After a day of tensions between two of the nation’s highest-profile Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office announced Friday that Ryan will meet with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday . . .
I've invited @realDonaldTrump for a meeting with GOP leaders next week, and I look forward to the discussion.
“Having both said we need to unify the party, Speaker Ryan has invited Donald Trump to meet with members of the House Republican leadership in Washington on Thursday morning to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November,” Ryan’s office said in a statement.
Trump, Ryan and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will also hold a separate meeting.
During the Republican presidential primaries, Ryan voiced displeasure with some of Trump’s proposals on immigration, in particular his proposal for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.
On Thursday, Ryan said he was “not ready” to support Trump’s campaign for president, and suggested that Trump needs to take the first steps to show he will unify the party. Later that day, Trump fired back a response saying he would not support Ryan’s agenda and suggesting that politicians should do what is best for the American people . . .
Trump said Friday that Ryan’s refusal to support him was “not a good thing” and “something the party should get solved quickly.” (Read more from “Republican ‘Unity’ Meeting Scheduled for Next Week” HERE)
Donald Trump once warned Speaker of the House Paul Ryan he would pay a “big price” if Ryan didn’t get along with him. Look who is paying now.
Yesterday Ryan, in publicly saying he will not at this point endorse the presumptive nominee called Trump’s bluff. When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if he would support Trump, Ryan said “Well, to be perfectly candid with you, Jake, I’m just not ready to do that at this point. I’m not there right now.”
And, with that, maybe Trump is forced to finally start realizing the consequences of how he conducted his campaign, rotten in both personality and policy. There’s a steep cost to the way Trump’s campaign has done its business and he, not Ryan, is going to pay.
Others in GOP leadership should follow Ryan’s lead. They have “leverage “as Trump would say. Get on record now, stating your opposition to Trump and make a demand for him to change. If he doesn’t improve, which he won’t, you are free to run as far away from the Trump train wreck as your legs can carry you.
People’s reactions to the prospect of a President Trump separates the wheat from the chaff.
And, the chaff is easy to see. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Trump, robotically murmuring that Republicans must support Republicans to win and stop Democrats from winning the White House.
This time, however, Trump is scarier than Hillary Clinton to many. This is a man who gets his news from the National Enquirer for goodness sakes, who came on to the political scene during the Obama Administration by peddling birtherism on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Had any other candidate, any one of them, won the nomination, this would be the best news cycle of their campaign. People would probably disagree on various policies but Republicans could come together and agree the candidate was a man of integrity and character.
But not Trump.
This should be Trump’s honeymoon period, but good men and women should prepare for divorce. (For more from the author of “Ryan Shows Trump There’s a Cost to How Trump Does Business” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/12987395815_bbc510cf65_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 02:11:242016-05-07 02:11:24Ryan Shows Trump There’s a Cost to How Trump Does Business
Republican lobbyists in Washington are struggling to come to grips with the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency.
“A lot of people woke up [on Wednesday] and went, ‘Oh, gosh, this is not a dream,’ ” said Jeff MacKinnon, a principal at Farragut Partners. “I don’t think downtown was really prepared for it happening so quickly. It did catch people off guard” . . .
Much of the downtown Republican crowd — lobbyists, consultants and PR operatives — built their careers working for establishment politicians like former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), and President George W. Bush . . .
Once Trump all but clinched the nomination this week, the topic of conversation among lobbyists quickly turned to the question of how Trump is going to finance a billion-dollar campaign.
Washington’s lobbying industry traditionally serves as an important resource for presidential candidates’ cash supply; supportive lobbyists often stay in close contact with campaign committees, participate in conference calls and recruit supporters. (Read more from “Lobbyists Struggle With Trump Reality” HERE)
It seems crazy to call it the ‘New Normal’, but once again, record numbers of Americans are renouncing citizenship. Every three months, the Treasury Department publicly names individuals who renounced. It is surely more about FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act enacted in 2010, than it is about politics. Still, numbers are flying, with one poll saying that 1 in 4 Americans would consider leaving if Trump is elected. Others claim they will leave if Hillary is elected.
In reality, of course, most who bristle about politics are not serious. And for those who are, they surely mean a temporary move, not a final exit. In contrast, giving up citizenship is a big deal. Yet the number of published expatriates for the first three months of 2016 was a record 1,158. In 2015, there were approximately 4,300 expatriations. Comparing present to past suggests that Americans renouncing citizenship have risen 560% from their Bush administration high. There are now 18 times as many renouncers as in 2008.
Of course, these numbers seem tiny compared to the influx of immigrants. Yet expatriations have historically been much lower, making the uptick worrisome. Moreover, the published list is incomplete, with many not counted. Surprisingly, no one seems to know exactly how big the real number is, even though the IRS and FBI both track Americans who renounce. There is no single explanation, though some renounce because of global tax reporting and FATCA. One law adding to the mix is the IRS power to revoke passports.
The reasons for renouncing can be family, tax and legal complications. Dual citizenship isn’t always possible, as this infographic from MoveHub shows. And leaving can be expensive. Some countries have no fee, but America charges $2,350 to hand in your passport. That is more than twenty times the average of other high-income countries. The U.S. government has collected about $12.6 million in fees since the fall of 2014, after hiking its fee to renounce citizenship by 422%. Some renouncers write why they gave up their U.S. citizenship. (Read more from “Many Americans Renounce Citizenship, Even Before President Trump” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/5440393641_6dabcc3f81_o.jpg31684752Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:51:452016-05-07 02:56:45Many Americans Renounce Citizenship, Even Before President Trump
With Mother’s Day around the corner, our moms are in many of our hearts, minds, and…Google searches.
In honor of the occasion, real estate site Estately did some research on the mom-related terms Americans most frequently Google. And, as it turns out, these terms are not the same throughout the country. When it comes to motherhood, different states have different preoccupations.
The site looked at which terms were most popular in each state compared to others — not which were most popular overall, or else many states would probably look the same — and found some pretty hilarious results.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Wild_Roses_for_Mothers_Day_495755710.jpg8811280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:51:272016-05-07 01:51:27The Most Googled Mom-Related Terms in Different States
The Alabama House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would ban abortion clinics from operating “within 2,000 feet of the property or campus of a public school.” The bill is now on Republican Governor Robert Bentley’s desk and if he signs it, the law will be challenged by the ACLU and a Huntsville abortion clinic.
The bill, which passed 73-18, says that “the Alabama Department of Public Health may not issue or renew a health center license to an abortion clinic or reproductive health center that is located within 2,000 feet of the property or campus of a public school.”
The bill’s sponsor, Alabama State Senator Paul Sanford (R), said in March that his hope with the legislation is that no more abortion clinics in the state “would ever open that close to small children.”
Sanford has said his bill is not intended to close clinics, but would prevent schoolchildren from seeing the “chaos” that sometimes surrounds them, according to the Decatur Daily . . .
The Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville, which is located across the street from Edward H. White Middle School, would have to move if the bill becomes law. (Read more from “Alabama House Passes Bill to Keep Abortion Clinics Away From Schools” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-7.jpg7201280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:51:022016-05-07 01:51:02Alabama House Passes Bill to Keep Abortion Clinics Away From Schools
As we reported yesterday, just when Hillary thought the email scandal was behind her, and she could shift her focus to the newly minted GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, an order by Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court decided to lay out ground rules for interviewing multiple State Department officials, and ordered at least six current and former State Department employees to answer questions, all in an effort to finish the depositions in the weeks before the party nominating conventions.
On the heels of interviewing Hillary Clinton’s top personal aide Huma Abedin, as we detailed previously, it appears The FBI is finally ready to go after the Emailer-in-chief herself…
Source confirms to @CBSNews Hillary Clinton to be interviewed by the FBI within the coming weeks in the e-mail server investigation.
— Charlie Kaye (@CharlieKayeCBS) May 6, 2016
As CBS reports, a source has confirmed that Hillary Clinton will be interviewed by the FBI within the coming weeks, in connection with the investigation into her private email server. As reported last night, Hillary’s top aide, Huma Abedin was interviewed by the FBI at its Washington field office in April.
The FBI and Justice Department have been investigating whether sensitive information that flowed through Clinton’s email server was mishandled. Abedin was interviewed at the FBI’s Washington field office last month. The FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email server was first reported in August.
The Clinton campaign has said it’s confident that the FBI’s review “will conclude that nothing inappropriate took place.” There’s no timetable for completing the investigation, and there have been no statements about how much longer the investigation will take.
As we reported on Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington said he may order Clinton to testify under oath about whether she used a private email server to evade public records disclosures.
The order from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan granted a request from the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch to question six current and former State Department staffers, including Abedin, about the creation and purpose of the email system.
Clinton has dismissed the idea that she could face legal trouble over the use of the server, responding to a debate question in March about the prospect of a federal indictment by saying, “It’s not going to happen.”
Perhaps she intends on pleading da’fif’ before the FBI? (For more from the author of “BUMMER: Hillary to Face FBI Interrogators Within Weeks” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/25681712640_418f3aabcb_b-2.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:47:492016-05-07 01:47:49BUMMER: Hillary to Face FBI Interrogators Within Weeks
In 2014, Attorney General Eric Holder invited attorneys-general across America to not defend laws banning same-sex “marriage” if they could not do so in good conscience, stating that he would not have defended segregation laws in the past if he had been required to.
This pattern continued when the DOJ petitioned the Supreme Court to redefine marriage in the Obergefell v. Hodges case last year to the point that current Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a congratulatory statement on June 26, 2015, after the Court took it upon itself to change the very definition of marriage.
Lynch closed her statement with these words: “The Justice Department is proud to have been a part of this journey, from Attorney General Eric Holder’s unwavering leadership in advancing the cause of equality to the groundbreaking progress we have witnessed today. Going forward, we are committed to standing on the side of equality — and standing with the LGBT community — to keep up the fight for safety, opportunity, dignity and justice for all.”
What the DOJ has now made clear is that in its aggressive solidarity with the LGBT community, it will wage war against the rights of everyone else. Be aware and be on guard, conservative Americans and people of faith. The DOJ might soon be targeting you.
This past Wednesday, May 4th, “U.S. Justice Department officials repudiated North Carolina’s House Bill 2 on Wednesday, telling Gov. Pat McCrory that the law violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Title IX — a finding that could jeopardize billions in federal education funding.” In the typical fashion of bullies, the DOJ’s letter gave North Carolina five days to respond “by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2.”
Should North Carolina refuse to bow to this pressure, it could risk losing $4.5 billion in federal aid to its 17 universities, all because the state ruled that men should not be able to use women’s locker rooms and bathrooms in public facilities.
Talk about an outrageous example of government overreach. Talk about Big Brother in action.
In response, Gov. Pat McCrory said to North Carolina business leaders that the DOJ letter is “something we’ve never seen regarding Washington overreach in my lifetime. “This is no longer just a N.C. issue. This impacts every state, every university and almost every employee in the United States of America. All those will have to comply with new definitions of requirements by the federal government regarding restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities in both the private and public sector.”
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest had even stronger words for the Obama administration, saying, “To use our children and their educational futures as pawns to advance an agenda that will ultimately open those same children up to exploitation at the hands of sexual predators is, by far, the sickest example of the depths the … administration will stoop to (to) ‘fundamentally transform our nation.’”
As for Title IX, which the Department of Education (DOE) claims requires schools to allow transgender-identified students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity rather than their biological sex, a new lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Thomas More Society demolishes this faulty reasoning — the very reasoning that is behind the DOJ’s attack on North Carolina.
The suit has been filed “in federal court against School District 211 and the Department of Education (DOE) on behalf of 51 district families who rightly claim that the district and the Department of Education ‘trample students’ privacy’ rights and create an ‘intimidating and hostile environment’ for girls who are being forced to share the girls locker room and restrooms with a boy who wishes he were a girl.”
In the words of ADF Legal Counsel Matt Sharp, “No government agency can unilaterally redefine the meaning of a federal law to serve its own political ends. The Department of Education is exceeding what it is legally and constitutionally allowed to do. In fact, at least five other federal and state courts have rejected the DOE’s interpretation of Title IX.”
It is critical that these matters be pressed in the courts, and we need to publicize this new lawsuit as loudly and widely as we can. Justice and sanity and common sense and fairness must prevail, otherwise the nation will completely unravel. And while these cases are being litigated, it is imperative that families, schools, churches, businesses, cities, and states stand up to the bullies and expose their illicit tactics. Only then will the bullies back down.
In my 2011 book A Queer Thing Happened to America, I devoted more than 50 pages and 138 endnotes to the topic of “Big Brother Is Watching and He Really Is Gay,” noting that, “The really frightening thing is that it would be easy to write an entire book focusing on the subject matter of this chapter alone, and the book could be much longer than this present book — and this is one long [700 page] book!”
Just four years later, in Outlasting the Gay Revolution, I cited scores more examples, noting that here too I was only scratching the surface. What is coming next?
This much is sure. With the DOJ’s latest actions, we can safely say that we have moved from “Big Brother Is Watching and He Really Is Gay” to “Big Brother Is Taking Action, He’s Radically Pro-Gay, and He’s Coming Your Way.”
To be forewarned is to be fore-equipped. (For more from the author of “When the DOJ (Department of Justice) Became the DOGA (Department of Gay Activism)” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Rainbow_flag_and_blue_skies.jpg20003008Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:43:542016-05-07 03:11:43When the DOJ (Department of Justice) Became the DOGA (Department of Gay Activism)
The battle over men accessing women’s bathrooms and vice versa has little do with bathrooms or even transgenderism, a well-known LGBT activist admitted last week. It has everything to do with re-working society and getting rid of the “heterobinary structure” in which we live—eliminating distinctions between “male” and “female” altogether.
Riki Wilchins, who has undergone “sex change” surgery and is a far-left social change activist, wrote in the gay publication The Advocate last week that social conservatives and many LGBT activists are missing the point when it comes to the transgender bathroom debate . . .
People should be able to enter whatever bathroom “fits their gender identity,” Wilchins wrote, but the fact that we even have “male” and “female” bathrooms reflects something about society that needs to change . . .
Transgenderism presumes that a man can be “trapped” inside a woman’s body and a woman can be “trapped” inside a man’s body. It encourages men “becoming” women to embrace femininity and wear dresses and make-up. Similarly, transgenderism encourages women “becoming” men to make themselves more masculine through hormones and by altering their appearances, reinforcing the notion that men look and act a certain way.
“The long-term goals of many LGBT activists are actually not just access to the restrooms of their preferred gender identity, but actually destroying the concept of gender or the separation of the genders altogether,” Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council, told LifeSiteNews. Sprigg noted that when LGBT activists are appealing to a mainstream audience, they “are accepting or implicitly accepting the separation of male and female facilities” like bathrooms. (Read more from “Bathrooms Are Just the Beginning: A Scary Look Into the Trans Movement’s End Goals” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Lady_Bunny_and_Sherry_Vine_by_David_Shankbone.jpg24482670Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:42:422016-05-07 01:42:42Bathrooms Are Just the Beginning: A Scary Look Into the Trans Movement’s End Goals
From oxygen deprivation and cosmic radiation to loss of taste, your body can suffer some worrying effects during air travel. But how can they be avoided? . . .
Dr Richard Dawood, Telegraph Travel’s travel health expert, says the “virtually moisture-free” conditions inside a plane cabin increase your vulnerability to airborne infection. You’re more susceptible to colds and respiratory infection, and viruses which are known to thrive in conditions of low-humidity.
The findings of Auburn University in Alabama in 2014 revealed that disease-causing bacteria can survive for up to a week inside plane cabins, on surfaces such as seat pockets, tray tables, window shades and armrests. Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacteria that could cause infections, skin disease, pneumonia and sepsis, lived the longest (168 hours). Escherichia coli (E. coli), which can cause urinary tract infection, respiratory illness and diarrhoea, was found to survive for 96 hours . . .
Aircraft cabins are pressurised to 75 per cent of the normal atmospheric pressure, a recent study claimed. Lower levels of oxygen in your blood can lead to hypoxia, which can leave you feeling dizzy, fatigued and with headaches . . .
A third of your taste buds are said to become numb at high altitudes, while dryness and cabin air pressure also affect your ears, sinuses and sense of taste, according to the latest research. (Read more from “What Really Happens to Your Body on a Flight” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/flying-people-sitting-public-transportation.jpg28484288Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:36:002016-05-07 01:36:00What Really Happens to Your Body on a Flight
