Category Archives: American Character

September 10, 2025 · 12:27 am

What’s in a name?

This blog post is going to be about “What’s in a name?”

As a frequent critic of the feminization of the US military since the 1980s, a critic of PC permeating the US military in the 1990s & early 2000s, and more recently of the US military going Woke, it might sound bizarre that I vehemently oppose renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

I hate lying.

Trump’s #1 selling point of the “rebrand” of the Department of Defense to the Department of War is predicated on a lie about US military history. The US military did not “go Woke” when the name was changed from the Department of War to the Department of Defense.

In fact, the leaders who led America to victory in WWII are the very architects of our post-WWII military structure and the formation of our Department of Defense. They were NOT Woke, they were serious and brilliant national security and military thinkers, who wanted to make sure that America was never again unprepared for war.

America’s Department of War was not prepared for war when we entered WWI or WWII. This is an historical fact, that every CINC and Secretary of Defense should know and it’s the entire predicate for our Peace Through Strength national security transformation after WWII.

So, I ended up fighting mad, honestly, after I saw some Hegseth Pentagon videos on X and I watched President Trump’s announcement of the Department of War “rebrand.” Their explanations to sell the “rebrand” are based on lies about US military history and I don’t know if it’s because they’re clueless nincompoops or just thought this sounded slick and tough.

What Trump said in this announcement is convoluted and untrue. The truth is that prior to the post-WWII establishment of the Department of Defense, America was NOT prepared for war, even though we had a Department of War. America entered WWI unprepared and undersized. General John J Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in WWI had to rapidly mobilize, build and train a US force and arm them. America demobilized after WWI and at the beginning of WWII, our Department of War was again unprepared for war.

WWII produced some of the finest US military leaders in our country’s history and one of them, often referred to as the “Architect of Victory, ” General George C. Marshall, who ran the war, was dedicated to assuring that America was never unprepared for war again. THAT is how the Department of Defense came into being. It was a commitment to America having a military trained and prepared for war, as the best way to secure the peace. This was the beginning of America’s commitment to a Peace Through Strength national security policy.

Along with that comprehensive national security strategy and framework for our military transformation was a strong alliance structure with peaceful nations committed to the same goals. The creation of NATO became an integral piece of our national security framework and is America’s most important military alliance. The US military has over 75 years of leading and training with our NATO allies. Yet, NATO is another constant target of Trump disparagement and MAGA media spin efforts for the US to abandon. That Trump would want to trash NATO or MAGA idiots would drum up for the US to abandon NATO is insane and it would leave our military much weaker and be an America Alone policy, This “leave NATO” MAGA idiocy comes at the very time our adversaries, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are forming a closer economic and military alliance.

We would become weaker abandoning our most important military alliance, while our adversaries are strengthening theirs. How does that make any sense?

Hegseth tried to spin that George Washington, the commander of our Continental Army, who won the American Revolution set up the Department of War and America won every war until we changed to the Department of Defense, peddling this idea that the DOD name change was going Woke. Washington did want an American military prepared for war, and in the report pictured at the top, General Marshall too invokes Washington’s message. THAT is why he proposed America, finally, fulfill Washington’s recommendations, which had never been acted upon.

Yes, America won previous wars, but we incurred an enormous human cost in lives lost, due to not being prepared to field a highly trained and well-armed force. And Marshall believed that having a strong military prepared for war was our best deterrent to future wars – that is the very predicate of Peace Through Strength.

The book above, I have mentioned on my blog before and it’s one of my prized possessions. I found it in my teens and it’s the first thing I ever read about military strategy. I was hooked. General Marshall is one of my military heroes and to have his national security legacy mangled and twisted, by Trump, a draft-evader, hit me all wrong. Yes, Trump is a draft-evader – that is the truth.

MAGA world, which includes millions of vets and servicemembers, will blindly cheer on this sounding tough name change and they’ve bought into all of Trump’s MAGA spin, but the truth matters. Trump evaded the draft, knows nothing about military service or military strategy, and he twists military history, just like he twists facts, to suit his purpose. He is exactly like Bill and Hillary Clinton in this regard.

Trump twisted some General Pershing history to sell committing war crimes back in 2016, when he floated murdering ISIS family members as his plan to scare ISIS fighters into surrendering. General Pershing was another American military leader I admire. Interestingly, Pershing was so impressed by Captain George C. Marshall, in WWI, that he pulled him to work at G-3 and after the war he selected Marshall to serve as an aide-de-camp for 5 years. When WWII came along Marshall then went on to lead America’s military to winning the war. So, Trump has two big strikes in my book – he trashed Pershing’s legacy and now he trashed Marshall’s legacy.

The Trump administration facade of eliminating the Deep State has Hegseth talking about eliminating top generals, but the truth is Hegseth is totally unqualified to be Secretary of Defense or Secretary or War. He is not the Secretary of War; he’s the Secretary of Spin War. He puts together flashy videos and does beefcake poses, but his “warrior ethos” is hollow and all he’s done is create chaos inside the DOD. Cutting experienced generals and replacing them with Trump cronies or more FOX News celebs or Trump loyalists is not any way to build a stronger US military. I posted this on X:

The final YUGE hypocrisy is that Trump has hyped DOGE, DOGE and more DOGE, yet this big Department of War “rebrand” will cost billions of dollars and do absolutely nothing to build a stronger US military – all it does is sound tough. This is like little boys playing at war, not a serious comprehensive national security reform effort.

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Filed under American Character, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military

October 18, 2024 · 2:25 pm

Unpacking some conspiracy theories: Diabolical grand strategists or amoral opportunists?

I reworked this blog post from yesterday.

We’re now three weeks past Hurricane Helene and this story is off the national news radar almost completely. The rumors flying on social media, still swirl about among the right-wing echo-chamber. With a presidential election just a couple weeks away, most of our national news will be focused on this race. Many people in western NC and eastern TN still face extreme hardship from Helene, but by and large the national news and most of the American people have moved on. I urge everyone, if it’s within your means, to donate to a charity aiding victims of this storm. I’ve lost trust in many big national charities and look for small charity efforts to support – especially local efforts.

I’ve seen several social media people, who were in the area, and their accounts about what happened vary a bit, but there are some common threads. I wrote about this topic of rumors, especially in a crisis, a few years ago, About rumor control. I experienced a crazy rumor environment during Desert Storm, living in Germany. Our husbands deployed to the Gulf and families were left in Germany, in a heightened terrorist threat environment and scared about the war. As wives called each other, rumors frequently grew into wild tales, that unfortunately many wives believed. In the 1992 we returned to the states and then I began following the Clinton spin information war.

Rumors and spin are almost always false stories being spread, although motives differ. In a crisis often people spread rumors out of fear. The right-wing echo-chamber, even the part that is openly religious, dwells in a community where rumors and fear take hold. Often sentiments of feeling that they and their beliefs are under attack and being threatened by the dominant liberal culture are voiced frequently. It’s hard to stay calm in a crisis or when you feel threatened and it’s easy to link all sorts of happenings, especially unexplained ones, together in overly simplistic ways- “they” – the evil people, are responsible for all of these terrible things.

One Helene grand conspiracy theory asserts some nefarious “they” manipulated the storm clouds and directed the path of the storm. This conspiracy theory gets linked to the evil federal government & Blackrock are going to take the land, where major lithium and other valuable minerals are located, so they can mine them. A very similar grand conspiracy theory spread during the wildfire disaster in Maui. Lithium is a vital resource for the green transformation and another mineral resource was mentioned too that is needed for the AI revolution.

My problem with all of these theories is I’ve watched our government and particularly this administration operate for 4 years – they aren’t grand strategists, in fact, they operate like what we saw in the first few days of this disaster. Private citizens showed up with helicopters to rescue people and get supplies to stranded victims, and they spent the weekend after the storm pleading for the government to send air assets. The NG was sent in, but it wasn’t until near the end of the first week when the 82nd Airborne and 101st were deployed.

Aside from the issue of whether or not technology exists that can steer a hurricane for hundreds of miles, I’m just speaking about how this administration operates – from the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle to the fires in Maui a couple years ago – it’s always a crisis blows up, they drag their feet on responding and spend more effort on trying to spin it away in the media and covering up their ineptitude than actually dealing effectively with the crisis at hand. THEN, they try to spin away their failures and criticism, claim they did a great job and point fingers at the evil right-wing, as the cause all the problems. This was the same operational model of the Obama administration and that’s because the Biden administration is filled with the same Obama people. Heck, look back to the Benghazi crisis and it’s the same response model. The Obama administration initially tried to blame an obscure filmmaker for sparking riots in the attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The administration also dragged their feet on launching a rescue effort, then lied and created more narratives to cover up their failures.

The entire Dem/liberal media COVID response effort was more of the same – lies, cover-ups, blaming Trump for all the problems. Throughout that crisis, the Dem experts kept hyping dangers and rolling out one ill-conceived social mitigation effort after another. They lied consistently and even recruited Hollywood to fuel fears and push their social mitigations – one-after-another that were never presented with real evidence that they worked or were actually based on science. It was a long-rolling example of how they just kept making stuff up to fit their agenda to control the American people, justify government waste of trillions of dollars on policies and even vaccines that don’t work, but most of all they consistently blamed evil right-wingers for daring to question or criticize their policies. When BLM launched the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, all of a sudden all those COVID rules no longer applied and it was safe for large protests and even doctors and nurses in large city hospitals poured into the streets to join the crowds.

Even globally, as the elites driving the COVID policies tried to use the pandemic as cover to launch these policies they envisioned as setting the stage for their green revolution (Klaus Schwab wrote a book called “The Great Reset” in the beginning of the pandemic). None of these “grand ideas” were carried out like some ingenious plan – it was all ill-thought out strategies, poorly executed and lots of revising to cover-up missteps. These weren’t grand strategists, but more like out-of-touch kooks.

That’s not to diminish the real harm they caused with their policies, it’s just to say it wasn’t rolled out as some ingenious plan, but as a piecemeal effort where Dr. Fauci or one of the big name policy people would churn out one stupid policy after another, in a rather ad hoc fashion and then ramp up some lame spin effort in the media to sell it, as resistance grew or people were pointing out how stupid the policies were or that they weren’t practical. So, even in this case there were elites with an actual “grand vision,” but they weren’t very good at turning their vision into some coherent plan. What we got was a big media spin show to try to con us into submitting.

This is why I’m very skeptical of some grand conspiracy theory with Hurricane Helene, involving some evil genius “they’ who plotted all of this. I think mother nature can wreck havoc and bizarre events of all sorts that we never envisioned. Growing up in the mountains, well, massive geological upheavals created those very mountains without any human hands involved and strange weather events, climatic events, and even geological upheavals can happen again.

There very likely are big business interests in lithium deposits in Appalachia and sure they might swoop in to try to buy out victims in this crisis, but that’s a far cry from some grand plan that caused all of this so the evil globalists could get their hands on these lithium deposits. It’s more that big vultures watch victims struggle, then swoop in to plunder the wreckage. I saw one video by someone there helping , who asserted that since we left Afghanistan and lost access to those huge mineral reserves, we need new lithium reserves. Well, since I criticized US policy since GWB ordered our invasion of Afghanistan and allowed the Chinese to buy all rights to those mineral reserves – we never had access to Afghanistan’s vast mineral reserves – I remembered we let China buy all the rights to those. There’s some issue of those contracts were up for renegotiation and I don’t remember all the details, but that led to some of the political turmoil that led to the Taliban seizing control of the government in Kabul, but my point is the US never had rights to the mineral reserves in Afghanistan – we let the Chinese buy those… while we put blood and treasure into trying to stand up the Afghan government and provide security for the country all those years. That’s how stupid our foreign policy was.

Of more immediate concern to me is the reports of highly toxic waste in the flood sludge. I don’t know what all industrial and other toxic waste might have washed into those flood waters. but that should be a an urgent health issue to identify and inform people in those areas. Yet, all the Biden administration wants to hype is right-wing misinformation and how that’s hurting FEMA’s response efforts.

Sure, the US needs lithium and other mineral reserves for the green transformation, but what I’m getting at is this conspiracy theory, as presented, about Helene, has a lot of holes. The administration trying to cover-up their response failures seems much more likely. This administration wants this disaster off the front pages, especially this close to a presidential election. Imagine headlines if there really is highly toxic waste present in the floodwaters and mud and the federal government knows about it, but is trying to downplay it (I think this is likely true). I know how much effort has gone into Dems covering up other big scandals and this often fuels more wild right-wing conspiracy theories, that often get in the way of exposing the real Dem cover-ups and corruption.

From what I’ve seen in this sequence of events – the governor of NC & WH were slow to respond in the first days after the disaster. And I believe there’s likely some effort at covering up that slow response and perhaps there’s a serious health hazard the federal government might be downplaying. I’ve seen no evidence of some grand plan of some “they,” including controlling the weather.

I believe the victims of Helene will be forgotten by the federal government and by most Americans (including most of the loud, right-wing online crowd), who quickly move on to the next big story to fight about. The left vs. right spin battles aren’t about helping Americans, they’re about driving narratives and ginning up controversy.

Among the right, there are many popular pundits and social media personalities, whose bread and butter is “connecting dots” of all sorts of truly unconnected events into big conspiracy theories, Many people buy into almost all of them, even though 99.9% of these connected dots theories are bs. What they are is constant money-making by feeding right-wing grievances. Grand conspiracy theories that lack hard evidence linking the pieces together only fuel more anger, more divides and can get in the way of helping the actual victims. The worst effect of these grand conspiracy theories is they work to spread fear and disempower people. Fear weighs you down and gets in the way of unleashing all our human potential – it sucks us of our God-given power of personal agency – to forge ahead, even in the most extreme adversity.

I’m not saying people need to hush, don’t have a right to their own views, or that I know it all about anything. In America we do have the right to believe in and talk about conspiracy theories – and sometimes those do turn out to be true, even though most don’t. I’m all for people expressing their views, even controversial ones. What I’m saying is tread cautiously about buying into grand conspiracy theories, because they usually aren’t true – especially with this inept bunch of nitwits in the Biden administration. They always cover-up their failures to respond promptly or assess a crisis situation accurately. And rather than a grand conspiracy theory, what’s unfolding could much more likely be a chaotic cover-up effort, like in Benghazi, the pandemic, the Afghanistan withdrawal or the wildfires in Maui.

Don’t assign superhuman powers to these corrupt nincompoops, that leave you feeling powerless.

In Helene, the WH has been busily churning out photo-ops about all their grand relief efforts and one press conference after another about their “whole of government” approach to dealing with this disaster, to cover-up for their slow response and failures. However, their biggest narrative about Helene is to rant about right-wing misinformation impeding FEMA’s efforts and endangering FEMA workers… At the same time they’re ramping up alarm about dangerous right-wing misinformation and even a story about NG reporting two trucks of armed militia hunting FEMA workers.

No matter what the crisis, at home or abroad, this administration, just like the Obama administration, can be counted on to be leading from way, way behind, then spending more time trying to do damage control for their failures than actually finding solutions. And in the end, the Dem spin crowd will blame Trump or the right-wing conspiracy theories for causing all of the problems with this disaster response. The evil right-wing will become the obscure filmmaker of Benghazi scapegoat for this crisis.

By the time government investigations into this disaster response happen most of the country will no longer care and none of the lessons learned that could improve disaster response will likely be implemented. That’s the way the federal bureaucracy operates – each partisan side embarks on endless investigations, hurling allegations of nefarious wrongdoing back and forth, while American victims suffer. I’m not wasting a lot of energy or fuming about the government in this disaster.

The big lesson I’m learning is that individual citizens have real power and personal agency to respond quickly, to effect real results fast. In this disaster they demonstrated the ability to network in innovative and creative ways. Individual YouTubers and people on other social media initiated fundraisers, coordinated with local churches and other people on the ground to get assistance rolling in before the government even responded. Many churches and religious groups jumped into action. Teams of private groups and organizations rolled in and organized amongst themselves, even bringing air assets before the government responded. Individual citizens showed the true spirit of America and the best of us. If we call the government, especially in Washington, to come save us, well, we will probably find out no one’s answering.

Americans all over the country and even some people beyond our borders saw people in crisis in NC & TN and wanted to help. That’s the spirit of America that will save our country, not all the partisan fighting, political drama, and definitely not letting fear of the government and corrupt elites take hold.

America is a country dedicated to the empowerment of individuals and individual liberty. Individuals rushed into action and saved lives in this disaster and mobilized. That should be the lesson learned.

The photo above is a small piece I stitched a long time ago. The more chaotic and crazy things become, I’m finding more calm and inner peace by trusting that God is in control. I spent a good part of my adult life avoiding religion, even though I was raised going to church. I used to consider myself pretty much agnostic. In the past 25 years, I came to know that it is only by the grace of God that I am still here and free to speak my mind. I hope more Americans start trusting in each other rather than placing trust in politicians or the government. Individuals united in common causes can work miracles, as we’ve seen with the relief efforts in NC & TN. People just saw a need and pulled together to help. They’ve provided a true beacon of hope, in a world filled with cynicism and distrust.

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Filed under American Character, Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Information War, Politics

October 7, 2024 · 4:56 pm

A couple baking daily bread even in a disaster

This is an amazing story:

I donated to them last night.

There are loads of links for charities to donate and some are well-known ones and loads are just ordinary people. This couple working by candlelight to bake bread for their neighbors in need, just speaks to a special kind of selfless service.

I try to focus on my own family first and then my friends and neighbors. I was very lucky with this storm, but other people here in my community weren’t.

The first thing I did after this storm was take 4 tanks of oxygen, that have been sitting in my garage since my husband died three years ago, and took them to a dear friend, whose husband is on oxygen 24/7. We had talked about these oxygen tanks before and he has some extra tanks, but since this power outage was worse than usual, even here, I wanted to make sure he had them.

That wasn’t anything at all really and the morning after the hurricane I wanted to slap myself for not doing it months ago, when I realized how much wind damage we had and there was a shelter in place order. As the morning went on I realized how many people in my county were without power. It was a fluke, that my section of my street didn’t lose power, but everyone all around us did.

I guess most people around here are watching the news about this next hurricane and all that discussion about paths and spaghetti models makes me more anxious. We aren’t in the direct path and it looks like we might get some rain.

There are a lot of good people in America, I believe.

This couple are among the best of us.

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Filed under American Character, General Interest

October 5, 2024 · 1:08 pm

A different kind of MAGA hurricane relief idea

Back in the 1980s, Tom Clancy popularized a new type of military/techno thriller, where his story began with events happening around the world, a dots on a map plot, where as more dots appeared you’d start to see the “big picture” of how these dots were connected to some much bigger event unfolding.

It feels like we’re living in a Tom Clancy novel, but there’s no Jack Ryan, who will save America.

I didn’t suffer any Hurricane Helene damage, except for losing some shingles on the roof. I called the roofer and he already showed up yesterday morning to replace them. Good thing too, because we got some rain later in the day. My head is full of thoughts on this post-Helene situation and the alarmingly slow Biden response. It’s also filled with a lot of thoughts about how people react to emergency situations. I’ve seen so much online drama on X, that’s disturbed me.

The Dem/liberal media spin effort has now shifted the blame for the Biden slow disaster response to blaming Trump & MAGA misinformation for all the problems. Yes, FEMA is now the victim of Hurricane Helene and we’re back to the Dems “COVID misinformation” witch hunt mentality.

This morning I posted my ideas for a way for Republicans to counter this deceptive Dem/liberal media campaign, but more importantly to get the focus back on the real victims of Hurricane Helene:

That’s my plan to get the focus back on the real victims of Hurricane Helene and go around the Dem/liberal spin war effort.

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Filed under American Character, General Interest, Information War, Politics

September 30, 2024 · 8:02 am

A bit about Hurricane Helene impacts

Hurricane Helene caused extensive damage across FL, GA, SC, NC, TN and even into VA. My area in GA had a good bit of wind damage and widespread power outages. 7,903 customers are still without power in my county and there are several counties in GA almost completely without power. We’re under a boil water advisory, a few stores are open, but not running normally, and more gas stations are now open. We aren’t in bad shape compared to hundreds of thousands of other people impacted by this storm, especially those in western NC and eastern TN.

An odd thing happened over the weekend, when one of my sisters called from PA and she was surprised that GA had such an impact from the storm and that millions of people were without power. She said she saw nothing in the news about it up there. Over the weekend America started getting more news about the devastating flooding in western NC and eastern TN – in Appalachia. My sister wondered if there wasn’t much in the national news about this hurricane, because there are Republican governors in FL and GA and the liberal media didn’t want to give them more attention, since we’re in the midst of a presidential election. There’s also that Appalachia is poor, rural white people, who are easily forgotten. I didn’t see much news about SC storm damage either and as I’m writing this SC still has 733,488 customers without power.

The liberal media focus is very strange in recent years and often natural disasters barely get a mention, while they fixate on hyper-partisan dramas. Being this close to the presidential election, a natural disaster in Appalachia must certainly seem like an untimely inconvenience to liberals trying to run the Kamala fake JOY campaign.

The real heart of America is on display in TN and NC, as volunteers from all over the country are pouring in to try to help, and it’s reassuring this American spirit still beats strong.

I’m trying to remain hopeful that my uneasiness with the way the WH has responded so far is wrong, but here are some warning signs that all is not well with the federal response to this disaster.

First, the FEMA director is Deanne Criswell, an Obama administration official, and she is the “first female director of FEMA.” The feminist push for “first female” in the federal government has always been about breaking glass ceilings any way they can, rather than competency. The feminist movement has always been run by far-leftists, so you get lots of high octane rhetoric and little in the way of principled leadership. Let’s hope this “first female director of FEMA” isn’t as incompetent as the “first female director of USSS,” who bungled Secret Service protection for former President Trump.

President Biden’s responses have been few and he had another odd interaction with the media yesterday, where a reporter asked him if he had any words to the victims of the hurricane. Biden’s response was, “We’ve given everything we have.” He sounded confused and unsure to me – as usual. Then late last night Kamala tweeted that she’s been briefed, but none of this displays command of a crisis, leadership or competency.

And then I saw the new FEMA guidelines under the Biden administration – DEI garbage:

These priorities led to delays in response to the Maui fires a few years ago. The chaos and dysfunction within this White House have gotten worse now and their only concern is winning this election and maintaining this charade of a Biden presidency going, as long as they need it. That’s another topic, but I expect them to try to install Kamala before the January inauguration date, regardless who wins the election. I expect Dems will contest a Trump win, install Kamala and refuse to let Trump become president – one way or another. Sounds crazy, but that’s where I’m at.

Now back to this crisis in Appalachia. It’s hard to know yet, if the FEMA response on the ground is inadequate, because it’s hard to get reliable information and a sense of the overall operation. However, the WH and FEMA have been failing completely at their PR and keeping the public informed. So, here we come to another recent bizarre image, that shows Biden is in even worse shape with cognitive decline than a few months ago, when top Dems pressured him to drop out of the race. Biden held his first full cabinet meeting in almost a year and had Jill run the cabinet meeting. Liberal media downplayed this:

I know Dems and liberal media think they can get away with any spin lie they create, but somehow I don’t think Americans will be satisfied with Jill Biden addressing the nation on an emergency response to a natural disaster:

All my instinctive reactions are twitching that something is very wrong with the federal response to this hurricane, but I keep hoping I’m wrong. Americans will still help each other in a crisis, even if our government fails, so ending on a positive note- here’s where you can donate to help the flood victims in TN and NC:

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Filed under American Character, General Interest, Politics

September 15, 2024 · 3:14 pm

Our country needs some serious soul-searching

Many years ago when I worked at Walmart in the fabrics and crafts department I watched what started as a silly practical joke snowball out of control. One of the two department managers came up with this practical joke to play on an associate in our department, who was obsessed about Winnie-the-pooh stuff. She gathered up the bolts of Winnie-the-pooh fabric and stuck them in a shopping cart before that associate arrived. She let me and the other associates and other department manager in on her joke and the gist was to play along when she told this associate that the Winnie-the-pooh fabric was being discontinued.

It was a harmless joke, except she decided to carry her joke further and went around the store getting other department managers to play along and tell this associate that Walmart was discontinuing all Winnie-the-pooh merchandise. Several of us told her that she was carrying this joke too far, because the associate believed her and was upset about this Winnie-the-pooh “news.” Finally she told the associate it was just a joke.

That associate was so embarrassed she fell for this practical joke that she ran in the restroom. I and another associate went in there to talk to her, where she was sobbing in humiliation. The jokester felt terrible too and she bought this associate some Winnie-the-pooh merchandise and apologized profusely to her. Sometimes people might think something is really funny, but they carry it too far.

I thought about this with Trump hyping the “eating the pets” thing in Springfield, OH. Sure, some dark humor aspect to many of the Trump “they’re eating the pets” memes, had me laughing, BUT…

It stopped being funny when Springfield just had bomb threats in schools and children, both Americans and Haitians, are scared. I don’t care who is at fault for these bomb threats, because I feel it’s a safe bet they are related to this Trump-hyped “eating the pets” drama that Trump tried to exploit for political advantage. There are right-wing activists running around Springfield and scouring the internet for proof Haitians are eating the pets and assuredly, there are sleazy Dem operatives busily at work to set up more racial-themed false flag operations to capitalize on this situation and make Trump look like Hitler, again.

A funny meme has gone too far, but assuredly many extreme partisans don’t realize that yet. Some very influential Trump pundits are on X urging Trump to have a huge rally in Springfield, to stir up more divides in this community.

Setting up Haitians, people from the poorest country in our hemisphere, as sub-human barbarians, creates a permission structure to mistreat them. The Biden administration gave these Haitians legal status, whether you agree with that policy or not, so they are here legally. Trump’s entire MAGA schtick always veered toward dividing people and incitement. He’s also unconcerned about facts or verifying information and even in his pre-politics days, he wallowed in spreading malicious gossip.

Back in his 2016 rallying campaign he did incite people at rallies to punch protestors and a 78 year-old vet got worked up and did punch a protestor. He was arrested and faced charges. This type of Us vs. Them rabble-rousing is Trump’s trademark approach to manipulating people. He displayed this same type of behavior on J-6 too. His latest “they’re eating the pets” is Trump creating this same type of incitement to justify vilification of Haitians in one small city.

Of course, the Biden administration open borders policy created this illegal immigrant/refugee crisis situation in Springfield, OH, where around 20,000 Haitians were brought into this small town, by the Biden administration, and now compose a third of the population.

There’s a massive Open Borders system of Dems (and some Republicans) politicians who welcome cheap, third world labor, companies and a vast structure of NGOs and religious charities that rake in billions of dollars from federal funding for providing migrant services. The people in this system should be the #1 target, not the Haitians in Springfield.

By all the reporting so far, most of Haitians are working in Springfield and the most frequent complaints I’ve seen reported are about their terrible driving and causing accidents, language barriers, and the amount of federal aid and benefits they’ve received. The eating the pets and ducks stuff, was the thing Trump chose to hype.

Sure, considering the poverty level in Haiti and the practice of voodoo being common there, just about anything that moves is considered food and weird animal sacrifice stuff is part of voodoo, so it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these Haitians do eat cats and dogs and practice voodoo. That said, there are over a million immigrants in the US of Haitian descent, who have successfully immigrated here and fit into American society. Haitians can successfully assimilate into American society. While doing more reading on Haiti, I was disheartened reading about impoverished people in Haiti who mix dirt with oil and make mud cookies to feed their children and there’s even a market selling them, as something cheap to fill bellies.

Another thing I learned in the Army is you can put people from all kinds of different backgrounds together, unite them to a common value system and goals, and they can live and work together peacefully and productively. The same thing is true in America – that is the wonderful thing about America.

The real issue is dumping so many people from a completely different culture in American towns, without the consent of the residents and then not having adequate plans and resources to facilitate assimilation into American culture. These residents have a right to be fed-up that more taxpayer money is going to help these Haitians than is going to help the residents of Springfield. The residents are just supposed to silently accept the upheaval the Biden-Harris administration caused or be labeled racists, so yes, their grievances should be heard.

Stepping back from the situation in Springfield and looking at the big picture of this illegal immigration crisis, granting legal status to Haitians in Springfield is not as high a priority as the large numbers of criminals, gangs, drug traffickers, terrorists, likely 5th column elements from hostile countries that have been allowed to flood into America.

These Haitians in Springfield, if they are working and not engaged in crime, are low on the list of top priority for deportation, I think, while rounding up illegals who are criminals, gangs, drug traffickers, terrorists, 5th column elements from hostile countries should be the priority. Trump doesn’t even understand anything about prioritization or forming a comprehensive strategy. He just brags, brags, brags and repeats malicious stuff “someone told me” or “I heard that.”

While in office, Trump did do better on the illegal immigration problem than Biden, but it was not spectacular. And he had no plan for how to get through the political walls Dems kept erecting, because he does not have a clue about the US constitution or how our government actually works. His loyalists have consistently tried to sell that as a benefit (and an excuse when he screws up). but if you are trying to defeat a vast, corrupt system, you better try to understand everything you can about how they operate. The same thing is true in war – you try to study everything you can about your adversary and how they operate.

Trump, when in office, often spewed out things he was going to do that weren’t legal or even within the powers of the presidency. He’s not sitting around studying policy or trying to learn more – he’s a schmoozer, braggart, and always looking for a way to get more media attention for himself.

At this point it will be hard for me to vote for Trump and I’m feeling much like I did in 2016, when I left the top of my ballot blank. How America ended up with two candidates, who are lazy, self-indulgent, and need campaign staff and surrogates as 24/7 babysitters to prevent them from self-imploding boggles my mind. Kamala can’t speak even a few minutes extemporaneously without sinking into a wilting tossed word salad.

Trump can’t be left unattended or he’s posting crazy or self-destructive stuff on social media or inviting a psycho far-right activist to travel around with him. He took Laura Loomer, a 9/11 truther, who claims 9/11 was an inside job, along with him to a 9/11 memorial service a few days ago. That’s his level of judgment.

The babysitter clubs in both campaigns are trying to keep these two pathetic candidates on message and from self-immolating. We, as a country, need to do some serious soul-searching on how we let our country devolve to this sad state, with two complete nincompoops as candidates.

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August 4, 2024 · 5:38 pm

Important American message

I came across this in X and feel it’s an important message to share:

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January 3, 2024 · 7:32 pm

Getting on the road to achieving dreams

Many people start the new year with “resolutions” to start fresh, make big changes, and optimism about following their dreams. While this may sound like being a killjoy, figuring out where you’re really at in life is probably more important than the dreams of where you want to go. Knowing where you’re really at, not just physical location, but also age, physical health, financial health, responsibility load (time constraints) and actual skills you possess right now, will help center your plans for the future on reality – not the big dreams. This isn’t intended to burst your bubble or dissuade you on pursuing dreams, but more a statement of fact to help ground you in how you go about achieving your dreams. 

Wherever we’re at in life, as long as we’re alive we can all work toward tackling new challenges and pursuing dreams, but there’s always that “but” and often we might have to chink away at some of the more unrealistic and impractical dreams and focus on the doable for where we’re really at in life. Often once you start working on the doable, you’ll build a solid foundation of skills and knowledge, that will make achieving those loftier dreams possible. The idiom “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” means building something great takes time and dedication. 

Benjamin Franklin was probably America’s first self-help guru, as he set about developing personal virtue as the path to building civic virtue in our new republic. The centerpiece of building our American republic was a citizenry of people committed to civic virtue. Civic virtue is the willingness of citizens to put a high value on commitment to the community and be willing to make personal sacrifices for the good of the community over their own self-interests. America’s founding fathers believed in the importance of civic virtue for our American experiment in self-governance to thrive.

You can’t become a nuclear scientist or a doctor or even a good cook without practice and building a foundation of skills and knowledge. That learning to practice and develop skills is how to learn self-discipline, which is the key to building good character. Our culture has completely lost sight of the importance of developing virtue, which all comes from learning self-discipline. I wrote about this in a 2017 blog post: When everyone gets a gold star. Once you start developing more skills and knowledge through dedication to practice, the larger accomplishment is you’re learning self-discipline, which will carry you through on more challenging endeavors.

I’m going to use needlework as an example, because years ago I offended some cross-stitchers online for pointing out that a popular online challenge in May some of them promote, they call it Stitch Maynia, focuses on the wrong thing. The idea behind Stitch Maynia is to start a lot of new projects in May. Some participants start a new cross-stitch project every day in May and others pick a set number of projects to start in May, but the goal is about starting a lot of new projects. Upfront I don’t “participate” in online challenges of any sort, but this one bothered me a great deal.

I was watching videos online of people new to cross-stitching preparing for Stitch Maynia and I knew they would likely never complete those projects. While they were enthusiastic about all the amazing projects they’d be doing, I knew from things they said, that some of them were taxing their budget to buy the patterns and supplies for a month’s worth of projects at one time. It’s easy to spend a lot of money on needlework quickly (I speak from experience here). The larger aspect of this Stitch Maynia, is rather than being a wonderful way to inspire new stitchers, I still feel this is a recipe to waste a lot of money and acquire piles of projects that will never get finished. Even more importantly, I saw videos of experienced stitchers talk about their regret and disillusionment about starting so many projects at one time. I’d expect most of the new stitchers quit cross-stitching quickly after participating in this, but plenty of cross-stitchers participate in this challenge. Counted cross-stitch takes a lot of time, even small projects can take 8-12 hours (or longer) of stitching and large projects can take months, even with stitching a few hours a day. 

So, what happens when you start a dozen or more news projects and then the reality hits that you can’t possibly keep up with stitching that many projects? I saw some YT cross-stitchers who do elaborate spreadsheets of rotating through their numerous projects and stitching so many hours on each one a week. Most of us aren’t going to keep to that sort of commitment and the other big reality is for most people, something that started out as a dream we were excited about, becomes a chore, or worse a burden, and then there’s the guilt factor of spending a lot of money on all that stuff that’s just sitting there. All the excitement with “being inspired” in the beginning can wane as the reality that even hobbies can require a lot of hard work and time to achieve the beautiful end result you’re dreaming about.

Trust me, I’ve been there on starting too many projects, but the bigger problem is the focus shouldn’t be on starting lots of projects. To become a better stitcher takes time and developing the basic skills. You’ll make mistakes and have to learn to fix them. Where the focus is on developing basic skills and finishing that project, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment. There’s nothing but looking at defeat if you start dozens of projects and realize you will likely never finish them. That’s all about instant gratification hits, as you pull out something new and exciting each day, then push it aside to start something new the next day.

Shortly after that gold star post in 2017, I wrote another post, Dutiful women and needlework, about how from one generation to the next, America went from the old way of rearing children to learn basic skills with daily chores as the norm, to a much more permissive parenting model by millions of American parents who lived through the Great Depression and WWII. I am a product of parents, who were part of that Greatest Generation and although my mother was big on assigning us chores and teaching us skills, she didn’t want us to struggle as hard as she had growing up. She learned from a very young age to put duty above her personal wants, because that’s how most children were raised back then. My mother had a lot more self-discipline than I do. We’re now a few more generations down the road and everything is about how children feel, not making sure they develop practical skills and knowledge, learn how to work through adversity, but most importantly – learn self-discipline.

Rather than starting all sorts of new projects at one time or chasing some big dream this new year, perhaps most of us would benefit at figuring out where we’re really at in life, then focus on small steps to take every day that lead to building more skills and knowledge. I need to start an exercise routine and make changes to my diet. I’m also working on dealing with my lifelong cluttering habits – especially with paperwork and craft/needlework supplies, however this really stems from my bad habits of hanging on to too much stuff, in general, and my totally delusional belief that someday I’m going to use all this stuff. Reading more is one of my goals too.

Everyone has areas where they could use some work – whether it’s more self-discipline with diet, exercise, getting things done on a timely manner, tackling tasks we don’t enjoy and put off, and the list goes on and on. We can all find things we can improve in our habits and new challenges to tackle that put us on the road to becoming more disciplined. And then we’ll be well on the road to achieving those big dreams.

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December 19, 2023 · 10:34 am

On the hunt for our American spirit

This is going to be a politics blog post of sorts, but here are three pots of cherry tomatoes I stuck on my back porch a few weeks ago. I had neglected the plants in my fall garden, so these have stunted growth and the tomatoes are tiny, but amazingly the plants are still producing. Out of the eight containers of cherry tomatoes, I picked three that looked like they might survive. These are from Burpee Veranda Red Hybrid tomato seeds and I’ve had more success in my backyard with this type of tomato than any other ones I’ve tried. Hopefully, some plant food and regular watering will help them along.

Now to the politics… Looking at where America is at and somehow believing a highly contentious presidential election year and an election, are going to do a single thing to pull Americans together seems delusional to me. I expect the divides to further deepen in the next year, but that doesn’t mean everything is hopeless..

After giving a lot of thought to our American political divides, first I’d like to give my short take on the 2024 presidential election. The 2024 presidential election can’t fix what’s broken in America.

The divides in our country can’t be healed with a presidential election, that half the country won’t accept as legitimate, and that’s where we’re at. However, I still hold out hope for America and after my quick presidential election take, I’ll explain why I’m still hopeful.

If Biden were to win – Trump supporters would be screaming the election was rigged or stolen. Mayhem would ensue.

If Biden dropped out and some other Dem. candidate won – same thing Trump supporters would be screaming the election was rigged or stolen.

If Trump won – Democrats and liberals would take to the streets with a march that would make the 2016 Women’s March and #Resist look like small fries. They would not accept the election as legitimate.

If DeSantis or Haley were to win the GOP nomination – Trump would not accept that gracefully and he’d set about to attack the GOP primary as rigged or stolen and discourage his supporters from showing up to vote. If either of them won, well, the Trump supporters and Democrats and liberals wouldn’t accept that as legitimate, especially DeSantis, since he’s determined to push back against the left’s “woke” agenda. Even though some leftie mouthpieces aren’t as harsh about Haley now, if she were to win, I just harken back to how Dems and the liberal media ranted about GWB and compared him to Hitler. This delegitimizing elections kicked into high gear in America in 2000, not 2016. The Clinton impeachment scandal and that scorched earth spin war effort (Carville called it going scorched earth) set this delegitimizing and stolen election politics into motion.

Add in all the other corruption into the mix – Trump corruption, Biden corruption, media corruption and seeing how the partisan political corruption has seeped into some of our most important institutions, like those tasked with safeguarding our national security and safety, well, I just don’t see much hope of Washington or politicians changing course and trying to work on unifying America.

However, we’re not hopeless. When people talk about other things, besides politics, usually they can still find some common ground. Although, just about anything can become a contentious political issue these days, we all have the power to try to start changing that. I need to work on moving away from the politics stuff too and especially the politics news. I’ve been trying to wean myself off politics news for a while. Then I’ll get caught up in some hot button political topic and do a bunch of googling, trying to figure it out – like the Twitter Files reporting after a House hearing a week or so ago. I wrote some blog posts and now I’m done with that (for now), because nothing I write about that is going to make a bit of difference. Plus, in the bigger scheme of things, what really matters is our families, our friends, our communities.

The partisan spin information war will continue to blow hot – because a lot of media and politicians get rich and powerful by fueling it. The rest of us just get played for suckers. That’s where the hope comes in. I think that since all the pandemic drama, the protesting dramas and all the never-ending political drama, many Americans long for a return to some sort of normalcy, where people aren’t consumed by political drama constantly. Most Americans also don’t want civil disorder or lawlessness. I still believe most of America wants a return to living where there’s a bit more tolerance and definitely stronger communities. These are things that are within the reach of every community to build, if we start making the effort. 

We have the choice to buy into the media-driven and social-media driven drama or we can work at weaning ourselves away from all the hot takes, the endless fearmongering and drama and the steady stream of “Us vs. Them” conspiracy theories that try to drag us down rabbit holes of distrust and division.

My father was a kind and good-natured man. He worked hard, was dedicated to his family, and he was one of those people who never met a stranger. He did watch the news and read the local newspaper every day, but he had no interest whatsoever in politics. He was more interested in local news and what was going on around him, oh, and his garden and yard. He had a gift for getting things to grow. That’s probably a healthier perspective. 

Most of these tempest in a teapot “national conversation” stories aren’t accurate or honest reporting, are skewed to advance a political agenda and have no relevance on anything really. There’s an entire class of political/culture punditry that makes locating videos on social media of the most extreme weirdos and then hyping them as representative of “the other side.” There are a lot of people who get rich off of this – on the left and the right. 

The demise of local newspapers has also pulled us away from paying close attention to our own communities. Cell phones leave many people living almost every waking minute transfixed on the little screen, and completely oblivious to what’s going on around them. Years ago, I quipped that America could be invaded and taken over and a sizable percentage of the country likely wouldn’t notice, unless it interfered in their cell phone service.

What’s happening right around us is way more important than some “national conversation” topic drummed up for clicks or to feed a political agenda. In any type of emergency situation – what’s going on locally is what we’re all going to need to be paying attention to. If we start working on building even a tiny bit of community around us, before there’s a crisis, well, we’ll be way ahead of the game in trying to weather those storms. We also might get better at bridging divides, one smile and small goodwill gesture at a time.

America is blessed with many natural resources, but one of our most under-utilized is our American spirit. Yes, that American spirit is still alive, if we just dig it out from under the pile of fear and hate-driven news/social media “information” overload. Americans are a people with a do-gooder gene in our national DNA. We pitch in to help other people and even countries, we rush to donate money, resources, and offer a helping hand. We can rekindle the American spirit without any government studies, new laws or government spending. We don’t need politicians for this at all – we can all begin to work on it and pass it on with a smile and lending a helping hand, as we can.

Changing our attitude and rekindling our American spirit doesn’t require some big national movement or setting up some organization or group. Any of us can work on this on our own or within our families or with a few friends or in our communities. Important things in life don’t really start with just a change of heart – it requires taking those first steps to really start. You can think about something for the rest of your life, but until you get up off your butt and start doing, nothing’s going to change.

Rather than looking at everything as Us vs. Them, I’m going to work on looking for tiny bits of common ground with people I disagree with on politics and hot button issues. With Christmas days away, this might be a good thing for many people in America to try.

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October 10, 2023 · 11:57 pm

There’s no excuse for the Biden border fiasco

“God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”

Daniel Webster

Today I worked on more pressure canning – some soup and ground beef. I also have chicken in the fridge to use to can chicken and vegetables in a “meal-in-a-jar” recipe, I want to try. I was thinking about the horrific attacks in Israel, but I want to stay focused on projects and things I can do in my own life. The nature of the surprise Hamas attacks, using paragliders to fly over the Israeli border shows that determined people can defeat even very careful security measures. Babies, children, elderly people were murdered in cold blood and some kidnapped. The horror goes beyond words.

Some of my direct ancestors came to America in the mid 1700s and settled in PA. During the French and Indian War, that area of PA was part of the American frontier. That war was fought largely along the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontier – where settlers dealt with the threat of attacks on their homes and small communities continually. The Hamas hostage-taking made me think of how hostage-taking became a deliberate tactic by the Indian tribes in that long ago conflict too. At the end of the war, agreements were signed for the return of all settlers who had been taken hostage. Many of the children had become attached to their Indian tribal family and did not even remember their real family. Brutal tactics are nothing new.

I turned on the news this afternoon on the free app, Haystack News, and a reporter in Jerusalem was being asked about what daily life is like in the past few days. He said his family is staying at home, close to a bomb shelter, except for short trips to the grocery store for milk and bread. There have been news reports online where victims in Israel described rushing to safe rooms and shelters to try to escape Hamas terrorists. There are plenty of scenes from Gaza, where the Israelis are inflicting massive damage on Hamas (and Palestinians), because that’s the nature of war. And, while this all seems like it’s far, far away, America is not immune from terrorist attacks inside the US and all that post 9-11 worst case scenario strategizing came to mind… like sleeper cells and other awful possibilities.

Between the Biden open border threat, not knowing who all has entered our country, there were also thousands upon thousands of unvetted refugees brought here during the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, even though the WH insisted they were all vetted. Back in 2016, when Trump was running for president and made building the border wall a major campaign pledge, the usual estimated number of illegals in America cited was 11 million. Here we are in 2023 and since Biden became president he reversed the Trump border policies, resulting in floods of illegals pouring across the border every single day.

The Biden unvetted refugees and border fiasco creates a very serious national security threat.

A recent news media report cited “10 million illegals in America.” Those 11 million from 2016 are still here and some were still getting in during Trump’s presidency, even though he had imposed stricter border enforcement policies. Biden opened the border in 2021, so how on earth the estimated number of illegals is 10 million, when it was 11 million in 2016, boggles my mind. Our government probably doesn’t even have a clue how many illegal immigrants are here and how many have bad intentions, but never fear the FBI is still hunting down every single person who attended the J-6 rally, even if they didn’t enter the Capitol or break any laws. They probably spend more time on tracking “MAGA Republicans” than illegals with criminal backgrounds. Here’s a NBC report from September that states the same things as the FOX News link at the top of this blog post: Number of people on terrorist watchlist stopped at southern U.S. border has risen. That report stated that so far this year, they had apprehended 160 illegals, who are on the FBI terror watchlist, trying to enter the US. One can only wonder how many have gotten through, who weren’t apprehended.

Awful possibilities are always with us, but that doesn’t mean we need to stop living or get worked up constantly, but we should be aware of potential threats.

We all like scapegoating, because it’s easier to blame someone or some group we don’t like for being “the cause” of complex events unfolding than it is to realize there are a lot of people, countries, leaders, whose actions compete, clash, jostle for power, and even before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia and China (and other countries aligned in their sphere) have been planning and working toward replacing the US (and the West) as the main powerbrokers on the world-stage. Russia and China have actively aided Iran, who in turn funds and facilitates terror operations all over the world – including Hamas.

President Biden came out and made a statement that the US stands with Israel, but based on past experience with Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, it’s a sure thing that the left will start trying to pressure Israel to back down and the crowd at the UN will start blaming Israel. I remember the 1972 Palestinian terrorist attack at the Olympics, where two Israeli athletes were murdered and 9 hostages were taken (and killed), so there’s a long history of Palestinian terror.

I don’t want war and I don’t think any sane person does, but the reality is events are leading in that direction and those events are being driven by various countries and entities. It’s really easy to point to some nebulous “they” and blame “they,” but the world is a big place and there are a whole lot of “theys” with a whole lot of interests. There isn’t some easy off-ramp, especially for America, who has taken on a lot of global responsibilities, that have benefited “we the people” a whole lot. Our standard of living, that we’re all used to, would not have been possible if America had been an isolationist country. I listen to a lot of people rant about how we should demand Ukraine stop the war, which a lot of anti-Ukraine Americans insist should happen, even though Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around and Russia doesn’t want to stop the war or withdraw from Ukraine. Likewise, Israel was attacked and has every right to defend their country and destroy the Hamas terrorist network.

After decades of “endless wars” it’s understandable that many Americans have taken an isolationist stance, but these same people likely would hate a world where America was a has-been world leader and China and Russia dominated the world. The truth is our decades of military adventures, GWOT or “democracy in the ME” or whatever name you affix to our post 9/11 foreign policy, has left a lot of turmoil in the world too, so it’s not just Russia and China trying to cause problems. We left a whole lot of power vacuums in our wake, which will likely keep blowing up in our face. We also left a whole lot of military equipment in Afghanistan and scattered about the ME, that’s going to end up in the hands of people who hate us.

While I’m definitely not like Lindsey Graham, who’s never seen a war he didn’t want to get the US involved in, with Ukraine and Israel, I do support offering intel assistance, arms and other aid. Frankly, both of these situations would be perfectly in line with the Reagan Doctrine, which I think made America stronger. Russia isn’t going to stop at Ukraine, if we abandon Ukraine. China has territorial aspirations and they’re building their military and military assets to achieve them. Iran is going to wage more terror attacks against the West and Israel. Hamas has American hostages and today I saw Biden said 14 Americans have been killed in Israel.

I’m going to circle back to the personal though, because I know how it feels to have a husband deployed to war and one of my sons deployed to Iraq in 2006. I don’t want to see other people’s sons and daughters sent off to war or my grandchildren, but frankly, Biden abandoning Americans in Afghanistan left me feeling we lost a part of our soul as a nation. It would be a terrible thing if America abandoned Israel, with Americans brutally slaughtered and some may be held hostage by Hamas.

And God forbid if something awful like what Israel just suffered happens here, I hope Americans will be able to pull together and meet the challenge. The most unsettling thing I’ve seen in the last few days has been protests, especially on some American college campuses, cheering on Hamas. Any Republican leader who rushed to virtue-signal, by embracing BLM during those protests in 2020, should be doing some serious soul-searching.

BLM was a group founded by people who openly stated they were Marxists… Hamas paraglided across Israel’s border to wage their bloody attack on military and civilians. A whole lots of American college kids and leftists cheering this makes me wonder if they’d lift a finger to defend America. Never mind, I know the answer to this. I watched the mayhem in the 2020 “Summer of Love.”

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