Donald Trump once again doubled down on the media, telling a cheering crowd in Florida: ‘I want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news.’
Source: President Trump and the First Lady step off Air Force One | Daily Mail Online
It’s the Campaign that never ends. Watch Live at Donald Trump holds a Rally in Melbourne, Florida for his supporters.
Source: WATCH: Donald Trump Rally in Melbourne, Florida (LIVE) | RedState
An Obama-tied activist group training tens of thousands of agitators to protest President Trump’s policies plans to hit Republican lawmakers supporting those policies even harder this week, when
Source: Obama-linked activists have a ‘training manual’ for protesting Trump | New York Post
Political newcomer Gov. Jim Justice, teaming with longtime political operatives Nick Casey and Larry Puccio, have said West Virginia must have nearly $500 million in new taxes to continue to
Source: Rick Snuffer: West Virginia is at a defining economic crossroads | Opinion | herald-dispatch.com
Mark Caserta: Free State Patriot editor
February 17, 2017
I’ve very concerned our nation is rapidly returning to a “pre” Sept. 11, 2001, mentality.
Every day, I see an increasing number of people lackadaisically living their lives with seemingly little knowledge of or concern over the threats our nation faces.
Some are even fighting against protecting our country.
Have we truly become so desensitized to terror and death that we’re willing to suppress the lessons of the past and expose ourselves to another attack, possibly even larger than we experienced on 9/11?
Granted, 15 years is a long time. Some millennials were simply too young to remember the frightening view of the planes flying into New York’s World Trade Center.
Some have been spared the horrific memory of innocent people leaping from windows, choosing to die from the fall rather than be consumed by the flames. They’ve no memory of the people screaming, scrambling in terror, on the streets below.
But, I’ll never forget. And neither will many of you. It changed us – forever.
Unfortunately, I believe that confirmation of U.S. vulnerability, combined with eight years of emboldening our enemies, has positioned us dangerously close to an attack unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
Now, progressives are sure to default to their conservative “the sky is falling” rhetoric regarding my statement. But that sort of irresponsible thinking will cost lives.
A February 2016 column in the National Review, co-written by R. James Woolsey, national security and energy specialist and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, addresses our “nave reliance” on other country’s “transparent disavowals” potentially costing millions of American lives.
The column, entitled, “Underestimating Nuclear Missile Threats from North Korea and Iran,” revealed the White House had not recognized that North Korea already had demonstrated the ability to kill millions of Americans with an electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) attack.
The attack would involve detonating a small nuclear warhead, a hundred miles or so, over the United States creating an EMP leading to a nationwide blackout. The resulting societal chaos (especially in today’s environment) could lead to overwhelming death and destruction.
Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, as President Trump has described it, is a disaster waiting to happen. Since signing the agreement in mid-2015, Iran has test-launched at least two ballistic missiles, despite a U.N. resolution prohibiting such tests. Every indicator suggests Iran is working diligently to become a formidable nuclear power.
We must remember the threat of nuclear attack from leaders who aren’t afraid to die is very real and very different.
A military standoff resulting from opposing nations being unwilling to be destroyed because they initiated a nuclear attack will not apply. These leaders do not subscribe to the “no-win” scenario.
Yet, liberals are fighting more for the rights of people who could potentially harm our nation than for protecting their own families here at home.
Sadly, we know all it will take is another devastating attack to quickly bring things back into perspective.
But, by then, it may be too late.
Stand down liberals. You had your chance.
Let President Trump do his job and protect the U.S.
Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.
The tax agency has stopped requiring individual filers to indicate whether they maintained health coverage or paid the mandate penalty as required under the law
President Donald Trump hailed the United States’ “unbreakable” bond with Israel on Wednesday and promised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran would never be permitted to build a nuclear weapon. Trump’s vow was designed to address Israeli concerns over the nuclear deal between
The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the
Source: Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn
Doug Smith: Author, historian, patriot and lead contributor to Free State Patriot
February 13, 2017
When I was a wee lad, I once ate food off a dirty dish that had sat overnight. I took a brief, disgusting sip of turpentine. When I was a foolish lad of 16, one of my friends decided the time had come for me to experience a new vista. He bought me a bottle of Boone’s Farm Apple “wine” and a pepperoni and banana peppers pizza from a Huntington, WV pizza shop who shall remain nameless and blameless for what occurred. The wine, by courtesy only, in that it does derive from fruit, is more closely associated with embalming fluid and starter fluid, with artificial flavorings. Someday I hope to repay him for the favor, and the next day’s misery, and the violent rejection of all that horrible combination in my stomach. With a hammer.
Some years later, when I was actually old enough to do so, I bought for myself a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux, 1976. Produced in the Bordeaux Region of France from a mix of cabernet, merlot, and Malbec grapes, it has a high tannin content for a rich, fruity flavor and pairs nicely with lamb or beef dishes, and pungent cheeses. I enjoyed a few glasses of it with a filet mignon, rare, coated with blue cheese crumbles, and slices of aged Sharp Cheddar.
Mind you I have not shifted from writing about politics, social issues, and history and taken up the Food Critic chair at Free State Patriot. This is personal history, and illustrates a point I wish to make.
In both cases I drank some wine and ate some food. While the latter was a gastronomic delight, the other was an object lesson on foolishness, or “Why we do not treat 16 year olds as adults. “ My stomach and head made the point very succinctly, both times.
In one case a friend paid 5 dollars for that foul liquid and the pizza (Ok, this was 1972) with a nefarious purpose. In the other, I paid, well, quite a bit more for an excellent meal.
The difference in the two experiences was my discrimination, born of experience and study. Because I had learned to be discriminating.
In our modern and poorly used lexicon, “discrimination” has become a bogey man, a veritable evil and flaw in character. But that is the result of poor understanding of the word, its meaning, and its vital importance in becoming an adult.
We all need to learn to discriminate between better and worse, wrong and right, wise and foolish, dangerous and safe, nurturing and destructive. Otherwise, not only do we miss out on some wonderful meals, but we continue to act from the same foolish notions as a child, with the same unfortunate results.
One discriminates between foods that are tasty and nutritious compared with that which is vile, and so eat better as we learn. I would happily have subsisted on peanut butter and chocolate ice cream when I was 8. I would not eat asparagus or okra, and wanted only the drumsticks from a turkey. Now, I understand that peanut butter is fine, but not the only real food on my menu. Chocolate Ice cream is wonderful, as an occasional dessert, but moderation is called for. Grilled asparagus is wonderful, and the breast meat from that bird is perfect for those after Thanksgiving sandwiches.
Okra, of course, is still a vile, slimy disgusting weed, that falls into the genre of food reviews by Dr Johnson who wrote in his dictionary “ Oats: a grain, eaten in England by horses, but in Scotland by people.”
But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes. Mature, adult humans learn to discriminate. On the food front, we learn, and in the arenas of life we learn as well. Or we stay children.
We learn that the man who lies to us about the little things will likely lie about anything. So we discriminate, based on experience, as to which people we will trust to repay a loan, or return a tool, or show up on time. Or we suffer the results.
We discriminate, based on experience and reading, the areas in a town that are safe or not to walk about at night. Or we suffer the results.
We discriminate about which places we would like to visit on vacation. I would love to travel to Ireland, but would never willingly fly to Iran or Somalia. Does this mean I hate Persians and Somalis? No. It means I can discriminate between a place where I can walk about and see sights and share meals and stand next to Molly Malone ( well, her statue), and places where warlords attack UN convoys of food and steal them, or Western citizens are imprisoned routinely and held for ransom. I discriminate between a country that is friendly and has good ties to my own, and those which demonstrate their hatred of my country, and by extension, me.
Common sense, or wisdom, or, discrimination, tells me I will never drink Boone s Farm, or eat okra (ok, on that one I concede some may differ with me, but yuck!) or put myself at the mercy of people who hate my country and my countrymen. To do these things would be foolish.
To avoid those places and people who hate me, to seek to keep them away from me and my countrymen, to love my own country and people, and put our interests foremost, these things signal reasoned, sober, discrimination.
They do not signal hatred, or unreasoned fear, or some character flaw.
These are the reasoned thoughts and actions of an adult. Those who insist on moral equivalence in everything and everyone, and refuse to learn and practice discrimination are still eating cold eggs from that dirty dish, and calling it steak.
Playing games with the words will not change what ends up in their stomach. Or their community.
Free State Patriot 