On the radio this morning they were playing Kennedy's speech when he was speaking Spanish. The commentator remarked that the only reason a snow white Kennedy would know Spanish is so he can yell at the Mexican's waxing his yacht!
.@RepJoeKennedy addresses "Dreamers" in Spanish. But we are told that these "kids" are as American as anyone else & can't relate to their countries of origin. Exactly the wrong way to convince the rest of America to agree to a compromise. Identity politics over pragmatism. #SOTU
Had to miss it last night. Watched the tape today. It's astounding the things that the left refused to applaud. Things like record low unemployment for blacks and Hispanics. A strong economy. Combating gangs like MS-13. Seriously, these folks have the mentality of a 7 year old. I apologize to the 7 year olds that are above that. How are these things to not be happy for in our country? Their backs are clearly up against a wall.
MAGA! I glad someone is on board with that. The left certainly isn't.
If the Dems were dumb enough to do that, they should have told the drivers "GET OUT OF THE TRUCK". Seems one driver died, according to prelim statements.
Why not? Union longshoreman sabotaged the railroad tracks in front of a train that I was on. Fortunately, Amtrak noticed before we got there. We parked for four hours while repairs were made.
Train carrying lawmakers to GOP retreat involved in accident Fox News, Jan. 31, 2018
A train carrying members of Congress to a Republican retreat in West Virginia slammed into a dump truck on Wednesday, throwing lawmakers from their seats and leaving at least one person dead, officials said.
The truck may have been stuck on the tracks. There are mixed reports over whether the train actually derailed.
Lawmakers on the train flooded social media with images of the wrecked truck, as well as damage to the crumpled front of the train.
The nature or extent of injuries was also unclear. Amtrak said there were no reported injuries to passengers or crew members, though lawmakers reported minor injuries on board.
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, while saying some members needed medical attention, told Fox News an individual in the truck was killed.
Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., confirmed this fatality, and said others in the truck were airlifted out.
Amtrak released a brief statement saying the train "came into contact" with the vehicle.
"There are no reported injuries to passengers or crew members. Local law enforcement is investigating the incident and crews are inspecting the equipment for damage," Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods said in a statement.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was on the train but is fine, Fox News is told. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Wis., was not on the train.
The accident took place in Crozet, Va., near Charlottesville, Va. Members were on a special chartered Amtrak train to the Greenbrier resort, where Vice President Pence was set to speak Wednesday night, with a planned appearance from President Trump on Thursday.
Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone. After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.
Unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low. African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded, and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.
Small business confidence is at an all-time high. The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion in value. That is great news for Americans’ 401k, retirement, pension, and college savings accounts.
And just as I promised the American people from this podium 11 months ago, we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history.
Our massive tax cuts provide tremendous relief for the middle class and small businesses.
To lower tax rates for hardworking Americans, we nearly doubled the standard deduction for everyone. Now, the first $24,000 earned by a married couple is completely tax-free. We also doubled the child tax credit.
A typical family of four making $75,000 will see their tax bill reduced by $2,000 — slashing their tax bill in half.
This April will be the last time you ever file under the old broken system — and millions of Americans will have more take-home pay starting next month.
We eliminated an especially cruel tax that fell mostly on Americans making less than $50,000 a year — forcing them to pay tremendous penalties simply because they could not afford government-ordered health plans. We repealed the core of disastrous Obamacare — the individual mandate is now gone.
We slashed the business tax rate from 35 percent all the way down to 21 percent, so American companies can compete and win against anyone in the world. These changes alone are estimated to increase average family income by more than $4,000.
Small businesses have also received a massive tax cut, and can now deduct 20 percent of their business income.
Here tonight are Steve Staub and Sandy Keplinger of Staub Manufacturing — a small business in Ohio. They have just finished the best year in their 20-year history. Because of tax reform, they are handing out raises, hiring an additional 14 people, and expanding into the building next door.
One of Staub’s employees, Corey Adams [pictured above on left], is also with us tonight. Corey is an all-American worker. He supported himself through high school, lost his job during the 2008 recession, and was later hired by Staub, where he trained to become a welder. Like many hardworking Americans, Corey plans to invest his tax cut raise into his new home and his two daughters’ education. Please join me in congratulating Corey.
Since we passed tax cuts, roughly 3 million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses — many of them thousands of dollars per worker. Apple has just announced it plans to invest a total of $350 billion in America, and hire another 20,000 workers.
This is our new American moment. There has never been a better time to start living the American Dream.
Struggling communities, especially immigrant communities, will also be helped by immigration policies that focus on the best interests of American workers and American families.
For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities. They have allowed millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans. Most tragically, they have caused the loss of many innocent lives.
Here tonight are two fathers and two mothers: Evelyn Rodriguez, Freddy Cuevas, Elizabeth Alvarado, and Robert Mickens. Their two teenage daughters — Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens — were close friends on Long Island. But in September 2016, on the eve of Nisa’s 16th Birthday, neither of them came home.
These two precious girls were brutally murdered while walking together in their hometown. Six members of the savage gang MS-13 have been charged with Kayla and Nisa’s murders. Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors - and wound up in Kayla and Nisa’s high school.
Evelyn, Elizabeth, Freddy, and Robert: Tonight, everyone in this chamber is praying for you. Everyone in America is grieving for you. And 320 million hearts are breaking for you. We cannot imagine the depth of your sorrow, but we can make sure that other families never have to endure this pain.
Tonight, I am calling on the Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13, and other criminals, to break into our country. We have proposed new legislation that will fix our immigration laws, and support our ICE and Border Patrol Agents, so that this cannot ever happen again.
The United States is a compassionate nation. We are proud that we do more than any other country to help the needy, the struggling, and the underprivileged all over the world. But as President of the United States, my highest loyalty, my greatest compassion, and my constant concern is for America’s children, America’s struggling workers, and America’s forgotten communities. I want our youth to grow up to achieve great things. I want our poor to have their chance to rise.
So tonight, I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties — Democrats and Republicans — to protect our citizens of every background, color, religion, and creed. My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans — to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream. Because Americans are dreamers, too.
As we rebuild America’s strength and confidence at home, we are also restoring our strength and standing abroad.
Around the world, we face rogue regimes, terrorist groups, and rivals like China and Russia that challenge our interests, our economy, and our values. In confronting these dangers, we know that weakness is the surest path to conflict, and unmatched power is the surest means of our defense.
For this reason, I am asking the Congress to end the dangerous defense sequester and fully fund our great military.
As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression. Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.
Last year, I also pledged that we would work with our allies to extinguish ISIS from the face of the Earth. One year later, I am proud to report that the coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria. But there is much more work to be done. We will continue our fight until ISIS is defeated.
Army Staff Sergeant Justin Peck is here tonight. Near Raqqa last November, Justin and his comrade, Chief Petty Officer Kenton Stacy, were on a mission to clear buildings that ISIS had rigged with explosives so that civilians could return to the city.
Clearing the second floor of a vital hospital, Kenton Stacy was severely wounded by an explosion. Immediately, Justin bounded into the booby-trapped building and found Kenton in bad shape. He applied pressure to the wound and inserted a tube to reopen an airway. He then performed CPR for 20 straight minutes during the ground transport and maintained artificial respiration through 2 hours of emergency surgery.
Kenton Stacy would have died if not for Justin’s selfless love for a fellow warrior. Tonight, Kenton is recovering in Texas. Raqqa is liberated. And Justin is wearing his new Bronze Star, with a “V” for “Valor.” Staff Sergeant Peck: All of America salutes you.
Terrorists who do things like place bombs in civilian hospitals are evil. When possible, we annihilate them. When necessary, we must be able to detain and question them. But we must be clear: Terrorists are not merely criminals. They are unlawful enemy combatants. And when captured overseas, they should be treated like the terrorists they are.
In the past, we have foolishly released hundreds of dangerous terrorists, only to meet them again on the battlefield — including the ISIS leader, al-Baghdadi.
So today, I am keeping another promise. I just signed an order directing Secretary Mattis to reexamine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay.
quote:
Presidential Executive Order on Protecting America Through Lawful Detention of Terrorists National Security & Defense Issued on: January 30, 2018
I am also asking the Congress to ensure that, in the fight against ISIS and al-Qa’ida, we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists — wherever we chase them down.
Our warriors in Afghanistan also have new rules of engagement. Along with their heroic Afghan partners, our military is no longer undermined by artificial timelines, and we no longer tell our enemies our plans.
I am asking the Congress to address the fundamental flaws in the terrible Iran nuclear deal.
My Administration has also imposed tough sanctions on the communist and socialist dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela.
But no regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea.
North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our homeland.
We are waging a campaign of maximum pressure to prevent that from happening.
Past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation. I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this dangerous position.
We need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America and our allies.
Otto Warmbier was a hardworking student at the University of Virginia. On his way to study abroad in Asia, Otto joined a tour to North Korea. At its conclusion, this wonderful young man was arrested and charged with crimes against the state. After a shameful trial, the dictatorship sentenced Otto to 15 years of hard labor, before returning him to America last June — horribly injured and on the verge of death. He passed away just days after his return.
Otto’s Parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, are with us tonight — along with Otto’s brother and sister, Austin and Greta. You are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world, and your strength inspires us all. Tonight, we pledge to honor Otto’s memory with American resolve.
Finally, we are joined by one more witness to the ominous nature of this regime. His name is Mr. Ji Seong-ho.
In 1996, Seong-ho was a starving boy in North Korea. One day, he tried to steal coal from a railroad car to barter for a few scraps of food. In the process, he passed out on the train tracks, exhausted from hunger. He woke up as a train ran over his limbs. He then endured multiple amputations without anything to dull the pain. His brother and sister gave what little food they had to help him recover and ate dirt themselves — permanently stunting their own growth. Later, he was tortured by North Korean authorities after returning from a brief visit to China. His tormentors wanted to know if he had met any Christians. He had — and he resolved to be free.
Seong-ho traveled thousands of miles on crutches across China and Southeast Asia to freedom. Most of his family followed. His father was caught trying to escape, and was tortured to death.
Today he lives in Seoul, where he rescues other defectors, and broadcasts into North Korea what the regime fears the most - the truth.
Today he has a new leg, but Seong-ho, I understand you still keep those crutches as a reminder of how far you have come. Your great sacrifice is an inspiration to us all.
Seong-ho’s story is a testament to the yearning of every human soul to live in freedom.
It was that same yearning for freedom that nearly 250 years ago gave birth to a special place called America. It was a small cluster of colonies caught between a great ocean and a vast wilderness. But it was home to an incredible people with a revolutionary idea: that they could rule themselves. That they could chart their own destiny. And that, together, they could light up the world.
That is what our country has always been about. That is what Americans have always stood for, always strived for, and always done.
I made it through the first hour or so, then NyQuil took over
I'll have to watch more video of it when I get home tonight. Reviews (from sources I trust, anyway) are all favorable...hell, if CBS published that screen shot above? That's saying something!
Thanks Blake, but Sundance at CTH deserves the credit; this (transcript interspersed w/photos) is his creation and I simply lifted out chunks to post here on BWB:
Here's the text of that Scott Adams article. Show it to all your anti-Trump friends.
quote:
The Mystery of Trump’s Lousy Polls
If he’s so persuasive, why is his approval so low? Well, Michael Jordan missed a lot of baskets.
by Scott Adams
For years I’ve been arguing that Donald Trump is a world-class persuader. So why is his job-approval rating so low? The short answer is that the old rules about presidential approval no longer apply.
Do you remember a few decades ago when one of the main complaints about politics was that Democrats and Republicans were not so different? Not anymore. The news industry has found that polarization is a strong business model. The first group of pundits claim many times a day that Republicans are right about nearly everything and Democrats are stupid and evil, while the second group do the reverse. Voters tend to consume news that agrees with their opinions, thus reinforcing them. In this environment, you can’t reasonably expect the folks who voted for the losing candidate to warm up easily to the winner. In the past the differences between victor and vanquished in the political arena were mostly questions of policy. To partisans today, Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump are a lying, cheating murderer and a crazy, impulsive, lying, racist, homophobic, sexist narcissist. That’s a big gap.
And it’s not as if Mr. Trump’s opponents are eager to close it. Michael Jordan missed about half of the shots he attempted. That isn’t because he lacked skill, but because the opposing players were highly capable at defending. Likewise, the political and media professionals who oppose the president are playing unusually strong defense, and that works against his job-approval ratings.
Example: Anti-Trumpers take it as a given that this president is a racist. As evidence, they point to a series of news stories and quotes that seem to support that position. Your common sense tells you that even if some of the claims are exaggerated or taken out of context, there are so many of them that they can’t all be wrong.
But as any cognitive scientist will tell you, they can all be wrong, and that wouldn’t be unusual. Confirmation bias looks exactly like a mountain of evidence. If that sounds crazy, consider how much solid evidence the press gave us in 2016 that Mr. Trump could never get elected. Let’s consider three bits of so-called evidence about Mr. Trump’s alleged racism to illustrate my point:
• Birtherism. Critics of Mr. Trump point to his questioning of President Obama’s birth certificate as obvious evidence of racism. But imagine if Hillary Clinton’s birth certificate had been questionable in any way. Do you seriously think Candidate Trump would have ignored that easy line of attack because she was white? In 2016 he did make an issue of Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth.
Mr. Trump has attacked every white male who opposed him, including Republicans, on a daily basis, using every persuasion tool at his disposal. But the birther issue still feels racist because you see it in the context of all the other evidence of his alleged racism.
• Charlottesville. Critics believe Mr. Trump took sides with the torch-carrying racists who were chanting anti-Semitic slogans in Charlottesville, Va., and called them “fine people.” The implication is that he publicly betrayed his Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren—while also inexplicably recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. That doesn’t make sense.
The more ordinary explanation is that Mr. Trump spoke about the protests without having all the details about who attended and why. It was reasonable for him to assume some people were there because they agreed with his position that toppling Confederate statues is more about political correctness than racism. (For the record, I regard those statues as offensive decorations we can live without.) In any event, Mr. Trump later disavowed the Charlottesville racists in clear terms.
• “S—hole countries.” If you don’t think Mr. Trump is a racist, you probably interpreted his scatological reference as applying to Third World countries that are not producing as many educated citizens as economically advanced places like Norway. If you think he is a racist, you probably believe he was calling the people in those countries a nasty word.
Now consider these three bits of evidence combined. I just offered compelling rebuttals to each, but when partisans weave them together in a quilt of confirmation bias, they feel deeply persuasive.
Candidate Trump offered his own explanation for his offensive statements. “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he said in the first Republican debate in August 2015. “I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness.” When he proves it time and again, critics cleverly reframe his offensiveness to “he’s a racist!” With that sort of persuasion working against him, even his supporters are likely to be wary of admitting it to pollsters.
Moreover, much of the public understands “job approval” to include liking Mr. Trump’s style in addition to his accomplishments. A better measure of presidential approval might be the National Federation of Independent Business’s Small Business Optimism Index. That captures a lot of variables: growth, jobs, foreign policy, domestic risks. The NFIB index’s monthly average hit an all-time high in 2017, even as Mr. Trump’s job-approval ratings hovered around 40%.
Anyway, 40% is better than the press’s approval rating, and a lot better than Congress’s. That sounds about right for the best persuader in the world. He’s very talented, but he isn’t magic—and the other team is playing too.
Mr. Adams is the creator of the comic strip Dilbert and author of “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.”
