With that trumped up Blasey-Ford case, Dems tried to normalize "guilty until proven innocent" for sexual harassment & sexual abuse cases (#MeToo) – trying to create a truly two-tiered system that would have eroded our core principle of "innocent until proven guilty."
I quote-tweeted Mollie Hemingway and I want to be clear that while I disagree with her about Ukraine and some Trump-related issues, I’ve read her articles and watched her political commentary on TV for years and respect her work. She’s always so composed and well-spoken on TV and I admire good public speakers (probably because I would rather undergo surgery without anesthesia over attempting public speaking). I also agree with her on many other issues.
I’ve written about what happened to me in 1998 on my blog many times before – short story is I posted messages on the Excite politics message boards and things happened that I can’t prove, but I do believe were efforts to scare me and silence me. That’s why I continue to fight to challenge the spin information war.
As the years have gone by, I’ve devoted a lot of time to trying to understand the Dem/liberal media spin information war and then, during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump campaign embraced the corrupt Dem spin information war model too. Millions of people on the right love that Trump “owns the libs” and punches back with as vicious and corrupt attacks as the Dems/liberal media wage. Funny thing about how so many people on the right, who proudly talk about their Christian faith, is they have embraced a vicious “eye for an eye” morality, but there you have it. They even dismiss Trump’s lying and vicious commentary as just trivial “mean tweets.”
Back during the 2018 Kavanaugh confirmation hearings I was very active on Twitter – “trolling” I guess is what people call it, but I’m going to explain why I “troll” on Twitter. I often feel like a lone voice in the wilderness, trying to speak out against this corrupt spin information war that is being waged to tear America apart. It’s worth being labelled a “troll” to speak out on Twitter/X, which was a main spin war battlefield, if I can get even one person, who does have real influence, to see my message or if I disrupt any of the spin info war attacks. Granted on Twitter and now X, anyone can mute or block someone they find annoying, so of course, I realize the odds aren’t in my favor of ever having anyone pay attention to what I’m saying. Plus, when you post too many messages, it can drown your own message, I’ve found out – so I try to rein in my gung-ho attitude and limit my posts on X. I also am the queen of redundancy and am terrible at trying to come up with clever, short quips, which makes for popular tweets or posts. I end up with threads, unfortunately, and realized long ago that my effort doesn’t stand much chance of succeeding, but I felt it was worth trying.
The Dem effort to derail the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings centered on the balance of liberal vs. conservative justices on the United States Supreme Court. There were mobs of protestors on Capitol Hill and headlines like, More than 300 protesters arrested as Kavanaugh demonstrations pack Capitol Hill and Protesters pound the doors of the Supreme Court following Kavanaugh confirmation. Amongst all that drama of insane Dem/liberal media orchestrated smear attacks against Kavanaugh to derail his confirmation, there was also the hysterical #MeToo movement working to incite women & urging them to publicly air all their accusations about personal incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault. It was easy to miss that what Democrats and the activists behind the #MeToo movement were trying to do, besides stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation, was an effort to mainstream the belief that in sexual assault cases the accused should be held to a different legal standard, by insisting victims must be believed and the accused should be presumed guilty. I bet hardly anyone even noticed this Dem effort. This would have flipped one of our foundational principles of innocent until proven guilty on its head. Here’s a short explanation of the presumption of innocence from LawInfo:
“Technically speaking, it’s not. The Constitution does not mention this right by name. Instead, the general principle comes from English common law. It has since been backed up firmly in numerous court rulings, such as Coffin v. United States in 1895.”
“While the phrase “presumption of innocence” is not in the Constitution, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments both touch on “due process.” Due process generally means that the government cannot deprive you of your freedom or property unless they go through the right processes. It is understood that your right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental element of due process. In that sense, it is a constitutional right, even if it is not directly addressed.”
It wasn’t just crazy liberal activists pushing this idea, it was people like Democrat Senators Schumer, Hirono and even Klobuchar (I quote tweeted them challenging that idea – they would say “trolled,” I’m sure).
Of all places to find someone challenging this idea, besides my Twitter spin disruption effort, here’s an article from October 5, 2018 on the World Socialist Web Site, The #MeToo campaign versus the presumption of innocence. Here’s the opening to that article:
“In the US, the Democratic Party and its celebrity and media allies, through the vehicle of its #MeToo campaign, are waging a battle against the presumption of innocence. By seeking to whip up hysterical moods surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct, they are trying to popularize the idea that those accused of sexual assault should be presumed guilty. This campaign is, in its essence, reactionary and should be opposed.”
We live in a crazy world these days, where it’s a world socialist website that’s supporting one of our foundational principles and prominent Democrats trying to abandon it, but there you have it. The important point I wanted to make is that amidst all the drama and loud distractions it’s easy to focus on the loud noises and miss the signals that do matter. Eroding that foundational principle of presumption of innocence would have eroded our justice system in America and created a true two-tiered system.
I’m now going to rehash a bit about how I approach the information overload we all face these days and also explain how I think the Dem/liberal media spin information war works.
I’ve gotten caught up in a lot of the partisan spin noise at times too and I’m working hard to try to focus on things that I think really matter, like American national security, freedom, law and order, and civics rather than getting drawn into the identity politics of the left (all the grievance groups & environmental extremists) or on the right (Trump drama).
There’s a homesteading guy I watch on YouTube, a very nice guy, and he talks about how he gets so much information from another YouTube channel where the guy fills his videos with “data points” and connects them all, which invariably leads to this guy often buying into the craziest right-wing conspiracy theories that fly by. The thing about using that methodology of just putting down every bit of data and then trying to construct some grand theory connecting all the dots, is that probably most of those “data points” aren’t relevant, aren’t verified information, and really aren’t connected in any meaningful way.
It’s time-consuming to verify information and it’s time-consuming to sift through a lot of information, but working to narrow your searches and trying to filter out all that noise (data points everywhere) and then trying to focus on finding real signals helps me analyze information. I’ve never been trained to analyze information, so I could be wrong, but I realized years ago with that Glenn Beck chalkboard schtick, he was just working to incite right-wing rage against the Obama administration and often all those “data points” he put up were just people on the Left he knew would get his audience foaming at the mouth. Beck pushed all my conservative buttons about far-left Obama’s policies and I wanted to believe some of his connect-the-dots schtick, even though rationally I knew what he was doing was a schtick. Just like all his “reverence for the founding fathers” stuff and finding your inner George Washington. I’ve had my “inner George Washington,” since probably the American Bicentennial in 1976 and have read a lot of books about George Washington.
The liberal media does this with their Trump coverage too – years now of creating non-stop “data points” and concocting one conspiracy theory after another. Obama, Biden and Trump likely have been engaged in corrupt activities, just like the Clintons, but this methodology of tracking every Trump “data point” (real and imagined wrong-doing, because sometimes the liberal media attacks on Trump have been bonkers) just seems to be a gimmick to me and not a constructive methodology to analyze information.
During the Kavanaugh hearings, many top Democrats were spinning aggressively trying to con the American people to embrace a change to one of our foundational principles, through a media spin war effort and fomenting mass hysteria about #MeToo. In the blink of an eye America could have surrendered a foundational principle via a media-driven mob effort.
If they had succeeded, I feel certain, their next effort would have been running aggressive “polling spin,” hyping polls that show most Americans agree with that position, because sexual assault is so terrible and women aren’t taken seriously when they report it. For some examples of this polling spin effort, look at how much gay marriage was spun up and then as polling indicated a shift to where they had some polls where over half supported it, the media hyped those polls, and also used these “the majority in polls” to corral anyone who publicly stated they were against it.
Media talking heads often conflate polls as being some important expression of the “will of the people,” when truly they’re really the opinions of a very small number of Americans. It’s a media and political spin tool to con the American people. Polls are used to hype “majority” viewpoints (manufactured through aggressive, media-driven information cascade efforts), but they’re also used by media and politicians to marginalize people, by framing opposing views as “your view is out of the mainstream.” (based on some stupid poll presented as a reliable gauge).
The trans movement spin effort has worked the same way and along with the polling is endless messaging campaigns to condition us to use new words and phrases – like “gender-affirming care.” On the right there’s an “aggressive polling spin” effort being waged currently by the the Trump campaign to convince Republicans that the primary is over and Trump won – despite not a single vote in the GOP primary having been cast yet.
I actually laid out this Dem/liberal media spin information war operational model back in 1998 on the Excite message boards, but don’t have those posts. Here’s what I wrote in 2016 on my blog: The Pieces of the Media Messaging Puzzle:
“It is a form of mass media brainwashing and antithetical to American free speech principles! To succeed this strategy requires MEDIA COLLUSION.
It can NOT work without that media collusion.
Here are the components:
Talking points and buzz word messaging, which are relentlessly repeated by both political operatives and the media.
Mass media domination of the messaging, to control the 24/7 NEWS cycle, which requires mass media collusion.
Relentless repetition of polling data by both the political operatives and media, to facilitate the manufacture of opinion cascades (winning in all the polls)”
The repetitive polling spin manufactures opinion cascades. It’s not really reflective of anything other than that people are very susceptible to conformity bias – most people will adjust their beliefs to fit in with the crowd. When Democrats, the liberal media, Hollywood are all spouting the same thing (trying to dominate and control political messaging in America), it’s very easy to drive their culture war to transform America.
Since 2018, we’ve gone through efforts to silence conservatives and others via social media banning various types of speech labelled “disinformation” or “misinformation” and also all sorts of limiting the reach of online posts on social media. On YouTube, I’ve seen numerous content-creators talk about how some of their videos were demonetized or even pulled for using the wrong words. And some have been banned for speaking out on forbidden topics – like COVID.
In April of this year, the Biden administration set up a Disinformation Governance Board working with the Department of Homeland Security to try to control free speech in America. That board was paused after three weeks. Here’s Wikipedia’s entry:
“The Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) was an advisory board of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced on April 27, 2022. The board’s stated function is to protect national security by disseminating guidance to DHS agencies on combating misinformation, malinformation, and disinformation that threatens the security of the homeland. Specific problem areas mentioned by the DHS include false information propagated by human smugglers encouraging migrants to surge to the Mexico–United States border, as well as Russian-state disinformation on election interference and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[1][2][3]”
“On May 18, the board and its working groups were “paused” pending review, and board head Nina Jankowicz resigned, as a result of public backlash.[3][4][5][6] On August 24, 2022, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas disbanded the board.[7]”
I believe this spin information war is a serious threat to America, which is why I bother with X/Twitter, despite finding most of the blue check mark crowd smug and wrapped up in their own self-importance. I have walked away at times, because I kept wondering if it’s even worth the effort to try to defeat the spin information war. Sadly, I often wonder if most people in America have core principles or any concern about protecting our constitutional republic and our fundamental freedoms.
The social media generation talk about “influencing” in terms of how many followers they have, making money and the political ones seem invested in currying favor with the media and political elites. I don’t want to be friends with any of the media elites or political class. I have no interest in monetizing my blog or trying to attract followers on X and monetizing. I cared when I saw no one challenging this corrupt spin information war in 1998 and I still care today.
Each side likes to blame the other side for the chaos in our politics and for the widening divides, but truly almost all of us who pay attention to politics in some way have played a part, because even if we aren’t actively a part of the media or the political class, if we buy into all the divisiveness or fall into rabid partisanship, we’re part of the problem, not the solution.
This aggressive media-driven spin information war has been a driving force in turning America into rabid, ungovernable factions, since the 1990s And that is a path to America’s collapse, as dangerous as the looming financial catastrophe or some of the other big threats.
Taking time to really think about where you stand on issues, being skeptical about partisan talking heads and narratives is a good first step toward centering your own mind. Another thing that helped me form my views was reading the Constitution and trying to understand the foundational principles and I am rusty on some things, but reading The Federalists Papers and referring back to that, has helped me understand foundational principles better. I’m not an expert though. Often as I read more, I realize that some of my views or understanding of issues was wrong or that I had a shallow understanding. Being open to admitting you were wrong is hard for most people, I think, but it’s important. It’s hard for me, because I have very strong opinions.
If you made it through this long post, I want to say, thank-you. I should have broken this down into several posts and probably edited out at least half of it, I know. And here’s a heads up, there will be post-publishing editing, because the WordPress autosaving went on and I’ll have to copy and paste this into a new window and try to get it published.
This PBS documentary about Elizebeth Smith Friedman (yes, her first name is spelled like that, not Elizabeth) showed up in my YouTube feed, so I decided to watch it. Considering my YouTube feed is mostly cooking, homesteading, prepper and craft/needlework stuff, I have no idea why this video showed up, but I found it fascinating.
Friedman and her husband developed many of the principles of cryptology during WWI. During the prohibition years she was recruited to help with encrypted messages used by organized crime and international smuggling operations. In WWII she was called back into action to help fight the Germans. She and her team were the primary codebreakers for the South American threat, where the Germans were very active – targeting American ships and working to topple the governments in South American countries.
It’s always fascinating where people sometimes end up when they venture off the beaten path. She did a year of teaching school after college and hated it, so was looking for a job. How she got involved in cryptography sounds surreal. An eccentric rich guy, George Fabyan, had set up a facility, Riverbank Laboratories at his estate to study cryptography. One of Fabyan’s pet projects was he believed that the works of Shakespeare were really written by Sir Francis Bacon and contained encrypted messages. Friedman had majored in English literature in college and studied Latin, Greek and German. Fabyan hired her to work with two other researchers and search for encrypted codes in Shakespeare, which they did not find. She met her husband, William F. Friedman, who was working on cryptography at Riverbank too. Wikipedia states:
“Riverbank gathered historical information on secret writing. Military cryptography had been deemphasized after the Civil War to the point that there were only three or four people in the United States who knew anything about the subject. Two of those people were Elizebeth and William Friedman.[1]: 67 When the United States entered World War I, Fabyan established a new Riverbank Department of Ciphers, with the Friedmans in charge, and offered their services to the government,”
That quote contains an important lesson about America – we have too often let down our guard and national defense readiness after wars and crises. After the Civil War, no one cared about intelligence work. We also didn’t really work to have a professional standing army until after WWI. Somewhere there’s got to be a balance between maintaining readiness and being dangerously unprepared. America was woefully unprepared for WWI. We didn’t even have an army capable of deploying to fight on the Western Front. Here’s a bit from an article, World War I: Building the American military, from the US Army website:
“On April 6, the U.S. Army was a constabulary force of 127,151 soldiers. The National Guard had 181,620 members. Both the country and the Army were absolutely unprepared for what was going to happen.”
“The United States had no process in place to build a mass army, supply it, transport it and fight it. Continental European powers had a universal military service program in place, and when war broke out, reservists — already trained — went to their mobilization points and joined their units.”
Elizebeth Smith Friedman was never recognized for her work during both world wars and she had signed an oath to never speak about her wartime work. Years after her death she was inducted to the NSA Hall of Honor, according to Wikipedia. It’s become rather trendy to distrust and rail about the CIA and NSA and while I do support limits on government surveillance activities, I think it’s important to also remember there have been thousands upon thousands of Americans, who have devoted their lives to working quietly doing intelligence and military work that keeps us safe. This was one lady with unique skills who stepped up to the plate whenever her country asked her to help and she never received any awards or accolades; she just did her duty as an American.
We don’t talk enough about the fact that Joe Biden gave a national address, flanked by the military, in which he declared tens of millions of Americans to be a national threat. pic.twitter.com/sbs2cCEiNT
Finally, getting to my sort of book report post on The Journal of David Q. Little, by R. Daniel McMichael, which was published in 1967. I’m sure I’ll reference this novel in future posts and to be honest, I’m only halfway through (it’s 557 pages), because I keep jotting notes on post-it flags and sticking them in the book and also writing down notes on paper. I can see how this novel influenced President Ronald Reagan, because it’s a story set in the late 20th century, after a US president signs onto a World Order of Nations (W.O.N.) agreement with the Soviet Union and other nations of the world to avert nuclear war (nuclear blackmail by the Soviet Union).
This W.O.N. agreement sets up a new international organization with vastly more power than the United Nations and it supersedes the US Constitution, even though the people of the United States are led to believe that this is all about world peace and trying to get along with other countries. There’s also a Treaty of Friendship the US signed onto. In reality with the stroke of a pen, an American president signed away American sovereignty to the Soviet Union and the remaking of America and dismantling of American beliefs in freedom and individualism blaze across the nation, as this novel begins.
The nuclear blackmail incident centered on the Soviet Union secretly building a massive nuclear arsenal – “she had a nuclear superiority of about 20,000 megatons capable of rapid delivery, compared with the U.S.A.’s rapid delivery nuclear capability then of only 2000 megatons – down from a previous high some years earlier of about 53,000 megatons.” This suggested to me some previous unilateral downsizing of the US nuclear arsenal, which over the years I’ve heard many liberals advocate.
The story is written as a journal of some average guy, David Q. Little, that is found in the year 2223. Historians keep gathering bits of old Americana from the time the world devolved into tyranny under this W.O.N. one-world system, akin to how historians in our day search for clues to unravel the fall of Rome.
The author wrote this fictional novel with footnotes to fill in background of Little’s journal, which is a very interesting way of plotting a fictional novel. I love reading footnotes and appendices in non-fiction books, so this is my cup of tea. The explanation of the nuclear blackmail comes with Little’s mention of DD-Day in his journal, with this footnote, “Newspapers used this expression in referring to the December 20 “destruction deadline” set by the USSR; the day on which she, presumably, would have exploded nuclear devices over 24 United States cities.”
Obviously, you can see how Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was likely influenced some by this novel.
A couple days ago I mentioned Stella Morabito’s piece from 2016 about this novel and then I followed with an X-thread of mine, so I want to be clear what I meant. Stephen Miller had commented on the above X-post about President Biden making that bizarre speech on September 1, 2022. Here’s a FOX News headline, Biden shocks viewers with ‘hellish red background’ for polarizing speech. He has continually fumed about Americans, who hold right-wing political beliefs, as being “MAGA Extremists,” and that term “MAGA extremist” could be applied to anyone who doesn’t agree with the left’s progressive views and agenda.
In this dystopian novel, David Q. Little comes to realize that anyone who dares question anything about the new rules being implemented can quickly be labelled an “extremist” and end up being tried in televised, staged public hearings, where the crowd has been coached on rallying a mob atmosphere to denounce the extremists, who are smeared as “Mr. X.” The hearings begin with a prayer about “the fulfillment of mankind’s oldest aspiration – peace” and then a new Pledge of Allegiance. The witnesses testifying in these public hearings are co-workers, friends and even family members. Then, if warranted the guilty are turned over to a world court system for trial.
Many of the communist indoctrination methods described in this novel remind me of how the progressive Left in America plays these same type of forcing new words and phrases on the American public and then tries to engage in public-shaming exercises to force people to comply. The intimidation of threatening people’s jobs for failing to comply seems eerily similar too. If Dems could get hate speech laws severely limiting speech passed in America, I feel certain they would avidly criminalize speech they want silenced. In Little’s journal anyone holding to the old ways, like American patriotism, rambling about the Constitution, questioning the new rules, possessing a firearm (guns were confiscated), and the list goes on and on, becomes a target of being labelled an “extremist.” Everything is rationed, travel is restricted, passes are needed for everything and worst of all the people are being forced to spy on each other and report their neighbors, friends, and even family for being extremists or breaking any of these new rules. So much of this sounds like the Great Reset green dreams and COVID social mitigation excesses.
Amazingly, most people in this novel adopt a go along to get along attitude and keep deluding themselves that they aren’t living under communism and rationalizing that making some adjustments to work for world peace is worth it, considering the alternative of nuclear annihilation. The main character, David Q. Little, a rather conformist type guy, begins to wake up to what’s really going on and begins his private journal as the only place he can express his thoughts and feelings openly. His wife is all-in on the “peace” plans. He is a man consumed by guilt, as he got sucked into testifying against other people and pressured to lead a march.
The footnote on the legislation prohibiting possession of firearms explains that law was enacted some years before the Treaty of Friendship “in order to assure greater public safety.” It also states the treaty sought to re-enforce this law.
President Biden and Dems repeating this “MAGA Extremists” public tarring has struck me as so egregious for any American president to try to engage in creating a mob mentality against a segment of society, especially “extremists,” who are so vaguely defined, that the smear can be adjusted at will – just disagree with the left’s agenda and you might be a MAGA extremist, just like anything imaginable now gets labelled as “racist.” I felt disturbed by this MAGA extremist smearing before I even heard of this novel.
I have several books on Ronald Reagan and in another book, I had read he often mentioned a book he read when he was 11, The Printer of Udell’s, as helping shape his moral sense, but I had never heard of this dystopian novel about the US surrendering to USSR nuclear blackmail, under the guise of signing onto a new international order dedicated to peaceful coexistence.
It’s become very trendy among the American right to rant about Marxists and communism these days, but I suspect most of the people doing that labelling have no understanding of the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution and the decades long Cold War era.
I’ve written about the left-wing Marxist-tinged movements, like BLM, the trans movement and the collectivist one-world governance effort being pushed by an assortment of unelected elites at the WEF, UN, international banking, and ultra-wealthy business leaders, in cooperation with many world leaders under the auspices of the UN’s 2030 Agenda and various green energy transformation initiatives and DEI programs.
America’s most determined adversaries assuredly target both political sides in America with efforts to sow divisions, fuel distrust and latch onto any means possible to manipulate Americans via the media. Minority factions have always been key targets by Marxists to exploit divides and ignite anti-American sentiments. Since Dems and the liberal media invested so much effort with the Clinton Trump-Russian collusion dirty trick effort and labelling just about anything “Russian disinformation,” at this point that term is pretty much meaningless, but that doesn’t mean the Russians, Chinese and other foreign actors aren’t busily fueling divides in America via information war and other penetration efforts. For instance see the Confucius Institutes. The Wahhabi movement has been a global movement too and put effort into spreading Wahhabism to American black universities and prisons. There are other international groups dedicated to spreading Marxist ideology too. And there are also melded ideologies of Islamic extremism and Marxism, like The Nation of Islam. The founders of BLM stated they were inspired by Marxist ideology.
I don’t believe Trump is a Russian agent but, I do believe he reveres strong men and authoritarian leaders, in addition to having no respect for following the rules. In fact, one of Trump’s big selling points in 2016 was about how Trump doesn’t follow the rules. He did encourage rally attendees to punch protestors that showed up in 2015-2016. A 78 year-old man got caught up in that “fight back” atmosphere that Trump escalated, when protestors disrupted the rally and the elderly man sucker-punched a protestor. That elderly man ended up getting arrested and charged – while Trump pretended none of that incitement effort was his fault (the same as what he did on J-6). Trump leaves other people facing their legal bills, and until just recently had offered no financial assistance to J-6 attendees facing charges for their legal costs.
Trump followers go to great pains to cherry-pick Trump’s public cover-his-butt line about urging protestors to go to the Capitol and remain peaceful, but I watched that rally and all of the speakers were using incendiary language to rile up that crowd and urging them to “Stop the Steal.” And while I do believe there was serious law enforcement failure that day and the FBI might have had informants in the crowd, Trump set up that rally to pressure Mike Pence to do something he had no constitutional authority to do.
So, we have this mob formation going on not just on the left with all their hate speech dramas and othering people, but on both sides of the partisan aisle in America now.
Back in the Cold War days there was a term, “useful idiot,” used to describe a person who unwittingly aided Soviet propaganda efforts. I don’t believe Trump is a Russian agent, but he’s one of the most useful idiots for Putin. Trump basked in Putin’s praise, Trump also trashed NATO constantly and talked about wanting to pull the US out of NATO. The US pulling out of NATO would be a huge victory for Putin and President Xi of China. That move would be surrendering America’s position as a world leader, without our adversaries having to exert any military or economic effort. Trump also refers to President Xi, another dictator, as a friend and he loved yucking it up with Kim Jong Un, the leader of one of the most repressive regimes in the world and for very little in return – North Korea didn’t stop any of their weapons procurement or alter their long-range objectives.
What America’s adversaries got was the sight of America’s military leaders having fits over the stupidity of frittering away the prestige of a presidential meeting with no real strategic gains. Trump’s followers believe he’s the greatest dealmaker in the world, but if you don’t even understand the foreign policy stakes for America- in detail – and believe a photo-op with you is winning, then how on earth can you negotiate a deal that’s to America’s advantage? Communist regimes are the most devious and deceptive regimes to work on deals with, because they play endless word games and have turned strategic ambiguity into an art form.
On the left we have a Democratic Party consumed by radical one-world collectivist dreams that reek of stale Marxist ideology. That ideology has literally captured academia in America and many American K-12 public schools and they’re working on turning our American military into a far-left institution too.
Our American political and public institutions really are being hit by both sides and I had hoped the communist threat was over in 1989.
In the author’s notes to this dystopian novel, McMichael, explains how the Soviets were trying to find a way to take down Czechoslovakia, the last remaining democracy, which fell in 1948. The Soviets were trying to sell their international image as working toward world peace and were trying to persuade the Americans to give up their nuclear weapons, so tanks rolling into Prague would have demolished that image. McMichael writes, “A way was found quite in keeping with the enigmas of the Marxist-Leninist world of dialectics. For the Czech problem: just turn everything upside down. Keep the military on the sidelines, stationed in other Bloc satellites but close enough to pose a frightening threat. Then, activate a concerted effort to break the will of the non-communist Czechs against a peaceful solution, this through the arts of propaganda, subversion and intimidation – components of which included: use of popular fronts, protest committees, disinformation, discrediting and decapitating non-communist leadership – all designed to generate loss of national confidence to resist the “inevitability of history and the will of the people.”
McMichael, went on, “The means employed was the continuing use of the strategy of “pressure from above, pressure from below” projects and the application of the “salami” technique to isolate leadership and institutions (such as bankers and banks) from lay public support. Targets involved leadership penetration of parliament, civil service, police, judiciary, as well as the electorate.”
I’ve been pondering the chaos going on in America for the past 20 years and in recent years it’s escalated dramatically, which has left me concerned that now both sides of America are dangerously polarized and unstable. This culture war, largely fueled by a relentless 24/7 spin information war, has played an outsized role in the culture war, I’ve believed since the late 1990s. I write about my thoughts about the spin information war on my blog and I’ve tweeted about it, but I stopped mentioning my ideas to my family members who are interested in foreign policy, because they just dismiss me as if I’m saying something ridiculous. Unless someone in the news says it – they don’t believe it. I have a high school education and when I first started trying to understand this spin information war, no one was talking about these repetitive messaging attacks that the liberal media and Dems launch (now in the right they produce clever videos, like that video of 3.4% fatality that kicked off COVID hysteria)- all the talk was about right-wingers complaining about “media bias.” I don’t care if anyone agrees with me, because I pay for my blog here and as long as I can get blog posts published, which is difficult with that autosaving problem, I mentioned, I’m going to keep writing. I usually end up having to do more background reading to even understand a lot of the issues and terminology I run into, as I wade through books and information online.
I’m going to continue to be a lone voice in the wilderness and I’ll keep reading through stacks of books and online searching trying to dig for information and hopefully find some answers. I highly recommend this dystopian novel, because while it’s very easy to invoke Orwell’s 1984, which I reread last year, I think this novel offers much more relevant food for thought about the culture war in America and the political chaos.
If you’re reading my blog, I sincerely thank you for your time.
For a long time, I have not been a Tucker Carlson fan, even though just about everyone I know, who is right-leaning loves him and believes he’s some sort of noble truth-teller. I have felt he’s mostly a fraud, especially with his embrace of Victor Orban and praising Putin, all by selling this false framing that Orban and Putin are really good Christian leaders fighting evil Western secularism. I started listening to the Tucker Carlson interview of Victor Orban and in the first minute he flipped the narrative.
My impressions of Carlson being disingenuous and a polished liar aren’t going to be popular with hardly any right-wing partisans, who believe he’s some sort of heroic figure trying to take on the lying liberal media. I think he’s as much a fraud as the liberal media liars.
Long ago, there was a big news story in the US, where a young mother claimed her two young sons were kidnapped by a black man, during a carjacking. My mother was talking to me about this case in a phone call and she was so upset about that case. We had both seen the first interview the mother gave to the media and I believed she was lying. I told my mother, I think she’s lying and my mother got very upset with me and asked how I could be that cruel about a mother whose children were kidnapped. Afterwards, when the facts emerged my mother told me that I have always been a good judge of character and I don’t think that’s particularly true. I just watch and listen closely to what people say. Tucker has all sorts of deceptive mannerisms, especially the feigned sincerity and how he carefully sets the stage to get certain responses and lead his guests toward the narrative he wants to sell.
Ep. 20 Hungary shares a border with Ukraine. We traveled to Budapest to speak with the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. pic.twitter.com/LOzpMrQNIz
At the 00.32 point in the very beginning of Carlson’s interview of Orban, Carlson lays the trap for gullible Americans and unfortunately too many conservatives in America have swallowed this lie whole. Carlson says, “If you take a step back, the point of NATO is to provoke war with Russia.” This is a total lie.The point of NATO was to prevent the Soviet Union from gobbling up more of Europe at the end of WWII, after the Soviet Union had seized control of the eastern European countries. So, Carlson set-up the rest of this interview with that false premise and too many Americans will buy into that and everything else he sells.
Carlson has flipped the narrative and while I can’t speak to his motives – I can say this is completely untrue and it’s intended to convince Americans to turn on NATO and their own government’s support of Ukraine, a country, which the US agreed to aid with security – to prevent against Russian aggression (just like Russia launching this full-scale invasion last year). This deliberate false-framing is also a tactic that was used for decades by the Soviet Union in their propaganda efforts in the West. Once someone sets up this type of false-framing – beware, because they’re trying to turn you against your own country. It’s very interesting how Carlson also uses this Orban and Putin are really good Christians leaders premise too, when the history of Putin is one of suppression and oppression of any sort of personal liberty in Russia, vast corruption, and a willingness to use extreme measures to destroy any political opponents.
Hungary does have a strong Catholic heritage, but only 12% of them attend church regularly. Spending 45 years under Soviet domination, where religious suppression and atheism was the state policy definitely left a strong mark on Russia and the former Eastern bloc countries. Religious education and activities were restricted in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries.
Victor Orban is very careful not to criticize Putin, because he’s spent the past decade forging close ties with Putin and Hungary relies on Russia:
“Landlocked Hungary gets 80-85% of its gas from Russia, and Szijjarto said that last year about 80% of crude imports also arrived from Russia.
While countries in western Europe have made serious efforts to wean themselves off Russian gas, Hungary has been receiving 4.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year from Russia under a 15-year deal signed in 2021.”
In this interview, both Carlson and Orban keep doing this WWIII fearmongering constantly and that’s an old Soviet propaganda tactic too, to get Western countries to lose their resolve and to convince people that the communist goal is all about seeking “World Peace”. Unfortunately, most Americans have forgotten all of these Cold War lessons. The Soviet Union set up a front organization at the end of WWII called the World Peace Council, to spread anti-West propaganda:
“The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the stated goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination. Founded from an initiative of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, WPC emerged from the bureau’s worldview that divided humanity into Soviet-led “peace-loving” progressive forces and US-led “warmongering” capitalist countries. Throughout the Cold War, WPC operated as a front organization as it was controlled and largely funded by the Soviet Union, and refrained from criticizing or even defended the Soviet Union’s involvement in numerous conflicts.”
In that quote on the World Peace Council, there’s the framing Carlson has been selling – Russia is peace-loving and it’s NATO and US warmongers, who are the threat to “world peace” – despite the fact Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign country, SIX months after our humiliating Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. In Afghanistan, China immediately moved in to fill the gap and forge close economic and security ties with the Taliban. Here’s a February 6, 2023 Fox news report: China moves in on Afghanistan as relationship with Taliban grows: ‘We welcome Chinese investment’.
Carlson has probably been the single most effective person in American media to cultivate this “oh it’s so dangerous to help Ukraine.” The truth is Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year and yet Carlson consistently portrays Putin as the victim of NATO aggression and the bad Ukrainian government. He often has a retired Army colonel on to spew anti-Ukraine/pro-Russian takes on the situation too.
In this interview Carlson works to get you to doubt NATO and believe it’s provoking war with Russia, despite, again let me repeat the fact that Russia planned and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine – six months after an American retreat in Afghanistan, that both Russia and China are capitalizing on. The other interesting narrative flip going on in anti-Ukraine media messaging lately is an effort to try to peel off American support of Ukraine and get Americans fuming about aid to Ukraine. There’s also an effort to sell this idea that Russia isn’t the threat, China is, and we should be focused on China, not Russia. Then there’s a framing I’ve heard in the past week about how we’re somehow pushing Russia and China closer together by aiding Ukraine. The truth is Russia and China have had close ties since post WWII and Soviet Russia was instrumental in Mao’s communist revolution in China. They were close allies during the Korean War, they were close allies during the Vietnam War too.
All over the world China and Russia are on the move trying to become the world powerbrokers economically and just last week there was this headline from ABC: BRICS announce major expansion with 6 countries joining in 2024. BRICS is an economic group of countries to counter the US-led economies. China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa were the founding countries in BRICS. If the US retreats from aiding Ukraine, that would embolden both Russia and China and weaken America’s position as a world leader. We would be handing Ukraine over to the Russians and abandoning our NATO allies.
Once you allow yourself to buy into Carlson’s false premise, you’re going to keep talking yourself into more and more anti-American, pro-Russia positions and for me, no matter how much I disagree and dislike the policies of the Biden administration – sorry, I’m not going down the road of making excuses for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and then wringing my hands in fear that what the WEST is doing is so dangerous, when it’s what Russia did (A FULL-SCALE INVASION OF A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY) that has brought us to where we are.
President Reagan would be turning over in his grave if he saw what today’s GOP has turned into.
Note: The Trump “peace idea” that Orban supports is America and NATO surrendering to Russian aggression and that isn’t a road to “world peace;” it’s a greenlight to all of America’s adversaries that we no longer have the will to defend our friends or allies. Trump also expressed disdain for NATO and suggested the US pulling out of NATO, which would be a big win for Russia and China.
Last week, I wrote a post, “The Narrative is back” and I linked this X video about a Dem/liberal media spin effort hyping the WHO 3.4% fatality rate for COVID to kick off the pandemic hysteria:
Great video of mainstream media talking heads parroting the lie that COVID had a “3.4%” fatality rate, though early data clearly showed this was dozens of times too high. The lie that started it all.pic.twitter.com/8RE8zKKQrU
This information is tacked at the end of that post last week:
I wanted to add this bit of information about that video with the hype about the 3.4% fatality rate from the WHO. Timelines matter and this was the spun up hysteria to scare people into complying with all sorts of draconian “social mitigation” policies, including shutting down the economy in March 2020.
Here are a few links to 3.4% fatality stories from early March 2020:
So, for over two years people in China were living under these crazy lockdown policies, but in 2022, a deadly apartment fire in Shanghai led to protests and the government finally started easing some of their restrictions:
I’m adding all this information about China for a reason. The policies that America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many European countries adopted were social mitigation polices that China started employing in 2019 – after that WHO alarmist 3.4% fatality rate, which was dramatically wrong, was used as the rationale. There was no evidence that any of these Chinese draconian social mitigation policies worked. The actual fatality rate is well under 1%.
Iran temporarily released prisoners due to COVID and then very quickly there were liberals in America proposing that. NJ did release prisoners.
Why was America adopting COVID policies from authoritarian regimes with terrible human rights records and also regimes where they routinely cover-up human rights abuses?
Even more disturbing in 2022, the Washington Post had a tech reporter still supporting China’s zero Covid policy and believes the US should adopt that policy:
The new “zero” hysteria is Net Zero… and I fear the radical policy prescriptions for Net Zero will be even more deadly and draconian than the zero COVID efforts.
I warned about any of these leftist utopian policies that have “zero” in the name before. The China zero COVID policy set the goal to get as close to zero cases of COVID as possible – by isolating people in their homes and even in one city there was a report of people with COVID being welded into their apartments.
In 2020, we were subjected to constant media-driven fear porn, to scare us into complying with all these rules and being emotionally blackmailed that if we didn’t comply we were going to kill those most at risk – “don’t you care about Grandma?” A lot of people lost their jobs, lost their businesses, were ostracized, endured orchestrated public shaming efforts, loved ones died alone in hospitals and nursing home – allowed no visitors.
The US military imposed a mandatory COVID vaccine policy. Here’s an article from Jan 2023:
“Roughly 99% of all active-duty troops received the vaccine. More than 8,400 service members were discharged from the military for refusing to take it. All of those kicked out of military service received at least a “general discharge under honorable conditions,” with others receiving the higher “honorable discharge.” The difference affects medical and other benefits service members receive after leaving the military.”
All that turmoil and over 8,000 servicemembers kicked out over vaccines that do not work – they don’t prevent the spread of COVID and they don’t prevent contracting COVID, as promised. There is the Faucian assurances that the vaccines are still vital and also claims that you’ll get a milder cased of COVID and that the vaccines are saving lives… Whatever. It’s important to not forget how the COVID “social mitigation efforts played out – massive political and media fear-mongering, hyping a global crisis, then pushing for the most extreme measures possible.
More is on the way – with a COVID wave starting again, with the “climate crisis” push ramping up and also with the political volatility in America. With Net Zero – the goal is to reduce carbon emissions as close to zero as possible. Part of that effort is to track and monitor every person on earth’s carbon footprint, then force radical lifestyle changes. Just pay close attention to the words Dems, leftist experts/activists and the media use. If you hear the same words and phrases being repeated to spread fear – that’s a signal to be very wary of the information they’re selling. If you hear “zero,” you know it’s another nothingburger, crazy plan.
I did watch the GOP debate Wednesday night. So, first I’ll do a quick rundown of how I think the candidates did:
DeSantis – won, but no break-out moments
Vivek – will probably get a bit of a bounce due to some of the GOP now loves sideshow antics
Nikki Haley – performed better than expected
Tim Scott – a few good moments, but faded as the debate went on
Chris Christie – way more subdued than expected
Mike Pence – preaching to a GOP about principles that the Trump GOP replaced with unswerving devotion to Trump.
Asa Hutchison – came across as angry and bitter – a relic from an older GOP.
Doug Burgum – governor of ND, unknown nationally – came across as a really nice guy.
Now for a bunch of rambling opinions, here goes.
There’s probably a good portion of Trump’s hardcore base who consider everyone other than Trump, and whoever his current groupies surrounding him are, as part of the Deep State. A lot of terms get thrown around in MAGA circles that are the same sort of “othering” that people on the right accuse the left of doing to demonize and marginalize them. MAGA Republicans fume about being labeled Deplorables, but they throw out RINOs or neocons or communists labels constantly And no, DeSantis did not call MAGA Republicans “listless vessels,” because in context, he was speaking about Republicans in Congress, who only kiss Trump’s butt rather take action based on principles.
Certain names, like Paul Ryan or Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, get spit out like curses. The people who believe Trump is the only person who can “save” America, won’t be persuaded to even consider any other GOP candidates. I’ve never been that dedicated to a politician and I sure was an admirer of President Ronald Reagan, but I still saw his flaws and I disagreed with him on some issues. Trump loyalists are all-in on Donald J. Trump – no matter what he says, no matter what he does – they will support him – no matter what. And they demand no accountability for mistakes he’s made – like keeping Dr. Fauci in charge of COVID policy up until the day he left office
I recognize my views aren’t what “most other Americans” believe or think, but within our very partisan echo-chambers – Trump supporters believe most of America believes what they do and Democrats believe most of America believes what they do. America is over 334 million people – that’s a whole lot of people to assume that most of them believe the same thing you do. While I am not big on trusting polls, consistently both Trump and Biden have very high negatives across the political spectrum. I’ve always been rather a contrarian and am used to holding opinions that aren’t popular and I’m fine with that.
There are plenty of Republicans, who are sick to death of Trump’s sideshows, sick of all the chaos and long for there to be some principles to the GOP platform, beyond loyalty to Trump. These people aren’t all RINOs – many of them are committed to conservative principles and the Constitution. There’s also a faction of Never Trump, former Republicans, who threw in their lot with Democrats in 2020 and became Biden supporters, but I truly believe most of the ones in the media were bought and paid for, to be Trump-bashers on liberal media.
Some of Trump’s most devoted mouthpieces were Democrats and became Republicans like 5 minutes ago and some, like Trump himself, have closer ties to the Clintons and George Soros than any Republicans in Congress. Trump was golfing buddies with Bill Clinton for years, after Clinton left office, and he was friends with both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Trump made a call to Bill Clinton in 2015, to discuss entering the 2016 race – that’s how close they were. Bill Clinton urged Trump to run (the perfect Bill Clinton triangulation strategy formed – portray Bernie as the far-left kook and Trump as the far-right kook, clearing the middle path for Hillary.) Hillary was such a terrible candidate that even Bill Clinton’s brilliant political strategy didn’t get her past the finish line. I thought the Clintons were total crooks and corrupt to the core – but I also think Bill Clinton is a political genius. Trump squeaked by in 2016 (Hillary won the popular vote with 48% to Trump’s 46%). I live in a world where I look for information and facts – Trump’s 2004 Trump Tower Chicago project was funded by Deutsche Bank and a trio of hedge funds – one which was Soros backed. Here’s a bit from Wikipedia:
“On October 16, 2004, Donald Trump and Hollinger International, the parent company of the Chicago Sun-Times, completed the $73 million sale of the former home of the newspaper a week after it relocated.[95] On October 28, 2004, Trump held a ceremony to begin the demolition of the former Sun-Times Building.[96][97][98] The demolition and construction were financed by a $650 million loan from Deutsche Bank and a trio of hedge funds, one of which George Soros backed.[99]“
For me, DeSantis’ strongest selling point wasn’t in the debate. I watched him during Hurricane Ian and saw principled, servant leadership, day after day, as he led disaster relief efforts in FL. I realized then that if there was a crisis and he said, “Come on, follow me!” I would trust him to try to get us safely through the crisis and I haven’t felt that way about Trump, Biden, any other politicians in a long, long time. Biden is a walking disaster all by himself – just look at his handling of this Maui wildfire disaster. We have the situation in Maui right now, with a president who didn’t want to interrupt his vacations and all he had to say was, “No Comment” for almost a week.
Trump was more invested in fighting the liberal media and Democrats during more than one disaster – especially with the hurricane in Puerto Rico. The Democrat mayor of San Juan was waging a political sideshow against Trump and Trump was battling her and the liberal media – all while the people of Puerto Rico were suffering. And yes, Puerto Rico has big problems with corruption, but the President should rise above all that and put getting help to suffering people first. DeSantis just focused on disaster relief and he ignored the liberal media efforts to bait and attack him.
I disagree with Trump, DeSantis and most other Republicans on Ukraine, because I see the situation not as simplistic as just stop sending money and Ukraine is “not our problem.” Nikki Haley made a case for not abandoning Ukraine, somewhat, and so did Chris Christie.
The thing about believing it’s just as simple as stop sending money to Ukraine is that both Russia and China have global economic and territorial expansionist ambitions. I’ve heard more than one Trump person online talk about the threat of China and BRICS expanding and saying we should be focused on China, not Russia. That’s absurd. Russia and China have been longtime allies and partners. The BRICS founders were China, Russia, India and Brazil. Both China and Russia pose some serious threats to US interests and them working together against our interests is even more of a concern. If we walk away from both our NATO allies and Ukraine, we won’t have any friends left in the world. NATO came about in 1949 and it’s a treaty passed by the Senate. It’s a law the president must honor. We have a security agreement with Ukraine, that came about in the 90s after the USSR collapsed. It’s called the Budapest Memorandum – it’s not a treaty, so a president can just not honor it.
If we abandon Ukraine, China and Russia would be even more emboldened than they’ve been after the Biden administration Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. That debacle likely emboldened Putin to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in the belief the Biden administration and Europeans would not respond.
Too many Americans see things only through a Dem vs. Repub. lens, while the rest of the world sees us as just America. It would be very hard to create some America First vision of American greatness if America abandons it’s closest allies and just gives carte blanche to Russia in Ukraine. All of America’s adversaries would be emboldened if we abandon Ukraine and our European allies. We would be much weaker and no other countries would trust us – and they’d be rushing to cut deals with the strong horses on the world stage – Russia and China. Foreign affairs is a lot more complicated than just do A or B, because all the other countries involved have their own interests and concerns.
Yes, the past 20 years of regime-change and democracy-building in places most Americans don’t care about – like Iraq and Afghanistan or Hillary’s Libya mess, have been failures and I don’t want to do that anymore either, but I also don’t think America becoming an isolationist country will keep us safe. The past 20 years of failed regime-change/forever wars policies were a disaster, but isolationism has a much longer history of failing and coming back to bite America in the butt – usually in that we were unprepared for war and to defend our nation. A lot of people, even Trump, blab about what a great president Reagan was, because Reagan transformed the conservative movement in America and he stood firm challenging the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union collapsed. I formed a lot of my foreign policy views during the Reagan years. Reagan was about peace through strength.
None of the GOP candidates on stage or Trump are where I’m at on foreign policy and Biden and Democrats are a complete foreign policy nightmare (and that’s why so much of this Ukraine effort is failing, I think). I feel the dumbing down of America has reached critical mass, when I listen to so much of the political discourse these days, especially the Vivek silliness or the MAGA crowd talking points like MTG and Kari Lake or Steve Bannon’s blustering “burn it all down” crap.
It’s much easier to get involved in military adventures than it is to get out of them, as we learned in the 1990s and all through the Global War on Terror/regime-change adventures, so just jumping ship on helping Ukraine would likely be very messy, especially if both Russia and China (and other adversaries, like Iran) read that as a green light to move full-speed ahead with their own territorial aspirations, while here in the US, we had an American President who is even weaker than Joe Biden on responding. Biden did send money and weapons to Ukraine (not timely and definitely lacking any coherent strategy – but he did send aid). Trump and some of the other GOP candidates are stating they won’t respond – it’s just “No more money to Ukraine!” and “No more wars!” Problem solved. And some of these same people complaining about aiding Ukraine are also alarmed at the BRICS expansion… wonder how much they think BRICS will expand if the US abandons Ukraine and our NATO allies (who stuck by us in Afghanistan for 20 years). How on earth they believe abandoning our closest allies will Make America Great Again, baffles me.
On domestic policy, I support DeSantis’ efforts to push back on woke policies and support of strong law and order policies. I also heard other candidates express various positions I agree with – except for Vivek, who’s staked out contradictory positions on just about every issue. Plus, I found his antics annoying and his grandiose big talking points total nonsense.
Mike Pence is now a pariah in the MAGA GOP and I think he did the right thing on January 6th to certify the electoral college vote. I don’t think J-6 was an insurrection and I also don’t think it was some Deep State plot, but I do think the events that day were disgraceful. Trump’s demands had no constitutional foundation. I remember the Dems 2000 election efforts – hanging chads in FL. Trump’s J-6 effort topped that in being disgraceful by a long shot. Pence spoke up at the debate about the question on promising to pardon Trump, if Trump were convicted and he was president. Pence got roundly booed for stating what the pardon process is. Here again, I felt like a dinosaur, because treating these constitutional processes with due deference and diligence is vital if we’re going to protect our constitutional republic. It’s about way more than loyalty to Trump, it’s about fidelity to the Constitution. It’s not just liberals who are trying to tear apart the foundation of our republic – it’s many Republicans too, who have bought into all these special rules for Trump.
I want one set of rules for everyone and that means that this Dem lawfare to bury Trump in indictments is thoroughly corrupt and it’s appalling to see this mugshot fiasco to try to humiliate Trump and these other, mostly lawyers. These indictments also will bury them in legal fees. This is the road we’re on ever since the over-the-top raids on the homes of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Last year there was also a federal raid on the home of Trump attorney, Jeffrey Clark. He was marched outside in his boxer shorts and the video was leaked to the media. He was asking if he could put his pants on.
Trump used his mugshot as his first post on X (formerly Twitter), so he’s back to his old tweeting stomping grounds. An interesting thing about X is that since Elon Musk bought it, it seems like a lot of liberal journalists and Dem politicians left or aren’t active there anymore. I am sure they have their own online meeting place now, but the Twitter Trump owned is no longer the same.
The first Republican debate didn’t change anything in the GOP field as far as Trump maintaining a big lead. The GOP field should start to thin out quickly. And, no, contrary to Kari Lake posting over and over on X, that the other candidates must drop out and support Trump and declaring the primary’s over, it’s still early days. Lake who is still grifting for money to continue her “stolen election” sideshow in AZ, thinks the primary’s over, because of polls that are getting hyped. Not a single Republican vote has been cast in the primary yet. It’s a bit hard to swallow that this Obama/Kerry supporter is now ordering Republican candidates to drop out of the race – no need for Republicans to get to vote – just shut up and, unite behind Trump, while she’s still contesting the 2022 election she lost in AZ.
With the Maui wildfires, I’ve seen reports that the only road leading out of Lahaina was barricaded and I have no idea when or what the reasoning was for that, but here’s a post I saw on X today and this lady’s sentiment, ““Only those who disobeyed survived” is going to be the slogan of our times.” struck a chord with me.
“LAHAINA, Hawaii — The Hawaii power utility believed to have started the deadly Lahaina fire removed damaged power poles and other equipment from a key fire scene, potentially affecting evidence that is part of an official investigation into how the blaze ignited.”
“Hawaiian Electric — which acted quickly to restore power on the island after Aug. 8 — hauled away fallen poles, power lines, transformers, conductors and other equipment from near a Lahaina substation starting around Aug. 12, documents show, before investigators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) arrived on scene. ATF usually responds to bombings and shootings. This is only the agency’s third wildland fire investigation, a spokesperson said. Usually, it’s the U.S. Forest Service’s role, but since the Maui fires were not on any national forest lands, ATF is the primary federal investigative force.”
So, there’s no definitive finding on Hawaii Electric’s actions and lawsuits are already flying.
“Bungling U.S. government bureaucrats dispatched to the Maui disaster zone are shacked up in $1,000-a-night luxury hotels on the Hawaiian island, DailyMail.com can reveal.”
Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have been slammed by locals over their slow response to the devastating wildfires that have claimed at least 114 lives and left thousands of people homeless after their houses were scorched to the ground.
But that has not stopped the under-fire agency from splashing taxpayer cash to put up more than 1,000 of its personnel at four bank-breaking resorts in Wailea after the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. for more than a century that caused more than $5 billion in damage.”
It’s odd that the death toll has been stuck at 115 for a couple days now, with reports of around 1,000 people (many of them kids) still missing. This story is going to get much worse, I fear, and Democrats and the liberal media sure seem to be trying to find a way to slow-roll details and downplay the tragedy.
Yes, I think, “Only those who disobeyed survived,” is a thought to ponder as the gargantuan administrative state, those trillions of dollars in COVID spending and the Dems “Inflation Reduction Act,” becomes turbo-charged as the politically-connected, big business and fraudsters rush to cash in on more government “free money” to chase the green dreams. Dems, now a year later, are bragging that their Inflation Reduction Act was really the biggest green spending bill ever passed – not about inflation reduction. Go figure… Assuredly, there will be more and more fraud, waste and downright deadly outcomes with so many incompetent nincompoops joining the ranks of the green dream federal bureaucracy. What matters most is their allegiance to the gods of social justice and regurgitating the liberal narrative, not competency.
The first GOP debate was last night and Trump’s big interview with Tucker Carlson, but rather than that, I was thinking about an essay I wrote on my blog back in 2013, The Quest For American Leadership In The 21st Century: A Few Home Truths and I recommended three steps to follow with finding leaders in America. My steps still might be worth thinking about:
President Abraham Lincoln stated “Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in the courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.” Few would argue that our leaders should be men of good character. Defining what constitutes good character, a task that should be simple, will produce a confusing array of answers, if you do a quick survey of your friends. Going back to my father’s, “if you give your word; you keep it” belief, demanding our national leaders possess basic honesty, propels us further in this quest than dissecting political platforms, plank by plank, ever will.
The challenges facing America, from the war against radical Jihadists to our escalating economic crisis, demand leaders willing to build renewed faith in our governmental institutions; to find solutions and protect our nation or we face the very real possibility of massive civil unrest and collapse. Machiavelli, endlessly quoted for his “the ends justify the means” line, offered advice for republics too. He stated, “A republic may, likewise, be brought back to its original form, without recourse to ordinances for enforcing justice, by the mere virtues of a single citizen, by reason that these virtues are of such influence and authority that good men love to imitate them, and bad men are ashamed to depart from them.” We need to demand that type of leader in this century.
The quest for our 21st century American leaders starts with you. Step One: Think for yourself; move away from being swayed by political partisans hurling talking points at you. Take the time to study issues, candidates and find your own moral compass. President George Washington, my favorite founding father, wrote a list titled, Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior In Company and Conversation”, 110 rules covering everything from admonitions not to clean your teeth with the tablecloth to don’t run in the streets. He ended with #110: “Labour to keep alive in your breast that Little Spark of Celestial Fire Called Conscience.” That should be your guide.
Step Two: Be the leader of your own destiny. Don’t be a follower of populist movements. left or right, unless you have completed Step One. Before becoming a political lemming, allowing professional media figures to press your political hot buttons, calmly discuss issues with family and friends. In our 24 hour news cycle, internet-connected world, misinformation, disinformation and outright lies can circle the globe in minutes. Don’t let these control your political reasoning, refer back to Step One.
Step Three: Follow the rules. President Lincoln’s call for reverence for the laws provides the keystone to rebuilding a stronger America. When political aspirants lack personal integrity, obfuscate on public issues, or find excuses for not following the rules; move on and continue your quest for worthy leaders. To honor those who sacrificed all, to secure our blessings of liberty, at the very least we all have a duty to become informed citizens, who demand men and women of character to lead us in this century.
Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen says there are now 850 people believed missing after the FBI and officials combed through a list that contained over 2,000 names. “Through the tireless work of the FBI and the Maui Police Department, over 1285 individuals have been located safe.”…
The Democrats and even liberal media are slow-rolling the reporting on the death toll in Maui. I think we’re sure to get excuses, a lot of blaming other things, and efforts to drum up climate change hysteria, rather than focus on the gross human error and incompetence aspects of this disaster.
Here’s the Democrat governor of Hawaii;
Climate change made them screw up is a novel excuse for gross negligence and incompetence.
This climate change excuse is to try to convince people all the mistakes made were unavoidable. The Biden White House has defaulted to this same position on the botched Afghanistan withdrawal two years ago. No one was held accountable for catastrophic errors and it was all just brushed aside, as no one could have known.
The ISIS suicide bomber who conducted the Abbey Gate attack was captured by the CIA in 2019 and was imprisoned at a facility adjacent to Bagram Airfield. He was freed when the Taliban overran Bagram after the administration abandoned it. https://t.co/h1NF4Y08IShttps://t.co/HAofm7R8qZ
July 1, 2021 – The US abandoned Bagram Airfield. Here’s an AP report from July 6, 2021, “The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.”
August 15, 2021 – So, the suicide bomber who killed US troops on August 25, 2021 outside Abbey Gate was freed when the Taliban overran Bagram Airfield on August 15, 2021. Here’s an Axios headline from August 15th: Thousands of prisoners freed by Taliban could pose threat to U.S.
August 25, 2021 – A suicide bomber, who was released from Bagram Airfield, when the US just slipped away at night without even telling Afghan officials and then the Taliban overran Bagram Airfield, killed 13 American servicemembers outside Kabul Airport at Abbey Gate.
The Biden administration relied on the Taliban for security outside the Kabul airport before the suicide bomber attack. Then, even after that attack, where 13 American servicemembers were killed, the Biden administration was still trusting the Taliban for security. A few days ago, John Kirby, a Biden White House spokesperson said, “There wasn’t much that could’ve been done to prevent that attack from coming, as tragic as it was.”
The US military has over a century of reviewing military operations and relies on a Lessons Learned approach, to carefully review military operations and figure out what went right, what went wrong, who and what were responsible for problems, hold people accountable, then apply those lessons learned to enhance performance and prevent those mistakes being made again. If no one even has the integrity to honestly assess failures and hold anyone accountable, then assuredly those same mistakes will be made again.
With this disaster in Maui, I expect, Democrats and the liberal media are going to do the same spin game and lie, lie, lie, make excuses, attack anyone who questions their lies and insist the people asking questions are the problem. And instead of the Kirby shrug, “there wasn’t much that could’ve been done, ” with this wildfire disaster, Democrats and the liberal media are going to blame – climate change…
All the bizarre, Biden, “No Comment!” and Obama waiting almost a week to make a statement, and the efforts to keep the media away from Maui, I’m beginning to think were because Hawaii officials and Biden FEMA officials already knew the death toll was shockingly high and are trying to figure out ways to spin it away.
Climate change will be the explanation, not failing to set off alarms to warn people or delaying in getting water there or maintaining the power lines – Climate change….
Note: I added a bit to this post after initially posting it, to try to clarify that Afghanistan timeline more – we abandoned Bagram without even notifying the Afghan military, then the Taliban overran Bagram and released all the prisoners, then one of those prisoners launched a suicide bomber attack outside Kabul Airport, which killed 13 Americans (and over a 100 Afghans)… all while the Biden administration was trusting the Taliban to keep its word and with providing security around the Kabul airport.
This is very much like Dems with their “defund the police” efforts and we’re not supposed to notice all these criminals that they release, who are committing serious crimes. We’re supposed to pretend their “Defund the Police” insanity has nothing to do with the crime explosion happening in areas that embraced these very policies.
There was a news article I saw yesterday about a Chicago alderwoman backing an idea proposed by some group, begging, gangbangers to refrain from shooting from 9 am to 9 pm:
“A Chicago politician and community group are so desperate to stem gun violence in the Windy City they’ve come up with a plan that sounds like it was inspired by “The Purge” — begging people to simply not fire their weapons for 12 hours a day,
Alderwoman Maria Hadden shared in a recent newsletter a proposal by the group Native Sons, which urges Chicagoans to hold off on shooting their firearms from the hours of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. when people are more at risk of getting caught in the middle of the crossfire.”
People in Chicago keep supporting the far-left policies on crime and the “Defund the Police” movement and they keep electing incompetent officials. You’ll hear excuses and more excuses, but never any willingness to admit that their policies failed or demand for any accountability whatsoever.
Maui is going to be the same Democrat response – zero accountability.
Next up is a blog post on FL governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, who I consider former President Trump’s main competitor out of the GOP field of candidates. This post will be a challenge for me to try to be a bit objective, because I really like DeSantis and hope he ends up being the GOP presidential nominee.
DeSantis is from a working class background. He’s 44 years old, attended Yale University, graduated from Harvard Law School, then joined the US Navy as a JAG officer. He served in Iraq. He was elected as a FL Congressman and served 5 years in the US House of Representatives. Then he was elected as the governor of FL and also reelected as governor of FL. Married and has three young children. That’s the short bio.
While in Congress DeSantis was one of founding members of the Freedom Caucus, a group of very conservative Republicans, who formed their group to promote a very conservative agenda. He’s considered one of the most conservative Republicans and he was a strong supporter of President Trump.
While I knew who DeSantis was when he was in Congress and as governor of FL, when he really started making national news was during 2020, during the pandemic. He began to defy the edicts coming for President Trump’s Warp Speed guru, Dr. Fauci. President Trump criticized DeSantis for defying Dr. Fauci and doing away with the lockdowns in FL. He also pushed for protecting people’s jobs if they decided against getting the COVID vaccine. He quickly become public enemy #1 of the Democrats and liberal media for challenging the pandemic social mitigation rules. He also has been in the midst of the battle against Critical Race Theory being taught in FL schools, pushing back against a lot of the trans movement and woke craziness.
I was sort of ambivalent about him though, because sometimes it seemed to me he was too much like Trump with the “owning the libs” press events and pushing back against liberal news media. Although, I agreed with most of his policy initiatives, the Republicans spending too much time in front of cameras, talking big and delivering little, has become all too common.
Trump’s sideshow politics, that Trump the reality star, “You’re fired!” image, is what many of his fans love the most and DeSantis seemed to be a Trump, Jr., with “owning the libs” with his clashes with the media as governor and I discount most of the political theater as just politicians suckering us. It was during and in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in the fall of 2022, that I really changed my opinion of DeSantis. I live in GA, so I usually watch hurricane and storm coverage news from the Southeast a good bit. Day after day he held press briefings and was all over the state. What struck me was he knew all the details of what was going on all over the state, what relief efforts were in the works, and he was surrounded by state and local officials, both Democrats and Republicans, with whom he seemed to have a very good working relationship. It was his attention to detail and being a hands on leader that caught my attention and changed my mind. He was a calm, competent, totally-engaged leader in a crisis.
When he entered the 2024 presidential race, he decided to go with announcing his campaign online on X (Twitter), rather than a conventional speech. It was filled with technical glitches and since only a small percentage of the country is even on X, I thought that was a bad idea. Then the Trump team smear attacks and the Dem smear attacks broke with a a fury and that’s a 24/7 thing on X and in the media. Trump’s team has stuck to vicious personal attacks, even attacking Casey DeSantis’ looks. There have been memes of her making her look like Eddie Munster or all sorts of stupid memes of DeSantis mocking his looks. Here’s July 2023 Newsweek story on the attacks on Casey DeSantis: Is the Viral Casey DeSantis’ Eyebrows Photo Real? One day the Trump/Dem smear crowds were attacking DeSantis and his wife for campaigning in Iowa and being terrible parents and accusing them of abandoning their three young children. They have their kids with them campaigning and when the kids are with them at events, they get attacked too.
There hasn’t been a single substantive attack on DeSantis on policy from the Trump campaign that has merit or is truthful, it’s all about being disloyal to Trump, vicious memes, and lies. I was outraged at so much of the liberal news media pile-on attacks, especially against Melania – she didn’t deserve any of that , so the attacks on Casey DeSantis really disgusted me and that they have been coming from the Trump campaign has been really disappointing – but not surprising.
There have been many attacks about DeSantis being on the spectrum, or autistic. DeSantis does appear a bit socially awkward at times and nerdy, but he’s sure done a lot of things in his 44 years – Yale, Harvard, Navy officer, Congressman, governor and he was a star athlete in college playing baseball, so despite being a bit nerdy, that sure hasn’t held him back. Rather than trying to be like Trump or stage-managed so much, he’d be better off just being himself.
There was an orchestrated liberal media attack on Melania’s Rose Garden renovation that made me realize that the liberal news media is so corrupt that they will run any Dem smear effort, without a moment’s hesitation, no matter how dishonest. I challenged the Rose Garden spin attacks against Melania on Twitter, because all the information on the Rose Garden renovation plans had been reported by Melania and the WH prior to her unveiling of the completed project. CNN and other news orgs, ran those stories, yet, they were trashing how the renovation turned out and spreading crazy lies about the project.
A “renowned historian,” who sits on MSNBC and constantly blabs about Trump being “an authoritarian,” was blabbing that Melania’s Rose Garden design was “authoritarian,” even though she put together a team of experts, who researched the Rose Garden history and came up with the plans. All of the flower choices were the subject of media pile-on attacks, here’s a Reuters fact check on one: Fact check: Melania Trump’s Rose Garden redesign did not remove rose bushes from all first ladies since 1913. I have been following this Dem spin info war for decades now and it really is a Dem/liberal media effort to control public opinion. One of the craziest spin attacks during the Rose Garden media meltdown was a charge that Melania removed all the colorful flowers and only used white roses, so it was a racist design. I actually used quotes from liberal news media – their own reporting on the Rose Garden renovation project from before this crazy spin attack to challenge these tweets. The white roses were JFK tea roses…
While this political meme stuff sounds silly – it’s meant to destroy people’s reputations and marginalize them. Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, provides the left’s playbook and he advocated ridicule as man’s most potent weapon and he also was all about “pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. It’s easy to dismiss crazy spin attacks as just trivial online stuff, but besides how destructive they are to civil discourse, they fuel partisan, class, and often racial divides 24/7. And they aren’t just online – the spin attacks get amplfied quickly online, then the other news media & other media venues take them and amplify them across all other media – so they permeate the culture. You wonder why America is so divided, well, this spin information war has been blowing across all American media now since the 1990s -dedicated to amplifying these divides – especially racial divides since the Obama years.
Even after Melania left the WH there was another effort to repeat all those Dem/liberal Rose Garden attacks again and that’s what’s important to remember – the Left will never stop repeating their spin lies – they will keep relaunching them, no matter how many times they have been debunked. Here’s a report from April 2021 in The Guardian:Restorationists urge Jill Biden to erase Melania Trump’s Rose Garden makeover. That’s why I keep warning about this spin information war – they will keep repeating their spin lies, over and over, until their lies drown out the truth.
DeSantis has not had an impressive campaign in the roll-out and opening weeks. He’s reshuffled his campaign, which was badly needed, and seems to be finding more effective ways to get his message across. His overly aggressive online team was overshadowing him and his message and they have toned it down a bit. They were trying to be just as in-your-face as the sleazy Trump smear team and it wasn’t working. Hardcore Trump supporters don’t have any standard they hold Trump to, but they get outraged if Trump is attacked.
Can DeSantis win the GOP nomination, sure it’s possible, because that Trump and Dem non-stop hyping polling drama is really just part of their effort to promote Trump in the primary. Dems want Trump as the GOP nominee, because they believe he’s easier to beat than DeSantis. They’ve used this strategy before – in the 2016 GOP primary liberal media gave billions of dollars worth of free media to Trump, to disrupt the GOP primary and in the belief Trump was the GOP candidate who was easiest to beat. Trump barely defeated Hillary. In 2022, Dems were pouring money & effort into promoting the worst, far-right, kooky GOP candidates in primaries again. Here’s a November 2022 USA Today report: Democrats spent millions boosting ultra right candidates in midterms. The strategy worked. For any who doubt that some Dem operatives are working with the Trump campaign to attack DeSantis, there was a Politico report yesterday: The Hard-Tweeting Defense Lawyer GOP Candidates Have Learned to Fear. Here’s a tidbit:
““I’m probably the top anti-DeSantis person on Twitter. So if [rivals] have something anti-DeSantis that they want to get into the mainstream, they’ll send it to me,” Filipkowski said, without disclosing the name of anyone on the Trump campaign he’s worked with. The Trump campaign declined to comment.
Loomer said they speak occasionally. “He knows I’m a Trump loyalist, and I know he doesn’t like Trump, and despite our differences, we have found common ground on making sure Ron DeSantis is never elected president of the United States, ever.””
The Dems, liberal media and Trump team are all making DeSantis their #1 target, but his campaign has made a lot of unforced errors too. Here’s a post from X about DeSantis being the Trump team’s main target:
A field that includes Trump’s former VP, Trump’s UN Secretary, a Senator Trump endorsed in 2022, and a good friend of Trump’s son pretending to run against him, but somehow only the Governor Trump attacked 3 days before the 2022 FL Gubernatorial election is disloyal. Makes sense. https://t.co/K4lQRe5rw4
Despite my dislike of Trump’s character, I can still see he’s been the target of the most relentless Dem/liberal media smear effort I’ve seen thus far and I thought the Kavanaugh smear campaign was as low as they could get. Clearly we haven’t reached the bottom yet. Unfortunately, Trump is willing to play by the Alinsky rules too and not only against the liberal media and Democrats – he’s out to destroy Ron DeSantis.
Despite all the media and Trump team hype that the 2024 GOP primary is over and Trump won, not a single vote has been cast yet. Trump definitely is the clear leader and most likely GOP candidate. Then again in the 2016 GOP primary, Jeb Bush was the most likely GOP candidate.
I still hope Ron DeSantis is the 2024 GOP candidate.
Fair warning, this post is going to be about former president, Donald J. Trump and that will be followed by a post on FL governor and 2024 presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, who I think is the only other GOP candidate, who might defeat Trump in the GOP primary. Trump remains the likely 2024 nominee, although the primary process often produces some surprises. Trump’s 2016 primary win was one such surprise.
I do not like Trump’s brand of politics and believe he lacks character, so I admittedly have a hard time being objective about him. I wrote loads of blog post from 2015/2016 about my NeverTrump/NeverHillary takes on events going on. I didn’t vote for anyone for President in 2016. I left the top of my ballot empty. In 2020, well, I was so alarmed at the bizarre Biden in the basement campaign, the Biden COVID Preacher fearmongering and his trying to sell more COVID restrictions that I did what I said I would never do – I held my nose and voted for Trump.
It took a long time for me to try to make sense out of what so many people see in Trump and his rally sideshow way of politics. I think a lot of the appeal was he was willing to thumb his nose at the political establishment and defy all the rules. Even with the petty name-calling, for many people he was attacking liberals and Republicans they didn’t like and giving voice to how they felt. He didn’t use pretentious language and he can be very funny and entertaining sometimes. He also particularly excelled at totally demolishing the orchestrated liberal media spin echo-chamber, often with one tweet. Most of all he drove the smug liberal media journalists so berserk that they devoted almost all their coverage to trying to destroy him for his entire presidency and even up to today.
The liberal news media has lost a great deal of credibility and I credit Trump’s “owning the libs” spin war for exposing them as little more than Democrat operatives, not the objective journalists they profess to be.
Trump had some big policy wins as president, but unfortunately most of those were of the kind that were completely overturned on Day 1 by Biden. However, along with those wins came constant battling, not only the liberal media, but Trump’s endless attacks against other Republicans and a constant churn of staff in his White House, that often drowned out the good things he was doing. And in 2020, he put Dr. Fauci in charge of the pandemic and went along with all the draconian social mitigation policies Fauci recommended – that’s the truth. He never fired Fauci and he did attack Governor DeSantis and Governor Kemp for defying Fauci and ending the lockdowns in their states. I live in GA and I was very grateful that my governor defied the political and media pressure, and even President Trump, and opened up GA. Ron DeSantis opened up Florida early too and defied the Fauci rules, which were all carried out with President Trump’s full support.
Despite Trump’s claim that he hires only the best people, I’d like to see anyone defend some of his hires like hiring Omarosa, a reality star or Anthony Scaramucci, plus he hired family members, which Americans traditionally frowned upon and Congress passed a law in 1967 to prohibit presidents from appointing family members to cabinet positions and some other positions. In the 1990s Republicans were up in arms about President Clinton appointing Hillary to chair a national health care reform task force.
Trump’s biggest staffing issue was that while many of his supporters eat up Trump the reality star, saying, “You’re Fired!” in his White House that created a revolving door of staff and chaos. There was constant turbulence and in-fighting, as staffers tried to score brownie points, backstab and never coalesced as a strong team. The number of former Trump staff, who are sitting on liberal cable news constantly and trashing him is astonishing. His long-time personal lawyer and friend, Michael Cohen, now is a frequent liberal media fixture attacking Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to several 2016 election-related criminal charges. Why does Trump choose so many people who lack character and turn on him? Is he a victim or does he not choose the best people? Despite all the hype about Trump being a great builder and deal-maker, he has demonstrated no ability to build a strong team or to keep quality staff.
This staff issue relates to where Trump is presently, despite his campaign and media blaring every day that he is winning in all the polls. He is also being hit by a tsunami of indictments, by probably the most corrupt Dem lawfare attack ever. Sleazy Dem lawyers engage in weaponizing the law to win political battles. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, faced a Dem lawfare attack too, with one of the most vicious Dem smear campaigns I’d ever seen. However, without a doubt Trump has faced the most relentless Dem smear campaign ever – from 2016 to the present. I’m not following all the indictment details, because I’m not a lawyer and at the rate Dems are throwing charges at Trump, I can’t even keep up with it – it’s insane and so corrupt that it’s breathtaking. I expect more indictments, if these sleazy Dem lawyers can pull it off. That said, Trump continually hands ammo to his enemies, which they turn around and use against him. He never shuts up and he’s still fighting like it’s 2016 – rage posting messages on Truth Social in angry caps… but it’s 2023.
He won the media spin war, but it’s now time to fight the Dem lawfare war and to fight to really eviscerate the progressive administrative state, where Dems have rammed through their green transformation legislation and ensconced literal armies of bureaucratic foot soldiers to advance their policy agenda. Republicans have assuredly added plenty of wasteful spending and bodies to that bureaucratic bloat too.
Trump is not prepared to fight Dem lawyers in multiple courts and he is surrounding himself with totally incompetent grifters and people who are no match for savvy Dem lawyers and legislative experts, many who helped craft all these laws. Trump also surrounds himself with grifters, most who have no political skills. Trump supporters may love Kari Lake, who brags about being an outsider. She can talk all day long about how her losing is really winning and stir MAGA crowds preaching about the evil Dems, but the truth is she’s a Kerry/Obama supporter, who got on the Trump train in the past few years and has absolutely no government or legislative experience. Even Trump’s loudest supporters in Congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, have scored no legislative wins – nothing. MTG is always introducing bills and rushing in front of cameras or posting on social media to hype them, but she has never done the work of building support from fellow legislators to get a bill passed. These are the type of people Trump loves – the types who fawn all over him and fan his ego.
With the Dem lawfare going on against Trump with all these indictments, they’re not only targeting Trump, they’re trying to destroy as many people around Trump, as possible, especially his lawyers. These other people indicted will face massive legal bills, that could bankrupt them. Here’s a news story about the head of Trump’s post-election legal team, Rudy Giuliani’s money problems: Giuliani struggling under massive legal bills after defending Trump. Giuliani travelled to Mar-a-lago to seek help for legal expenses in April. Here’s an article from May, about Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen’s prediction: Michael Cohen on Giuliani’s legal fees: He won’t get ‘two cents’ from Trump. Jenna Ellis, another member of Trump’s 2020 post-election legal team, has also been indicted in the GA case. She expressed support for DeSantis in 2024 and Trump’s mouthpieces on X (formerly Twitter) have attacked her non-stop and here’s a report: Jenna Ellis Pleads for Donations As Trump Allegedly Won’t Pay Legal Fees
This corrupt Dem lawfare, using the law to take out political enemies and Trump’s refusal to ever listen to his lawyers advice, will make it harder and harder for him to hire top notch lawyers, because they don’t want to jeopardize their livelihoods for Trump or deal with the Dem legal assassins.
Then we come to the most bizarre thing emerging in TrumpWorld. Trump flew in for the Iowa State Fair, a big early presidential election event, last Saturday and stayed around 45 minutes, then departed. On Sunday he was at Bedminster and had some golfing event going on and Laura Loomer showed up. Loomer is a far-right activist/internet journalist (who gets her facts wrong most of the time)/attention-seeker, with things like this in 2018: Far-right activist Laura Loomer handcuffed herself to Twitter’s NYC building; police removed her. Her dream is to be hired to work on Trump’s team and back in April Trump wanted to hire her, but his campaign staff talked him out of that. Loomer posts on social media 24/7 about how much she loves Trump and hurling out the most vicious attacks on Ron DeSantis. She even alleged that Casey DeSantis exaggerated having breast cancer. So, Loomer showed up at Bedminster Sunday and Trump greeted her and invited her in and spent 5 hours with her.
Since Sunday, Loomer is posting on X that she wants to be Trump’s press secretary and in charge of vetting his staff. She’s also flown to a “Stolen Election” event to meet with the Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell, to hobnob with other Stolen Election diehards – people grifting bigtime to make money off of “Stolen Election” conspiracy theories, while producing no real proof of anything. For the record, I do believe that the massive money in the CARES Act, which Trump signed into law, poured millions upon millions into Dem election changes to facilitate the Biden win. Dems sold those changes under the guise of helping voters have easier access to voting due to the pandemic. Trump often went along with policy actions as president that Dems used to try to destroy him. Trump kept Fauci in charge of COVID policy and he signed onto massive COVID spending that not only ended up aiding Democrats in the 2020 election, it helped fuel the inflation impacting all of us. Yet, somehow, many Trump supporters refuse to ever demand any accountability from Trump and talk like Trump is above all the rules they apply to other politicians.
On X this morning news is floating that Trump might not deliver his promised report. Here’s a Aug. 15th X post:
Georgia has among the most corrupt elections in the country — and they haven’t gotten better since 2020, they’ve gotten worse!
Well, two days later here’s what’s being reported:
BREAKING: Former Pres. Trump's promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County DA's Office is now very much in doubt, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell @ABC News. https://t.co/IlLLZYrqht
What’s going on is Trump’s lawyers fear, that while Trump’s political stunt of staging this press conference with “irrefutable” stolen election evidence might be political theater his MAGA base loves, it also might easily hand evidence to Dem lawyers that results in more indictments. Trump’s rate of lawyer attrition will likely increase if Trump keeps throwing out wild allegations and listening to advice from people like Steve Bannon and the Pillow Guy, while Dems still haven’t lost a single sleazy Dem lawyer, despite all of Trump’s ranting about stolen elections and all his promises to overturn the election. Biden is still the President… I almost said “in the WH,” but he’s usually in Delaware or on vacation, but never fear the Obama team running this administration are still hard at work “fundamentally transforming” America into a collectivist promised land… where anti-Americanism is the national religion.
Trump might very well win the GOP primary, but his chances to win the general election are very remote, I think. Even if Trump defied the odds and did win, I wonder how a Trump, totally unleashed presidency, where he picks people like Laura Loomer, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and a host of other dirty trick sewer operatives and kooks to top positions and where they go about “breaking all the rules” to “restore the rule of law” would work out. Jenna Ellis who was part of Trump’s post-election legal team is finding out – Trump won’t give her a cent for her legal defense in this GA indictment, Trump’s sewer operatives are not only trashing her, they’re urging Republicans not to contribute any money to the online fundraising effort her lawyer set up. Then Mark Levin, FOX News personality, conservative lawyer and fire-breathing Trump supporter supported Jenna Ellis and urged viewers to support her:
Guess we'll see where Mark Levin's moral compass is with this.
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