Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Savannah's Mayor Visits The Landings! Experience Savannah Yourself. Puerto Rico. Ah Youth! Hume Thinks Differently.




The Things Women Know
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Tuesday afternoon I attended a meeting  of the Skidaway Island Republican Club to hear the mayor of Savannah speak about our historic city. I served on the SIRC's board for a number of years and obtained speakers for the President Day Fund Raiser Dinner.  Our mayor, Eddie DeLoach is seeking a second term and is a laid back, good old boy type but very shrewd and funny.

He brought us up to date and stated emphatically the city is doing well and that many of our problems were being addressed and the statistics were favorable.

He is particularly interested in getting a Symphony Hall venue built, spoke about the efforts to stop flooding and reduce crime.  Eddie has a good ole "suthren" sense of humor and said one of the reasons deaths were down is gun owners have a serious inability to aim correctly.

Our city is very flat , like Houston, so when we get a gulley washer flooding occurs and Eddie believes there is nothing more disturbing than walking around in your home in 2 feet of water

He also talked about the cost of street repairs and until he became mayor  streets were paved every 75 years.

The community where I live is gated, is an island (Go to The Landings on Skidaway Island Ga. Com) and is part of the county not the city so we cannot  for the mayor but the mayor came to thank our community for our contribution to Savannah. We are monetarily very generous and we do a lot of volunteer work as well as contribute huge amounts of money for all kind of betterments.  The Jepson Museum is named after one of our residents, the symphony could not exist without Landing's participation and so the list goes.

Savannah is a beautiful city, extremely unique and historic and has a lot of culture, restaurants and constant activities that are nationally prominent.  Our Film, Music, Book and Jazz Festivals draw enormous crowds.  SCAD is the largest art school in the country with campuses all over the world.  We are home to one of the largest special forces training facilities and home of the fastest growing port on the east coast. Over 11 million visitors come to Savannah annually yet our city population is less than 200,000.

The St Patrick's Parade is one of the nation's largest.  Savannah has a large Catholic, Greek and rising Asian population.  We and more or less evenly divided between the black and white population.

Eddie is laid back and when asked about his opponent he said he is a good man just does not accomplish anything. He said he would love to have volunteers  help him get re-elected and  if some pocket change fell out he hoped you would leave it and  keep on walking.






The job of mayor is somewhat restricted by commissioners who are racially mixed and the city manager has a great deal of authority.

Savannah is not the city I first visited over 60 years ago. It is cleaner, the downtown area is bustling and in the last few years we have become a "foodie" town.  "The Garden of Good and Evil"  placed us on the map and we have not stopped moving forward, Everyone who comes loves our beautiful town, admire the fact that we were America's first designed city and we are a stone's throw from the Atlantic and Tybee - which we call our Red Neck Riviera.

I introduced Kim Strassel to Tybee and she returned with her kids and Sandra Bullock once owned a home there. There aren't many places left like Tybee.

Another thing that is unique about our city is we have one of the best ice cream parlors in the world, our commercial stores are mostly local and the art museum is the oldest in the southeast. Our airport is contemporary but small like those I remembered when I was a kid and we have plenty of unique hotels and historic  B and B's.  Our Squares are beautiful and in March the Azalea's bloom and make the city magical. We have two magnificent Art Deco theaters.

Negatives: narcotics because of transients and our port and gangs. We have a great District Attorney named Meg Heap.  Eddie made a Freudian slip and called her Meg Ryan - probably because Ryan was here several years ago at our Film Festival receiving an award. Parking limited and not cheap.

Additional positives:  Good medical facilities and doctors and a university medical school is located here.  The economic base is diverse and relatively solid - military, education, port, tourism and Gulf Stream's Headquarters and largest employer.

Come experience Savannah for yourself!!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Puerto Rico cannot catch a break. (See 1 below.)
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Ben Shapiro has it right. (See 2 below.)

And:

Ignorance may be blissful but there is always a price to pay. (See 2a below)

However, Hume has a different view: Why Brit Hume Thinks Pelosi's Impeachment Move 'Was Really Quite Clever' By Leah Barkoukis (See 2b and 2c below.)
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I hear from others Trump's speech to The UN was brilliant and given in the right tone. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) Puerto Rico Can’t Catch A Break
Authorities in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands on Sunday urged residents to prepare for heavy winds, rain and damage as Tropical Storm Karen rolled toward islands still recovering from the devastation of historic Hurricane Maria two years ago.
The National Weather Service issued a Tropical Storm Watch for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Karen is expected to pass near or over both Tuesday, after moving across the eastern Caribbean Sea on Monday. Maximum sustained winds were near 40 mph with higher gusts.
Karen will gradually intensify early this week, bringing an uptick in downpours and locally gusty winds as it approaches, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said.
Still, the storm is a blip on the weather map compared to the ferocity of Maria. But the island’s power grid remains unstable, and hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans live in housing still in disrepair from the fury of Maria’s 175-mph winds and rampant flooding.
Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced said an emergency management plan has been activated across the island of 3.2 million people.
“I urge citizens to be calm but vigilant and update their family plan,” Vázquez posted on Twitter.
The island’s emergency management agency posted a similar warning: “Remember that keeping calm and being informed is essential to make the best decisions in times of emergency.”
The National Weather Service warned that much of the islands will see 2 to 4 inches of rain; 6 inches could fall in isolated areas. Flash flooding and mudslides are possible, the advisory said.
Maria, a Category 5 storm, killed more almost 3,000 people on Puerto Rico alone and was blamed for $90 billion in damage. The recovery and aftermath drew controversy, including arrests on fraud charges of some government leaders.
Puerto Rican leaders and President Donald Trump conducted heated exchanges, often via social media, over the amount of help the island received from the federal government.
Thousands of homes remain battered or abandoned since Maria destroyed a wide swath of the island in 2017.
Many residents live in poverty and could not afford to rebuild. Puerto Rico’s halting recovery was among the issues that forced former governor Ricardo Rosselló to resign the post in August.
The island dodged what could have been another devastating storm when Hurricane Dorian battered parts of the Virgin Islands but mostly stayed away from Puerto Rico during its drive through the region just weeks ago.
Karen is the 11th named storm in one of the busiest storm seasons on record in the Atlantic Basin. Elsewhere, the center of Tropical Storm Jerry is expected to pass near Bermuda late Tuesday.
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2) Catastrophic Thinking Without Solutions
By Ben Shapiro

In July, Adam Grant, organizational psychologist at Wharton Business School, tweeted: "Agendas aren't driven by problems. They're driven by solutions. Calling out what's wrong without proposing ways to make it right is complaining."

This week, complaining was the order of the day.

The complaining was largely done by enthusiastic minors, to the raucous applause of Democratic politicians and the media. Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old activist from Sweden, appeared before a UN climate summit to chide the adults in catastrophic terms usually reserved for bad B-disaster flicks: "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. ... We are at the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?" One student intoned at a weekend rally, "All of our futures are in jeopardy." Another student said, "We will be the last generation to survive."

This, of course, is nonsense. We will not be the last generation to survive. The world will keep on spinning. The damage from climate change is uncertain -- it may be moderate, and it may be graver. But to suggest, as ralliers did, that the world will end without ACTION! (no specific action recommended) is factually untrue.

All of this "activism" prompted former President Barack Obama to tweet his kudos: "One challenge will define the future for today's young generation more dramatically than any other: Climate change. The millions of young people worldwide who've organized and joined today's #ClimateStrike demand action to protect our planet, and they deserve it."

What action, precisely? And why is the left so keen on rallying behind children to push their cause, the same way it did with regard to gun control in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting?

Perhaps it's because we don't expect children to have solutions. After all, they're children. But adults hiding behind children to avoid the difficult conversations that must take place about how to achieve solutions is nothing other than moral cowardice. At the same time leftist politicians were rooting on these children, commending them for their exuberance, the United Nations was accomplishing nothing on the issue of climate change. That's because the lead emitters on planet Earth aren't in the West. They're in China and India. And as The New York Times reported, "despite the protests in the streets, China on Monday made no new promises to take stronger climate action." Western teenagers screaming in front of cameras aren't going to convince Chinese President Xi Jinping to lower emissions and join in a global carbon tax. Hell, Hong Kong teenagers shutting down airports can't convince Xi to not violate international agreements.


It turns out that complaining without solutions isn't actually useful -- at least if you're interested in solving problems. It's political pandering, designed to make solutions more difficult by adding moral condemnation to political infeasibility. That merely frustrates people with the "system," since such pandering falsely suggests that at the heart of the problem lies cruel apathy -- and apathy directed at crying children -- rather than serious political gridlock. It's divisive, rather than unifying, and polarizing, rather than practical.

But perhaps that's the point, at least for the adults who take advantage of children to hide behind their own unwillingness to acknowledge the difficult realities of solution-making.

Ben Shapiro, 35, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller "The Right Side Of History." He lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles


2a) Youth and Ignorance 
By Walter E. Williams

Camille Paglia is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she has been a faculty member since 1984. Paglia describes herself as transgender, but unlike so many other transgender people, she is pro-capitalism and hostile to those who'd restrict free speech. She's a libertarian. As to modern ideas that include "gender-inclusive pronouns" such as zie, sie and zim, Paglia says it is lunacy. In a 2017 interview, Paglia was especially irritated by the thought police running college campuses today. In defending University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, who has become a pariah for his refusal to cave in to nonsensical gender-inclusive pronouns, Paglia said that the English language was created by great artists such as Chaucer and Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Joyce. She added: "How dare you, you sniveling little maniac, tell us how we're gonna use pronouns! Go take a hike."

On feminism, Paglia criticizes what she calls the "antisex and repressively doctrinaire side of feminism." She calls it "victim feminism" and complains that "everything we'd won in the 1990s has been totally swept away. Now we have this endless privileging of victimhood, with a pathological vulnerability seen as the default human mode." Everyone must yield to it "in the workplace, in universities, in the demand for safe spaces." Paglia adds, "What I am saying throughout my work is that girls who are indoctrinated to see men not as equals but as oppressors and rapists are condemned to remain in a permanently juvenile condition for life."

Paglia's bold statements got her in a bit of hot water last April. University of the Arts students demanded that she be fired over public comments she'd made that were not wholly sympathetic to the #MeToo movement, as well as for an interview with the Weekly Standard that they called "transphobic." That latter denunciation is particularly slapstick, since Paglia describes herself as "transgender," writes Tunku Varadarajan, Hoover Institution's institutional editor, in his Aug. 30 Wall Street Journal article "A Feminist Capitalist Professor Under Fire."

The students' demand that Paglia be fired fell on deaf ears. Fortunately, there are a few college presidents with guts and common sense. President David Yager is one of them. He wrote in an open letter to students: "Artists over the centuries have suffered censorship, and even persecution, for the expression of their beliefs through their work. My answer is simple: not now, not at UArts."

There's another part of this story that's particularly interesting considering today's young peoples' love of socialism. Paglia says that children now "are raised in a far more affluent period. Even people without much money have cellphones, televisions, and access to cars. They're raised in an air-conditioned environment. I can still remember when there was no air-conditioning."

Paglia says: "Everything is so easy now. The stores are so plentifully supplied. You just go in and buy fruits and vegetables from all over the world." Young people ignorant of history and economics "have a sense that this is the way life has always been. Because they've never been exposed to history, they have no idea that these are recent attainments that come from a very specific economic system." Young people led by the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fail to realize that capitalism has "produced this cornucopia around us. But the young seem to believe in having the government run everything, and that the private companies that are doing things for profit around them, and supplying them with goods, will somehow exist forever." For the feminists, Paglia says, "I insist that capitalism has produced the glorious emancipation of women." Today, they can "support themselves and live on their own, and no longer must humiliatingly depend on father or husband."

Reading Varadarajan's article made my day knowing that there's at least one intelligent radical feminist. But what else is to be expected from anyone who's a libertarian capitalist?


2b) The Impeachment Congress

House Democrats need to vote to authorize an official inquiry.


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday endorsed an official inquiry to impeach President Trump, and there is joy across Resistance America—at least for now. The decision guarantees that this will go down as the Impeachment Congress, with little to show beyond investigations into the Trump campaign and now the Trump Presidency.

In one sense this moment was probably inevitable. Most Democrats and most of the media have never accepted Mr. Trump as a legitimate President. They can’t believe 63 million Americans voted for him over their nominee, Hillary Clinton, so they have looked every day since Election Night in 2016 for some reason to expel him from office.

Is Trump's Ukraine Call an Impeachable Offense?

They spent two years spinning a tale of Russian collusion that proved to be false. Then they hyped obstruction of justice because Mr. Trump fired James Comey as FBI director, but the public wasn’t persuaded. The payment to Stormy Daniels made a cameo, but that was too close to Democrats’ defense of Bill Clinton for “lying about sex” to fly.

Mrs. Pelosi has now found a rationale in a whistleblower’s accusation about Mr. Trump’s July 25 phone call to Ukraine’s President. Mr. Trump admits that he warned Volodymyr Zelensky about corruption, including Joe Biden ’s interventions in Ukraine against a prosecutor who was investigating a company with ties to Mr. Biden ’s son, Hunter. Mr. Trump also admits that he delayed U.S. aid to Ukraine in early July prior to the phone call out of concern for corruption and allied burden sharing.

Mrs. Pelosi has concluded that all of this is worth ginning up the impeachment machinery that has been exercised against Presidents only three times in U.S. history. “The actions taken to date by the President have seriously violated the Constitution,” she said after a meeting of House Democrats. “The actions of the Trump Presidency revealed dishonorable facts of the President’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

The American people will be the ultimate judge of that, and they will want to see evidence that warrants overturning an election. They haven’t yet seen the transcript of Mr. Trump’s phone call, which the President says he will release on Wednesday. They don’t know the context of Mr. Trump’s request to Mr. Zelensky and how much it related to overall U.S. policy toward Ukraine. And they don’t know the role, access and motivation of the whistle blower.

Mr. Trump’s invitation to Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden, if that’s what it was, showed bad judgment in our view. Mr. Trump has no filter for separating the personal from the political. No President should invite a foreigner to investigate a domestic opponent, especially a President whose opponents sought foreign dirt to defeat him in 2016.

But bad judgment is not a crime, and voters may demand more to annul an election only months before they have a chance to render their own judgment about Mr. Trump’s behavior.

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Mrs. Pelosi’s decision will please her political base in Congress and the country. But she has also unleashed a political battle whose outcome is uncertain. For one thing she will now have an obligation to fairness. This should include an investigation into the actions of Mr. Biden and his son in Ukraine, and whether Mr. Trump had a point beyond self-interest in raising the issue with a new Ukrainian President who campaigned against corruption.

She will also need a commitment to accountability for the House. This means voting to authorize an official inquiry, as Republicans did in 1998 regarding Bill Clinton. Mrs. Pelosi can’t get away with merely declaring something “official” without honoring the proper procedure and making the Members declare themselves on the record. If she wants the constitutional privileges of the impeachment power, she has to be accountable for it.

Mrs. Pelosi has often said that impeachment won’t be credible with the public if it isn’t bipartisan. Yet so far it is entirely partisan. Mr. Biden proved that point by calling Tuesday for Mr. Trump’s impeachment if he resists the demands of Congress. The House can impeach on a partisan vote and define “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” as it wishes. But impeachment is ultimately political, and the voters will decide in 2020 if impeachment is what they voted for in 2018.

2c) Impeachment Can Move Fast, History Reminds
Editorial of The New York Sun
President Trump is right, in our estimation, to suggest that the Democrats’ decision to begin the impeachment process is born of their inability to defeat him on the issues. That’s certainly what it looks like. That doesn’t mean, however, that the Democrats’ strategy is without peril for the President. We learned that from their defeat of President Nixon. A lot can happen once an impeachment process is launched.

Nixon managed to win re-election even as the Watergate scandal unfolded. The break-in itself was in June 1972. By August 1, a PBS timeline reminds, the Washington Post reported that twenty-five grand that was supposed to be for Nixon’s campaign went to one of the burglars. Within a month of the election, the FBI had uncovered what PBS calls “a broader spying effort connected to Nixon’s campaign.”

Yet Nixon proceeded to win re-election by the third highest percentage of the popular vote in our recorded history (the popular vote tally before 1824 isn’t available). The break-in trial began in January 1973. It wasn’t until late April that the scandal reached the White House, the PBS timeline notes. The special prosecutor wasn’t appointed until May 18; he was fired on October 20. The Watergate hearings began in May 1974.

Mark how fast things now move. On July 24, the Supreme Court forced the White House to hand over the Nixon tapes to District Judge John J. “Maximum John” Sirica. The Judiciary Committee in the House voted out articles of impeachment — for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress — between July 27 and July 30. It wasn’t until August 5 that the “smoking gun” tape became public.

That tape recorded Nixon telling aides to order the halt of the Watergate investigation. By the end of the week, the Senate had collapsed. On August 7, two members of what would be the impeachment jury, Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott, broke protocol and went to the president and told him the Senate would convict. Two days later, Nixon abandoned his landslide victory and quit.

Now, Mr. Trump may not be in as perilous a spot as Nixon was. On the contrary and despite our advice, he did not fire his special prosecutor. The special prosecutor cleared him of collusion with the Russ camarilla and decided not to recommend charging him with obstruction. When the special prosecutor himself was called to testify, he collapsed. So far no Maximum John Sirica has emerged.

The angel of newspapering that flutters on our shoulder, though, warns against taking anything for granted. Witness Ukraine. The idea that Mr. Trump’s presidency was in peril over Ukraine was in the public discussion in only glancing ways until this month. It was only two weeks ago that Congress was alerted to the whistleblower complaint. It still isn’t public, nor is Mr. Trump’s phone call, though it may be tomorrow.

Mark, meantime, that the Democrats went to impeachment from a single leak in only two weeks, during which scant facts were disclosed. We wouldn’t suggest there are more surprises. Neither, though, would we suggest there won’t be. Meantime, we see nothing wrong with asking Ukraine to help get to the bottom of corrupt dealings, if any, by any Americans, even a Biden — lest Americans vote in the dark.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) In speech to UN General Assembly, US President Donald Trump says that US does not seek conflict with any nation, but as long as Iran's "menacing behavior" continues, US will not lift sanctions.

US President Donald Trump addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday and delivered a roaring defense of nationalism and American sovereignty even as he tried to rally a multinational response to Iran's escalating aggression.


The president implored the world's leaders to prioritize their own nations, with strong borders and one-on-one trade deals, rejecting sweeping transnational organizations and alliances.
"The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to strong, independent nations," Trump told a murmuring crowd at the General Assembly.
"Globalism exerted a religious pull over past leaders causing them to ignore their own national interests. Those days are over."

Focusing on the United States' self-interest, Trump said that the nation's security was jeopardized by the threat posed by Iran and warned Tehran to stop its aggression toward Washington's allies in the Middle East.

"All nations have a duty to act. No responsible government should subsidize Iran's blood lust. As long as Iran's menacing behavior continues sanctions will not be lifted. They will be tightened," Trump warned.

"The United States does not seek conflict with any other nation. We desire peace, cooperation, and mutual gain with all. But I will never fail to defend America's interests."
As speculation mounted that Trump could meet in New York with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the president raised the possibility of a diplomatic breakthrough, saying "the United States has never believed in permanent enemies. We want partners, not adversaries."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday he was open to discuss small changes, additions or amendments to the 2015 nuclear deal if the United States lifted sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic.

"I will be open to discuss small changes, additions or amendments to nuclear deal if sanctions were taken away," Rouhani told media in New York.

While Trump wants allies to join the US in further isolating Iran, he also seems to be holding to his go-it-alone strategy of using economic sanctions to pressure Tehran to give up its nuclear program and stop attacks that are rattling the Middle East.

In the speech's first moments, Trump did not explicitly blame Iran for recent strikes against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. Iran has denied orchestrating the attack, which US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has deemed "an act of war."

Trump also addressed the ongoing standoff in Venezuela, denouncing the oppressive regime and vowing that the United States would "never be a socialist nation."

Trump praised his diplomatic efforts with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even though the autocrat continues to hold a tight grip on his nuclear weapons. Trump has met Kim for summits in Singapore and Hanoi, Vietnam, and orchestrated a surprise encounter with him in June at the Demilitarized Zone, where he became the first US president to ever set foot in North Korea.

This was Trump's third speech to the world body.
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