Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy used a United Nations (UN) address to cringingly chastise Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine and grandstand about Western slavery.
“Mr President, I speak not only as a Briton, as a Londoner, and as a foreign secretary… [but] also as a black man whose ancestors were taken in chains from Africa, at the barrel of a gun to be enslaved, whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great rebellion of the enslaved,” he said, adding: “Imperialism: I know it when I see it, and I will call it out for what it is.”
A review of Lammy’s ancestry by The National Pulse has revealed that many of his forebears were involved in conquest and slavery, at least as much as their Western contemporaries.
The new foreign secretary’s 2021 book Tribes reveals he is “25 percent Tuareg tribe (Niger), 25 percent Temne tribe (Sierra Leone), 25 percent Bantu tribe (South Africa), with 5 percent traces of Celtic Scotland and a mishmash of other unidentified groups.”
AFRICAN SLAVERY.
The Tuaregs are a predominantly Muslim people who do not generally present as black Africans due to North African, Middle Eastern, and even European ancestry. Inhabiting mainly desert regions, slave raiding, slave trading, and protecting slave caravans was a key part of their way of life, and chattel slavery still exists in Tuareg lands to this day.
The Temne were also slavers, and their territories were unstable due to the existence of slave villages that rose in revolt periodically. After the British established Freetown in Sierra Leone as a home for freed slaves, the practice continued in the Temne hinterland into the 20th century.
The Bantu people, including the Zulu, were extremely warlike, seizing much of the territory they occupied in South Africa from the Khoisan, or Bushmen, hunter-gatherers, who are today a small minority in the country. Pygmy peoples were also frequently ethnically cleansed or enslaved by Bantus and continue to be discriminated against by Bantus today.
FAR-LEFT AGENDA.
Notably, it is doubtful Lammy’s ancestors were enslaved “at the barrel of a gun” by Americans or Europeans, with the vast majority of slaves taken from Africa being sold by African slavemasters.
His efforts to turn the Ukraine War into an opportunity to push racial grievances demonstrate not just his own well-established ignorance of history but the far-left ideology still at the heart of the Labour Party, despite Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to disguise it with a camouflage of bland managerialism.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, once on the extreme left of her party, is pulling a similar trick. It is not a coincidence that her team is currently recruiting Labour Party strategists.
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The public is exhausted after a decade of chronic untruth from the left-wing and its media.
The 2016 presidential campaign will be long remembered for the false allegation that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to warp the election.
Citing the bogus “Steele dossier,” loser Hillary Clinton and other Democrat grandees claimed that the victorious Trump was an “illegitimate” president.
Almost immediately, the left and media then pushed for the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller. He assembled a ‘dream team’ of partisan prosecutors to prove Trump-Russian collusion.
Some 22 months later, Mueller found no evidence that Donald Trump improperly won the 2016 election with help from any colluding Russians.
More hysteria followed when Trump was impeached in December 2019.
The left claimed he had pressured the Ukrainian government to look into the family of Joe Biden (then a potential 2020 election opponent) for its corruption with Ukrainian oligarchs—as a condition for releasing military aid designated to Kyiv.
Yet Hunter Biden was paid nearly $1 million a year by a Ukrainian energy company to enlist his father, Vice President Joe Biden, for quid pro quo services.
In turn, Joe Biden himself later bragged he had pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor, Victor Shokin—who happened to be looking too closely into the various shady schemes of the Biden family.
The deceptions and lies continued.
On the eve of the first 2020 debate, Biden aide and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken helped to round up “51 former intelligence authorities” to claim falsely that Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop—full of incriminating evidence of felonious Biden family behavior—was fabricated by the Russians.
Yet the FBI already had the laptop and had authenticated it as genuine.
The FBI was also actively enlisting Silicon Valley social media companies to suppress accurate news accounts of the laptop’s embarrassing contents—ostensibly to aid the Biden campaign.
The signees of the false letter included former intelligence kingpins such as Leon Panetta, James Clapper, and John Brennan. None has ever apologized for deliberating lying to the country in a (successful) attempt to help alter an election.
During the summer of 2021, top military officials, at least publicly, parroted the Biden administration’s lie that it was safe to abruptly withdraw all troops from Afghanistan.
The Biden plan was to take political credit for ending the two-decade-long war on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the American invasion of Afghanistan.
Yet many intelligence officials in and outside the Pentagon had warned both Biden and the Pentagon top brass that any such reckless and total withdrawal would collapse Afghanistan.
They rightly also advised that sudden flight would give terrorists a windfall of equipment and infrastructure.
But they were ignored and during the subsequent Biden misadventure, thirteen American Marines were needlessly killed.
After the greatest military humiliation in a half-century, Biden and many in the media lied that the mission was nevertheless a successful withdrawal.
But that was not all. For the first time in history, a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was subjected to numerous criminal and civil suits in an election year.
Yet the federal prosecutor, Jack Smith, met with Biden officials. A high-ranking Biden Justice federal attorney joined the New York municipal prosecution. The Georgia prosecutor met stealthily with Biden’s legal counsel. And a major Biden donor funded the civil suit.
The once collusion-hungry media ignored all such lawfare and rank collusion.
During the 2020 Democratic primaries, the general election, and throughout the first three years of the Biden administration, it was evident that Joe Biden was physically and mentally incapable of serving as president.
Yet his aides and the media all misled the American people. They insisted that Biden was vigorous and sharp.
Then suddenly in June 2024, within a 24-hour period, Biden was declared by these same insiders as unfit to continue as the Democratic nominee.
Their new problem with Biden was not just his long-standing embarrassing dementia. Rather bad polls increasingly warned that voters no longer believed their lies and thus would likely not reelect Biden but would instead punish most Democrats in the upcoming 2024 election.
So, a new media narrative arose: the once-hale Biden was forced to resign as the Democrat nominee. His once widely caricatured vice president, Kamala Harris, just as abruptly was coronated as his replacement candidate by an equally suddenly gushing and colluding media.
In sum, for some nine years, the media and the left have successfully fed the country a succession of rank deceptions and conspiracies.
They did so because they proclaimed Donald Trump too dangerous to be president and therefore any means they employed to stop him were to be justified. And they are doing so yet a third time in 2024.
As they continue, they have all but destroyed democracy, ruined the reputation of the media, alienated the public—and embarrassed their country before the world.
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As Steely Dan might say, the things that pass for knowledge today, I can’t understand. It’s all lies, falsehoods, and misdirection on tap, served fresh 24/7/365.
Lie #1: Joe Biden was a great president, a dedicated public servant who put country first and stepped aside so that Kamala Harris’s brilliance could save our democracy.
Well, that’s five lies all tied up in one bundle! Joe Biden is easily the worst president in my lifetime, possibly ever. He and his family got rich, not by serving anyone, but by grifting on his various political offices. Slow Joe also didn’t step aside; he was kicked to the curb by his Democrat comrades after it became clear he was going to lose in November. And so now we have Kamala Harris, who was chosen as V.P. simply because she possesses ovaries and dark pigmentation. And for the one millionth time, America is a republic — if we can keep it — not a democracy.
Lie #2: Man-made climate change will make the Earth unlivable for humans in (pick one) 5, 10, 39, or 5,000 years.
Ha, ha! If you think our Creator would allow us, His/Her/Zey’s most ambitious, creative, and intelligent organism, to destroy our beautiful terrarium, then you’re either a fool or an atheist, possibly both. Our most brilliant minds can’t predict tomorrow’s weather with precision, our weather records extend a mere blip into the nearly five billion years of the planet’s estimated existence, and the only reason the scam’s called “climate change” is because leftists gave up on “global warming” when the Earth inconsiderately stopped warming.
Lie #3: Democrats love black people.
Where to start with this one? The president who ended slavery in America was a Republican. It was the Democrat party who championed Jim Crow laws. It’s Democrats who’ve historically come up with all kinds of handouts and special programs for blacks, not because they love them, but because they think African-Americans simply can’t cut it on a level playing field. Folks, that’s racism of the highest order.
And Democrats just love killing unborn babies, a statistically telling percentage of whom are black.
Lie #4: Diversity is our strength.
Nope, sorry, uniformity is our strength. A team that’s chosen based on merit alone, and who plays according to one set of values and with a single goal in mind, always wins. But don’t take my word for it; ask any recent champions of the almost three-quarters African-American NBA. If diversity is strength, then the NBA is arguably one of the weakest b-ball leagues on the planet.
Lie #4: Gender is fungible.
People who think that taking hormones and having your penis or breasts amputated changes your sex are truly the saddest products of our failed education system. They no doubt also imagine that having webbed feet makes you a duck, or sharpening your canines makes you a vampire. It’s fun to pretend, like I do having a catch while wearing my Yankees jersey, sadly, that does not make me a Yankee. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the human race is born male or female. Period.
Lie #5: Life begins at birth.
During the process of conception, a live sperm unites with a live ovum, this within the vital body of a live woman. This human continues to live — unless torn limb from limb and vacuumed out by an abortionist — until a live baby comes into the world. There is literally no time, from the very moment of conception until birth, where an unborn human is not alive.
Lie #6: Fat is beautiful.
All humans of any size are precious and children of God. That being said, I’ve been a skinny, just right, and borderline obese child of God. And nothing is just right when you’re overweight and out of shape. You’re easily fatigued, your clothes don’t fit you properly, and trust me: hardly anyone of the opposite sex is giving you a second look. Although no one, including me, should hate himself for carrying extra poundage, it’s imperative to work toward one’s ideal weight, especially if you wish to live a long and active life.
Lie #7: No one is illegal.
If there’s no right or wrong, if all that follows this life is one long dirt nap, then OK, no one’s illegal. But in a world such as ours, with an almost universal moral code and a multitude of written laws, much is illegal. You can’t waltz into a foreign country without permission any more than you’d stroll into a stranger’s house and raid his fridge. Or steal his car, assault his spouse, or molest his kids. It’s one of life’s most difficult challenges to stay on the right side of the law. And, frankly, some people don’t even try and should absolutely be called illegal. And punished accordingly.
The Lie #8: The FBI is the pre-eminent law enforcement agency in the world, and they enforce the law without fear or favor.
This might seem true to people who’ve been in a coma for the last decade or consider themselves staunch Democrats. But to believe this, you’d have to ignore (deep breath): the Feebs lying to FISA courts in order to spy on Donald Trump, sharing communications where they talk of insurance plans for stopping Trump, giving Crooked Hillary a pass on mishandling classified info and destroying subpoenaed evidence, wasting time and millions of taxpayer dollars on the Trump-Russia Collusion Scam, stuffing Hunter Biden’s laptop full of debauchery and criminality into the circular file, setting up a bunch of halfwits for a faux conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, killing an old, disabled man in Utah for the crime of threatening Joe Biden on social media, and pawing through Melania Trump’s underwear drawer during the outrageous raid on Mar-a-Lago, all the while prepared to use deadly force to settle a records dispute. A records dispute!
At present, Funny Business, Inc. is “handling” a robust investigation into the attempted assassination of former president Trump. Expect an in-depth report on that incident sometime after the Feebs decide whether or not there’s any evidence of criminality on Hunter’s laptop.
Lie #9: Joe Biden and the Democrats have brought decency back into the White House.
I don’t know about decency, but it’s true that senile Joe and his lackeys brought a bunch of things into the Executive Mansion: Dylan Mulvaney, a man pretending to be a girl; a “mysterious” bag of cocaine; a transgendered person flashing his fake breasts on the South Lawn; six of the president’s seven grandchildren, the youngest born of an affair between a stripper and Biden’s felonious son being persona non grata; the selfish, spoiled, America-hating soccer star Megan Rapinoe; the lewd, obscenity-spewing rapper GloRilla; a pair of vicious German Shepherds, both fond of chomping on Secret Service agents; and, of course, Hunter, the president’s crack-smoking, sex-trafficking, illegal gun–wielding Biden Family bagman. If that’s decency, you can keep it.
Lie #10: The U.S. economy’s great; you just don’t know it.
Perhaps this seems true to all the millionaire actors, athletes, newscasters, entertainers, and academics so fond of smooching Democrat derrières. But for those of you like me, who have to pay bills and balance checkbooks, this is not the best of times, but the worst. I mean, Burger Kings are going out of business. Dollar Stores have had to come up with a new name since almost everything costs more than a dollar these days. Personal credit debt is at a record high, not to mention our astronomic national debt. How can anyone tell this particular lie without covering the smirk on his face?
It’s perhaps life’s greatest challenge to personally embrace truth and reject falsehoods. I’ve struggled with that challenge, but at least I’ve made an effort.
Not so for the people peddling the lies listed above.
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The idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) drives global warming or “climate change” now enjoys unquestioned authority and near universal approval. As burgeoning public policy, nationally and in some states, it is seeping into what once were private matters of choice (e.g., light bulbs, kitchen cooktops). Many scientists, primarily physicists, consider the belief pure supposition, however, and colossally off track.
John Stuart Mill observed in chapter six of his System of Logic, on ratiocination or logical thinking, that a doctrine may endure because inferences from it lead to ostensibly sound conclusions -- while belief in the doctrine’s truth may exist only by excluding evidence it is false.
Evidence is that CO2 is overall a coolant. First, it radiates incoming solar energy and outgoing terrestrial heat away to space. This is visible as cooling in satellite images not only of Earth but also of Mars and Venus, climate change’s orbiting poster child.
It is an “infrared radiation active” gas, absorbing and emitting radiant energy from the sun -- but not the entire spectrum. Like any molecule, it absorbs only “spectral bands” (beams) of solar energy (sunlight) that “resonate” with its “quantum number,” a measure of the energetic space between its nucleus and electron rings as developed by Max Planck and Albert Einstein in the early 20th Century.
A resonant band of energy from a radiating source causes the molecule’s energy to jump to a higher electron ring then fall back in a tiny fraction of a second. Total energy does not increase in its passage; the molecule is merely a conduit.
Nor is “delay” of the energy’s passage through the molecules likely to raise temperatures. The mean free path of a quantum wave, in the 0.0001 second before it collides with a CO2 molecule on the Earth’s surface, is about 33 meters. So wide a chasm between collisions casts serious doubt on the chances of a “warming CO2 blanket.” The effect from the energy’s fleeting passage through molecules of this trace gas can only be trivial.
Observation in the stratosphere and an Antarctic winter, and recent experiment have shown that CO2 interacts with solar radiation overwhelmingly at 80 Celsius degrees below water’s freezing point, i.e., 193K ( ‑80°C and ‑112°F).
Usually omitted from the discussion, too, is a study in 1971 by two NASA scientists on whether burning fossil fuels for more CO2 could stave off a then perceived ice age threat. They concluded, no. First, warming by CO2, if any, would be offset by the more familiar product of burning fossil-fuel -- smoke and airborne soot -- aerosols.
These tiny particles cool the atmosphere by screening out solar energy (sunlight) and reflecting it back to space, and providing nucleides for water vapor to condense on to make cooling fog and clouds. People contribute about 30% of aerosols to the air annually.
The NASA scientists advised against using fossil fuels to warm the planet in 1971 because they were “atmospheric coolants” with a potential, alarmists claimed, for triggering an ice age. They are still coolants.
Also, while aerosols from combustion cool in direct proportion to their increase, CO2’s warmer (but still tardy) emission bands would quickly “saturate,” damping off any temperature increase. All later studies and the IPCC agree on this, and it means no “runaway warming.”
Recent research shows more critically that, because CO2 concentrations follow temperature change on all time scales their rise or fall is an effect not cause of temperature change.
In the Antarctic’s Vostok Law Dome fossil record CO2 levels follow temperature change by 800 years on average. Recent studies, including one intended to prove the reverse, reveal a current months-long lag. Causes must always precede effects. The only result of a rise or fall in atmospheric CO2 levels would be a tardy and neutral changed presence.
Ironically, fossil fuels are the paramount “green” energy choice. Plants need and absorb CO2, and cannot survive without it. Satellites show plant growth has increased from higher global CO2 levels. A greener Earth is a cooler Earth, and added moisture evaporated from more plants increases water vapor and with it global cloud cover -- two more ways the gas keeps on cooling.
A trace gas, CO2 is about 400 parts per million of today’s atmosphere, that is 0.04%. The IPCC estimates that humans generate about 5% of annual CO2. In money terms, 0.04% of $1,000 is 40ȼ ($0.40) with people’s share 2ȼ ($0.02) -- of what is an innocuous and beneficial coolant.
Today the West is paralyzed by fear of no less than runaway modernity -- of familiar “carbon-based” industrial and domestic activities threatening life on the planet and even the planet itself. The perceived risk, if it exists at all, is unreasonably exaggerated at best and warrants little if any cause for alarm.
While the West obsesses, China, India, and other nations are becoming powers by their intense development of coal-fired energy. In July 2022, China had 1,118 coal power plants and India 285, compared to 225 in the U.S. Both state their intention to build many more of them. No warming calamity has come of this, nor will it come. But it does show how policies deliberately opposed or cool to official “warming” belief confirm that ample use of fossil-fuels can ensure a nation’s security, prosperity and good health. This nation, any nation, deserves that much.
Given the failure of the Republican Party nationally and the domination of our institutions by the left, it falls to these solidly red states to defend the rule of law, our constitutional system and our pre-political, God-given, inalienable rights.
Here is a list of measures that red states should undertake to reclaim lost ground against the relentless power of the left and useless RINOs so that we may preserve our nation, our values and our way of life.
I would propose the following:
1. State legislatures shall call themselves into session at will, particularly when confronted with a tyrannical governor. Many state legislatures are part-time, something conservatives would generally approve of. But in the context of unrelenting COVID fascism and other manifestations of tyranny — including in red states by Republican governors — and encroachments by the federal government, it is paramount that this be amended.
2. The state shall limit executive orders for emergency powers by governors to a single event and for no more than 10 days. Extensions or further orders shall require legislative approval.
3. The state shall declare and uphold the right of its citizens to freely assemble, worship (both in churches and homes), engage in free speech, walk and breathe without encumbrance such as the wearing of masks, and engage in commerce.
4. The state shall limit school closures to 10 days. Further extensions shall require legislative approval.
5. The state shall end all mask and vaccine mandates. It shall declare vaccination passports illegal, including when imposed by the federal government, corporations, local governments and boards, or other entities. When the state ends mask mandates, it shall render it illegal for individual counties, cities and towns to continue such mandates or pass their own.
6. The state shall abolish all universal powers of health departments at the state and county level. It shall be illegal for state and county health departments or directors to issue sweeping mandates, force schools or businesses to close, require the wearing of masks or other physical encumbrances, impose quarantines, or ban gatherings.
Health directors are not mini-dictators. They are paid employees of the county and state, serve at the pleasure of the public and its elected representatives, and are readily terminated at the discretion of the state and county and their elected officers.
7. The state shall scrutinize all federal executive orders, regulations and laws. Any of them deemed unlawful and unconstitutional shall be declared null and void.
8. The state shall declare itself a sanctuary for the Constitution, particularly the First and Second Amendments. The state shall embrace freedom of assembly, worship, speech and the press, freedom to petition the government and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. The state shall defend the right to bear arms.
9. The state shall refuse all so-called “asylum” or “refugee” cases and all such resettlement efforts, as virtually none of the “refugees” are refugees by any definition but rather economic migrants who entered the nation illegally. Asylum is intended for true victims of persecution, not those laboring under poverty or crime, which affects much of the world. They are not refugees and should not be accorded refugee status or resettled here.
10. The state shall refuse the resettlement of illegal aliens in general and shall not support them in any way — including with health care, other than emergency interventions — whether they declare themselves refugees or not. They will have no access to education, jobs or any public programs.
They will be prosecuted for trespassing, human and drug trafficking, illegal entry, rape, murder and any other crimes they may commit. They will be incentivized to return to their home countries or, when possible and necessary, deported. The state may send them to Democratic states that covet them.
Red states on our southern border shall prevent such individuals from entering or, failing that, deport them back to Mexico. Given the lawless behavior of the federal government in failing to enforce immigration law, defend our sovereignty, secure our border and protect Americans, the individual states shall themselves enforce the law and protect their borders, territory and citizens.
April 29, 2023
While still early, this primary season is already turning out to be unlike any other. It is not uncommon to see both parties experience a competitive primary with numerous candidates, however, that usually only occurs when the sitting president is concluding his second term in office, making him ineligible for another election. Yet Biden already has two declared challengers seeking the Democrat nomination. On the Republican side, President Trump is seeking to become only the second president in U.S. history to win a non-consecutive term. Because of that, there are essentially two candidates in the race that, to some extent, hold an incumbency advantage.
As always, candidates will attempt to separate themselves from the pack by informing the electorate about the greatest threats facing America, while also trying to convince voters that they have better solutions than their opponents. However, the greatest present threat facing America is unlike any other in history: itself.
While this is an inconvenient truth, America was warned about this long before any of us were born when our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, stated:
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"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
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If America is to be fundamentally destroyed, it will come from the people within, as opposed to enemies abroad. Furthermore, Lincoln suggests that we must actively work together and remain united and strong as a nation to prevent our demise, or else it will surely happen. This unfortunately sounds like a strikingly realistic possibility at this current time.
So yes, the greatest threat to the United States of America right now truly is those within government implementing the destruction we have witnessed for two-plus years, both at home and abroad.
To understand this, one must compare previous eras in our history to the current one.
From the time Donald Trump announced his candidacy all the way through his first term in the oval office, career politicians and media worked in lockstep, parroting the same talking points. They repeatedly warned that Trump was a threat to American democracy, a maniac who was going to get us into nuclear war, provoke Kim Jong Un, embolden Putin, wreck our economy and become a tyrant. Everybody would agree that if those things were to occur, whoever presided over such destruction would undeniably be the greatest threat to a nation, and that includes foreign threats. Those things did not occur under Trump, but interestingly enough, many of the people warning about the dangers of Trump are now in power, and as a result, their warnings are coming to fruition under their own tenure.
In 2019, Kim Jong Un welcomed a sitting U.S. president onto North Korean soil for the first time in history. Kim agreed to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Fast forward to the present day and Kim has begun to increase North Korean nuclear capabilities, just a few short years removed from a promising period of peace. The key change between then and now? American leadership.
Putin has been emboldened, but by whom? Prior to this administration, Americans constantly heard about the Russian president. However, much of that coverage concerned the now-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative, as opposed to issues of substance. In fact, as the collusion story dominated the news, the U.S. was hitting Putin hard by upholding previously imposed sanctions and placing additional ones that prevented U.S. banks from making loans or issuing credits to the Russian government after their role in a near-fatal poisoning was revealed. But recently, likely after seeing American weakness on full display abroad, Putin resumed expansion efforts by invading Ukraine after a rare hiatus from 2017-2021. The key change between then and now? American leadership.
Tyranny is a universal threat to any country. Tyrants are cruel and oppressive rulers who use their power to strip individual liberties from citizens and make their lives worse in all areas, including financially. By that definition, America is currently under tyrannical rule. While the previous administration protected religious liberty, free speech on college campuses, granted farmers financial freedom during a trade war, created a middle-class-benefitting economy, and further lightened the burden on the middle class by repealing the unconstitutional individual mandate portion of Obamacare, the current administration is a stark contrast.
America has recently witnessed an assault on freedom of speech, watched the White House send condolences to the trans community after one of its members murdered innocent children at a Christian school, and learned of a proposed tax plan that would hurt the finances of millions of Americans by adding four trillion dollars in new taxes.
But perhaps most indicative of a threat from within, this administration has ushered in a period of unprecedented domestic chaos by attempting to forcefully vaccinate citizens, prioritize DEI over equality and common sense, and crater military enlistment by promoting wokeness. Every administration presides over some level of disagreement on issues amongst the general public, but nothing compares to the confusion they are causing young American children to endure, especially during such a crucial time in life for a child’s development.
All these problems will have a devastating impact on America’s long-term future if not stopped dead in their tracks.
Damage to the state of the country since the current administration took power has occurred at such an alarming rate that even the most pessimistic citizen has a hard time coming to terms with what they are witnessing. This is not to say threats outside of the U.S. are nonexistent by any means. However, when America had strong leadership in power, those threats were only potential, now they are active.
If after being previously restrained, our present threats only acted following changes in our government, the greatest threat truly is those in power that allow these crises to occur. As this election cycle unfolds, it will be important to note which candidates grasp this. And looking to better days, when governmental authority returns to righteous leadership, we will quickly see once again that the active foreign threats currently facing America will return to dormant ones.
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It probably isn’t lost on most readers that conservatives aren’t always the best at articulating grand visions for the future or for the course of the country. Conservatives are very good at diagnosing problems and lobbying for the negation of those problems, but not always good at crafting an alternative solution or visionary agenda to counter these problems, the problems caused by leftists. Woodrow Wilson had his “14 points” and the League of Nations, FDR had the New Deal, LBJ had The Great Society, and the World Economic Forum has the Great Reset.
If America makes it to 2024 (and I say “if” because, at this point, it is not guaranteed that American civilization will survive until the next election, as it may collapse for any number of reasons before that time), it is clear to me that a grand vision that is equal to or exceeds the left wing grand visions mentioned previously is needed, as a conservative alternative vision in 2024 may be America’s last shot at saving itself from plunging into the abyss. That is why I am proposing something like a return to Enumerated Powers America.
What does this mean? what might it look like? It’s simple: America must return to the pre-“progressive” era of the early 20th century. American government must be reduced to the size it was for the first century and a half of its existence, it must be restored to the ideal government that the founders laid out in the Constitution, and must never again be allowed to go outside of the size or scope that the founders envisioned. Government, in essence, must return to only performing the duties that the Constitution explicitly demands and allows them, and absolutely no more. It must be a government that looks like the one described by the Enumerated Powers in Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution.
According to the Constitution, the federal government is only supposed to have 18 inherent powers. These powers are reserved for the federal government because they are things only the federal government can do, with the idea that the individual states can do everything else on their own, without the federal government intruding on their daily business. Clause 1, for instance, states that, “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the united states, but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” Notice that the founders only intended for enough tax revenue to be raised to A.) pay the national debt and B.) provide for the common defense, which means fund the military. Nowhere does this clause mention entitlement programs that will go insolvent in a few years and are increasingly bankrupting the American people, like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP (food stamps) etc, schemes which have become mandatory for some reason.
In clause 11 of this section, the Constitution grants the federal government the power to go to war if, and only if, it formally declares war, with the consent of congress: “to declare war, grant letters of marquee and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.” That means that, technically, the Biden Administration’s proxy war with Russia, and the endless supply of military armaments to the Ukrainian military from the United States military could be construed as unconstitutional, because Biden never actually declared war against Russia. Other powers granted to the federal government include things like maintaining an army, a navy, militias, establishing post offices, etc.
What do the Enumerated Powers not permit the federal government’s control over? Well, issues like education, healthcare, energy, the environment, transportation, tax collecting, and so forth clearly do not fall under the constitutional purview of the federal government. So that means that nearly all of the existing administrative state can and should be overhauled, dismantled, and abolished. There are 15 cabinet offices in the Executive Branch of the US government. All but 5 (the departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice) should be abolished, because these five departments are the only ones that are relevant to the federal government’s Enumerated Powers…and the only ones that do anything remotely close to the duties of the federal government.
All the rest of the administrative state (the departments of education, energy, transportation, agriculture, commerce, labor, health and human services, housing and urban development, veterans affairs, and the interior) and the additional agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, should be abolished, immediately. That is a monumental task and an uphill battle, but we are discussing a vision that may take a long time to be implemented. On the top of the list, the Education and Environmental Protection agencies must go first. If someone cannot tell that the Education department must be done away with, for instance, which is the reason that things like Critical Race Theory, Comprehensive sexuality education, and social-emotional learning are being taught in public schools, and the reason that public schools are not motivated or incentivized to change anything no matter how much pushback they get from parents, then they are not paying attention. Parents and good teachers should be demanding the abolition of the DOE.
And the reason that all these other departments can be expunged from the government is because the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights clearly states: “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution clearly does not permit the federal government any say over how the individual states determine their policies or govern themselves in relation to education, energy, their environmental landscape, or nearly anything else that the modern government seeks to control. Why are so many so blind to these obvious facts? These ideas are not revolutionary; the only time they were revolutionary was when a small group of American patriots first unveiled them to the world in 1790. Ever since then, they have served as the basis for the freest and most prosperous nation in the world, if not the history of the world.
And what has happened since the turn of the last century? Congress, who the Enumerated Powers primarily applied to, has ceded most of their constitutional authority and power to the administrative state, and have allowed the administrative state to expand unabated and exponentially since then, to the point where a few government agencies staffed by unelected bureaucrats are making the bulk of the laws today that all Americans have to follow. The only way for the country to survive is if Joe Biden’s America returns to Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin’s America, Enumerated Powers America.
February 21, 2023
During its North American aerial odyssey, The Big Chinese Balloon passed within intel-gathering distance of ICBM silo fields, strategic bomber bases, key global logistics hubs (Charleston for example) and major Army and USAF headquarters.
The balloon wasn't just blowing in the wind. Its calculated military itinerary tells reasonable Americans and Canadians -- reasonable being a qualifier that excludes media influencers and politicians bribed or blackmailed by communist China -- that the balloon was spying on critical North American defense installations.
Which means it had a War Mission. Note I did not write "pre-War"; I wrote "War."
I'll explain why in a moment, but first due praise for The Wall Street Journal's February 20 article titled: "China's Newest Weapon to Nab Western Technology -- Its Courts."
According to the report, U.S. and EU officials "accuse China of using its courts and patent panels to undermine foreign intellectual-property rights and help Chinese businesses. They say China is focusing such efforts on industries it deems important, including technology, pharmaceuticals and rare-earth minerals."
Beijing has weaponized its legal system to steal technology.
Beijing's lawfare is calculated and synchronized. According to the Journal the EU is suing China for attempting to bar European companies from protecting their patents in courts outside China. One company official lamented: "It is puzzling that so many cases went wrong at the same time."
Actually -- it isn't puzzling at all.
At the bottom line, communist China is fighting a war to dominate the world. In pursuit of that goal the Chinese state has weaponized every technology, media and means of personal and organizational interaction,
Informed minds assure us the study titled "Unrestricted Warfare" and published by the People's Liberation Army in February 1999 isn't a war plan. I'll agree it isn't a step-by-step plan, but it is a thoughtful and deadly intellectual guidebook China's communist leaders are using to defeat the U.S. and establish a Chinese-mandated international order.
The authors are Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. When they wrote "Unrestricted Warfare," both men were People's Liberation Army Air Force colonels. Qiao later made major general.
Chapter 2 discusses full-spectrum warfare. Its title in English: "The War God's Face Has Become Indistinct."
Translation: In China's long war with the U.S., weather balloons and lawyer jargon are weapons that can degrade American capabilities.
The chapter lists several types of warfare that China can use to attack and harm the U.S. without risking a military counterattack.
Start with Drug Warfare. The authors add this comment on pushing drugs: "obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries." In 1999 it was one of Qiao's and Wang's speculative options. In 2023 fentanyl is savaging American society. Beijing's delivery system for this weapon in Drug Warfare? Mexican cartels.
Here are some other Qiao and Wang options with their comments in parentheses.
--Psychological warfare ("spreading rumors to intimidate the enemy and break down his will").
--Smuggling warfare ("throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order").
--Media warfare ("manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along").
--International law warfare ("seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations"). The use of courts to steal technology is another wrinkle.
--Resources warfare ("plundering stores of resources"). China's attempt to gain control of Congo's cobalt reserves involved crooked contracts and bribery. That is white collar plundering.
--Economic aid warfare ("bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret"). Controlling matters in secret hints at bribery, blackmail and intimidation. The concept goes hand in glove with resources warfare.
--Cultural warfare ("leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views"). Beijing has spent billions influencing Hollywood and social media. American teenagers love the China-sourced TikTok app. But TikTok and similar apps are potentially routes for spying and disseminating psychologically and socially destructive propaganda.
TikTok is being banned by some states. We can fight back.
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January 31, 2023
In the words of Karl Marx, the theorist of communism, history reveals itself “the first as tragedy, then as farce”. Another 19th century philosopher Hegel said that “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”. It seems that today we are witnessing another confirmation of these profound thoughts.
What is happening in Ukraine is not an isolated event that arose either by misunderstanding or as a result of one man's ill will. It would be wrong to assume that Russia's attack on Ukraine was due to an unfortunate miscalculation by the Russian president. On the contrary, all current events are a logical step in the centuries-long history of the Russian state, which has always been aimed at imperial expansion and the conquest of foreign lands.
The conquest of Siberia, Central Asia, countless wars with Turkey, with Sweden, with Lithuania, with Austria, with Persia, with Napoleonic France, with Finland, with Afghanistan — it’s only a small list of the Russian wars of aggression. Russia has never been interested in developing its own country and improving the lives of its people, but only in expanding its territory at the expense of its neighbors. Putin's power is not a legacy of past traditions, but an inseparable continuation of centuries of the Russian expansion, one inseparable chain of colonialism from the time of Ivan the Terrible, to Alexander the First, to Stalin, to Brezhnev and now Putin.
The vast majority of Russians (about 70%) support the war in Ukraine and are not concerned about any moral constraints in this regard. According to the old wisdom that “every nation deserves the government it has,” it is not Putin who usurped power in the country and sends the Russian men to war, but he is exactly what meets the traditions and aspirations of the Russian people, exactly the government that the population of this miserable country wants and deserves.
What if we try to break Hegel's cynical observation about history and assess the war in Ukraine through the prism of relatively recent events? Recall 1938, when Hitler first annexed Austria to Germany and then invaded the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia on October 1 of that year under the pretext of “protecting the German population from oppression.” Not only did Austria not resist, it gladly joined Germany. Czechoslovakia at the time was the 7th world economy with advanced industry and agriculture — a tidbit for Hitler. But it, did not resist and did not go to war with Germany over its territory. Moreover, neighboring Poland too under the pretext of protection of the Polish population decided to snatch a piece of Czechoslovak territory and occupied Zaolzie.
How did other countries react? The United Kingdom and France tried to avoid confrontation with Germany at all costs and decided to appease Hitler, hoping that the territories he took would curb his appetite and he would go no further. The government of Neville Chamberlain tried to persuade Czechoslovak President Beneš not to resist and to give Germany everything it wanted. Beneš resisted at first and even declared a mobilization. However, on September 28 in Munich, U.K., France and Italy surrendered Czechoslovakia without her consent and signed an agreement with Germany. Chamberlain returned to London extremely pleased and proudly waved a piece of paper with Hitler's signature, “I have brought you peace!”
What happened next? Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland and it was the beginning of World War II in Europe. However, it wasn’t just European countries that hid their heads in the sand like ostriches and hoped that the weather would carry them through, an isolationist mood was also strong in the USA. America was busy with getting out of the Great Depression and did not want to get involved in the overseas wars, believing that “it’s none of our business”. Yet, it had become impossible to isolate from the rest of the world and Pearl Harbor woke America from her sweet slumber.
And what would have happened if France and U.K. had resisted and supported Czechoslovakia, if not with troops, but at least politically and economically, and Czechoslovakia itself had resisted with arms? Historians are nearly unanimous in this regard — there would have been no World War, there would have been no loss of tens of millions of lives and the world today would be a very different world. Appeasement of an aggressor is a sure path to doom.
Now let's go back to our days and compare them with those of 85 years ago. As a KGB agent, Putin studied the history of World War II and learned well the lesson of the past: the West has no will to resist and will go to any lengths to avoid confrontation with an aggressor. This is exactly what has unfolded in the last 20 years as Putin has waged small wars of invasion: with Chechnya (1999-2009), with Georgia (200, with Ukraine (2014), and in Syria (2015).
The countries of the free world reacted anemically to Russian aggression, limiting themselves to diplomatic protests and imposing symbolic sanctions on Russia. Like Hitler in 1938, Putin realized that he had a free hand and could continue his expansion in Ukraine. Ukraine is an obvious tidbit for the aggressor: it has well-developed agriculture, heavy industry and rich deposits of minerals, especially a lot of lithium, a valuable metal for modern industry. But then the unexpected happened.
Ukraine offered fierce resistance and the Russian blitzkrieg failed. The U.S., U.K., France, and other countries initially behaved just as they had 85 years earlier — they were willing to accept the de facto defeat of Ukraine and the expansion of the modern Russian empire. However, the grandiose failures of the Russian army and the unexpected successes of the Ukrainian army forced Western governments to reconsider their positions. Ukraine received economic and military aid, first in small bits, then in more powerful streams, and Russia was subjected to sanctions unprecedented in history. And not only Western powers, but even China also refused to support Russian aggression.
However, it seems that not everyone has learned the lessons of the past. While in England Churchill's legacy is strong and thus the United Kingdom is now doing everything possible to help Ukraine, in France, in Germany and especially in the United States the voices of opposition are increasingly heard: “this is not our business,” “we need negotiations with Russia to end the war as soon as possible,” “give Putin what he wants, and the war is over”. Even Trump recently stated that he would end this war in a couple of days. How would he end it? Very simply: He would end aid to Ukraine and force onto it peace on Putin's terms, hoping, like Chamberlain, that after that there would be peace for a long time to come.
Never before in history has coercing peace led to peace. It's about time we realized that! If we let Putin get even a small fraction of what he wants, it will just take a little time and he or his successor will move again with war, and not only to seize more territory in Ukraine, but also in Poland, Germany, and then all over Europe. To concede to Putin now is not to prevent the war from spreading to other countries. It is a guaranteed step toward the next wars of conquest. This has always been the case; it is in a Russian tradition. Russia is incapable in sustaining a stable productive life; it can exist only in a state of permanent war. As the wise Churchill once said: “The baby must be strangled in its cradle.”
Ukraine, for all its problems and shortcomings, today is an outpost of the free world. Its victory will be a victory over aggressive Russia, which is cancer on the body of humanity. This tumor cannot be persuaded, it must be starved economically or destroyed physically. Defeating Russia, no matter how much it costs, is the only way to prevent a hot WW3, and without military and economic aid from the West and especially from the United States, this is impossible. We have to understand that by helping Ukraine, we are helping ourselves and our children.
In recent history we have already seen tragedies more than once, should we repeat past mistakes and turn history into a farce? Only I am afraid that it will not be funny at all.
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January 16, 2023
It is a shame that, in the country that invented capitalism, we can’t explain it. Perhaps that is a reason we are losing it to socialism. Ask any conservative, or even an economist, and they are likely to describe it as “free markets.” Barter societies in the Middle East are free markets and they are mired in poverty.
Capitalism is not simply free markets. It is a designed, self-accelerating economic system that reduces prices and poverty. It was gradually designed, in the United States, from 1793 to 1914. Before we can understand capitalism’s benefits, we must define wealth and poverty in comprehensible economic terms.
The wealth of a nation is its amount of usable goods, just as poverty is a lack of usable goods. Poverty in a society is created by a lack of clothes, food, vehicles, housing, etc. If the supply of these usable goods is low, naturally, there is not enough to go around. This creates the divergence of wealthy and poor. It gets worse; those who can afford the limited supply of usable goods bid up the price, creating even more poor. A large supply of usable goods brings prices down so that more people can afford them. As the supply of usable goods rises, poverty declines.
The United States grew to be wealthy because we created far more usable goods than other nations. But how did that happen?
All usable goods are created by manufacturing. It is not the amount of money that manufacturing employees earn that is of value; it is the millions of shirts, hammers, and cars they produce that create wealth in a society.
In 1793, rural people were paupers, living off the land, building log cabins, growing their own food, and wearing buckskins for clothes.
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin accelerated the production of textiles and brought the cost of clothing down so even the poor could afford it. However, it was Whitney’s other invention that ignited the growth of capitalism. It was his creation of a new technical expertise, mechanical engineering, which led to the next generation’s proliferation of other manufacturing machines.
Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper in 1840, but there was an array of business problems that beset him. He was selling a complicated machine to farmers who did not understand it and were not capable of its repair. Broken parts might cost the farmer his crop during harvest. Sales and service were paramount and McCormick could not traverse the territory fast enough.
McCormick solved these problems by designing a unique system, a network of distributors with whom McCormick shared considerable profit. The distributors took over all sales and service. They stocked parts locally and performed repairs. McCormick wisely turned farmers away from direct factory sales by telling them they had to buy from their respective distributor.
McCormick Reapers throughout farm country helped bring food prices down to supply the poorest of households. It was not the reaper that added structure to capitalism, it was his concept to share his profits with others to increase sales -- the distribution system.
Rural couples were using mail-order catalogues to buy household items direct from factories. Mistakes in ordering and returns were enormous problems, and single orders added to the cost of usable goods because they limited mass production.
Manufacturers of household goods solved these problems by carrying McCormick’s distribution concept one step further. Distribution centers were given a wholesale price so they became profitable businesses, but the manufacturers added an additional discount and layer of profit to include retailers. This created a unique three-tier distribution system (factory, distributor, and retailer). It worked well for household goods.
Distributors were told to send buyers back to the retailers. Because the distributor provided a nearby stock and a retail discount, retail stores became efficient and profitable businesses.
Sales grew exponentially and prices declined. The retail industry expanded to its full capacity because factories were willing to share their profits with retailers, and to protect those profits. Contrary to popular opinion it was the sharing of profits, not greed, that helped create America’s great wealth.
Factory owners had wisely added another innovation of factory recommended retail prices. The wisdom of this was to provide a structure of profits for all who sold their product. It might seem that this would add to the price, but it did the opposite. The resulting high volume of sales resulted in an overwhelming larger drop in product cost. As manufacturing costs fell, the recommend retail pricing was reduced to protect product sales from competition.
Prior to this, women made their own soap, household goods, clothes, and tended crops. Men planted crops, hand-forged steel tools, and built what they needed. Rather than make their own goods, people began to buy them at a local general store. Rural couples were unshackled from the centuries-old life of paupers.
Rural couples wanted more. Factories could not meet the demand. Enter Andrew Carnegie. He recognized the demand for steel from retail-good factories and built his Pittsburgh steel mill in 1873. At Carnegie Steel, he set up a double shift to produce steel 24/7 and provided incentives to the shift that produced the most. He began by walking the floor and paid his workers well. Production far exceeded other producers.
Over the next twenty-five years, Carnegie Steel alone grew to exceed the total production of any country in Europe. His high production facility brought the price of steel down to about a fourth of its previous price.
Factory owners took advantage of the unrestricted supply of steel to supply our nation with everyday usable goods for millions of households. Poverty was declining rapidly. The assembly of complex products however, took time and quality control was always a problem.
In 1909, Henry Ford added the innovation of an assembly line to increase production of his Model T cars. The lines used conveyors to bring chassis and parts to the workers. The assembly line brought order to installation of parts. Each worker became expert at the installation of his part. This improved quality considerably. The Model T was long considered the most reliable car built.
More important, production increased from 12½ man-hours per car in 1912 to 1½ man-hours in 1914. With fixed costs and increased production along with volume discounts of his variable costs, the cost per car plunged. The more he made, the lower the price. The price of Henry Ford’s Model T declined from $850 to $260, putting the price well within reach of the average family.
Because sales volume was so high, Henry Ford was able to reduce prices and increase wages. He raised wages to $5 per day, which was more than twice the national average. His distributors were able to do the same. Workers migrated from all over the country to work for Henry Ford.
Henry Ford, one man, employed 100,000 workers. Untold wealth and jobs were created in related industries.
Elsewhere, people born poor would likely end up poor, as would their children. Foreigners named the United States “the land of opportunity.” Our standard of living had risen faster than any nation. Poverty declined to approximate present-day level. Americans had become the wealthiest people on Earth.
Our unique form of capitalism was not simply free markets. It is a designed structure of shared profits which create a self-accelerating economic system that reduces prices, thus reducing poverty.
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I am not an editor or journalist. I’m not an influencer. I don’t sit in a boardroom or govern my companies’ policies; I abide by them. Not exactly a position of fortitude, but like many of you I don’t have the luxury of not having a job. I have a mortgage to pay and a son to put through college.
For most of my life I’ve been apolitical. I’ve only voted in a handful of elections and my votes have never been one party-centric. Perhaps I just never had the inclination to support a political entity that would invariably let me down. Perhaps I just thought that silence would serve me better than plainspoken conversation.
But inaction has consequences too. In recent years, I’ve seen many of my colleagues and friends readily embrace the illusion of safety over personal self-determination. As these same friends and colleagues are equally eager to embrace a mantle of inclusion based on the exclusion of intellectual diversity, I’m reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s warning that adversaries of liberty would need to begin by “subduing the freeness of speech.”
This isn’t a minority of my peers, mind you, that take no issue with federal mandates and the idea of government led disinformation boards. It's disheartening to see how quickly we’ve lost our grasp on the historical truths that distinguish free societies. But what did we expect? Most of us never provided our children with a historical context to understand or even consider these truths. Instead, we’ve relinquished our role to Yahoo and Google, Facebook, Tik Tok, and Instagram. We’ve given academia the green light to raise our children and we’ve taught our children not to question authority. We’ve been lazy and now we’re disappointed about the way the cake turned out.
So, what can we do now? Namely, what can someone like you or I do? What can someone with no audience and no political capital really accomplish when nearly every medium of political discourse and method of communication is driven by a coastal elitist narrative? In truth, maybe not much. But, not much, isn’t nothing either. And, maybe if there are enough of us commoners doing something more than nothing, we’ll actually accomplish something quite substantive.
Let’s focus our attention on few resolutions that promote vibrant communities and limited government. These aren’t schematic changes. They are resolutions that “Main Street” Americans can implement without any real time commitment, monetary cost, or risk of reprisal.
1. Vote with your Wallet
You may vote at the ballot box once or twice a year, but you vote every day with your wallet. As Americans we are constant consumers. We spend a lot and we spend often. And, every day we funnel our hard-earned salaries to corporations like: Paypal, Apple, Ben and Jerry’s, Starbucks, Target, and Nike. It’s a sad irony, but we’re financing the who’s who of Woke Inc.
In 2023 let’s commit to changing our spending habits. The good news is most of us spend the majority of our money within the same circles of retailers and restaurants. Switching over a handful of products is easier than you think and you can feel good about money you were already spending anyway.
2. Vote with your ‘Clicks’ (aka: Never Google Anything Again)
There are some fantastic search engines out there not named “Google” or “Yahoo.” Download one of them and set it as your default browser. The only thing you’ll miss are the trackers, advertisers, Big Brother Google, and the liberal content you’re force-fed daily.
3. Teach you Kids the Bill of Rights
If you haven’t noticed, kids tend to be idealists. What’s more ideal than ensuring the rights and liberties of individual citizens from an expansive government? Post a copy on your kids’ wall. Understanding it will provide your children with a lifelong lens to see the abuses of power in plain sight.
4. Vote Twice!!
Ever found it frustrating that our elected representatives are being put in office by a constituency of uninformed and unmotivated voters? Here’s a silver lining. No, you can’t literally vote twice, but you can make your ballot count more.
Judges don’t have a capital “D” or “R” near their names. Do your homework (most of your fellow voters won’t) and vote down ballot. Since you just taught your kids the Bill of Rights, now’s your opportunity to support judges who will actually uphold it.
5. Know your Charities
You don’t have to support BLM, Planned Parenthood, or the Southern Poverty Law Center to have your well-intentioned dollars funding left of field ideologies.
6. Widen Your Circle of Influence
Here are a few ideas: write an article, volunteer, run for your local school board, join a PAC, teach a class online. These might take more of a coordinated effort but there’s no shortage of options.
7. Consider the Switch (from Network TV to Podcasts)
It’ll save you time and money, give you the flexibility to listen on your watch, and empower you to choose the content of your programs.
8. Raise Skeptics not Conformists
Children have a natural inclination to question everything; let them. They’re going to have to unpack a lot of BS in their lives from all sorts of avenues and authority figures. Let’s not raise sheep just because they’re more agreeable.
9. Buy and Hold
I’m not suggesting that you should revamp your brokerage account. But why not make money supporting the companies you love? Consider that values of the company as one of the criteria in your selection.
10. Aspiration Trumps Contention
Anger and fear are short-term wins. Represent the party of aspiration. It should come natural to us. You can start with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Bonus: Pay it Forward
The best part about these resolutions is that they have a multiplier effect. Pay them forward. Let’s make 2023 the year we reject the fear tactics and divisiveness spurred by elitest ideologues. Let’s not have our values cooked up in the boardrooms of some multinational conglomerates. They’ve led us astray; caused us to turn our backs to the city on a hill. Let the common sense and common decency of everyday Americans pave the way back.
This first suggestion might not seem like a piece of financial advice, but it is. In an inflationary marketplace where prices are rising and you suspect supply chain issues are coming down the line, stockpiling staple foods and goods is a wise decision that will provide you with financial relief in the coming months.
When you don’t have to worry about overpaying for things like rice, pasta, sugar, flour, soap, toothpaste, and other necessities, you can reallocate that money to other areas. It creates margin in your budget to be successful. It allows you to focus on other things and conserve your financial resources.
2.) Diversify Your Assets
You never want to be too heavily invested in one asset or investment type when a recession or collapse is coming. It can easily cause you to lose everything. You’re much better off being diversified across multiple asset classes. While it’s likely that all of these assets will temporarily go down in value, it gives you more flexibility and increases your chances of an eventual recovery.
3.) Build Up an Emergency Fund
Focus your energy on building up an emergency fund. If you don’t already have a minimum of six months’ worth of cash in a savings account, you don’t have enough. You need enough cash to allow you to survive for at least six months, even if you don’t earn another dime during that period. Do whatever it takes between now and the coming financial crisis to do this.
As a reference, a family with basic living expenses (meaning food, shelter, medical care, etc.) of $5,000 per month will need a minimum of $30,000 in an emergency fund. Don’t underestimate this!
4.) Pull Out Cash
While it’s never happened in the United States, all you have to do is look at the financial collapse in Greece from a few years ago to understand how quickly things can go sideways. Believe it or not, there could come a point in time where banks could limit how much money you’re able to pull out on a daily/weekly basis. The easiest way to avoid a scenario like this is by pulling out cash ASAP.
You’ll have to decide how much physical cash you want to keep on hand, but a one-month supply of cash is a good starting point. Using the example above, a family with $5,000 of monthly expenses should have at least $5,000 in cash sitting in a home safe. If you have a particularly safe location and aren’t worried about the possibility of fire or burglary, two to three months of physical cash is a good idea.
5.) Make Tradeworthy Investments
Now’s a good time to make what we call “tradeworthy” investments. That means instead of putting a bunch of money into the stock market, buy things that you can barter with during a depression. Good options include alcohol and liquor, tobacco, and ammunition.
6.) Find Additional Streams of Income
In a depression, you can go from a successful career and stable position with your employer one day to no job and no career prospects almost overnight. The best way to insulate yourself from this threat is by proactively adding additional streams of income.
The more jobs and hustles you have, the less likely you’ll lose 100 percent of your income. You might lose a good chunk of it if your primary employer fires you, but you still have a few different methods for generating income. This will serve you well when stuff starts hitting the fan in an economic collapse.
Adding it All Up
If an economic crash, recession, collapse, or depression is going to happen, there isn’t much you can do about it. It’s going to happen. You can, however, control how prepared you are. By making smart choices today, you can lessen the impact it has on your family tomorrow. Handle what you can handle and forget about the rest.
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(These are excerpts from the article. Complete article is at the link. Zim.)
A fellow offering a prediction about an election in these chaotic times surely owes his readers a track record of previous successes. Unfortunately, I have only one earlier success, and it was long ago — but it was a trifecta. Very early on, I told everyone who claimed some interest in politics that the Democrats would nominate Jimmy Carter, that Carter would choose Mondale as his running mate, and that the Carter/Mondale ticket would win. By early on, I mean that for quite some time, people responded by asking, "Who's Jimmy Carter?"
I have the same feeling of certainty this time around, and perhaps that means something this time, too. We'll see.
If my prediction proves out, there is an upside. Dick Morris is predicting that Hillary will run again. I am sure he is right about how much she wants to move back into the White House, but I am predicting there will not be an opening for her to make a run for it. Now for the downside. There won't be an opening for Hillary for the simple reason that Kamala Harris will be running as the incumbent.
Biden will have shuffled offstage for the last time well before the next election, and Harris will have ascended to the Oval Office.
Gavin Newsom is already running for the top spot. He won't be the nominee, either, but getting started early will put him in position for the No. 2 spot.
But wait, you say. Even if you are right about Harris, the Democrats will never choose Newsom to run with Harris. They are both San Francisco hard leftists. The Democrats will try to balance the ticket with a more moderate candidate from a different part of the country in order to win the election.
A balanced ticket was once standard operating procedure, but we live in a new era, and new rules apply for now. The Democrat powers-that-be have proved to their satisfaction they can steal the next election and get away with it. Consequently, there is no longer a need for a balanced ticket.
Biden has proved that Democrats no longer even need to campaign or even to offer some claim to having done some good in office to be "elected." The Harris/Newsom ticket has all that is required. They make a photogenic pair, perfect for waving to the crowds in a fabulously expensive tsunami of polished political ads. And with a woman at the top of the ticket, the corporate media will go wild. There will be no reporting about any shenanigans necessary to bring about the outcome they desire.
You heard it here first.
But wait. Do they get away with it?
That, dear friends, depends upon what we do in the meantime. In the words of my friend Tony Petroski, "true the vote and transform the nation."
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I find this depressing . . . with a certain amount of believability.
Zim.
August 5, 2022
Leftist liars recently have been trying to cover for the Biden regime's abject failures by redefining the word "recession," going so far as to flag as false those who reject Biden's recession wordplay.
Aside from the obvious answer of protecting the dear leader, what is their justification for doing this?
For the sake of argument, let's say they might have had some theoretical point in playing games with the facts about COVID. We cannot fathom what that was, but that was their "emergency justification" at the moment. But what is their rationale for doing this now? No one is going to make an incorrect medical decision based on this definition, so why are they doing this?
We know exactly why. In fact, this is why we have labelled them the anti-liberty left: because their ideology cannot stand the people exercising their basic freedoms under the Bill of Rights.
The problem for the enemies of liberty on the left is that while they think they can run around and offer an alternate version of reality — that changes every five minutes — there is a whole slew of documentation that is piling up showing they are nothing but abject liars.
You almost get the impression that they think George Orwell's socialist-fascist Utopia in 1984 has become real, and we'll believe nonsense phrases such as "War Is Peace," "Freedom Is Slavery," and "Ignorance Is Strength."
You know you're ahead of the game in understanding those people when you have a complete copy of George Orwell's novel 1984 in a text file for quick reference (available here) — along with several hardcopy versions for safekeeping.
Having read it the first time around because that year was coming up and then recently, it has some stunning revelations, many of which are doubleplusungood.
However, there are things that George Orwell got wrong. One of these is the infamous "memory hole":
>>>
> When one knew that any document was due for destruction,
> or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about,
> it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest
> memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled
> away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces
> which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
>>>
The big problem for the left is that the situation we have today is quite the opposite, and we need to take advantage of that. Think of this as a short tutorial on just how to do it.
Two of our favorite tools aside from TOR (The Onion Router) and Proton Mail to try and stay two steps ahead of "Big Brandon" (you can't be too careful these days) are the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive and archive.today webpage capture sites.
Does everyone realize that all of the shenanigans taking place on sites such as Wikipedia are almost being documented in real time on these sites? They specifically say they save images of these pages at certain times, not when they are being changed. However, there are enough snapshots of these sites to show these changes, and it's hilarious to behold.
It's even more enjoyable that we can all participate, in a couple of ways, in the fun of flummoxing the fascist far left's attempts at rewriting the dictionary in real time. For those of you that are old hands at trying to cover your internet tracks, please excuse a little divergence into a couple of tutorial points:
1. Fake them out.
First of all, you're going to want to set up a good semi-anonymous email and VPN setup. These won't be perfect, but nothing in this life ever is.
You'll want to find a site that randomly generates fake ID data, the idea to get user names and passwords, and other information for this purpose, such as the Fake Name Generator.
2. Encrypted email, Virtual Private Networks, and TOR.
We've already mentioned some good examples of these. The idea is to prevent or at least slow down the ability of "Big Brandon" to see what we're doing. Remember the old saying of strength in numbers: the more pro-freedom patriots use these services, the less the authoritarians will be able to keep control of the situation.
3. Now it's time to have some fun.
Let's face it: the anti-liberty left's socialist national agenda is based on a number of false premises and lies. Remember, it's rooted in authoritarian socialism with forced wealth redistribution and a centrally controlled economy, no matter how they try to dress it up with flowery labels. They can never be honest, always having to lie to hide the facts. Lies always lead to contradictions because the story keeps changing. Anti-liberty leftists are at war with logical reality, so they also have to change dictionary definitions. George Orwell predicted "Newspeak" in 1984; he just underestimated when this would happen.
The great thing about all of this is that everyone can play along and do their part showing how they are abject liars. In our present example, it's just a matter of searching for the Wikipedia entry for "recession" in the Wayback Machine search box. Copy and paste the URL — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession — or you can just go to this web page.
Alternatively, you can also use the Wayback Machine and search for the same entry, and you'll see all the times that page has been archived. Try it yourself. It's hilarious to see how many "snapshots" of that page have been taken over time, and you can have the system save it another time if you want. The same holds true for the archive.today webpage capture.
The fun thing is that we can also use the same tools to document other definitions that they might be thinking of changing and trip them up because they won't be able to "memory hole" the old definitions. So start anticipating their next move, and document the definitions ahead of them. Then, when they try that, you'll be able to cite your documentation showing that they are lying.
We'll leave it to someone else to document what just happened with the definition for "recession," but all you'll have to do is grab those snapshots and start comparing to show how the liberty-denier leftists have been lying over time.
July 28, 2022:
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February the Ukrainians have had special teams investigating sites where Russian guided missiles landed, seeking fragments of the guidance system to determine which components were imported from the West. Russia has found they could not mass-produce many Western electronic items and that it was cheaper and easier to import them from the West (which includes South Korea, Japan and sometimes even Taiwan). The 2022 economic sanctions imposed on Russia halted export of electronic components used in missiles and guided rockets.
It was noted that many Russian manufacturers did not stockpile these components but used the more efficient and less expensive “just in time” system that had needed components delivered days before they would be needed for production items. The Russian economy could not afford to maintain stockpiles of these expensive components, something that became evident after 2014, when the first and milder round of economic sanctions were imposed on Russia. After 2014 Russia had to halt production of some systems because they could no longer get key components from foreign suppliers. The 2022 sanctions took note of this and immediately halted shipment of a wide range of electronic components to Russia. As expected, a lot of Russian manufacturing operations soon halted. Russia sought to smuggle in key components via China but that did not solve the problem. This use of China as a middleman for high-tech smuggling was a known problem and China was warned that they would be added to the sanctions list if they assisted the Russians. Evidence of such smuggling could be detected via examination of the missile fragments.
Russia was more successful smuggling its oil but found it could earn more money via smuggled oil than it could spend to buy smuggled electronic components. Oil is a bulk item that is much easier to smuggle than electronic components that have identifying notations, often serial numbers, on them. Smuggling such items is much riskier and rather rare, especially on short notice. Russian ally Iran has lots of experience with this problem and over the decades developed many techniques to get around it. As the Iranian techniques became known they were added to the watch list. This makes it more difficult and expensive to smuggle such components.
Russia believed the Ukraine invasion would succeed quickly and be over within weeks. That was a major miscalculation because months of sustained combat have depleted Russian stockpiles of guided missiles and rockets as well as unguided artillery shells. That may seem odd but post-Soviet Russia could not afford to maintain manufacturing facilities capable of producing large quantities of ordinary artillery shells and unguided rockets. That was not going to be a problem if the Ukraine invasion was over quickly. It wasn’t and now the Russians have less artillery ammo to fire at the Ukrainians. This got worse when Ukraine finally began receiving American GMLRS (guided rockets) in late June. The Russians lost lots of shells when these GMLRS rockets hit Russian ammo storage sites within range. Forced to establish new ammo storage sites farther away from the front line, the Russian also discovered that they did not have enough additional trucks to transport the shells to artillery units near the fighting.
This disruption of Russian ammo supplies was immediately noticeable on the front lines where there was much less artillery fire from the Russians and fewer attacks by Russian ground troops. Those attacks were dependent on heavy artillery support to disrupt Ukrainian defenses. Russian troops either refused to attack without artillery support or did so with so much hesitation that little was achieved. The Ukrainians could attack more frequently and with more success because of the reduced Russian ammo situation. The Ukrainians are to receive longer range guided rockets that will force Russia to store ammo even further away from the front line. In some cases, this means all ammo will have to be trucked from Russia to artillery units. Meanwhile Ukrainian troops receive more trucks, weapons and ammunition from NATO nations that can outproduce the Russians.
Ukrainian military intelligence and planners realized these Russian vulnerabilities long before the Russians did. After the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine (Donbas) the Ukrainians had to operate more effectively to defeat a larger scale Russian attack. Ukrainian intel and staff officers did the math while their Russian counterparts did not. There were some Russian production and manufacturing specialists who noted the danger but their warnings were ignored by senior Russian leaders who were more inclined to gamble than plan.
It wasn’t always like this. For example, Russia invented the use of unguided rockets in the MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems) in the 1930s, but they were late to adopt the use of guided rockets in MLRS systems. The United States finally adopted MLRS in 1983, using an unguided 227mm rocket. That changed twenty years later when the U.S. added GPS navigation to the unguided MLRS rocket to produce GMLRS (Guided MLRS) rockets.
Russia saw some innovations in the original American MLRS and incorporated these into their BM-30 MLRS system that entered service in 1989 using 300mm unguided rockets. It took the Russians a decade to duplicate the American GMLRS and the Russian version was seen operating in Syria by 2016. Russia had problems producing their GMLRS and associated (in the MLRS vehicle) electronics. By 2017 a reliable GMLRS system (Tornado-S) was in mass production and many of the “guided missiles'' used by Russian forces in Ukraine have been Tornado-S. Russia was unable to find a solution to its dependence on key foreign components to turn unguided rockets into much more effective GMLRS missiles.
Ukrainian military planners now predict that Russian forces will be weakened sufficiently by the end of August that Ukrainian forces will be able to go on the offensive on a wide scale. Russia never expected that and all they can respond with is threats of using nuclear weapons. That is a very unpopular option inside Russia, where most Russians have done the nuclear math and it is very unfavorable for Russia.
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, with Ukraine (2014), and in Syria (2015).