Category: Historical Commentary
The Future of America Lies in Your Hands: Vote!

The Future of America Lies in Your Hands: Vote!

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The choice for America hasn’t been more clear in more than a century and a half. Not since the election of 1860, which led to the victory of Abraham Lincoln, the subsequent Civil War, and the eventual end of slavery, has there been a more impactful election.

The choice can be stated in simple terms: If you’re willing to accept and be complicit in the biggest fraud ever attempted in American political history, then Joe Biden is your guy. If you want to continue the push toward a stronger America, toward sensible economic policies, and toward policies that recognize global realities and how strength promotes prospects of peace without kneeling to the country’s enemies, then Donald Trump is your guy.

I know, I know. You don’t like Trump’s tweets. You don’t like some of the off-the-cuff things he says. You don’t like the name-calling. I don’t either. But if superficial things like that influence you more than things like policies, confronting the political elites (of both parties), mental and physical competence, and not being taken in by bald-faced political fraud, then go ahead and vote for Biden. And don’t complain later when, on the outside chance that Biden wins, you see what you’ve actually voted for. And it won’t be peace or prosperity or togetherness or justice or any of those nice-sounding things. You’ll find how much you’ve been snookered.

If you’ve been following my blog postings over the past two-plus years, you would know why Joe Biden is an utterly unacceptable candidate for President. You would have seen accounts of his misdeeds – all since confirmed in recent revelations – and you would have seen the reasons why he has earned a criminal investigation on a number of counts. And you would have seen the duplicitous and hypocritical and deceitful tactics of the Democrats in Congress and their lackeys in the mass media.

Scary Stuff

If that isn’t enough to dissuade you from voting for Biden, you would have seen the evidence of the man’s ever-more-frequently obvious mental deterioration, rendering him unfit to hold the nation’s highest office. Despite his campaign handlers’ best efforts to keep him sequestered in his Wilmington basement, when Jell-O Joe is allowed out to speak to a smattering of supporters and neutered media representatives, he has taken to speaking – not just in his usual gaffes and misstatements – but in what can only be described as “tongues.”

Here is just one example of that. Listen to it yourself.

And another.

And lots more cited here.

And it’s not just mental. Listen to his labored breathing as he spouts gibberish here.

Scary? I think so. This is the man who would have his finger on the nuclear button. That should get anyone worried. Very worried, indeed.

The inescapable conclusion is that Biden’s supposed running mate, Kamala Harris, is the real candidate, and Jell-O Joe is just a placeholder. He’ll be in the Oval Office until his deteriorated mental state becomes impossible to any longer ignore, and then he’ll be eased out of office with Harris taking over officially. And meanwhile, both Biden and Harris, considered the most liberal member of the Senate, will be subservient to the will and insane policies of the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren. Never mind that Harris couldn’t even muster enough support to make it as far as the primaries or that she is widely disliked, even despised, across the full range of the political spectrum. She, and the radical left, and the Dem power brokers, are whom you’ll really be voting for.

A Tale of Two Campaigns, A Tale of Two Americas

The photos above graphically illustrate the tale of two campaigns, and the two Americas they represent and appeal to. Both photos were taken at recent rallies in Georgia. The top image is the Trump rally held in Macon on Oct. 16, following earlier rallies, attended by tens of thousands of people, the same day in Fort Myers and Ocala, Florida. The bottom image is the Biden rally held in Warm Springs on Oct. 27. In contrast to the vibrant and raucous gathering of thousands of avid supporters – typical of all Trump rallies – we see a smattering of supposed Biden supporters, some of whom are actually reporters, isolated in 38 – count them, 38 – circles, to enforce social distancing, outside on the grass. Compared to a garden party, it looks more than silly. Later the same day, Biden attracted his largest crowd of his campaign, such as it has been, at a drive-in rally in Atlanta – 771 people in 365 cars.

This really is the choice put to voters: Which America do you support? A lively and growing and vibrant and courageous America, or an America afraid to even breathe, cowered into fear, locked down and looking forward to the “dark winter” promised by Biden? An America of hope, or an America of despair? An America where the individual is treasured, or one in which the individual is submerged and devalued and canceled in the dismal swamp of identity politics? An America of tolerance and fairness, or one in which venom and hatred and division are fostered by a corrupt political-media establishment? I know which one I’ll be voting for when I go the polls tomorrow. Do you?

I honestly have no idea how the election will turn out, which of those narratives America will choose. If you believe most of the polls – I don’t – Biden will win. Of course, those same polls said Hillary Clinton would win in 2016. So much for that theory. If you go by the enormous enthusiasm shown to Trump, whether in rallies or in the many impromptu displays like car and boat parades held around the country, contrasted with the lackluster showing of support for Biden, Trump has to take it. If you use such anecdotal approaches as I use, like my Yard Sign Theory, there will be places solidly for Trump and others solidly for Biden. Do the Trump yard signs outnumber the Biden ones? Based on my limited observations in different places, I’d give the nod to Trump.

Something like 90 million voters have already cast their votes, in mail-in, absentee, and early voting. I remain opposed to early voting in most cases since vital information, like what the Hunter Biden laptop contains, often comes in late in the game. I’ll go in person to my local polling place tomorrow and cast my vote, as I’ve been doing in most elections since my first vote when I was 18. I don’t know if we’ll know a winner by late Tuesday night. I suspect not. I suspect, unless there will be enough clear results in sufficient states to determine a clear winner, we may wait days, weeks, perhaps months to know who the winner is determined to be as Americans’ faith in their political institutions is further eroded. I hope that isn’t how things go, just as I hope there won’t be violence in the aftermath of the election, but I have my doubts about both. Many cities already are boarding up in anticipation of that violence.

In any case, I hope the sensibility of the country comes through and voters wind up picking the only acceptable candidate on the ballot. I hope they do that even if it takes having to grit their teeth and accept a candidate who is less than perfect. The alternative is too incomprehensible, too horrible, to even think about. And I hope that sensibility carries through down the ballot, too, to keep the Senate in Republican hands and to turn the House. The country doesn’t need more gridlock, nor does it need the one-party state the Dems have in mind for it.

And it’s not just the future of America that lies in the balance. In many respects, it’s the future of the world. I have had non-Americans writing to me to stress that point, and their concerns and fears mirror my own.

Readers of this blog probably know more about the issues and the opposing views of reality than most. Now go out and apply that knowledge and vote.

Featured image: Donald Trump in Omaha, Anna Reed, The World Herald; Joe Biden in Bristol Twp., Pennsylvania, Darryl Rule, LevittownNow.com. Both used under Fair Use.

Trump at campaign rally in Tucson, Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star; Masked Joe Biden waves in Bristol Twp., Pennsylvania, Darryl Rule, LevittownNow.com. Both used under Fair Use.

Trump campaign rally in Macon, Ga., Getty Images; Biden campaign rally in Warm Springs, Ga., Independent Sentinel. Both used under Fair Use.
Is America Ready for the One-Party State?

Is America Ready for the One-Party State?

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That is the question that everyone who goes to the polls or mails or drops off their ballot – unfortunately, millions of people have already voted, their minds already made up, apparently, even as vital information continues to come in – should be asking. Is America ready for the one-party state? The danger of that is more than real – it is imminent – should the Democratic Party gain control of the House, the Senate, and the White House in these elections.

How do we know? The party’s leaders, such as they are, both actual and ad hoc, have told us that is their intent. There is no room for lower categories of people, such as rural dwellers, Republicans, or <gasp> Trumpites in the elitist, “progressive” America they foresee and are planning for you.

Before we parse how this outcome might come about, let’s consider how bad an idea this is. And it is.

The one-party state: A very bad idea

One-party states aren’t a new idea, but they have proven to be a universally bad idea wherever the concept has been (and in some cases, still is) implemented. When we think of one-party states, we think of Communist countries, such as the former Soviet Union, Cuba, the PRC, North Korea, and a number of formerly Communist satellite countries in Eastern and Central Europe and Central Asia. Or we think of totalitarian dictatorships, such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Imperial Japan. But there have been plenty of lesser-known examples, especially in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

The idea of the one-party state was widely touted as an embodiment of “national unity” in the initial post-Colonial stage of many former European colonies, particularly in Africa, though also elsewhere around the world. In Africa, they were based on the traditional African concept of consensus, where decisions were to be taken by universal agreement. Some were based on the power of the “strong man,” and were justified as ways of organizing otherwise disorderly societies. But wherever and whenever they have existed, what single-party states amounted to were kleptocracies where the ruling elites were able to bleed their countries dry, enriching themselves and their own tribes, families, or party powerful, impoverishing and repressing the bulk of their populations.

While far from extinct, the general trend worldwide has been away from the one-party state. For instance, a map of one-party states on the African, Asian, and South American continents reveals far fewer of them than existed just 30 or 40 years ago. There are some examples where things went the wrong way, such as Venezuela, but in general the trend has been away from them. There are good reasons for this, not the least of which is that they are dysfunctional, and eventually are either rejected by the population through political pressure or overthrown violently. In some cases – Taiwan and South Korea come to mind – the one-party dictatorship yielded to a multiparty democracy as their economies and political consciousness grew. We see similar cases in a number of formerly Communist countries in Europe, though the transition there took place much more suddenly than in Asia, where it required decades of transformation and evolution.

In the United States, we gravitated to essentially a two-party system, with a smattering of small and largely ineffectual third parties, and this has been the pattern for most of the country’s history. But there are examples of essentially single-party rule in the United States, too. There was the “Solid South” in which Democrats ruled all the Southern States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A key element of that one-party state was Jim Crow and disenfranchisement of blacks across the region.

In contemporary times, there is the one-party stranglehold exercised by the Democratic Party over most large cities in the country. Depending on machine and identity politics, there hasn’t been a Republican mayor or administration elected in these cities in anywhere from a half century to a century and a half. During this time, poverty, crime, maladministration, and corruption have all festered in most of these Democrat-controlled cities. For more on this version of the one-party state, I urge you to read my piece Back to the Plantation, which details the deleterious effects single-party rule has had and how it depends on maintaining a permanent underclass, and includes links documenting all these realities.

Whether in Africa or in Chicago, Asia or Baltimore, Latin America or Detroit, it is a kleptocracy that this kind of single-party rule creates, fosters, and entrenches, at enormous cost to the bulk of the population.

If you want to see the results of one-party rule at the state level, one need look no further than California, which has become essentially a one-party vassal state of the Democratic Party. Despite it possessing one of the largest economies in the world and being home to powerful Big Tech, it also has the distinction of possessing (according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure) the highest poverty rate in the country, six of the 10 least educated cities in the country, two of the 10 most dangerous cities in the country, a number of the worst-run cities in the nation, and the biggest homeless population of any state. So-called sanctuary cities provide protection to illegal aliens, including violent criminal offenders, while prejudicing against protecting law-abiding citizens. And to achieve these remarkable accomplishments, the state has the highest state tax rate in the nation and enormously onerous regulations. There shouldn’t be any wonder why Californians are fleeing the Golden State in droves, sadly, in too many cases, taking their stupid ideas with them.

But California is exactly the model that the Democratic Party has in mind to transform the rest of the country into. Are you ready for it? Let’s look now how they intend to accomplish this.

How the Dems plan to turn the country into a one-party state

None of this is a mystery. All of these steps have either been specifically stated by leading Dems, or – as in the case of Presidential candidate Jell-O Joe Biden and his running mate and President-apparent Kamala Harris – telegraphed by refusing to tell the American public what is planned. In their refusal to answer the question, they’re telling you what is planned. Dem Senatorial Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the real power in the House (both of New York, another near-one-party disastrous state) both have said that all options are on the table.

“It will be a decision that comes to the Senate,” Schumer has said. “We first have to win the majority before that can happen . . . but everything is on the table.”

So what is on the table and what decisions do Schumer and AOC have in mind? These:

Eliminating the Senate filibuster: For most votes to pass the Senate, it takes 60 votes due to the ability of either party to filibuster any given bill. This comes under what is known as the Cloture Rule. That is a big part of why deliberation can go in much longer and take more compromise for legislation to pass the Senate than the House. But by various means, including majority vote, the filibuster can be eliminated. Known as “the nuclear option,” this would allow Dems, even holding a narrow majority in the chamber, to take it over absolutely. If they also hold the House and the White House, anything they do is virtually guaranteed to pass and become reality.

Adding new states to the Union: Under Article IV, Section 3, of the Constitution, Congress can pass legislation admitting new states to the Union. With a majority in both houses of Congress and a Democratic President, the way would be open to add the District of Columbia (long a Dem issue and Dem stronghold) and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (another Dem stronghold) as the 51st and 52nd states. And there wouldn’t be anything to stop them from adding other territories, such as American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, as states, if they thought it would benefit them politically. The idea would be to add two new (ostensibly Democrat) senators from each new state.

To give you some idea how crazed some of these people are, there actually is a proposal to carve D.C. Into anywhere between 127 and 150 neighborhoods, and admit each as a separate state. This isn’t a satire in The Onion, for instance, but an idea put forth in a serious article published in the Harvard Law Review. With all these new Democrat senators, the way would be cleared to completely alter America’s electoral process, including elimination of the Electoral College, transferring the Senate’s power to a new body where all citizens have equal representation, and an alteration of the Constitutional amendment process to ensure that amendments can be made by states representing the majority of Americans. This lunacy is presented as “a modest proposal to save American democracy.” Never mind that America’s Constitution and the representational republic as a union of sovereign states it created have served the nation for 233 years. These crazy liberal law professors have a better idea. Can’t you see it? And you wonder why radicalized college kids are burning down the cities?

Elimination of the Electoral College: An adjunct to the idea of adding new states to the Union is eliminating the Electoral College. As anyone educated in Constitutional matters knows, the President of the United States is not elected directly by the people, but rather by the states, as represented by electors sent to the Electoral College. Each state decides how those electors are allotted. In some states, it’s “winner takes all” of the popular vote. In others, they’re apportioned according to the proportion of votes won by each candidate. Various restraints on the behavior of electors to vote independent of the vote of their state have been imposed by courts and legislatures, but in the end, these are the people who choose the President. While it might seem like a good idea to eliminate the Electoral College, what will result is that a few big states will wind up dominating the rest of the country, more than they do, anyway. Given the huge differences in values between residents of the various states, the end result might suppress any chance of the smaller states, and their residents, to have any real influence on the nation. The Founding Fathers were clear in their desire to avoid a “tyranny of the majority” (in the words of James Madison) through creation of a republic and a representative form of democracy. There is an expression that a democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what’s for dinner, and protection of minority rights is essential if freedom is to be preserved in the U.S.

Packing the Supreme Court: What “packing,” in this case, means, is adding additional justices to the Supreme Court. Neither the Constitution nor any law sets the number of Supreme Court justices. Since it was established in 1789 with six justices, the High Court has varied from a low of five to a high of 10 justices. It has had nine justices since Congress set that number in 1869. An odd number avoids tie votes. Now, upset with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett by President Donald Trump to fill the vacancy created by the death of long-time liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who herself opposed packing the Court), the Dems are openly talking about adding additional justices – “packing the Court” – that would be appointed by a Democratic President and confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate. The last time this ploy was attempted was in 1937 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, reelected by a large majority in 1936, attempted to add additional justices to counter the existing justices who had been ruling against parts of his New Deal legislation. The move proved tremendously unpopular and failed, and it was viewed as what it was: An undemocratic power grab. Make no mistake: The current Democratic talk of packing the Court, adding several new justices to it, is no less of an undemocratic power grab.

When asked whether voters deserved to know his position on packing the Court, Joe Biden’s answer was clear: “No they don’t.” It shows what Biden, and his party, thinks of voters, and anyone stupid enough to accept that attitude and answer will get what they deserve should Biden be elected.

Those four changes, by themselves, would be sufficient to create a one-party state in the U.S., with the now-radical Democratic Party ruling the country. Add the near-complete sell out of the mass media and social media in support of the Party, and we’re looking at a Chinese-style totalitarian state.

Are you ready for it?

How far off is this?

I was asked this question recently, how long might it take for the Democrats to create this one-party state. The person asked me how many years it would take to implement. He was surprised when I answered that, if the Dems win the House, Senate, and White House in the elections already under way, we are probably months, not years, away from it. I don’t envisage any delay on the part of the rabid Democrats who now hold sway over the party. Given the absolute power of holding two of the three branches of government, no Constitutional constraints to their actions, what amounts to a supportive state media, and with their left flank biting at their heels, I expect the partisan power-hungry likes of a Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC and the Squad to act very quickly and not to allow the opportunity to pass, as the opportunity was lost in the initial years of the Obama Administration when the Dems held both houses of Congress.

A lot has changed since 2008. The mass media and social media have even more clearly lined up as a partisan force, blinding much of the country to what really is going on. And the Democratic Party, both those elected to Congress as well as those pulling the strings behind the Biden-Harris candidacies, have become far more radical. Once they do away with the filibuster and exercise the nuclear option, any restraint they faced 12 years ago will be obliterated. And the rest will follow from that.

As I see it, the only thing standing between us and a one-party state is to vote against Democrats at every level, for every office, and most especially voting for Republican Senatorial and House candidates and for the re-election of the President. And that is coming from someone who has always considered himself a political independent (and still does) and someone who previously mostly voted for Democrats. Things have changed in the party, they have changed in the country, they have changed in me – and hopefully, if you voted for Democrats before, they have changed in you, too.

Otherwise, I have to again pose the question: Are you ready for the one-party state?

Coming Next: In my next posting I am going to outline why the RICO statute – Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – can and should be applied to Joe Biden, the Biden family, the Democratic Party, several mass media and social media organizations, and specific individuals within them, given the organized conspiracy to commit and cover-up egregious criminal activities by Biden and the Biden family, for which clear evidence now exists. Stay tuned and watch this space.

Featured image: Blue America, University of Florida. Used under Fair Use.
Democracy Dies in Darkness

Democracy Dies in Darkness

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Democracy dies in darkness. If you care at all about the very survival of American democracy, you should be absolutely terrified of what is happening right now with the cold-blooded and utterly partisan repression of information being perpetrated by the social media giants, bolstered by the mainstream media. Unprecedented in the nation’s history – in the world’s history – it is not government carrying out this bald-faced censorship, but private enterprises, arguably the most powerful corporations on the face of the earth.

This frightening trend toward non-governmental repression, whether it is from the social media giants, cancel culture, or militant forces on the left such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, was the subject of my recent posting on Banned Books Week: Canceling of Thought in 2020 America on my Stoned Cherry blog. In just two weeks, its prescience has come to the fore in what I would assess to be the single biggest threat facing our democracy.

When the New York Post broke the story confirming what many of us have long suspected, that former Vice President Joe Biden had used his official position to favor the business and financial fortunes of his son, Hunter, and, worse, may have himself gained vast financial benefit, not just in Ukraine but in China, the social media giants Twitter and Facebook immediately shut down the story. They then went even further, and blocked any attempts to repeat the story, such as through retweets, and even shut down the accounts of the Post itself and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. The mainstream media, in lockstep, hardly even mentioned, or downplayed, what the Post reported, and Biden and his campaign have been virtually silent on the story, and has not been pressed on it. You can be excused if you feel you’re in Belarus, Russia, China, or even North Korea, and not in the United States of America, with the concerted attempt to keep the public from even knowing about this story.

What we are witnessing is the utter crushing of the free flow of information in this country, and it is coming from private, but extraordinarily powerful, actors. And it is coming entirely from one side of the political spectrum. This is something I have been warning about on this blog for years now, but it has now reached a critical state.

Keep in mind that the Post is not some frivolous journal. Depending on the method and time of calculating circulation, its readership ranks anywhere from No. 1 to No. 6 nationally, and, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, it is the oldest continually published newspaper in the country. Despite allowing dubious stories negative about President Trump to appear and remain on their platforms, including stories based on anonymous sources and illegally obtained (and never verified) information, Twitter and Facebook justified their actions based on these very grounds, as well as the untrue grounds that the Post‘s information had been “hacked.”

This piece isn’t intended to deal in detail with what the Post found and reported about the senior Biden’s involvement in furthering his son’s business dealings, but rather with the egregious repression of the information to keep it from reaching the voting public. I’d direct you — and strongly urge you – to read the actual stories (we, not being Twitter or Facebook, are happy to be a medium for the free flow of information), which, if accurate, confirm in detail what I previously opined about Biden’s abuse of his office while he was Vice President in the Obama Administration:

The initial Oct. 14 story reporting on emails that reveal how Hunter introduced a top Burisma official to his father

The Oct. 15 story detailing Hunter Biden’s murky business dealings in China

The Oct. 16 story about Hunter’s troubled life and pained soul

The Post stories

In brief, the stories report what some 40,000 emails – as well as thousands of texts, videos, and photos, some showing Hunter in “very compromising positions,” including having sex with an unidentified woman while smoking crack cocaine – to and from Hunter Biden reveal about his personal life, business dealings, and the leveraging of his father’s position to further his business interests and prodigious income, both in Ukraine and China. The emails were on a water-damaged laptop left in April 2019 with a computer repair shop in Delaware, and which was never picked up. While the shop owner couldn’t identify the customer as Hunter Biden, the laptop bore a sticker of the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother, and the email address was that of Hunter Biden at that time.

The shop owner, after numerous unsuccessful attempts at contacting the customer, eventually informed the FBI of its existence, and the agency seized the laptop in December. Meanwhile, the shop owner had made a copy of the hard drive, which he turned over to Robert Costello, attorney for Trump legal advisor Rudy Giuliani. In due course, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon informed the Post about the emails, and on Sunday Giuliani turned the drive copy over to the Post.

While it is true that the authenticity of the emails has not been confirmed, the Biden campaign initially did not deny their existence or authenticity, pointing only to the action by the social media platforms to block stories concerning them as “proof” they weren’t true. Subsequently, the campaign painted them as promoting some sort of “conspiracy theory.” The Democratic smear campaign went into full “Russia conspiracy” mode, with California Rep. Adam Schiff, Liar-in-Chief in the Congress, hauling out that now long-debunked theory to attempt to delegitimize the emails. That there are people foolish enough to continue to believe that sort of nonsense is indicative of the deliberate failure of the media to propagate truthful information in this country.

As further confirmation of the clear media bias that has taken hold, moderator George Stephanopoulis did not ask Joe Biden a single question about the Post reports during Thursday night’s townhall on ABC, and neither did any of the voters posting their softball questions. How this is not considered journalistic malpractice eludes me. Meanwhile, on NBC, moderator Savannah Guthrie, sounding more like a petulant high school girl than a professional journalist, hurled accusatory statements (often inaccurate) at President Trump who, to his credit, responded to them, and the often challenging questions put to him by voters, with grace and directness. Given that NBC came under attacks both from without and within even for hosting the townhall with Trump, can there be any residual doubt that there is almost no fairness or honesty left in the mass media?

There are so many things wrong with this whole state of affairs it leaves one grasping for what to include and what to leave out, so as not to confuse the issue or wind up going on for thousands of words on the topic. With some 20 million people reported to have already voted in this critically important election, how can it be considered a democratic process when virtually all the powerful levers of information are working to suppress reports that, in earlier times, would have been considered crucial to determining the outcome of an election?

Applying the Twitter standard used to suppress the Post stories, the American public would not have known about the Pentagon Papers (hacked), COINTELPRO (stolen), Watergate (unidentified sources), or the revelations of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks (hacked and unidentified soures), or Edward Snowdon (also hacked and unidentified sources). Would America be a different country today were those revelations suppressed? Undoubtedly. Would it be a better country? I doubt many would even attempt to make that argument. Further underscoring the issue, news of the trial of Assange has been largely ignored in the same media that relies on the First Amendment to defend its egregious actions, posing a further threat to freedom of expression, even more under attack in the U.K. than in the U.S.

Pushing back

There are some efforts going on to bring the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, all tech giants, to heel before things go further down the rat hole of Chinese-style repression. Senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley have called for a subpoena to haul Twitter CEO Jack Dempsey to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 23, and Hawley – a key advocate for limiting the power of social media to suppress ideas they don’t like – is calling for the Committee to subpoena Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Hawley also has joined senators Marco Rubio, Kelly Loefler, and Kevin Cramer in seeking a clarification of the Section 230 rules which protect platforms from civil liability when third parties post false or misleading information. The argument is that the platforms are abusing the special protection Section 230 gives them and, if they are going to censor third-party posts, then they should be subject to the same liability as any media source not given such protection.

Additionally, the RNC has filed a complaint against Twitter with the Federal Elections Commission, alleging that its censorship of the Post stories amounts to an illegal campaign contribution to the Biden campaign.

I would contend that the time for hearings and testimony has past, and it’s time for action. In any event, note that all the concerns are being raised by Republicans. If you think the Democrats are concerned about protecting free speech, you would be seriously mistaken. When they have the weight of what amounts to state media on their side, they remain unmysteriously silent. Partisanship and the pursuit of power supersedes basic American and human rights, as far as they’re concerned. In the one-party Democratic state of California, for instance, an Orwellian-style “Ministry of Truth” has been proposed to seek out and block what it determines to be “fake news,” and a similar measure has been introduced by a Dem in Congress. They see themselves as the arbiters of what is “truth,” and the less you know about what is really going on, the better for them, they reason. But is that better for you?

How would you feel to learn that Joe Biden used his influence and public funds to have a Ukrainian prosecutor, who was investigating the company on whose board his son served, fired? Or that he lied to you about not meeting with a top executive of that same company? Or that he sold out American interests to companies and institutions controlled by the Chinese Communist Party to benefit his son, and very possibly himself? Who, you might wonder, is the “big guy” referred to in one of the reputed Hunter emails, promised a carve out of 10% of a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars with China’s largest private energy company? Might it be Papa Joe himself? And have you ever wondered how Biden got as wealthy as he is, living off his government salary for 47 years?

Read the Post stories and see what you think.

If it’s up to Big Tech, the majority in the mass media, and the Democratic Party, you won’t ever find out answers to these, and many other, questions. And you should be very terrified, indeed. Democracy dies in darkness, and night is closing in all around us.

Featured image: Candle in Darkness, Rahul, Pexels. Used with permission.
The Entertainment Event of the Year: The First Presidential Debate

The Entertainment Event of the Year: The First Presidential Debate

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Debate, n.: “discussion or argument about a subject”

                                                                             — Cambridge Dictionary

By now, if you’re not doing 40 years in solitary in a maximum-security prison, you’ve probably heard more than you want to hear about the Entertainment Event of the Year, the first Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Maybe you were one of the 29 million or so people who actually watched the brawl that went on at the Cleveland Clinic on the evening of Sept. 29, in which case you have your own views on the proceedings.

It’s worth noting that, based on viewership numbers, the effect of the debate in terms of electoral support for one candidate or the other is probably minimal. It’s reasonable to conclude that most voters have already made up their mind which candidate they support, and many voters have already cast their votes in early voting. The preliminary numbers are down 36 percent from the first debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, when those numbers were 45.3 million. The numbers will go up as other means of viewing the debate are figured in, as they did in 2016 when the final tally rose to 84.4 million, besting the previous record of 81 million set in the Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan debate in the pre-Internet days of Oct. 28, 1980. But it is doubtful that they will reach the 2016 numbers.

Words used to describe the countretemps – there’s one word right there – between the candidates include “brawl,” “travesty,” or, as CNN’s Jake Tapper put it, “a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck” (come on, man – using one of Joe Biden’s favorite expressions when he’s at a loss for words – how did you really feel about it?)

There are links at the conclusion of this posting where you can see a replay of the debate or read a transcript of it.

I guess it largely depends on what you were expecting, how you reacted to the proceedings. Me, I was calling it the Entertainment Event of the Year long before it actually happened. Given Trump’s flair for showmanship and his relentless pursuit of rolling over his opponents, whoever those opponents might be, and Biden’s utter contempt for the President, who would expect anything less? The biggest unknown variable was whether Jell-O Joe would hold-up to the pressure, much as he did in the last Democratic debate against Bernie Sanders, or if he’d collapse before our very eyes into a mass of babbling protoplasm. In the end, he managed to hold up pretty well, clearing the very low bar that had been set for him, while sacrificing the truth on the altar of political expediency, knowing most of the media and his own ill-informed followers would let him slide on his deceits.

When all was said and done, I’m inclined to agree with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – one of Trump’s debate coaches – who said in the aftermath that Trump’s performance was “too hot” and he often stepped on his own message, while calling Biden’s performance “very shaky.” There were times I wished Trump would have kept quiet and just let Biden hang himself, which he came precariously close to doing more than once before Trump cut him off and spoke over him.

On the other hand, there was the view of Fox News commentator Dan Bongino, who felt Trump’s strategy was to solidify his base to assure the largest voter turn-out in Republican Party history, and in that he won big in the debate, Bongino said.

While he says he will participate in the next two presidential debates planned, it remains to be seen whether Biden doesn’t yet bow out of the remaining debates.

A debate or a brawl

I’ll confess, I like the idea of a free-flowing, open format debate, adhering to the definition of the word as a “discussion or argument about a subject.” Almost out of the gate I thought that’s what we’d get as Trump and Biden went after each other, shouting over each other, and completely ignoring the pre-agreed debate rules. Shouting between the candidates isn’t exactly unknown, as anyone who watched the Dem primary debates is aware, but the debate moderator, Fox News’s Chris Wallace, didn’t seem inclined to let things go as they might.

Before the debate had gone on eight and a half minutes, Wallace was cutting into the fray, saying, “All right, we’re gonna jump in right now. Mr. President. Mr. President, there’s a moderator,” trying to quiet Trump.

At times it seemed Wallace was conducting a journalistic interview more than moderating a debate, and he appeared put-off when the candidates sidestepped his questions. Some commentators later expressed sympathy for Wallace, but my feeling is, if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. I doubt Wallace, a seasoned journalist, is looking for any sympathy, but from my perspective it would have been more useful if he just shut up and let the brawling go on. A presidential debate isn’t just about the issues, but it’s also about how the candidates handle themselves and deal with criticism.

Anyway, that was just the beginning. By the end of the full hour and a half, the debate had become one between Trump and Biden and another one between Trump and Wallace. Given the extent to which Wallace let Biden slide on key issues of fact while pressing Trump to state things he’s already stated repeatedly, I think there was good reason for Trump to feel put upon. And it wasn’t all Trump pushing the limits of decorum. At thirteen and a half minutes in, Biden, already seriously flustered as Trump tied his opponent to Socialist Bernie Sanders, said, “Folks, do we have any idea what this clown is doing?”

“Clown?” An appropriate way to refer to the President of the United States? In any case, I, for one, did recognize what Trump was doing, getting Biden to separate himself from the far left of his party, the wing that had agreed to allow Biden be the candidate in trade for accepting their far-left agenda, and getting them to see whom they had signed off on.

Two and a half minutes later, Wallace pressed Biden to say whether he supported packing the Supreme Court or doing away with the Senatorial filibuster, which Biden refused to answer, instead babbling nonsensically, “Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue — the issue is, the American people should speak. You should go out and vote. We’re in voting now, vote and let your senators know how strongly you feel. Vote now, in fact let people know it is your senators. I’m not going to answer the question.”

Trump continued to press him on the issue, saying, “Why won’t you answer the question — radical left — well, listen.”

That was when Biden made perhaps the most disrespectful comment of the night, saying directly to the President: “Would you shut up, man?”

Trump continued to press Biden to release his Supreme Court nomination list and, rather than let Biden state clearly he would not do so, Wallace cut in, sounding the allegorical bell ending the round. Even that wasn’t enough to satisfy the flustered Biden, and he went on, “That was a really productive segment, wasn’t it. Keep yapping, man.”

Later in the debate, Trump managed to tie Biden to the Green New Deal and its $100 trillion price tag, leaving Biden to deny his support for the radical plan, co-sponsored by his running mate, Kamala Harris, as well as its cost.

Not funny, but laughable anyway

I have to say that numerous times during the debate I broke out into laughter, as unfunny as the reality was, mostly listening to the bald-faced lies and blatant absurdities Biden uttered at several points during the debate. Not the least of which was when Trump pressed him on the corruption allegations involving his son Hunter, and Biden had the audacity to say those claims had been “totally discredited.” Totally discredited, by whom, I had to ask? By Mitt Romney, Biden offered. Oh. That’s explains everything, doesn’t it?

Wallace failed to push Biden on the issue and he cut off Trump when he tried to, and went on to offer cover to Biden when he said, “We’ve already been through this, I think the American people would rather hear about more substantial subjects. Well, you know, as the moderator, Sir, I’m going to make a judgment call there.”

I can’t speak for all the American people, but this member of the American people thinks corruption and abuse of power is a substantial subject, Mr. Wallace, particularly as it involves someone who wants to be president.

Other absurdities were Biden’s claim that Trump had brought about the recession – ignoring the fact that he had created a booming economy with the lowest unemployment rate in history prior to the coronavirus pandemic – and then insisting that the Biden plan included shutting down the country until the pandemic was over. Does anyone do any logic tests, much less fact checks, on these things?

Perhaps the best and most quotable line of the night came from Trump when he said to Biden, “Let me just say, Joe, I’ve done more in, in 47 months, I’ve done more than you’ve done in 47 years, Joe.”

Much has been made about Trump’s response to Wallace’s call for him to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, something Trump has frequently already done, and he responded, “Sure, I’m prepared to do it . . . I’m willing to do anything, I want to see peace . . . You want to call them – what do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me . . . “

That’s when Biden threw in, “The Proud Boys,” and Trump, trying to think on his feet, foolishly took the bait, and answered, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem . . . “

Biden then made perhaps the most outrageous statement of the night, saying, “Antifa is an idea, not an organization.” To which an astounded Trump (echoing what I was thinking at that moment) responded, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.” Instead of pressing Biden on what amounts to an absurd claim, Wallace again rang the bell on the segment and went on to the next topic.

While Biden accused Trump of being a racist, at no point did Wallace challenge Biden on any of his racist statements, such as when he recently told a radio host, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” or his previous opposition to desegregation or his support of the crime bill that led to millions of incarcerations of blacks.

There were two points on which Trump scored and left Biden with no realistic comeback. One was how every endorsement made by law enforcement agencies have gone to Trump due to his support for law and order, and then saying to Biden how “China ate your lunch.”

Trump also made a key point of how he has been politically harassed his entire term, saying, “So when I listened to Joe talking about a transition, there’s been no transition from when I won. I won that election. And if you look at crooked Hillary Clinton, if you look at all of the different people, there was no transition. Because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started on the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with the First Lady, they were a disaster, a disgrace to our country. And we’ve caught them. We’ve caught them all.”

In the closing statements, I again had to laugh at how Biden had been coached to look directly into the camera and speak to the audience, pretending he was one of them, while uttering the usual Democratic blue sky claims how life will be so good and Paradise will descend to earth if only he and the Dems are elected. Are there still people so naive to believe that jive? Apparently so.

In the aftermath

In the aftermath, both CNN and Fox News interviewed members of focus groups they had assembled to watch and react to the debate. In both cases, when asked for a show of hands, almost no one’s opinion had been changed, and (as hard as it is to believe at this point in the game) most undecided voters remained undecided. Based on the one or two hands raised, Trump might have had a slight edge with both groups, though nothing statistically significant. What was perhaps most interesting, though, was how Telemundo’s poll of its Spanish-speaking viewers showed that 66 percent thought Trump had won the debate, compared with 34 percent who said Biden did. Perhaps the forcefulness exhibited by Trump influenced that outcome, and it has to send shivers down the spine of those running Biden’s campaign.

Meanwhile, wherever you come down on the debate or the politics, it’s clear we’ve come a long way – and not necessarily a good way – from the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Those debates wound up helping to change the course of history in the United States, and form the basis for debate among student debaters more than a century and a half later. I don’t think the Trump-Biden debate just held will have a similar impact, though this election might well determine the future course of the country.

To see a replay of the debate, go here.

To read a transcript of the debate, go here.

Featured image, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, historical image, source unknown.
Replacing RBG: Why the Dems Have No Case

Replacing RBG: Why the Dems Have No Case

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It was not a huge surprise when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died recently at the age of 87. Named to the high court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, her tenacity in overcoming health conditions that would have killed many less ferocious fighters was remarkable. Given her more recent health issues, I think it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw that she wanted to hold on at least until after Jan. 20 when there might be the chance of a new president, one more receptive to her brand of liberal political views.

We usually can’t plan our deaths, and of course that was the case for RBG, too. While the time and date of her demise could not have been predicted, what was predictable was how, no sooner than she had taken her last breath, that the Democrats would immediately raise a ruckus about how the current president should not name her replacement but should leave that to the winner of the upcoming election. Equally predictable, the word they hauled out to apply to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was “hypocritical” if he proceeded with consideration of any nominee named by President Donald Trump. This because it was McConnell who refused to consider the naming of Merrick Garland to the court by former President Barack Obama to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in the last year of Obama’s term.

The Dems’ wholly owned toadies in the media, as well as the rabble in the street, quickly picked up the same refrain. McConnell wouldn’t give Merrick Garland a hearing, so he shouldn’t give whomever Donald Trump names a hearing, either.

The problem with that line of argument is that it completely ignores long-established precedent, the actual basis for McConnell’s refusal to take Garland up for consideration, and such delicate niceties as the U.S. Constitution. Leave out the details and the facts – something the Dems and their media acolytes have gotten rather proficient at – and it sounds like they have a case. Add in those details and facts, and it becomes clear that they don’t.

“The McConnell Doctrine”

Let’s start with McConnell’s reasoning in refusing to bring Obama’s nominee up for consideration while saying he would consider Trump’s nominee. Sometimes referred to as “the McConnell Doctrine,” it wasn’t, as the Dems have asserted, that he wouldn’t consider a SCOTUS nominee in an election year. It’s that the nomination was brought within the context of a divided government: The Democrats controlled the White House, but the Republicans controlled the Senate. That is not the case now, when Republicans control both the White House and the Senate. That is the reason for the different response, not hypocrisy. And McConnell is relying on two centuries of established precedent.

One would need to go back 132 years in American history, to 1888 and the term of President Grover Cleveland, when a Senate controlled by the opposite party considered and approved the appointment of an election-year nominee to the high court. Facing a backlog of cases in the high court, a Republican Senate approved the nomination of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, made by Democratic President Cleveland. There have been 10 cases in American history when an election-year appointment was made by a President of one party to be considered by a Senate of the other party, including six made before the election. Fuller’s appointment was the only one of those to be considered and approved before the election. Of the four made in lame-duck sessions after the election, three were left open to be filled by the winner of the election. Only three nominees of the 10 were filled after election day in a way that favored the elected President, the earliest in 1845, the most recent in 1956.

The Constitution

The Constitution is the basis for all U.S. law and legal precedence. Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives the President the right to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court, with “the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” To wit:

“He [the President] shall have Power . . . and he shall nominate, and by and with Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Justices of the Supreme Court . . . “

It doesn’t say anything about whether the nomination and appointment takes place in, or not in, an election year. The president is president, and holds the powers of the president, from noon on the first day of his term until noon on the last. And the Senate has the right to advice and consent to the president’s nominations. This isn’t a matter of debate nor is it a matter of interpretation. The Constitution includes no exceptions or qualifications on this point.

Even Justice Ginsburg herself was clear on the subject. In 2016, while offering support for President Obama’s nominee, she said, “The president is elected for four years, not three years, so the power he has in year three continues into year four.” While urging members of the Senate at that time to “wake up and appreciate that that’s how it should be,” she conceded there is little anyone could do to force the Senate’s hand.

The red herring of RBG’s deathbed wish

The Dems, including no less than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who should know better, have made a big deal out of what has been said to be RBG’s deathbed wish. As reportedly transcribed and released by the late Justice’s granddaughter, Clara Spera, she said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

To which the proper response is a big, so what? As even RBG would have recognized, the hand does not reach far from the grave. All the more so in matters of state, politics, and the Constitution.

Given some of the less-than-judicious things Ginsburg had to say about Donald Trump, before later retracting them, as well as her very liberal views of the law, it’s no surprise that she didn’t want to be replaced by one of Trump’s nominees. But who the person is who replaces her on the court is not up to her, and neither are the conditions of the appointment. That’s just the way it is, sympathy or not for her preferences. Of course at this point we don’t know whether Trump will succeed himself in office or not. We do know he is President now, and has to power to name a replacement for Ginsburg. As he will, and as he should.

Even more irrelevant are the rantings of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Last time I checked, the House plays no part in consideration of or approving a SCOTUS appointment. Nancy says the Dems will “use every arrow in our quiver.” And what arrows are those, Nancy?

The Dems dug their own hole

Until 2013, it took overcoming a Senatorial filibuster – requiring 60 of 100 votes – to approve presidential nominees. That was when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, not happy because he couldn’t muster enough Democratic votes in the house he led, got rid of the filibuster rule for most presidential appointees, including lower court judges. Old Harry apparently forgot, or never knew, the adage, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. In 2017 the Republicans, who had taken over control of the Senate, got rid of the filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominees. Thus, it only takes 51 votes today to approve whomever President Trump nominates. As of this writing, it looks like the votes will be there, even if not a single Democrat votes in favor of his appointment (that in itself goes against what has happened in the past when nominees of presidents of both parties have often been approved by overwhelming, even unanimous, votes of both parties, indicative of how partisan politics have become in recent years).

The new crop of radical Dems seem to have no sense of history, since they are now advocating packing the court with additional members to give them the edge on rulings by the high court. Since it was established in 1789 with six justices, the number of justices has ranged from a low of five to a high of 10. But since 1869 Congress – which has the power to set the number of justices – has set the number at 9, where it is today. Having an odd number of justices is important to avoid deadlocks, and even RBG supported keeping the high court at nine justices. Said Ginsburg in 2019, “Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time.” With more ethical sense than many of her supporters, she pointed out the danger of packing the court to further Democratic Party interests, saying, “It would be that — one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”

The last attempt at packing the court occurred under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and it didn’t end well for Roosevelt. With no sense of, or regard for, history, the idea is again being pushed by the radical Dems. If you can’t win on your ideas, win by forcing your ideas on others. Easy-peasy, but disastrous for democracy and our republic.

The need for a full court now

The idea of nine justices and an odd number of justices on the court is perhaps more critically important now than at almost any time in recent memory. With court challenges already being filed over issues related to conduct of the upcoming election, and with tensions and maneuvering to impact the outcome of the vote running high, it is almost inevitable that electoral outcomes in many places across the nation are going to wind up at the Supreme Court. Should the vote divide 4-4 issues will not be decided in final form, and the faith of the American public in the electoral system and process will be even further undermined than it is already. For the high court to be able to rule definitively, whether one agrees with those rulings or not, is essential to settle crucial issues, possibly even including outcome of the vote for president.

“Burn it down, blow it up”

The very existence and legitimacy of the rule of law is already under attack, and not just by the rabble in the street. None other than members of the mass media and commentators given wide attention are advocating a destruction of our current system and imposition of their will by any means necessary, even if Biden and the Dems manage to regain control of the White House and Congress. If you have any doubt about that, listen to the words of none other than CNN anchor Don Lemon, who makes up with chutzpah what he lacks in brain power:

“We’re going to have to blow up the entire system,” Lemon said to fellow host Chris Cuomo. “You’re going to have to get rid of the Electoral College, because the minority in this country get to decide who our judges are and who our president is. Is that fair?” And if you had any doubt about what this rabid segment of the population has in mind, Lemon clarified things for you by saying, “And if Joe Biden wins, Democrats can stack the courts and they can do that amendment and get it passed.”

Some go even further, advocating violence and arson. RBG’s body was barely cold when author Reza Aslan, an Iranian-American scholar of religious studies (sic), tweeted, “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire fucking thing down . . . Over our dead bodies, literally.” Another author, Aaron Gouveia, who claims to know what it takes to raise happy sons, tweeted, “Fuck no. Burn it all down.” And a member of the Wisconsin Ethics Commission – ethics, Dem style, mind you – Scott Ross, writing to Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, said, “Fucking A, Ed. If you can’t shut it down, burn it down.” And those are authors and supposed keepers of the national ethics. What about the mindless anarchists who have taken over the streets?

Things have sunken so far in this country that when the President and First Lady Melania Trump went to pay their respects to Ruth Bader Ginsburg – whom Trump has called “an amazing woman” – on the steps of the Supreme Court, crowds booed them and chanted, “Vote him out! Vote him out!”

Meanwhile, the cowardly Jell-O Joe Biden, cowering in his Wilmington basement, has once more blown with the political wind. After previously announcing that he would release a list of names of people he would consider for nomination to the Supreme Court should he be elected, he now refuses to, calling it “inappropriate to do so.” While Donald Trump announced his list of prospective high court nominees as he was running for President the first time – it may have been a key factor in his election – and recently added to it, Joe Biden would rather keep voters in the dark.

Asked by a local Wisconsin reporter during one of his rare and brief forays out of his basement – “Should voters know who you’re going to appoint?”– Biden made it clear what he thinks of voters’ right to know whom he supports. “No, they don’t,” he responded. “But they will if I’m elected. They’ll have plenty of time.”

Do you really need to know more than that about where you stand with Jello-O Joe and his Dem power-broker handlers?

Photo credits: Featured image, Ralph Bader Ginsburg, AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin, used under Fair Use