchs; Trump administration implements more sanctions against the Russians, this time on 38 persons and entities responsible for violations in the conflict with Ukraine; ICE announces that it arrested an average of 13,085 between February and June, compared to 9,134 average arrests in the last three months of the Obama administration; the DHS ended Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, which would have given 4 million parents of illegal immigrant children amnesty in the U.S.; Trump gave the Pentagon authorization to set troop levels in Afghanistan and Somalia, allowing them to better assess the threat there; the president established the Veterans Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, which established protections for whistleblowers and allowed senior officials at Veterans Affairs to fire underperforming employees more easily. Since January of 2017, 500 employees had been fired from one of Obama’s most disastrous departments and 200 more had faced suspensions. The VA also adopted a new Defense Department records system which allowed them to share information more easily with the Pentagon; a new VA hotline also became operational in June; Betsy DeVos appointed Adam Kissel, one of the most vocal critics of Title IX abuses in the Obama administration.

July:

GDP grew by 2.6 percent, double the first quarter; unemployment fell from 4.8 in January to 4.4 percent; Trump signed an order that increased drilling for energy on federally-owned lands; the president repealed the Obama administration’s “Stream Protection Rule,” which cost the coal industry and America $81 million a year; Trump managed to get “companies such as Ford, Chrysler and Carrier Air Conditioners to manufacture and build plants in the United States,” as well as getting companies like Corning and Foxconn to make significant investments in the United States; the administration ended a program to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria, many of whom who turned out not to be so “moderate;” coalition forces pushed the Islamic State out of the Iraqi city of Mosul; the president created the Office of American Innovation, which aims to modernize the U.S. government; Trump implemented a five-year ban on lobbying for political appointees and prohibited them from lobbying for foreign countries; the DOJ busted 400 people who were prescribing opioid drugs to addicts in what Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the “largest health-care fraud takedown operation in American history; Sessions’ DOJ also cracked down on leaks, “pursuing three times more investigations in the first six months of the Trump administration than had been open at the end of the Obama administration.”

August:

Alarmist scientists have been caught red-handed tampering with raw data in order to exaggerate sea level rise.

The raw (unadjusted) data from three Indian Ocean gauges – Aden, Karachi and Mumbai – showed that local sea level trends in the last 140 years had been very gently rising, neutral or negative (ie sea levels had fallen).

But after the evidence had been adjusted by tidal records gatekeepers at the global databank Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) it suddenly showed a sharp and dramatic rise.

The whistle was blown by two Australian scientists Dr. Albert Parker and Dr. Clifford Ollier in a paper for Earth Systems and Environment.

The paper – Is the Sea Level Stable at Aden, Yemen? – examines the discrepancies between raw and adjusted sea level data in Aden, Karachi and Mumbai.

Kenneth Richard at No Tricks Zone reports:

The authors expose how PSMSL data-adjusters make it appear that stable sea levels can be rendered to look like they are nonetheless rising at an accelerated pace.

The data-adjusters take misaligned and incomplete sea level data from tide gauges that show no sea level rise (or even a falling trend). Then, they subjectively and arbitrarily cobble them together, or realign them. In each case assessed, PSMSL data-adjusters lower the earlier misaligned rates and raise the more recent measurements. By doing so, they concoct a new linearly-rising trend.

Here is a before/after from Karachi:

The authors do not mince their words. They refer to these adjustments as “highly questionable” and “suspicious.”

That’s because they can find no plausible scientific explanation for...

21 Photos of Pearl Harbor and a Day That Will Live in Infamy - Dec. 7, 1941

Could you imagine FDR saying, 'We were attacked yesterday on Pearl Harbor. I really don't want to talk about who did it?' Republicans rip into Obama's tone-deaf terrorism speech

Top 10 Little-Known Events in World War II

Morning Mistress

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

2050: JAPAN NOT CHINA Will be Asia's DOMINANT Power

Girls With Guns

This Christmas Season, Don't Drink And Drive...

Think of Your Family And Animals... Where Would They Be Without You?

Goolag Archipelago: Google Sends Powerful Migrant Crisis Video by POLISH GOVERNMENT to ‘YouTube Jail’

YouTube has ‘quarantined’ a hard-hitting video on Europe’s migrant crisis released by Poland’s conservative government, as part the platform’s crackdown on “hate speech and violent extremism”.

The Polish Ministry of Interior and Administration’s video has been placed in a controversial state designed by YouTube to limit access to videos it says contain “supremacist” or “extremist” content, but which don’t break any of the platform’s rules.

Opening with dramatic scenes of migrants swarming into Europe, the video highlights EU leaders’ insistence that the newcomers be spread throughout the continent, and forced even on unwilling nations through compulsory quotas.

But YouTube has now placed the powerful video in “limited state” — a condition designed to severely reduce the potential audience for “borderline” content. Videos placed under this system are unsearchable, impossible to embed on other sites, and removed from users’ recommended videos lists.

The only way to reach ‘quarantined’ content is by clicking a direct link to the video in question, at which point viewers are warned that the “content is inappropriate or offensive”, asking them to click a button before they are allowed to proceed.

YouTube has also shut down comments on videos which have been placed in this “limited state”, and removed view counts and up-votes and down-votes, making it impossible to see the reach of the video, or know how it has been received.

Google unveiled the policy in August among a raft of new measures which the video-sharing website said it will use to counter “extremism”. It announced a partnership with 15 “expert NGOs and institutions” — including the Council of Europe’s left-wing No Hate Speech Movement and George Soros-linked groups — who will direct them in identifying objectionable content.

Explaining the system, YouTube said it bans content which “promotes violence or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against individuals or groups based on...

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau Makes A Fool Out Of Himself Dressing Up Like A Sikh And Making Groveling “Apology” For “Canadian Racist” Incident That Happened Over 102 Years Ago

Justin Trudeau Says Immigrants Are More Canadian Than Natives

Justin Trudeau Vs. The Fire...

What Is The Dumbest Thing Justin Trudeau Has Ever Said?

Canada's Prime Minister: "If You Kill Your Enemies, They Win"

Canada's Prime Minister: Honor Killings Shouldn't Be Called "Barbaric"

Pres. Trump Warned Theresa May, ‘Focus on Radical Islamic Terrorism’, Day After Muslims Arrested in Plot to Assassinate UK PM

The day before President Donald Trump warned British Prime Minister Theresa May, “don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”, two Muslim men were arrested by British police for targeting May in an assassination plot that allegedly involved bombing 10 Downing Street and stabbing May to death.

Trump gave the warning in a to-and-fro with May on November 29 about his retweets of videos critical of radical Muslims posted by Britain First’s Jayda Fransen.

Metropolitan Police released a statement on Tuesday announcing the arrests of two men on November 28 for terrorism offenses. The UK media is reporting the arrested men were plotting to kill May.

Two men arrested last week have been charged with terrorism offences.

Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20 (23.07.97) of north London has today been charged as follows:

= within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court with the intention of committing acts of terrorism engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to that intention, contrary to section 5(1)(a) and (3) Terrorism Act 2006;
= within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court with the intention of assisting Mohammed Aqib Imran to commit acts of terrorism engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to his intention of committing acts of terrorism, contrary to...

The Army Has a New Way to Take on Russia or China in a Ground Fight

“Our recent conflicts against less sophisticated threats allowed for more open-hatch operations. A commander would be up out of the hatch using his own senses. Operations against a near-peer using artillery, drones and other sophisticated weapons would likely be more closed-hatched operations. This technology will enable him to have more capability in closed-hatched scenarios,” Klager said.

The Army is testing emerging next-generation ground combat vehicle sensors using computer algorithms and artificial intelligence to identify, target and destroy enemy tanks, drones and incoming fire, service officials said.

The technologies now being tested, currently in prototype form, are being engineered for the yet-to-be-built future fleet of Army Next Generation Combat Vehicles to surface in coming years. Equipping Army combat vehicles with an ability to conduct mechanized vehicle operations in a massive, full-scale ground war against a near-peer adversary is a fundamental priority in the rationale for creating this technology.

The concept is to use what Army weapons developers call “multi-function” sensors which not only help vehicle crews find and destroy enemy targets at greater distances - but also simultaneously provide 360-degree cameras around the exterior of a vehicle to more quickly locate threats or enemy attacks.

The new sensor technology, to integrate and test on actual vehicle platforms by next year, is designed to increase situational awareness by using algorithms and computer automation to help soldiers find targets or areas of combat significance; technologies include more narrow-beam thermal sights for long range targeting along with closer-in, vehicle-surrounding electro-optical cameras able to quickly detect approaching enemy drones and...

#BoycottSanFrancisco takes off after Steinle case acquittal

1 Year After Steinle Death, San Francisco Unveils Immigration Policy Keeping ‘Sanctuary’ Protections

MOTHERS OF CHILDREN MURDERED BY ILLEGALS DEMAND DEMOCRATS CENSURE LUIS GUTIERREZ

Number of Refugees Into U.S. Drops 83 Percent Under Trump

During his presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump had promised to “stop the massive inflow of refugees” in order to safeguard the country from terrorists. Chalk up one campaign promise fulfilled.

According to Fox News, only 3,108 refugees came to the U.S. in October and November. In the same period last year, under Barack Obama's reign, 18,300 refugees were admitted. That's a jaw-dropping decline of 83 percent.

Trump restarted the refugee resettlement program in October after a four-month moratorium. A month earlier, he had lowered the annual refugee admission cap from 110,000 to 45,000, the lowest on record.

"The president's strategy on refugees is guided first and foremost by the safety and security of the American people,” Trump administration spokeswoman Helen Aguirre Ferré told Fox News. “The United States can also help a larger number of refugees by resettling them in their home region and enabling their eventual safe return home.”

Not only is there a steep drop in refugee admissions, but fewer Muslims are reportedly among them -- only 10 percent, as opposed to about 40 percent in November 2016 under Obama.

Not only that, but the administration said it is backing out of the Global Compact on Migration, a United Nations initiative established in 2016 that called for two years of negotiations focused on organized and safe migration of the world’s displaced people.

U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, said over the weekend that "The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty. No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue. But our decisions on immigration policies must always...

Some members of Congress are threatening to block government funding unless Congress provides amnesty to so-called Dreamers—the illegal aliens included in President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Donald Trump is ending.

Responsible members of Congress should not give in.

Such an effort would be fundamentally flawed and would only encourage even more illegal immigration—just as the 1986 amnesty in the Immigration Reform and Control Act did.

Democrats portray the DACA program as only benefitting those who were a few years old when they came to the U.S. illegally, leaving them unable to speak their native language and ignorant of their countries’ cultural norms. Therefore, the reasoning goes, it would be a hardship to return them to the countries where they were born.

Obama himself gave this rationale when he said DACA beneficiaries were “brought to this country by their parents” as infants and face “deportation to a country that [they] know nothing about, with a language” they don’t even speak.

While this may be true of a small portion of the DACA population, it certainly is not true of all of the aliens who received administrative amnesty. In fact, illegal aliens were eligible as long as they came to the U.S. before their 16th birthday and were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012.

DACA also required that beneficiaries enroll in school, graduate from high school, obtain a GED certificate, or receive an honorable discharge from the military; have no conviction for a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more other misdemeanors; and not pose a threat to national security or public safety.

However, the Obama administration appeared to routinely waive the education (or its equivalent) requirement as long as the illegal alien was enrolled in some kind of program. Only 49 percent of DACA beneficiaries have a high school education—despite the fact that a majority of them are adults.

How thorough was Homeland Security vetting? In February 2017, after the arrest of a DACA beneficiary for gang membership, the Department of Homeland Security admitted that at least 1,500 DACA beneficiaries had their eligibility terminated “due to a criminal conviction, gang affiliation, or a criminal conviction related to gang affiliation.”

By August 2017, that number had surged to 2,139.

In fact, based on documents obtained by Judicial Watch, it is apparent that the Obama administration used a “lean and light” system of background checks in which only a few, randomly selected DACA applicants were ever actually vetted.

Additionally, DACA only excluded individuals for convictions. Thus, even if a Homeland Security background investigation—which apparently was almost never done—produced substantial evidence that an illegal alien might have committed multiple crimes, the alien would still be eligible for DACA unless Homeland Security referred the violation to...