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.
When former President Barack Obama said he was “heartened” by anti-Trump protests, he was sending a message of approval to his troops. Troops? Yes, Obama has an army of agitators — numbering
Source: How Obama is scheming to sabotage Trump’s presidency | New York Post
Since 9/11, 72 individuals from the seven mostly Muslim countries covered by President Trump’s extreme vetting executive order have been convicted of terrorism, bolstering the administration’s immigration ban. According to a report out Saturday, at least 17 claimed to be refugees from those nations, three came in as students, and 25 eventually became U.S. citizens. The Center for Immigration Studies calculated the numbers of convicted terrorists from the Trump Seven: — Somalia: 20 — Yemen: 19 — Iraq: 19 — Syria: 7 — Iran: 4 — Libya: 2 — Sudan: 1 The Center’s director of policy studies, Jessica M. Vaughan, based her blockbuster report on a 2016 report from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, then chaired by new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that report found that 380 out of 580 people convicted in terror cases since 9/11 were foreign-born.
Source: Report: 72 convicted of terrorism from ‘Trump 7’ mostly Muslim countries | Washington Examiner
Mark Caserta: Free State Patriot Editor
February 10, 2017
Winning the 2016 presidential election was possibly the single most important conservative victory in my lifetime, for many reasons. But paramount to the win is the pending balance of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Liberals, having been reduced to lamenting, ad nauseam, the election of Donald J. Trump, will no doubt seek to bog down the pace at which our new president is working to re-align our nation with our founding fathers’ original intent.
And look for them to do so using the federal court system.
The progressive movement has been notorious for attempting to fundamentally change interpretation of the U.S. Constitution for political gain. The assertion that “any” individual, regardless of religious affiliation, has a constitutionally protected right to enter our country illegally, without comprehensive vetting, is fundamentally and constitutionally unsound.
Citing the First Amendment as justification for violence, property damage and rioting in the streets is simply unabashed lawlessness and nothing short of domestic terrorism.
Understand, our nation’s top security leaders already have told us we don’t have an adequate system of vetting individuals from terror-ridden countries. Last year, FBI Director James Comey told a congressional committee that we could “query our database until the cows come home” but if Syrian terrorists have never been on the law enforcement radar, it won’t do any good.
As a candidate, Trump pledged to protect Americans through “extreme vetting” of people from countries representing significant terror concerns. His recent executive order temporarily banning travel from these countries was simply fulfilling a promise to the American people.
But despite the fact voters decisively elected a president willing to compromise Washington political correctness rather than the lives of Americans, some on Capitol Hill are willing to stay the course.
Last Friday, a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary nationwide restraining order on Trump’s executive order, questioning its “rationale.” The Department of Justice is appealing the ruling, but this may be one of many such cases eventually decided by the Supreme Court.
Currently, the Supreme Court (operating shy one justice since the passing of Antonin Scalia) is fairly balanced. Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are arguably extremely liberal, while Samuel Alito, John Roberts and Clarence Thomas are widely considered conservatives. Justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy could be considered moderates.
But two of the justices (Ginsburg and Kennedy) are over 80 years of age, and Breyer is 78. The remaining justices range in age from 55 to 67. Besides the replacement of Justice Scalia, we could see any number of Supreme Court nominations by the current administration.
President Trump intends to nominate Supreme Court justices who will not attempt to “legislate” progressive views from the bench. And obviously, a GOP-controlled Congress and conservative-leaning Supreme Court would be beneficial to his cause.
Trump could, in fact, determine the court’s balance for decades!
So, while the left may be successful at “slowing down” the Trump train, Americans will ensure he succeeds.
Liberals can get on board, but they may have to “sit in the back seat,” just as President Obama suggested in 2010 that Republicans should do in likening running the economy to driving a car.
Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.
Free State Patriot 