Broken Borders

Silverfiddle Rant!

President Trump spoke for all sane Americans:

"We have the worst laws of any country in the world. ... You have to fix the asylum situation, it's ridiculous."

Damon Linker, a sensible liberal who excoriates President Trump daily, begrudgingly agrees:

It's a mess. But things truly cross over into the absurd with the recent decision of a California judge to block the Trump administration's effort to get most migrants to remain in Mexico until their asylum hearing. The U.S. is confronting a flood of migrants fleeing oppression, violence, and poverty in one country (usually Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador), crossing a massive intermediary country (Mexico) that no one claims is persecuting them, and yet a judge insists that it's a violation of the law to deny them entry.

That ruling is either an outrageous warping of the law, in which case it needs to be quickly overturned by a higher court, or it is a demonstration that the law itself needs to be changed […]. In the current situation of years-long backlogs and restrictions on detaining kids, it amounts to a wide-open door to anyone who shows up on the border with a child claiming asylum. To the extent that current law requires this fiasco, it needs to be scrapped and replaced.

Bernie Sanders agrees as well, stating he is not for open borders:

What we need is comprehensive immigration reform. If you open the borders, my God, there's a lot of poverty in this world, and you're going to have people from all over the world. And I don't think that's something that we can do at this point. Can't do it. So that is not my position.

The ground is shifting under the Democrats.  President Trump may be demagoguing the illegal immigration issue, but his demagoguery is working, and it is needed to wake us from our media-induced stupor.

Our president is stymied by our idiotic immigration laws and Trump-hating judges who allowed the previous president to make up his own immigration laws, but Democrats will pay a price in 2020.  

President Trump's trollery and demagoguery have manipulated Democrats onto the side of open borders and illegal immigration, where some don the presidentially-proffered political suicide vest, while others scramble and scurry to split hairs, make excuses and confect distinctions without differences. 

Despite losing every battle, President Trump is winning.  How do we know?  After struggling mightily to deny reality, Democrats now acknowledge the crisis, but blame President Trump.

At least half of the world's 7.5 billion people want to come here. Government needs to act.

See also:
Democrats Powerless to Stop Red Wave
David Frum - How Much Immigration is Too Much?

Musical Interlude

Flute Concerto in A Minor, composed by German Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann (1681 – 1767):


Wonderful polyphony and antiphony!

¡Viva el Presidente!

Silverfiddle Rant!

Corruption is killing many struggling countries around the world.  Yes, we have corruption in the US, but we are so wealthy, with so much easy credit sloshing around, chiselers can rake off their take without the stupefied public taking notice.

Not so in poor countries.  Hunger and misery serve to sharpen the senses and narrow an intense focus on injustice.  Haiti is mired in misery nine years after an earthquake made the miserable nation even crappier.  Over $13 billion in aid has poured in (as of 2015), and outraged Haitians are asking where the hell it all went, because it sure has hell didn't go to the people.

Mexico is also afflicted by endemic corruption...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday he will create a “Robin Hood” institute to return to the people the ill-gotten wealth seized from corrupt politicians and gangsters.

A 2017 report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development noted that recent studies estimated that Mexico lost between 5 percent and 9 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to corruption annually. (Reuters)

Mexico's GDP is just north of $1 Trillion, so the amount stolen by corrupt oligarchs and criminal syndicates is staggering $50 to $100 Billion. That's how a country ends up a shithole despite having good, hardworking people.

I fear he will be killed before he reforms the system. May God bless and protect President Obrador.

Pot-Kettle-Black

(Also scroll down to the active post below this one)

No words of introduction needed. Click to enlarge:

More A.F. Branco HERE, at Legal Insurrection.

The Socialist Plan for America

By Sam Huntington

Most socialist countries have pursued extreme policies. Most, but not all. The argument made by socialists and dyed-in-the-wool communists, such as Bernie Sanders, is that socialist policy in the United States would involve fewer increases in tax rates, but one notices that Sanders never discusses the likely economic or social consequences of socialism. Why should he? He’s trying to sell socialism to the American people. A full discussion of socialism’s likely ramifications would only defeat his argument.

To begin with, socialist policy produces lower real growth. We know this because we can observe the effects of socialist policy on citizens who live in countries that embrace it. Experts who have not sold their souls to a proven ruinous ideology tell us that in the long run, American socialism would likely reduce real GDP by 40% (See Economic Freedom of the World, 1975-1995, Fraser Institute and Economic Freedom of the World Index). The Fraser Index provides a range between the least-free (1) and the most free (10). These indicators are aggregated to five main categories, which are given equal weight in the overall. The categories are indicators of economic freedom, not political freedom or civil liberties. The categories are:

• Size of government in spending, taxing, and size of government-controlled enterprises
• Legal system and property rights
• Sound money (measuring policies relating to inflation
• Free international trade
• Limited regulation, the freedom to exchange and trade domestically

Names Have Meaning: Sri Lanka Suicide Bomber Mohammed Azzam Mohammed

About the Easter Sunday jihadist who stood in line at the crowded breakfast buffet at one of those high-end hotels and detonated himself just as he was about to be served:

It Ain't Over

Silverfiddle Rant!

Mueller Time! has come and gone, and its unsatisfying quaffs have left deranged Democrats with a skull-splitting headache and a wicked case of flatulent diarrhea.

Exoneration Schmoneration…

Investigators, prosecutors and their investigations don't "exonerate" people other than those wrongly imprisoned.  Our justice system doesn't work like that.  Progressive demands of "Prove your innocence!" are out of Stalin's Soviet Union.  In the United States, the government must make the case of a person's guilt within the judicial system. If they cannot, the person is guilty of nothing.

Mueller found no collusion and no obstruction (make no mistake--had he found prosecutable obstruction of justice he would have recommended prosecution in his theatrical report.)  

Obstruction??? President Trump cooperated completely with the investigation:

The president could have shut down the investigation at any time, but he didn’t. He could have asserted executive privilege to deny the special counsel access to key White House witnesses, such as McGahn. To the contrary, numerous witnesses were made available voluntarily (there was no need to try to subpoena them to the grand jury), and well over a million documents were disclosed, including voluminous notes of meetings between the president and his White House counsel. (Andrew McCarthy - NY Post)

It's not over, folks. With Democrats, its never over. They're still steaming and bawling over Merrick Garland's "stolen" seat. They're still fuming over Bush 2000, forgetting the Supreme Court decision to stop the Gore shenanigans was 7-2, not 5-4.

The Democrat conspiracy to trap the President has failed.  All Democrats have left is lies and smears.

Shred the Clean Bill of Health

Fat Jerry is demanding to see everything: The unredacted report, all the evidence, every page of grand jury testimony...  and the beauty of it is, he's entitled to none of it. Not one shred, but he will continue to beat that drum, because Democrats cannot abide this clean bill of health Robert Mueller issued to President Trump.

Fat Jerry, Gasoline Maxine and the rest of the bug-eyed unhinged nutballs in the Democrat congressional delegation will persist in demanding tax returns, bank statements, personal papers, stool samples and anything else they can dream up. It's an un-American propaganda game know as, "What do you have to hide?" and its great for fundraising.

The outrageous Democrat requests will be tied up in the courts through Election 2020, with President Trump gloating at massive rallies and Democrats fuming and raising money from the softheads.

Discredit the Attorney General

More damaging to our nation is the Democrat campaign--carried out with their co-conspirators in the Infotainment Media Complex--to demean, dehumanize and discredit Attorney General William Barr. Ad Hominem is the left's favored tactic.  Put the object of rage and hatred beyond the pale, smear him, drum up hatred and scorn against him.  That's the Democrat way.

Why?  Because Attorney General Barr will get to the bottom of the Clinton Crime Syndicate dirty tricks that sparked this historical travesty that sucked various alphabet agencies into the worst abuse of power in our nation's history.  His final report won't be pretty. The only Democrat defense is to use their Infotainment Media Complex toadies to preemptively mud up William Barr, smear him and discredit him in the eyes of the American people.

Pelosi knows they are scaring the normals, but she can't stop this circus train...


See Also:
Robert Mueller Obliterated the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theories
Mueller’s Despicable Parthian Shot
Top 10 things the media got wrong about ‘collusion’ and ‘obstruction’

Music For Resurrection Day

(For politics, please scroll down)

The promise we have, from this epistle from St. Paul:

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.  For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. - 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17 Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)

"Wele'n Sefyll Rhwng y Mwrtwydd" ("Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah"), a hymn which is an affirmation of the Christian resurrection faith:


Lyrics in Welsh:

Wele'n sefyll rhwng y myrtwydd
Wrthrych teilwng o fy mryd;
Er mai o ran, yr wy'n adnabod
Ei_fod uwchlaw gwrthrychau'r byd:
Henffych fore, henffych fore,
Y caf ei weled fel y mae.

Rhosyn Saron yw ei enw,
Gwyn a gwridog, teg o bryd;
Ar ddeng mil y mae'n rhagori
O wrthrychau penna'r byd:
Ffrind pechadur, ffrind pechadur,
Dyma_ei beilat ar y môr.

Beth sy imi mwy a wnelwyf
Ag eilunod gwael y llawr?
Tystio'r wyf nad yw eu cwmni
I'w cystadlu â Iesu mawr:
O! am aros, o am aros
Yn ei gariad ddyddiau f'oes.

Parsing and translation of the Welsh words:

A Sad Metaphor?

Silverfiddle Rant!

Notre Dame is a warning to Europe: don’t take what you value for granted 

From Gilles Gressani, writing in the Guardian...

The sorrow becomes even deeper when you realise that the catastrophe of Notre Dame represents so perfectly the condition of contemporary Europeans: people condemned to live among wonders, taking them for granted, ignorant of the fact that they may disappear– then suddenly finding themselves in a situation they’d never envisioned.

I can take that sorrow at least three levels deeper than the superficial sorrow caused by a smoldering landmark. Can you?

Today marks the anniversary of Our Lord's last supper. This happened the next day:

27 A large number of people followed Jesus. Some were women whose hearts were filled with sorrow. They cried loudly because of him. 28 Jesus turned and said to them,

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 The time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the women who can’t have children! Blessed are those who never gave birth or nursed babies!’ 30 It is written, 

“ ‘The people will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
They’ll say to the hills, “Cover us!” ’ (Hosea 10:8) 

31 People do these things when trees are green. So what will happen when trees are dry?”  - Luke 23:27-30

The Gold Cross Remains

The golden cross and the Pietà sculpture of Mary holding the crucified Jesus at the base of the cross survived. A powerful symbol in Holy Week:

And the rose windows are saved:

Related: The hero who saved the Crown of Thorns: Fire brigade chaplain entered flaming Notre Dame to recover holy relic - three years after he bravely helped Bataclan terror victims.

Julian Assange: Hero or Criminal?

Silverfiddle Rant!

Barack Obama got in one more jab at the nation on his way out the door when he granted clemency to traitor Chelsea Manning, the Army Private who gave classified information to Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

Manning is back in jail after refusing to cooperate with a grand jury looking into Julian Assange:

Manning, convicted in 2013 of leaking classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks, was jailed in early March as a recalcitrant witness after refusing to answer the grand jury’s questions. (Gizmodo)

The US charges against Assange have nothing to do with "journalism:"

Assange allegedly aided her in attempting to crack a password that would provide access to Defense Department network used to store classified documents and communications. While Manning already had access to the network, known as SIPRNet, the password would have enabled her to download additional material under a username that was not her own. (Gizmodo)

Assange was just the conduit.  That in itself was not a crime.  If it were, our prisons would be filled with writers from the New York Times, Washington Post and many other media outlets who gleefully publish classified information.  This new information--that Assange attempted to crack a US military network--now puts him in the criminal category.  It looks like Manning may again be in legal jeopardy if new information is discovered that contradicts her earlier sworn testimony.

The most interesting aspect of this is the confusing scrum of different ideological camps attacking or defending Assange.  The battle lines do not break down neatly, with all left/Democrats on one side and all right/Republicans on the other. I will spare you explanations of this lunacy.

Julian Assange is no hero. He published stolen classified information that chilled secret nation-to-nation diplomatic efforts, many of which were humanitarian. His dispatches also damaged the United States. I wish we could prosecute him for this, but it is probably not possible.  I do support prosecuting him for his role in Manning's traitorous espionage.  I hope they both end up in federal prison.

What say you?

See Also: Why Isn’t Assange Charged with ‘Collusion with Russia’?

Kudos To The New York Post

For this, when so many others would not take Rep. Ilhan Omar to task:

The mainstream media and AOC denounced the New York Post for the above truth-telling.

Oh, and by the way, contrary to what Ilhan Omar said, CAIR was not founded post-9/11.  CAIR was founded in 1994.

Related: Ilhan Omar complains about outrage over her 9/11 comments.

Personal Update

(For politics, please scroll down.  There was a post yesterday, April 10, 2019, a post about reparations)

Arthroscopic surgery today, to trim the meniscus in my right knee. I'm hoping for no complications! The good news based on x-rays and the MRI: no arthritis, therefore no knee replacement needed.

Also on the good-news front: my pre-op blood work was perfect. For the first time in nearly four years, my kidney-function values were normal. So, the kidney surgery I had back in November of 2016 worked. YEEHAW!

Reparations

By Sam Huntington

The United Nations Working group of Experts on People of African Descent* have determined that the United States owes reparations to African Americans.  Why? Because, they say, compensation is necessary to combat the disadvantages caused by 245 years of legally allowing the sale of people based on the color of their skin and because the US has never confronted its legacy of “racial terrorism.”  I’m not sure, but this could be the reason why the United Nations has no credibility among thinking people.

The argument is that people who never owned slaves (everyone alive today) should pay reparations to people who never were slaves.  It is an irrational argument, and yet dozens of leftists are supporting it.  

In fact, the proposition is about as illogical as a human being can get.  What about the Africans who took other Africans prisoners during tribal warfare and sold them to Europeans and Moslems?  Should they pay reparations, too?  What about white skinned people who were enslaved over the past 500 years? Should they also receive reparations, or is this just a black thing?

And what disadvantages are these people talking about?  Look, if black people want to get ahead in life, there are only three things they have to do to avoid being poor: (1) Finish high school; (2) Don’t have children before they are 20-years of age; and (3) get married before having children. Voila!  Problem solved.

As for the claim that the US has never confronted its legacy of “racial terrorism,” what in the hell do they think the Civil War was about?  I’d say the cost in blood more than paid the price for ridding our nation of slavery.  Ordinarily, I would shake my head and wonder how anyone could be this stupid, but then with a bit more thought, lifting a few layers, we’ll find other facts: no one on earth has been more cruel to blacks than other blacks.  The murder rate in Chicago bears this out.  Dig down a bit further, and we’ll discover the highly-successful leftist policy of racial discrimination toward blacks through the imposition of low-expectations.  Remove another layer and we’ll find that an overwhelming number of people who feed from the public trough reman there permanently.  This is the foundation of "black policy" in the Democratic Party.  

Final questions: Kamala Harris is one of many Democrats who support reparations for blacks.  Her ancestors were slave traders.  Does Harris write a check, or receive one?  Barack Obama’s mother’s ancestors were slave owners and traders.  Does he write a check, or receive one?  Since no one is able to control who their ancestors were, how would reparations payments off-set the (manufactured) “trauma” of knowing that someone’s fourth great-grandparents were slaves?

*No one should have a title that won’t fit on a calling card.

Guilty White Liberals: A Clear and Present Danger

Silverfiddle Rant!

White liberals are cracked, and if they have their way, they will destroy the nation, wreck our democratic republican form of government, and splinter out society into a turd-world toilet of battling tribes.



From Matthew Yglesias at Vox, of all places...

"...on key measures of racial attitudes, white liberals’ opinion has moved to the left of where black and Latino opinions are. White liberals are now less likely than African Americans to say that black people should be able to get ahead without any special help."

"White liberals also have warmer feelings about immigrants than Hispanics do."

"And, critically, white liberals are much more enthusiastic about the idea that diversity makes the United States a better place to live than are blacks or Latinos. Non-liberal whites are least enthusiastic of all, which is not enormously surprising, but Latino views of this are closer to those of non-liberal whites than to white liberals." 

Question from ANES 2018 Pilot Survey:

On balance, do you think having an increasing number of people of many different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities in the US makes this country a better place to live, a worse place to live, or does it make no difference?

Answers by Demographic:

Non-Liberal White  Better: 42.3%,  Worse: 26.8%
Hispanic           Better: 45.9%,  Worse: 16.4%
Black              Better: 54.2,   Worse: 11.4
White Liberal      Better: 87.1%   Worse: infinitesimal

It is clear. White liberals are a kook fringe 15%, a Berned-Out statistical outlier, but still a very dangerous demographic that thanks to the Infotainment Media Complex, always manages to punch above its weight.  

Face it.  White liberals are guilty, pathetic and suffer feelings of inadequacy, so they seek approval for being woke, unlike those red state hillbillies.  White liberals, stewing in their own low self-esteem and bile, decide they want to redecorate the place because they've grown to hate this nation and at least half of the population, because Trump, or their own failure, or whatevs.

To quote the Great Winston Churchill, we must defend our nation and our culture, "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

Related Links:

Gallup:  U.S. Still Leans Conservative, but Liberals Keep Recent Gains
Gallup:  Party Affiliation

Welcome, Spring!

(For politics, please scroll down)

Enjoy!

[hat tip to Bunkerville, 2018, for the above video]

Impeach?

Silverfiddle Rant!

Robert Mueller has concluded there is not enough evidence to charge president Trump with Russian collusion. He also did not have enough information to charge the president with obstruction of justice, or he would have flat out said so in the report.

What he did do was leave the question open:

"The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion one way or the other as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction."

and...

"while this report does not conclude the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

Robert Mueller intentionally dangled impeachment bait for the Democrats. This is now a political matter, as it should be according to our Constitution.  Mueller could not establish that the actions he documented amounted to criminal activity, but the bar is much lower for impeachment.

Between now and Election Day 2020, I expect to see...

Democrats fighting each other over whether to impeach or not, with the pro-impeachment faction getting all the radio and TV airtime.

Congressional committees will be going full steam, billowing bald-faced propaganda and blaring sanctimonious accusations against the president.  This is not "guilty until proven innocent" territory.  This is the political and constitutional arena where the House of Representatives decides whether the president's actions rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Wiser heads in the Democrat party will stave off impeachment while allowing the wilder elements to stoke the flames and keep the controversy alive as a campaign issue.

Craven Congresspeople will leak classified and confidential material from the Mueller report to disparage the president and bolster their case for impeachment.

The Justice Department will issue a report on how this Trump-Russia hysteria got started, detailing the "missteps" and "failure to follow department guidelines," sometimes naming names, but nobody's going to jail*, so I encourage my non-Democrat friends to do what Democrats cannot:  Let. It. Go.

We live in a world of Iron Laws. The rich and powerful rule the world, governments are fertile soil for corruption, and all bureaucracies put self-preservation above all else.

* - VDH disagrees. Read his Rogue’s Gallery of Liars and Leakers

Lesson Learned?

(Note: this is not an April Fool's prank)

Funny how an idea changes when it becomes personal — and connected to something to which budding socialists can relate.

From Campus Reform (March 29, 2019):

More young people than ever before now say they prefer socialism over capitalism. But students at Florida International University weren't so open to socialism if it were to apply to their GPA.

Please watch the short video below:


Read the full article HERE.