America - Land that I love: 2018

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Most folks know that I despised Hillary, but was somewhat dismayed that the alternative was Trump. Trump for me was the lesser of two evils, but that’s water under the bridge. I stumbled into this article about a Gold Star Mom, and figured I’d share.

Billy and Karen Vaughn are the parents of fallen Navy SEAL, Aaron Carson Vaughn (SEAL Team VI). On August 6, 2011 Aaron was killed in action in the Tangi River Valley of Afghanistan when a chopper (call sign Extortion 17) carrying thirty Americans was shot from the sky. Let me tell you, when a Gold Star Mom speaks, people listen. These moms have endured unimaginable loss and have earned the right to a bully pulpit. They are not some fawned over TV show host or starlet. GSMs are the stuff that made America truly great, raising kids who understand the meaning of “the last full measure of devotion.”

Here are her words:

Sometimes God uses the no-nonsense, salty sailor to get the job done. Appreciating what the man is doing doesn’t mean we worship the salty sailor or even desire to be like the salty sailor. It doesn’t even mean God admires the salty sailor. Maybe He just knows he’s necessary for such a time as this.

I believe with all my heart that God placed that salty sailor in the White House and gave this nation one more chance in November 2016. Donald Trump is what he is. He is still the man he was before the election. And without guilt, I very much admire what that salty sailor is accomplishing.

He’s not like me. That’s okay with me. I don’t want to be like him. I will never behave like him. I know we’ve NEVER had a man like him lead our nation. It’s crazy and a little mind blowing at times. But I can’t help admire the ability he has to act with his heart rather than a calculated, PC, think tank-screened, carefully edited script. I still believe that is WHY he became our President and WHY he’s been able to handle a landslide of adversity and STILL pass unprecedented amounts of good legislation for our country AND do great works for MANY other nations, including Israel.

I’m THRILLED with what he’s doing for my nation, for the cause of Christ (whether intentional or unintentional, doesn’t matter to me), and for the concept of rebuilding America and putting her FIRST. I will not be ashamed of my position because others don’t see him through the same lens.

Should it matter to me if a fireman drops an f-bomb while he’s pulling me from a burning building? Would I really care about what came out of his mouth in those moments? Heck no! I’d CARE about what he was DOING. He wasn’t sent there to save my soul and I’m not looking to him for spiritual guidance. All I’m thinking in those moments is, “Thank you, Jesus, for sending the fireman.”

This man is crass. Okay. He’s not careful with what he says. Okay. You feel offended that he’s not a typical statesman. Okay. But he is rebuilding the nation my son died for…the nation I feared was on a fast track to becoming a hopeless cause. Forgive me if I’m smiling.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Obama on Trump Tweets

Columnist Charlie Hurt said former President Barack Obama acted "obnoxiously" when he criticized President Trump's Twitter usage.

In an interview with the United Kingdom's Prince Harry, Obama said it's more difficult to be "as cruel in-person" as one can be on the internet.

Obama also told the royal that people can live in "entirely different realities" when they are online.

Hurt said many people saw the comments as criticisms of Trump.

He said Obama's comments are "akin to attacking [President Franklin Roosevelt] for using the new-fangled radio for doing his fireside chats."

"[Twitter is] a way of communicating with people," Hurt said, adding that it is also helpful in "getting around a media that viciously despises him."

see more at http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/12/27/charles-hurt-obamas-interview-prince-harry-criticism-trump-tweets-fdr-radio

Obama vs Fox news

by Breck Dumas
Recently, former “Late Show” host David Letterman signed on for a series of six episodes with the streaming giant, Netfilix, rolling out his debut with [former]President Obama as his first guest. During the interview, Obama expressed his disdain for Fox News, saying “If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR. If I watch Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me. I would watch it and say ‘Who is that guy.'”

by Brian Flood

Former President Barack Obama resurfaced on Friday and took a shot at Fox News viewers, saying they’re “living on a different planet” than people who consume mainstream media.

Obama made the remarks on the premiere of the new monthly Netflix series “My next guest needs no introduction with David Letterman,” which hit the streaming service on Friday morning. Early in the episode, Obama asked Letterman about his retirement but the veteran talk show host quickly let the former president know who was boss.“Now here’s how this is gonna work. I’m gonna ask you stuff, and then you respond to stuff,” Letterman joked.

Letterman then asked Obama what he considers the more dangerous threat to a democracy, the president demeaning the press or a foreign power sabotaging the voting process. Both options are clearly jabs at President Trump and Obama answered without mentioning the current president’s name.

“One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts,” Obama said. "If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR.”

The response got a big round of applause from the presumably liberal crowd at the City College of New York. Obama has a long history of taking shots at Fox News but the recent comment marks his first public attack on the network and its viewers since leaving the White House.

While Trump is often criticized for attacking the media and labeling CNN as “fake news,” Obama’s comment is a reminder that the White House and the press have sparred for decades. Obama once even accused Fox News of “attacking” his administration during an interview with CNBC.

see more at http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/01/12/obama-rips-fox-news-viewers-are-living-on-different-planet.html

and

see more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/03/08/obamas-in-talks-with-netflix-to-produce-series-of-exclusive-shows?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TheBlaze%20Daily%20AM%202018-03-09&utm_term=TheBlaze%20Daily%20AM%20-%20last%20270%20days

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Trump just took ‘telling ordinary Americans’ stories’ to a whole new level

by John Podhoretz

The true inspiration for Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech was not Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln. It was Paul Harvey.

His five-minute daily show, “The Rest of the Story,” featured beautifully told tales of individual Americans and the challenges they overcame from a populist right-wing perspective.

Forget the immigration talk and the border talk and the prescription drugs and whatever he said about America’s global challenges.

Trump’s policy is largely improvisational anyway, and there’s nothing he promised or vowed or cited as something America desperately needs that he couldn’t take back tomorrow.

The only thing anyone is going to remember about this speech are the stories he told about the people his administration invited to sit in the Capitol gallery.

Presidents have been using ordinary Americans as tools and props and symbolic representatives of the goodness of the country for more than 30 years.

Trump took it to a new level last night — to a Paul Harvey level.

Those who loathe Trump and those who love him are stirred by the same ad hominem, slash-and-burn, take-no-prisoners style of his tweeting and his rally speeches — and by the stories of his backstairs-at-the-White-House rages.

So his emergence as a sentimental, feel-good, sob-sister toastmaster was entirely unexpected and all the more effective for it.

Who was not rendered misty-eyed by the story of Ryan Holets, the 27-year-old Albuquerque cop who came across an addicted pregnant woman and later adopted her baby because he heard God calling to him to do so — after which he and his wife named the baby Hope?

Who did not feel sorrow when hearing of and seeing the families of two teenage girls killed by MS-13 gang members — and the family of Otto Warmbier, the college student who was effectively tortured to death by the North Korean regime?

It might seem exploitative to use their grief to advance policy prescriptions, but all three families chose of their own free will to attend the speech so that their loved ones could be remembered.

On and on Trump went, introducing ordinary American after ordinary American and citing the country’s strength and nobility and purpose — and the memory of his bizarre inaugural address about an America awash in carnage seemed to have been delivered by an entirely different person.

(And it was — that speech was the handiwork of Steve Bannon, who is probably sleeping in the doorway of your nearby shuttered storefront right now.)

So maybe this is what Trump should do. He was a TV star. Maybe he needs an actual TV show.

Or, to bring this forward into 2018, a presidential podcast on the model of “The Rest of the Story,” in which he literally does what he did Tuesday night in the State of the Union.

Tell us all feel-good stories about Americans striving to do good, or who want to make a better life for themselves, or who are working to ensure that a loved one struck down unjustly did not die in vain.

I’m serious about this. He has all that time on his schedule that’s unscheduled, why couldn’t he spend five minutes on this?

He has spent so much of the first year of his presidency indulging his angers and going for the jugular, it would do him and the rest of us a bit of good if he devoted a few minutes a day to something, you know, nice?

That stuff was a hit. And you know what you’re supposed to do with a hit in show business?

Give them more of what they want.

see more at https://nypost.com/2018/01/31/trump-just-took-telling-ordinary-americans-stories-to-a-whole-new-level/