Category Archives: Politics

August 25, 2023 · 1:28 am

A long ramble about the GOP debate & Trump

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.

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Filed under 2024 Election, General Interest, Politics

August 24, 2023 · 8:47 pm

More disturbing reports coming out of Maui

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.

Today the Washington Post reports, Maui utility may have compromised evidence in fire probe, lawyers say. Here’s a bit of that WaPo story:

“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.

This DailyMail yesterday reported: EXCLUSIVE: FEMA officials are staying at $1,000-a-night luxury hotels in Maui amid recovery efforts in Lahaina. Here’s a taste of this scathing report:

“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.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12430203/FEMA-officials-staying-luxury-Maui-hotels.html

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.

In 2023, I’d add one more step to my 2013 essay:

Step Four: Pray for our country.

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August 21, 2023 · 11:26 am

Democrats ignite their Maui wildfire spin effort

Here’s another post on X:
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;

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.
Timeline of Afghanistan Withdrawal Debacle:

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.”

https://nypost.com/2023/08/19/chicago-pol-community-group-propose-12-house-gun-ceasefire/

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.

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August 18, 2023 · 8:53 am

Can DeSantis find his footing?

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:

Regarding this comment about Trump attacking DeSantis 3 days before the 2022 FL Gubernatorial election here’s a Nov. 2020 report from The Hill: Trump attacks DeSantis amid positive press: ‘An average Republican governor’.

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.

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Filed under 2024 Election, General Interest, Information War, Politics, Uncategorized

August 17, 2023 · 1:17 pm

A pessimistic 2024 Trump scorecard

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:

Well, two days later here’s what’s being reported:

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:

So much winning for America with Trump or Biden, for sure…

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Filed under 2024 Election, General Interest, Politics

August 9, 2023 · 8:47 pm

Hillary wants to fix America’s loneliness epidemic

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog post, The federal government wants to manage our social connections, about a new National Strategy for Social Connection Act, introduced by Senator Chris Murphy, a very liberal Democrat from Connecticut. While most people probably will just dismiss this as more feel-good government posturing or as a family member told me they probably are concerned about addiction, I feel this is going to be another stealth effort to increase federal power and will go well beyond trying to help individuals with problems stemming from addiction, social isolation and helping communities promote “social connection.”

Lo’ and behold, a couple days ago, our premier social architect, the village expert herself, Hillary Rodham Clinton, penned a piece, The Weaponization of Loneliness: To defend America against those who would exploit our social disconnection, we need to rebuild our communities, in The Atlantic. Naturally, in her world everything that’s wrong with America is the fault of the “vast, right-wing conspiracy” and protecting Americans from right-wing demagogues plays large in her remedy for repairing social connection… Of course, one can only wonder what she’s got in mind to deal with the “basket of deplorables” and all the people who don’t agree with liberal policies…

As I mentioned in my previous post about this new “social connection” proposed federal government effort, Stella Morabito wrote a book last year titled: The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear Of Isolation To Silence, Divide, And Conquer, in which she explains the history of Utopian revolutions, conformity impulse and mob formation. She makes a case for American identity politics and the leftist long march through our American institutions with the culture war and feminist movement being part of the vanguard leading to the social isolation and dislocation in so many families and communities. Hillary’s version of the “weaponization of loneliness” seems like she took Morabito’s ideas and flipped the script.

I’ll take a pass on any “social connection” policies Democrats and liberal social engineers conjure up, thanks!

We’re headed toward a digital currency, where our every online transaction would be tracked, and our every click online could be monitored to keep track of where we go online and our cell phones and in newer cars our location can be tracked too. Even newer household appliances can be monitored if you set up the app on your phone and turn on, for instance, your clothes dryer with your cell phone – the government could monitor when and how often you’re using your dryer.

The federal government collecting data about our “social connections” didn’t give me the warm fuzzies, but made me pause and keep repeating their innocuous sounding term, “social connections,” which could encompass surveillance of all of our movements.

Assuredly, a federal program designed and managed by leftists, who want federal government control of everything, would intrude into state and local jurisdictions on things like zoning and planning decisions to restructure communities that promote “social connection” and deal with communities where resources aren’t distributed “fairly” in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This will be another redistributive extravaganza, well beyond eliminating “food deserts” that was a Democrat pet project in the 90s and early 2000s.

“Fair share” was the old leftist lingo, while now it’s all about diversity, equity and inclusion, however, my gut instinct is that this benign- sounding, “social connections” program about helping combat the loneliness epidemic is similar to what was hidden from us during the pandemic “social mitigation” programs, where churches were closed, people were forced to close their businesses, lost jobs, couldn’t visit dying loved ones in the hospital or nursing homes, couldn’t even hold funerals in some cases, faced both arrest and social ostracism in some places. “Social mitigation” was sold to us as being good people, who didn’t want to spread illness to others.

Many Dems and liberal media folks have tried to selectively remember the draconian actions during the pandemic, but it’s important to remember what happened and be on guard against allowing the government to intrude into our daily lives and interfere in the exercise of our personal liberties. We must safeguard our private spaces from government intrusion or we’ll lose all of our personal liberties.

In 2020 Governor Gavin Newsom of CA issued Thanksgiving COVID guidelines that even told citizens how to manage the bathroom for guests in their own homes:

“Gatherings are defined as social situations that bring together people from different households at the same time in a single space or place. When people from different households mix, this increases the risk of transmission of COVID-19,” the CDPH said in a statement.

All gatherings must include no more than three households, including hosts and guests, and must be held outdoors, lasting for two hours of less.

“The longer the duration [of the gathering], the risk of transmission increases,” the statement noted.

“Gatherings that occur outdoors are significantly safer than indoor gatherings. All gatherings must be held outside. Attendees may go inside to use restrooms as long as the restrooms are frequently sanitized,” the statement added.”

https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-california-gavin-newsom-new-rules-gatherings-thanksgiving-1541402

I believe the loneliness problem is a real thing, considering the fall-out from school closures/lockdowns during the pandemic, decades of family structure breakdown, fraying of community bonds, decline in church-going, and the negative impacts of social media replacing real-life friendships. The left’s progressive culture movements and government policies facilitated and helped create many of our social ills, so the last people I would trust for a remedy are progressive “experts,” like the ones we were told to trust during the pandemic. In fact, there are still diehard COVID social mitigation proponents and plenty of Dem activists and politicians, who would avidly impose more rules on Americans’ daily lives. There are even “zero-COVID” true-believers in America, who believe that if more stringent social mitigation rules, like China tried, were imposed, COVID could be eradicated and there are still some masking zealots. I also suspect there are more than a few liberals who would not be opposed to forced relocation of Americans whom they consider “MAGA” or those “basket of deplorables” Hillary finds not fit for polite society.

Dealing with such a vaguely defined problem as “social connections” could encompass just about every activity humans engage in and that, I suspect, was why Democrats used this nebulous term – it disarms most Americans, because it sounds harmless and caring. It could also, in the hands of governmental “expert” busybodies, who think they know what’s best for all of us, include massive surveillance and data collection on individuals’ daily lives, to include our associations within our own neighborhoods and communities. You could get evaluated on the clubs or organization you join, the people you hang out with, where you shop, etc. It could include a federal effort to decide how our communities should be set up to best enhance “social connection,” based on some sort of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) criteria. Not only could schools, churches, private organizations, and private businesses be evaluated on whether they promote “social connection,” but assuredly they’d be evaluated on “social justice” and “environmental justice” goals too. In another post about climate change I’m thinking about writing, I’ll include how “environmental justice” is integral in the Biden climate change agenda – so even with a supposed climate crisis – all the other identity politics gets worked in like this: Biden signs order protecting Grand Canyon lands sacred to tribes.

A “social connections” program about helping combat the loneliness epidemic in America might be even more intrusive than the pandemic “social mitigation” efforts.

Don’t let soft and fuzzy words fool you. The government is not your friend, nor should you trust the government to manage your “social connections.”

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August 4, 2023 · 12:56 pm

Where has President Obama been?

Yesterday, there was some buzz on politics Twitter about an interview, The Obama Factor, of a historian, David Garrow, who wrote a biography, Rising Star, about former President Obama in 2017. I don’t recall a lot of talk about this biography in 2017, but then again our political media was in complete #Resist mode and 24/7 meltdowns about how President Trump was going to destroy the world.

I realize that most people don’t have time to read a lot and this interview is a long piece. It covers Obama’s life, his writings, and a lot of other topics beyond the part that caught my attention the most – the weaponization of the federal government. Here’s the paragraph that stuck out:

“But while the attention of Republicans in Washington turned to questioning the FBI, more careful observers could not fail to notice that the FBI had hardly acted alone. After all, Russiagate had not originated with the Bureau, but with the Clinton campaign, which having failed to get even sympathetic mainstream media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post to bite on its fantastical allegations, was reduced to handing off the story to campaign press apparatchiks like Slate’s Franklin Foer and Mother Jones’ David Corn. The fact that the story only got bigger after Clinton lost the election was due to Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who in November and December of 2016 helped elevate Russiagate from a failed Clinton campaign ploy to a priority of the American national security apparatus, using a hand-picked team of CIA analysts under his direct control to validate his thesis. If Brennan was the instrument, the person who signed the executive order that turned Brennan’s thesis into a time bomb under Trump’s desk was Barack Obama.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama

Brennan has become a permanent “Trump/Russian Collusion” mouthpiece on CNN and MSNBC since Trump took office in 2017 and yet this interview points out that Obama has pretty much disappeared from being in political news a lot, other than the stories of the Obamas fancy mansions and hobnobbing with the ultra-rich elites. Obama’s people are everywhere though – in the media and in the White House, but Obama wasn’t out there ranting about Trump or politics. This interview mentions that, unlike other former presidents, the Obamas live mostly in their home in Washington DC, yet the press never talks about what they’re doing in Washington or who visits them.

This other paragraph was illuminating too:

“That Obama might enjoy serving as a third-term president in all but name, running the government from his iPhone, was a thought expressed in public by Obama himself, both before and after he left office. “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony,” he told Steven Colbert in 2015, “I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.””

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama

Well, the Biden White House is filled with Obama’s people and it’s been obvious since that Locked In The Basement 2020 campaign that Joe Biden isn’t running things. Obama had initially tried to generate political momentum for his friend and ally, Deval Patrick, former Massachusetts governor in the 2020 Democratic primary, but that effort failed. Biden won the Democratic nomination and there seemed to be a bit of a power struggle within the Biden circle.

I didn’t know the Obamas still live in Washington DC, because the media only mentions their other mansions and their vacations. However, I’ve suspected Obama was running the Biden White House and this interview bolsters that opinion.

In recent months, Hunter Biden has moved into the White House and is by his father’s side constantly. I’ve wondered if the top Dems (Obama and his peeps) are working to orchestrate a “dignified exit” for Biden to drop out of the 2024 race and if Hunter’s there to squash a palace coup. Who is really running the Office of the President right now, Hunter or Obama? At this point it’s hard to tell. What is clear is Michelle Obama and Gavin Newsom keep getting liberal media buzz as alternatives, not Kamala Harris, if Joe Biden drops out of the race.

Before ending this blog post, I wanted to touch on my own waffling about the focus of my blog. I started this blog in 2012 blabbing about politics, foreign affairs, military matters and assorted culture war topics, but as the polarization and “politicization of everything” in America escalated, I’ve thought about skipping the politics and writing about less controversial topics and about other things I think are important – like emergency preparedness. However, I really do enjoy reading through articles and books and reports hunting down information and I’ve been writing about how America’s political and culture war are being fought out via a corrupt, media-driven spin information war, long before most politicos even talked about the weaponization of news. In an information war – digging for reliable or accurate information is vital, because the spin efforts create walls of lies and deliberate misdirections.

Words really are the weapons in spin war. Back in 2016, I wrote a blog post, The “War about Words” (Part 1), and here’s a bit from that:

“Trying to explain this dichotomy of Americans who boldly proclaim their principles and independent-thinking, then become devoted followers of obvious con men and demagogues, I remembered  this book by Brian Burrell.  He relates DeTocqueville’s observations on Americans from 1831 and perhaps this American characteristic still gets passed on in our cultural DNA. DeTocqueville identified the American reliance on “experts”, that still persists today:

“On his visit to the United States, Tocqueville noticed that the Americans he encountered tended to exhibit two opposing tendencies: they did not want to be told what to do or think, and yet their collective will could easily be rallied behind certain carefully chosen words, to which he gave a name.  “In the United States, Tocqueville concluded, “the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of the individuals who are thus relieved from having to form opinions of their own.””

pages 4-5, The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, And Pledges That have Shaped America, by Brian Burrell”

There’s still a great deal of truth in DeTocqueville’s observation that Americans tend to rally behind the loudest “public opinion” and the architects of our American spin information war use many tools driving public opinion to con the American people. They eagerly use repetitive messaging bombardments in the media, where the liberal media jump on repeating the same inflammatory and/or deceptive words to incite mob type behavior and fuel the latest cancel culture trends. At this point the Trump circle effectively borrowed the same Dem/liberal media spin tactics too and they’re using the polling spin game against DeSantis – hyping “winning in all the polls” to con Republicans into believing that polls reflect the will of the GOP voters. In reality polls are only a momentary snapshot of the opinions of only a very few people. When the media hypes the majority in polls they’re trying to convince people that if you aren’t in the majority your views are “out of the mainstream” of the group being polled. Many people don’t want to be called fringe and they will move to be part of the mainstream. This media/political effort to drive public opinion by hyping polls creates opinion cascades to push public opinion in a certain direction. It’s fascinating to realize that DeTocqueville in 1831 recognized this culture trait in America.

The traditional terms “disinformation and misinformation” are pretty meaningless at this point, because Democrats and their vast liberal media sphere have called just about everything “Russian disinformation” to attack Trump or during the pandemic calling information that differed with their experts’ views as “COVID misinformation” and working to silence them, so I’m going with “deliberate misdirections” (LIES). I’m hoping providing links to information I come across might help others be aware of this information and be encouraged to do their own research.

I continue to work on my own preparedness, but I feel there are loads of better preparedness sites and videos online than what I can write or create. In my own life I get frustrated when people I care about don’t seem to take my preparedness advice seriously and ignore my warnings about how if they wait until there is a serious crisis to prepare for an emergency, it’s too late.

Along with natural disasters, the constant growing threat in America continues to be the polarization and politicization of everything,” fueled by our media and social media. Most of the spin war hits us daily through controversies that seem like trivial, stupid stuff – like the Jason Aldean song or arguing about pronouns. However, all of these culture war media/social media controversies are part of the larger political war, being waged constantly via the 24/7 spin information war. While it’s understandable to try to ignore these ridiculous controversies and the partisan dramas, as American citizens we all should at least be aware of the partisan divides and about how media and social media play a major role in the political and culture war swirling constantly.

In the words of the Aaron Tippin country song, “You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”

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August 2, 2023 · 1:32 pm

More bad financial news

The partisan political drama in America yesterday was about Biden’s 20 “perfect” phone calls with Hunter’s business partners and then later more Trump indictment drama. Here’s the bigger headline from yesterday:

Fitch downgrades US’ long-term ratings from ‘AAA’ to ‘AA+’

Today the fallout from that downgrade is already impacting: Stocks sink after historic US credit rating downgrade. Here’s a quote from this CNN article:

““In Fitch’s view, there has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters, notwithstanding the June bipartisan agreement to suspend the debt limit until January 2025,” Fitch said in its explanation.”

https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/stock-market-news-today-credit-downgrade/index.html

It’s very easy to get caught up in the political media drama-of-the-day or the partisan echo-chambers being hyped and completely miss the important news. This blog post will jump around a bit, from partisan politics to the larger global politics.

For the next year Americans will be bombarded with partisan presidential election garbage, so I’m going to try to look beyond those loud distractions and seek out news that’s getting drowned out.

Democrats will be selling “Bidenomics” and telling us how spectacularly the economy is doing, while Republicans will be in-fighting for the foreseeable future. The Iowa caucus, the first in the formal nomination process despite the hype about who is winning based on polling, isn’t until January 2024.

In the GOP roster of candidates, so far, it appears to me that Trump and DeSantis are the only two candidates who are likely to be the GOP 2024 candidate and Trump definitely has a huge advantage.

To get a sense of how immersed the GOP is in in-fighting, many Republican candidates and pundits quickly jumped on board the latest Dem “You Racist!” spin smear attack against FL governor, Ron DeSantis, over the new FL K-12 history standards – especially Trump’s campaign attack dogs. After all the unfair Dem spin smears against Trump, Trump’s campaign mouthpieces embrace and then amplify every vicious Dem smear against DeSantis.

I still believe DeSantis is the only candidate who has demonstrated an ability to dismantle radical Dem laws and efforts by getting laws passed in FL. Unfortunately, Trump never united the GOP while president and his defenders will insist it’s because of the “Uniparty in DC” or “RINOs in Congress,: but the truth is if you are the leader of a party, you are responsible for building a cohesive and unified team. Trump’s way of operating has always been to play people against each other, even in his own cabinet, which is poison to building a team that works together. Trump did take some actions as president, in the form of executive orders, to dismantle Dem policies, but those lasted only as long as Trump was president. The Biden administration reversed those Trump executive orders on day one.

DeSantis has many flaws as a candidate too – he’s too invested in imitating Trump’s spin drama tactic of harping about whatever the latest “woke” spin drama is, but what he’s missed is that the segment of the GOP that eats up that spin drama is Trump’s most loyal group of supporters – who aren’t going to switch to DeSantis. DeSantis’ potential base is former Trump supporters, who lost faith in Trump’s abilities and more moderate Republicans and independents. DeSantis also empowered too many online campaign mouthpieces, who created unnecessary controversies of their own and did nothing to build support for DeSantis. The responsibility for that falls on DeSantis, so as his campaign is undergoing a restart or whatever they’re calling it, it’s going to be difficult to make up lost ground and almost impossible to regain lost trust or voters his campaign has alienated. Trump is immune from that sort of accountability, because his supporters don’t hold him to any standards whatsoever and will excuse him for just about anything (and usually blame someone else for Trump’s bad behavior).

Anything could happen between now and November of 2024, but one thing I am sure of is Dems, the left’s vast activist apparatus, liberal media and liberal big tech, and even global entities committed to the green transformation will be working overtime to make sure a Democrat remains in the White House in 2024. The global green transformation depends on having an American president who is fully-committed to the UN Agenda 2030 radical world transformation.

Here’s a reminder from May 2023 on where things are going with the green push: John Kerry targets agriculture as part of climate crusade. Along with targeting home appliances as a threat, agriculture in America, which has helped feed the world for decades, is now on the environmentalist chopping block:

“Kerry lamented that agriculture production alone creates 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming, during remarks Wednesday morning at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit. The former secretary of state also touted so-called climate smart agriculture as a potential solution.

“A lot of people have no clue that agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world,” he said during his keynote address. “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.””

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-kerry-targets-agriculture-part-climate-crusade

Leftist utopian plans often include terms they make up, like “net-zero,” with the word “zero” in them, as if getting to “zero” holds some sort of magical power. Back in the 1960s, there was the Zero Population Growth movement and other “zero” movements followed. During the Obama years, the left came up with a “Global Zero” movement, with the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons by 2030 (so it was part of that UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals). “Sustainable” is another of those murky terms the global environmentalists harp about, but how they define that term is fraught with politics, more than something scientifically measurable – “Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

I remember this Global Zero movement, because I wrote a blog post, Global Zero: Another Nothing-Burger Plan, about it in 2013. Yep, I’ve been tired of hearing about “zero” movements a long, long time. I wrote, “Here’s a thought, perhaps, the greatest threat just might be weakness, which this loopy movement would increase dramatically.  My best advice for people – if some morons come up with a plan that has ZERO in the title, consider it null (nothing but hot air).”

I still feel the same way about “ZERO” movements. Even back in 2013, when this Global Zero movement started, Dems were hard at work laying the groundwork for the UN Agenda 2030, which was signed onto by 193 countries, including the US, in 2015. Unfortunately, it seems many right-wing Americans seem to have only awakened to this UN global effort in the past few years. Dems have embedded these global 2030 “sustainable goals” in US Congressional spending bills and other legislation for years now, while most of the right in America is just now figuring out the scope of the global transformation ready to steamroll over us.

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July 27, 2023 · 12:31 pm

About “benefiting” from slavery…

This post isn’t about whether you support DeSantis or Trump or Biden or Cornell West, or whoever else is running for president, even though I’m going to mention another of those “Racism” dramas in the 2024 presidential election. I’ll tell you upfront, the point of this post is about reading history, not just repeating partisan talking points you see on TV or social media.

The Florida Department of Education has been working on their own African American history standards, after rejecting the AP standards in mid-January, which they claimed focused on Black Lives Matter, reparations, Black feminism – you get it, the woke topics. So, Florida put together a work group to come up with Florida’s new African American history standards for grades K-12. A few days ago those standards were approved by the Florida state board of education. Then the backlash started.

Democrats “pounced” – here’s a NBC headline to give you the gist of the complaints: New Florida standards teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught useful skills. The big issue was mentioning “benefited.”

FL governor, Ron DeSantis backed the new standards, Democrats, liberal media and activists rushed into full-throated condemnations of DeSantis and the usual “Racist!” smears, but Trump’s campaign also decided to jump on the Dems’ smear effort too. Vice-president, Kamala Harris, usually mercilessly mocked for her ridiculous, disjointed speeches, rushed to Florida to grandstand about… how dare they teach children that slavery benefited slaves.

After all this brouhaha, members of the work group that developed the new standards spoke out and defended their standards. Here’s Megyn Kelly interviewing, Dr. William B. Allen, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University, who was part of the FL work group:

Dr. Allen mentions Frederick Douglass in this interview (at minute 5:32), as an example of a slave who “benefited” from skills he learned as a slave.

Then last night DeSantis’ press secretary tweeted out information about the AP African history standards, which include the same point that the VP, Dems, liberal media and Trump campaign were ranting about to attack DeSantis:

And what ticks me off the most is this is just another idiotic political media circus, to label DeSantis as a racist and this actual point – the power of how individuals persevere in even the most awful conditions – is something every American should learn in school. In the Megyn Kelly video, Dr. Allen mentions Frederick Douglass, who grew up a slave, became a abolitionist, writer, and famous orator. Dr. Allen says we should listen to the words of these people in history. I find Douglass’ words truly inspiring.

I wonder how many of the people ranting about the FL standards have ever read Frederick Douglass’ writings? I have a high school education, but I’ve always been a voracious reader. I also like studying history and researching things just to satisfy my own curiosity. I always want to know, “Well, what really happened?” and “Why?” With the internet, you can easily hunt down Douglass’ writings and read them free online.

This bogus racial drama brought to my mind Frederick Douglass immediately. I’ve mentioned Douglass in other blog posts and I believe every American should read his story, My Bondage and My Freedom, if they want to feel the inhumanity of slavery, in heart wrenching, but eloquent words. I’ve linked it to a free copy at guternberg.org.

Douglass related that while a slave learning to read was forbidden, but a white mistress began teaching him how to read, until her husband found out and forbade her to continue. Douglass, then undertook a secret and dangerous mission to learn to read and educate himself. I have these quotes in a 2015 blog post, The power of free thinking:

“Seized with a determination to learn to read, at any cost, I hit upon many expedients to accomplish the desired end. The plea which I mainly adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of using my young white playmates, with whom I met in the streets as teachers. I used to carry, almost constantly, a copy of Webster’s spelling book in my pocket; and, when sent of errands, or when play time was allowed me, I would step, with my young friends, aside, and take a lesson in spelling. I generally paid my tuition fee to the boys, with bread, which I also carried in my pocket. For a single biscuit, any of my hungry little comrades would give me a lesson more valuable to me than bread. Not every one, however, demanded this consideration, for there were those who took pleasure in teaching me, whenever I had a chance to be taught by them.”

Douglass, Frederick (2009-10-04). My Bondage and My Freedom (p. 85). Public Domain Books Kindle Edition.

Douglass wrote about hearing white schoolboys talking about a popular schoolbook, The Colombian Orator, which was filled with essays and speeches on republican virtues (learning about liberty and good citizenship) and he determined to get a copy. I located a link to The Colombian Orator years ago, because I was curious about why Douglass found that school book so inspiring. I am always curious about books that inspired important people in history. Here’s what Douglass wrote about what The Colombian Orator meant to him.:

“I had now penetrated the secret of all slavery and oppression, and had ascertained their true foundation to be in the pride, the power and the avarice of man. The dialogue and the speeches were all redolent of the principles of liberty, and poured floods of light on the nature and character of slavery. With a book of this kind in my hand, my own human nature, and the facts of my experience, to help me, I was equal to a contest with the religious advocates of slavery, whether among the whites or among the colored people, for blindness, in this matter, is not confined to the former. I have met many religious colored people, at the south, who are under the delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains with meekness and humility. I could entertain no such nonsense as this; and I almost lost my patience when I found any colored man weak enough to believe such stuff.”

Douglass, Frederick (2009-10-04). My Bondage and My Freedom (p. 87). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition

When I compare the stirring, eloquent words of Douglass, a man who grew-up in slavery and basically educated himself, to the bumbling, blathering of our Vice President, Kamala Harris, a woman who attended both Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of Law, I feel sad for the state of our country. Sometimes, it seems to me that we, with all our modern conveniences and advantages, fail to even understand how ridiculous most of our political and culture war dramas really are. VP Harris could learn a lot studying Frederick Douglass’ writings and speeches. It might improve her public-speaking skills.

Douglass absolutely “benefited” from those few reading lessons his white mistress taught him when he was a slave and then he set about doing everything possible to learn more. Douglass’ soaring oratory helped drive the abolitionist movement in America.

Frederick Douglass’ life is a slave story every American schoolkid should learn about. He fought against slavery with every fiber of his being and his is an American freedom story every American should know about.

7/27/2023, 8:54 pm, Note: Just like in the Jason Aldean “racist” song allegations, with the pushback from DeSantis and the work group who developed the FL African American history standards, the attacks from the left are shifting. A new term was floated today – “policy violence.”

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Filed under American Character, American History, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics

July 21, 2023 · 3:21 pm

Here’s how these liberal pile-on attacks go

The Jason Aldean commotion will likely die down, because Aldean and his wife, aren’t backing down. Plus, the song that’s at the center of this leftist-created controversy shot to #1 on the country charts. At first the controversy was supposedly about the racist lyrics and when Aldean defended the song, the “racist” allegation shifted.

The next faux controversy floated by liberal mouthpieces was about the location where the video was shot – about the courthouse Aldean is standing in front of in the video: The grim history of the courthouse in Jason Aldean’s new music video. This second attempt to trash Aldean brings up some lynching in front of that courthouse in the 1920s. This old history explanation for the outrage is all bs and I’m going to explain another similar attack that happened recently on Twitter. I seriously doubt Aldean knew anything about that 1920s courthouse history.

Back in June, Casey DeSantis wore a black leather jacket with an alligator emblem on the back in Iowa and immediately when I saw a tweet, by this man, whose bio lists historian, author, progressive Democrat, I quote tweeted it, Later the Community Note discrediting the “alligators are racist “allegation showed up:

Very quickly, Donna Brazile, long-time Democrat strategist ran with that historian’s take and I quote tweeted that also:

I had been avoiding Twitter for a while, but then I started checking out the political drama again. Anyone is entitled to their own opinion, but to make the allegation that someone is racist on the flimsiest evidence, citing some old history, is absurd and should be challenged.

With the attack on Aldean, “mainstream” media has jumped on board trying to breathe life into the “racist” allegation. The article about the courthouse I linked is from NBC, but there are other major “mainstream” news outlets trying to bolster that 1920s courthouse history angle too.

Aldean’s song speaks to the truth about a whole lot of people across America – of all colors and ethnicities – who don’t want the type of urban lawlessness they see flashing across the news daily happening in their small town or rural area. Why the left keeps trying to shut up people who mention the rise in lawlessness is because that lawlessness can be directly attributed to the BLM – Defund the Police effort and the Antifa chaos. Liberal policies have created the urban lawlessness. That’s the truth. All the people who rushed to support the Defund the Police policies will keep pointing the finger at everyone, but themselves for the chaos that has ensued where officials embraced those BLM policies. There are people of all colors and ethnicities who want the police to keep their neighborhoods safe. Law and order is important for all of us. Most people, regardless of race or ethnicity, yearn for a safe, close-knit community, where neighbors help neighbors, which is the overarching theme of Aldean’s song, I think.

Once someone on the political left in America launches these attacks, there’s usually a leftist pile-on effect (mob attack) from liberal media, liberal mouthpieces and politicians, to try to get the target to start apologizing and backing down. A few years back there was a media pile-on against the Covington school kid, that resulted in that kid and his school receiving death threats. No one wants to be dragged through the mud in public and labeled a racist or bigot, but the minute the target gives an inch, the radical left mob smells blood in the water and the attacks and demands intensify. The Covington kid, Nicholas Sandmann, filed defamation lawsuits – CNN and WashPost settled.

In America, we have the right to free speech, even controversial or unpopular speech. Many people in foreign countries don’t understand that, but free speech is a right in America, not something the powers that be allow us.

Certainly, CMT has the right to pull the video of the now #1 country song in the country. Country music fans also have the right to not watch CMT. I quit CMT years ago, when they started running all sorts of stupid shows and less and less music, but after this incident, well, I’d imagine CMT will face a backlash like the Bud Light ad campaign. I don’t drink, so I wasn’t a Bud Light customer anyway. I also was not a Target shopper. I am not a boycott or protesting kind of person, but as more and more companies jump on board these partisan political causes, well, I certainly will think twice where I choose to spend my money and I will speak up if I feel something is wrong. There’s a whole lot wrong with the media mob attacks in America.

The important thing is to stop and ask a lot of questions when these pile on attacks or allegations of racism hit social media and the news ecosystem. And don’t trust the “mainstream” media to present the facts. Speak up if you disagree.

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