Author: Frank Yacenda
Back to the Moon!

Back to the Moon!

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As long as it’s been since I’ve posted on this blog, it’s been way waaaayyyy longer since humankind has ventured past the bounds of low earth orbit into deep space. The last time was the flight of Apollo 17 which launched from Cape Canaveral — at the time, officially known as Cape Kennedy in honor of the assassinated president who set the nation on the path to the moon — on December 7, 1972, and returned to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 19, 12 days later but more than 53 years ago.

Two of the Apollo 17 astronauts, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, were the last humans to walk on the lunar surface, while their mission mate Ronald Evans orbited the moon in the command module. At least part of that history is to be added to now as the four crew members of the Artemis II mission hurtle toward the moon, escaping the grasp of earth’s gravity for the first time since the flight of Apollo 17.

There are naysayers today, just as there were in 1972, who question the value and purpose of the space program in general, and human space exploration in specific. My purpose in writing this essay isn’t to address those skeptics. There is ample evidence of the tangible value the space program has brought to both the U.S. and the larger world in the seven or eight decades it’s been a reality, and that evidence is easily uncovered. My answer to them is much simpler. We go into space, to the moon and points beyond, because it’s there. We don’t need any greater explanation or justification than that. It is in the human spirit to go beyond our known limits, our known frontiers, our known worlds, and space exploration captures and embodies and extends that spirit.

Back to the Cape

As a journalist who for some years covered the space program, I’ve spent a lot of time at the Cape and observing launches from both Kennedy Space Center and the Canaveral Air Force (now Space Force) Station. I can tell you from direct experience, seeing a launch on the tube or from a distance isn’t the same as being close up. I can see night launches, and occasional landings of SpaceX first stages, from my home, 120 miles (193 kms) distant, and even hear them, about 11 minutes later. But that’s not the same as being close-up to a rocket lifting off from the pad and heading for space.

I’ve become a bit complacent over the years and have only gone down to the Cape a few times since my career as a science and aerospace writer ended some decades ago. In truth, I almost didn’t go down for the launch of Artemis II (I was there when the initial launch of Artemis I was scrubbed shortly before launch time). It’s a bit of a trip, dealing with traffic and the crowds can be challenging, and the chances of a scrub all too real. As fate would have it, I had errands to run the day of the launch in Ocala, so I figured I was already part way there so decided in real time to just keep going. And that’s how I wound up on the shores of the Indian River in Titusville, directly opposite and just about nine miles from Pad 39A, where Artemis II was in final stages of preparation for launch.

It is always gratifying seeing the crowds of people who come from all over the country and, even more telling, all over the world, to see a launch. It’s especially gratifying seeing all the kids in the crowds, animated and excited as they await liftoff. One of the things that has struck me the most since the end of the Apollo program is how humankind waited and wondered throughout eons of history when a person might walk on the moon, and how whole generations have been born since that last human presence on the moon and were again relegated to waiting and wondering. And now these kids were again going to be able to see their dreams and wonderings realized.

My Personal Journey

My engagement with space and space travel goes back to my own childhood, growing up at the height of the Space Race in the 1950s and 1960s. I go into some depth on this in my piece Voyage to the Moon: My Personal Journey, posted in this space on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing on July 20, 1969. That piece is as accurate and worth reading now as it was in 2019, and I strongly urge you to click on the link and read it. I won’t rehash all the detail included in that piece here.

That said, it is worth noting that, during my years covering the space program, I got to interview and in some cases hang out with half the guys who had walked on the moon. Most notable among them was Buzz Aldrin, second man to walk on the lunar surface, with whom I spent a few fun days palling around. Also notable, especially in light of the flight of Artemis II, was the time I spent with Walt Cunningham. Cunningham never walked on the moon, but he was part of the three-member crew of Apollo 7, the first manned mission of the Apollo program. That mission corresponds with Artemis II. The four Artemis astronauts — Mission Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — won’t be walking on the moon, at least not on this mission. But they are the crew of the proof-of-concept mission that will lead to the first planned Artemis lunar landing in 2028. Unlike Apollo 7, which orbited the earth for nearly 11 days, in its 10-day mission Artemis II will travel to the moon, go around the back or “dark” side of the moon, and then sling-shot back for a return to earth. Its crew will have traveled further from earth than any other humans ever have.

The Launch

It is said that when the powerful Saturn V rockets which last sent humans to the moon lifted off, the sound waves broke windows in Titusville, the vantage point from which I was viewing the launch of Artemis II. Given the 8.8 million pounds of thrust, making Artemis the most powerful vehicle ever launched — 7.2 million pounds of thrust from the liquid-fueled main stage plus another 1.6 million pounds from the two solid rocket boosters latched onto the main stage — I fully expected sound waves at least equivalent to those generated by Saturn V’s 7.6 million pounds of liquid-fueled thrust. In truth, while I certainly heard the sound of the mighty rocket as it headed for space, I can’t say it was remarkable. Having witnessed many Space Shuttle launches, with their 6.4 million pounds of thrust, from the KSC press site — just three and a half miles from the launch pad — and feeling how those launches shook my insides, I expected more. Nevertheless, the liftoff was still a majestic moment, the sound of launch almost drowned out by the cheers and claps of the gathered crowds around me.

There had been a number of points in the last hours before launch, as I waited with the crowds and able to listen to the broadcast of a space group tracking the launch, when things looked iffy. There was the weather, which at times looked more than iffy. That fortunately improved toward launch time. There was a hangup closing and sealing the main hatch. It was found that a human hair was preventing the perfect seal needed, so that problem was corrected. There were high temperature readings with an onboard battery, and the mission management crew subsequently decided the readings were an instrumentation error and not a problem with the battery. Perhaps the biggest issue was with the Flight Termination System (FTS), a range problem. Flight controllers were unable to communicate with the system which would terminate the flight — read that as blow up the vehicle — were something to go wrong during ascent. At one point I was giving the chance of launch no more than 70%. To me, it’s always preferable, if there is to be a scrub, that it come sooner rather than later. In any case, finally, Shuttle-era gear was hauled out to deal with the FTS issue which resolved that problem. Things were looking better for launch.

Launch time — 6:24 p.m. EDT — came and went, with no launch. I had moved into position close to the shoreline where I could get a clear view of the launch site, through an opening in some bushes that would frame my photos, and waited, like everyone else. There was a Russian or Ukrainian family to my right, and their kids kept running back and forth in front of me on the rocks, a source of some annoyance. A number of different nationalities, mostly Asian and Latin, were to my left. There was a two-hour launch window, but I decided I’d give things 10 minutes before abandoning my post to see if I could learn the source of the holdup. Before that time tolled someone listening to a countdown report called out that launch would be in three minutes. I built in some time for a delay in the broadcast, which proved prescient since the vehicle ignited on the launch pad when the person was still calling out 30 seconds. Liftoff came about 10 minutes later than initially planned, but it was flawless as Artemis headed for space.

I won’t burden you with further verbiage about the launch. The pix and the videos that follow them below will tell you all you need to know and, if you didn’t have a chance to see the launch, wherever you are, you can share in it here. For now, three days in, things are going well with the mission, and if that trend continues we’re still on schedule for humans once more to set foot on the moon in about two years.

Click on the image links below for some videos of the launch. Here’s a hint: If you just click on the links, you probably won’t hear the sound of the launch. Instead, right click on each link, select “Save Link As,” and save the vids to your hard drive. Then view them with a video viewer such as VLC Media Player or Microsoft Media Player. Be sure your sound is turned up. It’s worth the slight trouble to hear the sound of the launch and of the crowd. Also, be sure to back click to get back to this post from the videos.

Alternatively, you can watch the vids, which play correctly with sound, on my Substack post. Just click on that link to go there.

All images and videos by the author.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.
A glimmer of hope

A glimmer of hope

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Tomorrow’s inauguration encourages many, myself included, to hope that the abuses and degradation of the past four years can be undone and things moved in a more promising direction. But there will be tremendous opposition, already begun, from the side that doesn’t realize it lost, and many things will take Congressional action, never an easy thing.

I have no doubt the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump will, in fact, be the dictator . . . ON DAY ONE, for the more simple minded among my beloved readers . . . he promised to be. He will close the border and open drilling leaseholds, both by executive order, and fix and undo many of the other biggest mistakes put in place by his predecessor’s own dictatorial actions on his Day One and the 1,460 days that followed it.

Just as Joe Biden set things in the wrong direction for the past four years, Trump will set a new and positive course beginning Monday afternoon. But after that kickoff to the new administration, things will get more challenging. Consider Monday a beginning. Or, more, the beginning of a beginning. But it is not anywhere near the end. Which, in reality, does not exist.

A top priority

Among a field of many priorities, a top priority has to be paring down the gargantuan and wasteful and inefficient megalith the U.S. government has mutated into. It is no wonder that many of us wonder why we continue to pay taxes just to see them pissed away to stupid, counterproductive, and corrupt purposes and programs. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are perhaps the perfect two individuals who have the best chance at succeeding at this seemingly hopeless task. There are powerful vested forces who will fight them every step of the way. But if we have any chance at getting government to fulfill its true purposes and to divest it of the rest, this is it.

The list of agencies that need fixing, reform, reduction, or reorientation encompasses virtually every arm of the government. I have put in my own bid to help fix our very broken non-immigrant visa system, the sole job that could get me to go back to Washington and the State Department. I’m not terribly hopeful I’ll be selected for the position, but we all need to do our part, no matter how small that part, if things are to be fixed. And to keep up the pressure on Washington that they be fixed.

A new wind blowing

It’s a new wind blowing in the land, and the incredible fireworks display staged as part of the pre-inaugural events Saturday night in Sterling, Virginia, is symbolic of that new and refreshing wind. Of all the fireworks displays I have seen over the years, including the amazing ones I witnessed — even from literally underneath them — while posted to Brazil, none come close, not even by a fraction, to that display. Accompanied by operatic singing, and ending with a dramatic presentation of America the Beautiful, the display symbolically blew away the timidity and senility and sclerosis and deceit of the past four years.

The fireworks display, which had to run into the millions of dollars to put on, are part of inauguration events that might cost up to $200 million — a new record — funds raised from private donors, not public sources.

Many, many of us — encapsulated in the 312 electoral votes and 76.6 million votes won by Trump in the 2024 election — have been awaiting with less than saintly patience for this change of the national guard. As Biden made himself more of a non-entity almost by the hour since the Nov. 5 election in which his vice president went down in flames, Trump has emerged as a true leader, more of a president as a president-elect than the actual president is or could ever be.

The subject line of a friend’s email to me today says it well: “Last day!! A brighter future tomorrow”

As the old wind continues to wheeze

It falls somewhere between highly entertaining to seriously pathetic to watch, since election day, those on the left melting down, in many cases quite spectacularly, over the defeat of their less than beloved Kamala. You can’t find a better example of intolerance, outright hatred, and propagation of bogus ideas they bought into fiercely — and many still do — as if they were true.

It turned out the American electorate bought the doughnut and not the hole. That shouldn’t be a mystery, but the Harris campaign never seemed to grasp that was what most people wanted. And many in the corrupt and misguided media still haven’t gotten the memo.

The lack of logic defies description. If you’ve seen claims, as I have, that Elon Musk bought the election for Trump for the $250 million he contributed to his campaign, do these people not question how Kamala couldn’t buy the election for $1.5 billion, six times as much? Even with the most heavily bankrolled campaign in U.S. history, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t pull Kamala and her empty vision across the finish line.

What the anti-Trump crazies completely miss in their blindness is that it takes more than money to win elections. It takes actual ideas, good policies, a candidate with whom people can resonate and not one simply installed by the party oligarchs, and a sense that change is needed. The map below, showing the 2024 vote by county — red for Trump, blue for Kamala, Alaska still counting votes but it went red, too, in the end — illustrates the breadth and depth of the dissatisfaction voters had with the existing order.

It’s a tall order that Trump and his team have been handed to fill. Given the tight margins in the Senate and especially the House, it’s going to be a struggle every step of the way. If we see results, those tight margins could go against historical precedence and increase in 2026. If we don’t, the Dems could reestablish control in the Congress, which would be nothing short of a catastrophe. The rapidity and sense of urgency with which Trump has approached the task ahead gives hope that he has learned the lessons of his first term and won’t be taking any prisoners in his quest to put in place his program and — to use his favorite phrase — Make America Great Again.

America, and the rest of the world, is watching.

Featured image, TravelScape, Lake Sunrise, Freepik, used with permission.

Donald and Melania Watch Spectacular Fireworks, Alex Brandon, pool, Associated Press, used under Fair Use.

Disappointed Kamala Voters, Howard University on Election Night, Daniel Cole, Reuters, used under Fair Use.

Electoral Map by County, 2024, Karina Zaiets, USA TODAY, used under Fair Use.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.

Tweedle Dum & Tweedle Dee
Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb

Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb

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The characters Tweedledee and Tweedledum came out of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Later, in 1871, they were transformed into Tweedledee and Sweedledum by the famous political cartoonist Thomas Nast, to parody the corrupt Democratic Tammany Hall politicians, headed by William “Boss” Tweed and Peter “Brains” Sweeny, who ran New York as their personal fiefdom. Well guess what? The rolly-polly identical twins are back, this time in the guise of Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb.

We’ll get back to Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb, but let me say that this piece has been sitting unfinished in my draft file since July. So with less than three days to go until the most consequential U.S. election since the Civil War, I figure I should actually finish it. One thing that has happened in the three and a half months since I first decided to write it is that my focus has shifted. I still think Kamala Harris is perhaps the most dangerous and ill-prepared major presidential candidate we’ve ever had, and one of the absolute dumbest, so that hasn’t changed. She has added an even dumber and less qualified person, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as her running mate, so that is one change. But the overall premise of Tweedledee and Tweedle Really Dumb remains.

What has changed, in terms of the focus of the piece, is not how dumb these candidates are, but how dumb, uninformed, and just plain ignorant are the people who can’t or won’t see through their charade and lies and will wind up (if they haven’t already) casting their votes for these frauds.

I was accused in 2020 of denigrating Joe Biden’s voters. The past four years have proven me right, not just about the catastrophe Biden’s term has proven to be, but how millions of people were taken in by him and the Democratic Party’s autocratic selection of him as their candidate. I don’t feel I have anything to apologize for there. Many of those voters have since come to their senses — we can forgive them, perhaps, since they were misled by the state media on some key facts, like the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop and the crimes it revealed — but the majority of them still haven’t seen the error of their ways and are all too ready to be fleeced again. It’s not like the real facts can’t be found. There are so many sources for debunking the lies of the left that in this connected era it is hard to excuse ignorance of the facts.

The bigger issue

It’s low-hanging fruit to quote the nonsensical word salads dealt up by Harris over the past four-plus years. That’s what I originally planned to do in this piece. She truly is Tweedle Really Dumb. But I think there is a far bigger and more troubling issue, and that is how the blatantly bogus campaign points raised by Harris and Walz and the Dems are so readily accepted, absorbed, and trundled out by those on the left. These people think they are so smart, but really this is a classic case of ignorance with impudence.

Does anyone really believe Trump is a fascist, a Hitler, a Nazi, and a threat to democracy? This is the main basis for the Dems’ campaign. The accusations are so ludicrous that no sensible person, with any even basic knowledge of those things, or of Trump, would give them any credence. It’s also a total affront to those who were victims of Naziism. But we see them repeated like Gospel truth by a range of self-avowed Harris supporters across the social spectrum. A kind explanation would attribute their accusations to pure political malice, aimed against the person they see as a threat to their candidate. But like the question of whether the failures of the Biden-Harris Administration and the Dems are the result of mere incompetence or are deliberate, the kind explanation does not apply.

This past week I actually saw one of these sheep with an inflated sense of their own intelligence compare Trump to Zimbabwe’s former dictator-for-life, Robert Mugabe. Who is next, in what passes for these peoples’ minds? Idi Amin? Jean-Bédel Bokassa? Caligula? Will Trump soon be not only rounding up and executing his opponents, but he’ll be keeping their body parts in freezers in the White House basement to serve up at state dinners? And these people consider themselves intelligent.

They accuse Trump of being anti-Semitic when, in counterpoint to Harris, who rejected Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate because he’s Jewish and she wanted to appeal to the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party, he has been Israel’s biggest supporter while in the White House, and made the biggest advance in bringing peace to the Middle East with the Abraham Accords.

Harris, like Biden, claim Trump is a threat to democracy, when both were installed by behind-the-scenes and very undemocratic dictate of Dem Party elites. Like Hillary Clinton was installed as the party’s candidate in 2016 to push out the peoples’ popular choice, Bernie Sanders, Biden was installed in a similar fashion in 2020. And Harris was installed as his running mate — I am convinced — as a poison pill to keep him from being either impeached for his crimes or 25th Amendmented for his senility, already visible in 2020. She never won a single vote in either 2020 nor this year, she polled as the least popular Vice President in the history of polling, and in July she was hand-picked to take the top of the ticket by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and James Clyburn, after deposing Biden as the party standard bearer in what effectively was a coup. And they say Trump is the enemy to democracy.

Their plot in 2020 was even laid out by one their own in the media, and a similar play book is being followed this year. As egregious as all this is, supporters of Harris and Tampon Tim Walz are unfazed by it. A reasonable person would ask, what is wrong with these people?

The contemporary Democratic Party has more in common with Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall than the Democratic Party of Adlai Stevenson, JFK, or RFK. Party stalwarts loyal to its former tenets, such as Tulsi Gabbard — who has now left the party and joined the Republican Party — and RFK Jr., have denounced the party’s undemocratic reincarnation and are now supporting Trump. Speaking for myself, as someone who mostly voted Democratic through my adult life, I can no longer vote for a party that has betrayed my values, as well as its own. And, should Harris win, I have to question whether I want to remain in a country with so many ignorant people.

I think it is telling that the same party that called people like Dick and Liz Cheney warmongers and worse now embraces them and props them up on the stage to plead Harris’s case. Sheep of a feather flock together, it seems.

We know what Harris says about Trump, but does anyone really know what Harris stands for? It took one of my Australian friends to point out how, when she is asked a question (on the very rare occasions when she has given an interview), invariably her stock response is, “That’s a really good question,” and she then goes on to not answer the question, instead talking around it with a lengthy obfuscation about her alleged middle-class upbringing or how her neighbors valued their lawns or what can be unburdened by what has been. The few supposed policy positions she’s stated, such as not taxing tips or “securing the border,” a joke after overseeing an open border for nearly four years, she stole from Trump. Otherwise, she repeatedly has said she can’t see a thing she’d change from what Biden has done. And hasn’t that been a rousing success.

Don’t forget what got us where we are

It’s important not to get lost in the fog. Don’t forget what the last four years have been like, what got us where we are. If you’re among the 29% of Americans who think the country is on the right track, then that might not matter to you (who are these 29%, anyway?) But if you’re among the 71% who think the country is on the wrong track, what the past four years have been like should matter to you since you’ll be facing another four years not only as bad, but worse, possibly far worse, should Harris be elected.

Rather than detailing each of the failures in the areas that most concern voters — the economy, the border, crime, and the state of our democracy — I’m going to put here links to my posts over the course of the past four years. These should remind you of where things went off the rails and the importance of getting back on them. Read them, digest them, and then, if you haven’t already, go to your polling place and vote on Tuesday. The future of America rests in the balance.

We are soooo f*cked July 29, 2021

It all falls apart August 17, 2021

Ignorance with impudence August 25, 2021

Disgrace August 31, 2021

Stranger than fiction September 16, 2021

Ruining America: It’s by design September 25, 2021

Finally, something that *is* bigger than Watergate February 17, 2022

Twisted up in our own shoelaces February 25, 2022

The dismal state of the union March 2, 2022

Dancing with the devil March 13, 2022

Back to the USSR: America’s media corruption March 20, 2022

Sweeping up the mess in Biden’s brain March 29, 2022

Turning Twitter around: A battle won in the war on free speech? April 26, 2022

Striking thirteen: Where we’ve arrived May 31, 2022

It’s time to break up the FBI August 10, 2022

Nothing matters anymore August 25, 2022

One year later we must not forget: Disgrace August 31, 2022

Nothing to see here July 10, 2023

Covering up the cover -up August 12, 2023

Back posting: The myth of the independent voter September 19, 2023

Don’t believe your lying eyes September 27, 2023

Lessons unlearned October 12, 2023

Redux: The wizard is still dead, but the world has fallen apart January 23, 2024

Who is really in charge in the White House? June 19, 2024

It’s nice to be right, but at what cost? June 28,2024

Treason, by any other name July 5, 2024

Sticks and stones July 16, 2024

The undemocratic Democratic Party August 29, 2024

Featured image, John Tenniel’s illustration for Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, published 1871. Scanned from Modern Library. Public Domain.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.
The Undemocratic Democratic Party

The Undemocratic Democratic Party

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In the past week, two influential former Democrats threw their support to the candidacy of Donald Trump for President, citing the dangers that the Democratic Party and its newly coronated standard bearer, Kamala Harris, pose to America’s democracy, as well as to world peace and security.

On August 23, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his Presidential campaign and pledged his support to Trump. This came after the Democratic Party, the party of his assassinated father and uncle, did everything it could do to thwart voters’ ability to cast their ballots for him, both in the party’s single-candidate non-primaries, and then in the general election. Kennedy’s move was followed on August 26 when former Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard also endorsed Trump, citing his dedication to preventing wars and working for peace, as well as restoring and preserving civil liberties, objectives abandoned by the Democratic Party.

At a joint rally held with Trump in Phoenix on August 23, Kennedy called out the Democratic Party for what it has become, which is inherently and thoroughly undemocratic. The state media did its best to hide such a momentous occasion from your eyes, and belittled and attempted to discredit Kennedy when it mentioned him at all, so if you don’t know of the event or of Kennedy’s words, you might want to re-evaluate what sources you use for news since you’re being denied access to an entirely different perspective than is being fed you.

Perhaps the most poignant and relevant words uttered by Kennedy are these:

“The mainstream media was once the guardian of the First Amendment and democratic principles, and it’s joined this systemic attack on democracy. It also — the media — justifies their censorship on the grounds of combating misinformation. But governments and oppressors don’t censor lies. They don’t fear lies. They fear the truth. And that’s what they censor.”

Read those words and let them sink in, really sink in, and you have the essence of what is going on in this country now and since well before the election of Donald Trump — which the corrupt state media then, as now, worked feverishly to prevent — in 2016. The trend is now so well established and documented there is no doubt about it. I call it the state media since it works hand in glove not only with the Democratic Party, but with such key government institutions and centers of power as the FBI and the CIA. The media hold the key to whether democracy survives or perishes in this country, and as of this moment they have thrown in with the forces that wish to overturn democracy in favor of one-party authoritarianism.

Gabbard, a former four-term Congresswoman, highly placed DNC executive, 17-year veteran of the Hawaii Army National Guard, and former candidate for President, left the Democratic Party in 2022, also citing how the party has become anti-democratic, repressive of free speech, and a supporter of endless wars. Introduced by Trump at a conference of the National Guard Association of the United States in Detroit on August 26, Gabbard said she supported Trump since he opposes the endless wars the Democrats have come to support, and the kinds of dangers to civil liberties a Harris Presidency would pose.

“I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war,” she said. “We cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace. And we cannot live free as long as we have a government that is retaliating against its political opponents and undermining our civil liberties, weaponizing our very, our very institutions against those they deem as a threat. Kamala Harris has done this over the last three and a half years. She won’t hesitate to continue that if she is elected as President. President Trump has been their first and foremost target in this because they don’t want us, as voters, to even have the option to vote for him. I’ve been their most recent target, added to a secret domestic terror watch list after exposing the truth about what kind of dangers we would face if Kamala Harris is elected as President.”

I’ve never done this before, but I’m going to let both RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard tell you, in their own words, why they have come to support Trump. RFK Jr. lays out his case and details the ways in which the Democratic Party has changed and abandoned its earlier roots, and has become the un- and even anti-democratic party it now is. And Gabbard explains why she believes Trump will work to defuse ongoing wars and work for peace, and the dangers to our freedoms a Kamala Harris Presidency presents. There also are links to reportage on both presentations. Listen, read, or both.

Click on the image below to hear RFK Jr.’s own words. Be sure to turn on the sound. A good piece presenting and analyzing RFK Jr.’s endorsement speech in the Daily Mail is accessible with the link below the image.

Read Daily Mail piece on RFK Jr.’s speech

Click on the image below to hear Tulsi Gabbard’s own words. Below that is a link to the AP report on her endorsement of Trump.

Read AP piece on Tulsi Gabbard’s endorsement of Trump

Featured Image, RFK, Jr., screen shot from video of speech appearing on X @RealSaavedra, used under Fair Use.

RFK Jr. video link inage, X @RealSaavedra, used under Fair Use.

Tulsi Gabbard video link image, Carolyn Kaster, AP Photo, used under Fair Use.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.
Sticks and stones

Sticks and stones

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Many children, myself included, often heard the refrain, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. In my case, it was part of my parents’ efforts to calm me in the face of daily schoolyard bullying to which I was subjected in elementary school. I might not have believed it then, but after Saturday’s events, if we didn’t already know better, we do now.

Let’s get right to the heart of the matter. Words can hurt. They can kill. And Saturday they came damned close to killing a former President, the Republican soon-to-be nominee for President, and if current trends hold, the next President of the United States. How close? A fraction of an inch. Less than a couple centimeters.

Ever since Donald Trump came down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his run for President in June 2015 there has been a veritable unrelenting tidal wave of hatred, vitriol, and shameless lies to come out of what can only be termed the state media and the Democratic Party against the man who would become the 45th President. They mocked him, accused him of being a racist and a sexist, said he was a hater.

His opponent, Hillary Clinton, bankrolled a bogus so-called dossier to paint him as a tool of Vladimir Putin and someone who would have Russian whores pee on him. High officials in what is supposed to be the country’s premier organ of law enforcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, furthered the lies, tricked close associates of Trump into entrapment, knowingly verified warrants as truthful that they knew were not. Putin himself would have been proud of the techniques used by FBI officials to attempt to prevent the will of the people from selecting Trump as their President.

For virtually the entire four years of his term he was hounded by one bogus investigation after another. He was impeached, but not convicted, twice. He was badgered, slandered, and mocked relentlessly. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were squandered on trying to pin one false charge after another on the man. The nation’s energy and attention and good will were plundered, all because a single man dared challenge the established order. And that established order fought back, covering up the corruption and perfidy of his opponent in 2020, using a national crisis in the form of a pandemic as an excuse to bend and break election laws, putting a weak, already dementia-ridden tool who would do as he was told, into office.

That was then. This is now.

A lot of people, the current incumbent among them, thought Trump was done, an artifact of the past. But he wasn’t done, and when he indicated he was going to reclaim the office he felt was taken from him, the wheels of the established order swung back into action. Biden’s Department of Justice (sic) swung into action, launching what has been termed a lawfare campaign against him, ginning up legal cases on charges others, Biden himself and Hillary before him, were guilty of, but never charged. Dem Party hacks in Georgia and New York ginned up state cases. But Biden and his henchpeople underestimated voters ability to see through the ploy, and with each charge, each case, each hearing, Trump’s popularity increased.

Biden, in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2021, promised to bring the country together. Something he put the lie to almost every time he has opened his mouth since. He spoke nothing but defamation and hatred for the half of the country who continued to support Donald Trump. He sneered at “Maga Republicans,” said Trump would be the end of democracy. Never mind reconciliation. It was the hyperbole of hatred that came from Biden’s mouth.

“In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,” Trump presciently told his supporters. By now those supporters see all too clearly the truth in those words.

And then Saturday happened, and the true import of the lies and hatred and vitriol spewed by the current President and the lackeys in the state media — afflicted to the last one with the mental illness known as TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome — became apparent. You don’t compare someone to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, say he’s going to usher in Fascism and Naziism, be the death of democracy, predict he would incarcerate and execute his opponents, and all the other hyperbolic nonsense spewed by the real haters in the White House and state media, and not expect some nut job, like Saturday’s shooter, to take those things to heart and act on them. Take, for instance, the June cover of the leftist magazine The New Republic, presented above. That’s a real cover, not some made-up meme. And the magazine had the chutzpah to double-down on defending it following Saturday’s assassination attempt.

The power of words to hurt

If someone really believes Trump to be Hitler, who wouldn’t want to see him done away with before he can take power? Biden and others can blather about deploring political violence, but if they really believed their words they wouldn’t say things to incite it. We don’t know all of his motivation, but Thomas Andrew Crooks, the 20-year-old shooter on Saturday, might have felt he was doing something heroic in attempting to kill Donald Trump. I’d also add that he gave truth to Trump’s words about who the haters are really coming for, since the shooter was willing to fire into a crowd of Trump supporters, killing one and critically wounding two others. Almost as miraculous as Trump’s survival is that more innocent people were not killed or wounded in the eight-round fuselage released by Crooks from his AR-15.

Just last week, Biden told donors in a private phone conference it was time to forget about his abysmal debate performance and “to put Trump in the bulls-eye.” Well, on Saturday, someone attempted to do just that.

On Monday, in one of his halting, stumbling, and rare interviews, with NBC’s Lester Holt, Biden tried to cover his tracks. And he couldn’t even get that right, mumbling a couple of times that he didn’t say “crosshairs,” as if it made any difference. Apparently he was trying to remember some talking point given him by his handlers, and all it did was further reinforce the notion of what he did say, and his inability to express thoughts cogently.

Despite every thing thrown at Trump, from Biden’s lawfare to a would-be assassin’s bullet, Trump has only grown stronger and more likely to be elected back into the White House in November. As one black woman said Tuesday, speaking to a reporter in an Irish bar in Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention is under way, “He’s Teflon Don.”

Indeed.

Featured image: Fight! Evan Vucci, AP Photo, used under Fair Use.

The New Republic cover, The New Republic, used under Fair Use.

The Instant of the Shot, NTD.com, used under Fair Use.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.