+++Subject: New addition to Air Force One with Trump on board!!!
I have had the pleasure of meeting Mike McNeely. He is currently running for the office
of Chairman of The Georgia Republican Party. Mike is young, and like Obama is black
but unlike Obama, Mike is highly qualified for the office he seeks. He has walked the walk
and is able to talk the talk.
Michael’s life has been focused on service to God and country. He first learned this principle in his church and had it reinforced as he became an Eagle Scout, served his country in the Georgia Army National Guard, and served his community as a police officer in Metro Atlanta. Michael graduated from Georgia Southern University with a degree in Criminal Justice. He is an executive with the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. Over the years Michael has managed multi-million dollar budgets in vital areas such as Training, Investigations, Human Resources, Policy, and Legislative Affairs.
As a Georgia Republican, Michael has served as Third and First Vice Chairman of the Douglas County GOP, the Georgia Young Republican’s Political Director, and Chairman of the Georgia Black Republican Council. In 2010, he graduated from the Republican National Committee’s Campaign Victory School, its Campaign Management College, and Republican Leadership for Georgia.
Michael has defended the principles of the Republican Party through television, radio, and print media over the years. Additionally, he has traveled the state of Georgia speaking with individuals of all walks of life about being a Republican and the impact of conservative policies. He has volunteered on a number of campaigns going door-to-door, phone banking, and providing counsel.
Under his leadership as First Vice Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, the Community Service Committee was created. The committee raised thousands of dollars in cash and gift cards for families at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, partnered with Veterans Empowerment Organization of Georgia to serve homeless veterans, and helped provide Christmas gifts to underprivileged children. Michael also continues to work to grow the party through strategic engagement with minorities and millennial's. In 2014, retired Lieutenant Colonel and former U.S. Congressman Allen West named Michael one of the black communities shining stars. In 2016, Michael represented Georgia as an At-Large Delegate to the Republican National Convention and as a Presidential Elector for Donald Trump.
During the campaign President Trump told the black community "you have nothing to lose." Conservatism and moderation works and particularly for the underclass because it is the best way to build self-worth and character, maintain the family structure, improve the economy and create job opportunities.
I sent Mike a check for his campaign and encourage those of like mind to do so as well. You can make your check payable to "McNeely for Chairman of the Ga. GOP" and send to; Russ Peterson
28 Shellwind Drive
Savannah, Ga. 31411
Thanks in advance for any consideration shown my request. Mike's election would send a valid signal rebutting the false impression Democrats try to convey about Georgia Republicans.
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The author who sent this to me today is a long time friend and fellow memo reader. Perhaps his solution is the correct one but my wife does not allow me to own a gun and we have few squirrels molesting our sole bird feeder.
"Anyone who has ever tried to keep squirrels off bird feeders knows how clever and persistent they are, very much like ISIS and other radical Islamic groups. Recently, I have been fighting an epic battle with the ever-expanding squirrel population. Barriers to access bird feeders have again and again been circumvented. Reluctantly, I concluded that just shooting the raiders is the only solution. J----"
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Andy Kessler makes a cogent comparison. Very clever analogy. (See 1 below.)
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I have a liberal friend who constantly sends me articles from the NYT's that are full of false facts and from the Huffington Post calling for Trump's Impeachment.
He is intelligent but bewildered by the turn of events. I thought he was joking with me at first but it has become such a stream of negativism that I now take it seriously.
The most recent had to do with the "fact" that Trump was totally opposed to Israeli Settlements and that turned out to be because the NYT's scrubbed what Trump and the White House had to say.
This is why Trump resorts to Tweeting. You cannot alter facts. You can only re-report and mis-characterize. (See 2 below.)
and now for a Swiss Cheezy spoof: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=
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Rah Rah to Reid. (See 3 below.)
Dick
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1) Trump Could Be the First Silicon Valley President
He is as disruptive as Amazon, Uber and Napster—and also as risky as any high-tech startup.
Like it or not, Donald Trump has disrupted politics. You might even say he is the first Silicon Valley president. What Amazon did to bookstores, Napster to music and Uber to taxis, Mr. Trump has done to the Republican Party, presidential elections and maybe global governance. “Move Fast and Break Things” posters were plastered all over Facebook. Sound familiar?
On the surface, Mr. Trump and Silicon Valley are oil and water. He’s a real estate guy. Highly leveraged. From a family business. Scorns immigrants. Antitrade. But they definitely share disruptive DNA. No respect for authority. High risk, high return. People think you’re crazy, tilting at windmills. Self-driving cars? Trump as president? It’s all crazy until it isn’t.
Like Silicon Valley, Mr. Trump breaks all the rules. Amazon fought state sales taxes while it grew. Uber ignored cease-and-desist orders. Napster never even heard of copyrights. Mr. Trump insulted opponents, dispensed with a ground game, and didn’t bother with much TV advertising. Every entrepreneur reads the book “The Lean Startup.” Mr. Trump could write “The Lean Campaign.”
Both view Twitter as a weapon of mass (media) disruption. Like Mr. Trump, many in Silicon Valley speak in sentence fragments—a perfect fit for Twitter’s 140-character limitation. Mr. Trump is obsessed with his poll numbers the same way Silicon Valley obsesses with likes and retweets and harvesting followers.
Mr. Trump has a unique relationship with the truth (see Theranos). He appears thin-skinned (see Steve Jobs). And much as Amazon has quietly built a world-beating cloud business and Uber a delivery company, Mr. Trump often says one thing to distract opponents while he does something else.
Mr. Trump wants to make America great again, while Silicon Valley wants to make the world a better place. And life imitates art, which imitates life. On HBO’s fictional “Silicon Valley,” Gavin Belson, CEO of Google-like Hooli, Trumpingly declares: “I don’t want to live in a world where someone makes the world a better place better than we do.”
Being disruptive means failing early and often. Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk was broke in 2009-10. “I ran out of cash,” he wrote in a divorce-court filing; he was borrowing from friends and living on their couches. Mr. Trump has been there, with casino failures and borrowing from banker “friends,” who even took his yacht away.
What else? Silicon Valley often gets accused of being filled with tech bros and has had its bouts with “locker room talk”—look up Gamergate.
Silicon Valley has its own form of populism. Technology is for the masses more than the elite. Smartphones, social networks and virtual reality all need billions of users, forcing a populist thinking in products, if not ideology—transferring power “and giving it back to you, the people.”
Yes, Silicon Valley destroys jobs Mr. Trump would probably rather save. But over many cycles, technology ends up creating more jobs than it destroys—wielding more economic power than any president.
No matter. By and large, and apart from Peter Thiel, people in Silicon Valley loathe Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton outpolled him 85% to 9% in San Francisco and 73% to 21% in Santa Clara County. Techies are having emotional breakdowns that would make Meryl Streep proud. But I think it’s because they secretly see a little Donald Trump in themselves. The whole valley may need therapy.
But if I were Donald Trump, I’d be careful. The dirty little secret of Silicon Valley is that nine out of 10 funded investments fail, often spectacularly. So will a Trump presidency be disruptive? The jury hasn’t even been selected, but if he follows through on campaign bluster and actually starts closing down obsolete departments and agencies like the FCC, he might earn the label of first Silicon Valley president.
Mr. Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager, is the author of “Eat People” (Portfolio, 2011).++++++++++++++++++++++
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THE ALGEMEINER
FEBRUARY 3, 2017
Defending Trump’s Executive Order on ‘Terrorist Entry Into the US’
by Mort Klein & Liz Berney
The Left’s confusion about what constitutes “morality” compels us to explain why President Trump’s executive order, titled “Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States,” is a moral act, and why the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has been speaking out in support of it.
Most Americans agree with the ZOA, overwhelmingly favoring Trump’s order, 57% to 33%. (See this Rasmussen poll for proof.)
The purpose of Trump’s executive order is to establish a vetting system that protects all Americans from ISIS and other foreign terrorist infiltrators’ attacks. The order explains: “Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement program.”
Foreign terrorists carried out the 9-11 attacks and the San Bernardino, Boston Marathon and Paris massacres, although many were from countries not on Trump’s list. Many more foreign terrorists have attempted attacks. US synagogues and Jewish schools are frequently threatened, and have had to become virtual fortresses. It’s not “immoral” to reduce dangers to our children.
President Trump’s executive order calls for reviewing our screening processes and establishing adequate standards to prevent infiltration. The temporary suspension of immigration from seven countries that the Obama administration identified as “countries of concern” (only seven out of 53 Muslim-majority nations) facilitates establishing such a proper vetting system. This is not only moral; it’s a moral imperative. Protecting US citizens is “Job One” for a responsible president.
Moreover, Trump’s executive order allows individuals from “countries of concern” to enter the US, on a case-by-case basis, during the suspension period. This humane provision enables admission of those especially deserving refugees whom the Left wrongly claims are absolutely banned.
Numerous top security officials in Obama’s administration (including FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, National Intelligence Director James Clapper and National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen) warned us about ISIS infiltrating the US using refugee and immigration flows, our inadequate vetting system and the unavailability of the information needed to properly vet refugees from certain countries. Heeding these and many others’ warnings is clearly “moral.”
Jewish law also confirms that maintaining strong borders and preventing immigration of those who endanger us is moral and necessary.
The Torah commands: “Take heed and carefully guard your lives.” (Deuteronomy 4:9 and 4:15). Self-preservation is so important that the Jewish “duty to rescue” is inapplicable if a rescue would substantially endanger the potential rescuer’s own life.
Further, “Ethics of the Fathers” (Pirkei Avot) 1:7 enjoins: “Distance yourself from a bad neighbor; do not connect yourself with a rasha [evildoer].” We are also commanded: “Make a fence for your roof, so you will not place blood in your house if a fallen one falls off of it” (Deuteronomy 22:8) — which is broadly interpreted to require many other safety precautions.
Strong borders are one of those precautions we must take. Before his death, Moses blessed the Jewish people with a prayer for strong borders “sealed like iron and copper” to enable the people to live “securely” into healthy “old age.” (Deuteronomy 33:25, 28.) Similarly, Exodus 23:33 explains: “They [enemies] shall not dwell in your Land. . . .”
Also, under Jewish law, someone with a potential “profit motive” to favor a particular position is in no position to judge. Some groups, such as HIAS, which have invoked “morality” arguments to promote admitting poorly vetted refugees, have been receiving millions of dollars of government grants to resettle refugees.
There is also no moral equivalence between Trump’s executive order and Roosevelt’s slamming the doors on Jews trying to escape from Nazi Europe. The 1930s Jews posed no terror threat to the US, were in imminent danger of annihilation and had nowhere else to go. By contrast, immigrants from the seven countries of concern are infiltrated by terrorists, are often already in Turkey or Jordan where there is no imminent danger and have 50 other Muslim nations that can be pressured to accept them. (ZOA also favors safe zones in the Middle East.)
The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes survey from 2009 found that over 90% of Muslims in surveyed majority Muslim nations held strongly unfavorable (anti-Semitic) attitudes towards Jews. Bringing more Jew-haters into the US, who will join surging vicious anti-Semitic activities on college campuses and the anti-Israel Congressional lobby, is dangerous and immoral.
Moreover, while radical Islamists in the US have primarily targeted Jews, Christians, homosexuals and other minorities, proper immigration precautions benefit every faith — including Muslims.
In sum, supporting President Trump’s efforts to prevent radical Islamists from murdering American citizens and residents of every faith and creed is eminently moral.
Morton A. Klein is the National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Elizabeth Berney, Esq. is ZOA’s Director of Special Projects.
Commentary Magazine
Israel, Settlements, and the Media
Two important things happened tonight: Donald Trump reversed Barack Obama’s policy toward Israel’s settlements, and the New York Times headline on the story about it was “Trump Embraces Pillars of Obama’s Foreign Policy.” #1 is obviously the matter of the greatest importance. #2 is meaningful because it’s part of a pattern of reporting on the Trump administration by the mainstream media that features breathless and hurried assertions of fact on a policy that turn out not to hold water once they are examined.
First, to Trump and Obama and Israel and the settlements. On Thursday night the White House released the following statement: “The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years. While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region. The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.”
What this letter does, in effect, is return the United States to the status quo ante before the Obama administration—specifically, to the policy outlined in a letter sent from George W. Bush to Ariel Sharon in 2004. In that letter, Bush said, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
This language was an acceptance of the reality that the most populous Israeli settlements beyond the pre-1967 borders would certainly remain in Israeli hands at the end of any successful peace negotiation with the Palestinians. And according to the officials who negotiated the matter, primarily Elliott Abrams of the Bush National Security Council (and full disclosure: my brother-in-law), it was understood that the expansion of existing population centers due to natural growth (families getting larger, people moving in) should not be considered a violation of the idea that there should be no new settlements. For if, like New York City, Ariel gets more populous, its land mass does not increase in size, just the number of people living there.
The Obama administration did not like these ideas, and reversed them. Its conception of a “settlement freeze” was that it be a freeze on the number of settlers as well as the number of settlements. Add new apartments to Ariel, and you were “expanding the settlements.”
The Trump language puts an end to that idea. It says “the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful.” This returns U.S. policy to the notion that the physical acreage holding settlers should not increase but that the number of settlers is not at issue. This is a wholesale shift in America’s approach.
Astoundingly, the New York Times completely missed this. Its article states: “In the most startling shift, the White House issued an unexpected statement appealing to the Israeli government not to expand the construction of Jewish settlements beyond their current borders in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Such expansion, it said, ‘may not be helpful in achieving’ the goal of peace.”
This is, at best, shockingly ignorant of existing U.S. policy. Indeed, the Trump statement can be read as a radical break even from Bush: as the international law scholar Eugene Kontorovich pointed out on Twitter, it doesn’t even endorse the two-state solution. It merely calls for “peace.”
These hurried reports filled with inaccuracies have become standard issue over the past two weeks, driven by breathless and overly fast reporting whose assertions turn out either to be ignorant or wrong. For example, Peter Alexander of NBC News earlier on Thursday tweeted this: “BREAKING: US Treasury Dept easing Obama admin sanctions to allow companies to do transactions with Russia’s FSB, successor org to KGB.” After 5,800 retweets and assertions that this demonstrated Trump’s fealty to Putin’s Russia, Alexander tweeted this: “NEW: Source familiar w sanctions says it’s a technical fix, planned under Obama, to avoid unintended consequences of cybersanctions.”
The number of retweets of this correction: 240.
There are multiple examples of this pattern, too many to recount here. At a time when the country needs the most accurate and exact reporting on the issues at hand out of Washington due to the hyper-partisan moment we’re living through and the administration’s rather tenuous connection to fact, institutions that would never have made such basic mistakes 30 years ago—because they would have taken the time to talk to several sources before going into print or on TV many, many hour later—are now hurrying things onto the Internet when they don’t really know what is going on. Rather than clarifying things, the media are muddying them and making them worse.
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He guaranteed Neil Gorsuch’s elevation to the Supreme Court.
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By Charles Krauthammer
There are many people to thank for the coming accession of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump for winning the election. Hillary Clinton for losing it. Mitch McConnell for holding open the high court seat through 2016, resolute and immovable against furious (and hypocritical) opposition from Democrats and media. And, of course, Harry Reid.
God bless Harry Reid. It’s because of him that Gorsuch is guaranteed elevation to the court. In 2013, as Senate majority leader, Reid blew up the joint. He abolished the filibuster for federal appointments both executive (such as Cabinet) and judicial, for all district and circuit court judgeships (excluding only the Supreme Court). Thus unencumbered, the Democratic-controlled Senate packed the lower courts with Obama nominees.
Reid was warned that the day would come when Republicans would be in the majority and would exploit the new rules to equal and opposite effect. That day is here.
The result is striking. Trump’s Cabinet appointments are essentially unstoppable because Republicans need only 51 votes and they have 52. They have no need to reach 60, the number required to overcome a filibuster. Democrats are powerless to stop anyone on their own.
And equally powerless to stop Gorsuch. But isn’t the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees still standing? Yes, but if the Democrats dare try it, everyone knows that Majority Leader McConnell will do exactly what Reid did and invoke the nuclear option — filibuster abolition — for the Supreme Court, too.
What is the 'nuclear option,' and how would it change the Senate?
Reid never fully appreciated the magnitude of his crime against the Senate. As I wrote at the time, the offense was not abolishing the filibuster — you can argue that issue either way — but that he did it by simple majority. In a serious body, a serious rule change requires a serious supermajority. (Amending the U.S. Constitution, for example, requires two-thirds of both houses plus three-quarters of all the states.) Otherwise you have rendered the place lawless. If in any given session you can summon up the day’s majority to change the institution’s fundamental rules, there are no rules.
McConnell can at any moment finish Reid’s work by extending filibuster abolition to the Supreme Court. But he hasn’t. He has neither invoked the nuclear option nor even threatened to. And he’s been asked often enough. His simple and unwavering response is that Gorsuch will be confirmed. Translation: If necessary, he will drop the big one.
It’s obvious that he prefers not to. No one wants to again devalue and destabilize the Senate by changing a major norm by simple majority vote. But Reid set the precedent.
Note that the issue is not the filibuster itself. There’s nothing sacred about it. Its routine use is a modern development — with effects both contradictory and unpredictable. The need for 60 votes can contribute to moderation and compromise because to achieve a supermajority you need to get a buy-in from at least some of the opposition. On the other hand, in a hyper-partisan atmosphere (like today’s), a 60-vote threshold can ensure that everything gets stopped and nothing gets done.
Filibuster abolition is good for conservatives today. It will be good for liberals tomorrow when they have regained power. There’s no great principle at stake, though as a practical matter, in this era of widespread frustration with congressional gridlock, the new norm may be salutary.
What is not salutary is the Reid precedent of changing the old norm using something so transient and capricious as the majority of the day. As I argued in 2015, eventually the two parties will need to work out a permanent arrangement under which major rule changes will require a supermajority (say, of two-thirds) to ensure substantial bipartisan support.
There are conflicting schools of thought as to whether even such a grand bargain could not itself be overturned by some future Congress — by simple majority led by the next Harry Reid. Nonetheless, even a problematic entente is better than the free-for-all that governs today.
The operative word, however, is “eventually.” Such an agreement is for the future. Not yet, not today. Republicans are no fools. They are not about to forfeit the advantage bequeathed to them by Harry Reid’s shortsighted willfulness. They will zealously retain the nuclear option for Supreme Court nominees through the current Republican tenure of Congress and the presidency.
After which they should be ready to parlay and press the reset button. But only then. As the young Augustine famously beseeched the Lord, “Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.”
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