How sad

 Over at the American Thinker today there is a post by Eric Utter noting that Poll shows most Americans believe other Americans are biggest threat. This is not good.

Look, AOC and her fantasy that somehow other members of Congress want to kill her is dangerous stuff, and she sounds unhinged. Oh, and what about the notion that somehow Trump supporters were planning riots in all 50 state capitols? To my knowledge, there was never any chatter to that effect. None, zero, nada. The FBI made if up out of whole cloth, if indeed it was the FBI who provided that intelligence. Here's the pull quote:

There is no way America as founded can survive if elite progressives/leftists/statists comprising the vast government-Big Tech-academic-media complex have their way. Specifically, they wish to marginalize, silence-- and possibly eliminate-- those with whom they disagree. Unity is not possible when one large group of people in a society believe another large group of people in that society are a threat to their beloved power and control and therefore must be neutralized at all costs.

America is more divided than at any time since the Civil War, and in some ways more so. There are certain things that can never be reconciled on this earth, such as oil and water, fire and ice, good and evil. Those who wish for a massive government nanny state that knows best how to run everyone else’s lives are simply incompatible with those who yearn to be free and believe in America’s founding principles of limited government of, by, and for the people, the rule of law, freedom of speech and assembly, the right to bear arms, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, etc. Put another way, those who detest the country as founded obviously cannot live in peace and harmony with traditional patriots. And, as we have seen this past year, there are now enough of the former to make this an immediate, existential crisis.

It pains me to realize that so many people whose ancestors came to this country for the freedom and liberty this country was founded to provide have turned their backs on it. Their ancestors came here to be their best selves, something they could not be in the old country they left. And now their children and grand children want to turn this country into the old one. How sad.

A Brief History of Slavery

 Many people have been caught up in the saying that "black lives matter."  Of course, it is true that black lives do indeed matter, but it is more true to say that all human lives matter.  This should be self evidently true, but it seems that people have been criticized and cancelled for saying it.  And while even animal lives and plant life matters, such a discussion is beyond the scope of this essay.  Note though, that the organization Black Lives Matter, Inc. does not care particularly about black lives, or indeed any lives.  These people are a Marxist organization pursuing power.  To repeat constantly the phrase that "black lives matter," does not signal virtue, but instead signals that you on on board with a Marxist government.  Are you?  If not, please stop chanting "black lives matter" because it doesn't mean what you think it means.

As an aside, one must also understand that if all lives matter, then surely the lives of the unborn also matter.  As Michael Brown points out in this piece at Townhall.com from the moment of conception, the life that forms in the womb is a human being. It has the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as every other person. Naturally, the immature life will need to be protected and nurtured by adults, but that does not give adults the right to end that life. Only God has that right.  But no one has the right to abort a child.  The Supreme Court got it wrong in Roe v. Wade.no matter who says otherwise.

Returning to the topic at hand, slavery is the claim by one person to the ownership of another.  As such, then, the "owner" feels entitled to benefit from the work output of "his" or "her" slaves.  But a true understanding of the God's Will for us tells that each of us has a mission in the world.  Slavery interferes with that mission, and turns what a person might do into something the slaver wants instead.  That is truly the original sin: substituting the human will for the Will of God.  Thus slavery is evil, a form of sin.

Nevertheless, slavery has been practiced by people since time immemorial.  It was common in the ancient world.  The Bible records that the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt for some 400 years, until God freed them.  The story of God's freeing of his people is in the book of Exodus.  Interestingly, it is actually everyone's story, for God is there to free everyone from slavery to addictions and other things that may be limiting us (as said above, each of us has a mission to accomplish here on earth). In subsequent wars various tribes of the Hebrews were carried into "captivity" by the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Persians.  The reason these kings took people into "captivity" was of course to use the captives as slaves.

Every race and ethnicity of people has been enslaved at one time or another.  You can read about some of the people who have either been enslaved, or have held slaves right here. The Vikings kept other Europeans as slaves, as did the Saxons in England. The very name of the Eastern European peoples known as Slavs derives from the fact that they were at one time kept as slaves. It should be noted the slave trade has never been extinguished, and people are still enslaved in parts of the world including China and the Muslim Middle East.

Today, a number of Black personalities keep the fact that blacks were once enslaved to work on plantations in America on the front burner.  Note that slavery was officially ended in the United States by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution at the end of 1865, 156 years ago.  Suffice it to say that no one alive today experienced being enslaved, nor were slave owners.  The constant cry of racism keeps up the notion that somehow Americans secretly discriminate against blacks.  At one time, blacks were fighting genuine discrimination and to be equal partners in society. 

We, as a society have made great strides in achieving Martin Luther King's goal of judging each individual on his or her merits and not the color of his or her skin.  But, as we have made progress in racial understanding, the definition of "racism" has continually changed to make us seem, if anything, more racist.  Now, because the race hustlers can not point to any real racism, they point to something called "systemic racism" that allows for claims of racism where any sane person can not see any. Indeed, the constant use of racism as a way to end discussion and debate has rendered the charge meaningless.  And the notion that only whites can be racist is equally fatuous.  

The other thing the race hustlers cry for is reparations for slavery.  The demand for reparations though  has nothing to do with slavery.  It rather has to do with grabbing power for the person making the claim.  And the claims become more outrageous with each passing year.

One of the claims for reparations is that Americans have benefited from the monumental contributions of slaves to our prosperity.  It is as if other Americans didn't do anything except sit back and wave their hands while our slaves did all the work.  In their telling, every white American was a plantation owner using slave labor to achieve vast wealth.  Of course, a clear eyed look at history tells us that while blacks certainly contributed to our nations achievements, those contributions were in proportion to their numbers in the population, which has never been higher than around 12%.  So, George Washington Carver made great contributions to agricultural science, and he was black.  But was Henry Ford or Thomas Edison black?  No?  How about Eli Whitney or Samuel Colt?  No?  Of how about Jim Throrpe?  No, of course not, because he was Native American.

So here is my point, stated again:  Each individual has a purpose, a mission if you will.  We have been sent into the world by our Creator to accomplish something.  And our creator doesn't care about race, for we are all created equal before God.  It behooves each of us to attempt to treat each other as if character matters, not skin color.

While writing this post, I came across an article by Derek Hunter at      Townhall.com entitled I can't bring myself to care any more. He notes that the charge of racism has become meaningless, and he has become numb to it.  I will leave you with the following quote.  Yes, racism does exist, as does "white supremesism.  But the numbers of both are both vanishingly small, and confined to the morons and idiots that invariably exist in any population 

Racism still exists. In a nation of 330 million people there are always going to be a few bigots around, of every color. But this country isn’t racist, fundamentally or otherwise. The Democratic Party is. And as long as they continue to engage in that racism and get away with it, people will continue to suffer and the few real victims who exist will continue to be ignored for the politically convenient and manufactured victims. I’m not going to be a part of it, so I’m going to join the majority who tune it out.

Republicans don’t have the wherewithal to spot it, nor the underpants content to effectively counter it. As long as they remain afraid of the charge, it’ll work. For my part, that kid who scrambled to find someone who cared enough to do what was right has now heard wolf cried too many times, for too many things where there wasn’t a wolf or even a dog to give a damn anymore. If turning people off to fighting real injustice was the goal, mission accomplished, Democrats.

Tulsi Gabbard Defends Conservatives

 Tulsi Gabbard was on the Tucker Carlson show the other day.  Now, Gabbard is no conservatives.  Indeed, she ran in the primaries as a Democrat.  Gabbard says that the Leftists now in power are attempting to turn the United States into a police state.  Of course what they are doing is against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  But never mind, because the Supreme Court will somehow find that it is all nice and legal like.  After all, if you are a conservative who advocates for following the Constitution for every American, you are a "domestic terrorist."  Breitbart has the Tucker Carlson Tonight show right here.

We need to continue to speak out and speak the truth. We can not let our rights go unused, or we will surely lose them.  Our First Amendment rights support all our other rights, including the Second Amendment.  But, as you can see, H.R. 5717 propses every Un American gun control imaginable. And the Second Amendment of course, is intended to support the First Amendment.  So, like I said, we all need to speak out now, or...

Update:  American Defense News has posted Foremer Democrat presidential candidate warns of 'police state'-Cites ex spies colluding with big tech.

You're Not Paranoid if They are Really After You

 Rod  Dreher has an excellent article at The American Conservative entitled How To Prepare for the Coming Crackdown. Dreher ubtervuews Alex Braszko who, besides his experience as a military intelligence officer, is a Orthodox Christian. Please go read the interview. Braszko paints a grim picture, particluarly as relates to our online lives. Yes, I figure my writing here may already have me on a list. But he is right that you should disconnect from social media, and keep you phone in a faraday bag, get rid of Alexa, and the other things he suggests. More, however, is a matter of attitude:

...Nothing but the grace of God prevents those same things from happening in our own country today. So, no, I don’t think I’m being alarmist. I think we’re being vigilant, I think we’re being observant, thinking critically about what happened historically in many other countries, looking at similarities taking place in our own country today. And it’s really not good what we’re witnessing.

Please go read the entire article, and begin now improve your spiritual life and become "the gray man."

Industrial Scale Fraud and The Great Coverup

 We keep being told that there simply is no evidence of election fraud.  Yet, for those who look even just skin deep at some of the things that went on during the 2020 election and the counting after, it is clear that this process was hinky.  Hinky, of course is a technical term.  The word means that all was not kosher.  Interestingly, because no court would actually hear the evidence, it allows the press to claim that there isn't any.  But just because no one will hear the evidence doesn't mean it isn't there.

Jay Valentine has an article today at the American Thinker entitled Industrial-Scale Election Fraud - Did It Happen? Now, Valentine is not your usual know nothing journalist or news reader. In fact, he actually has lead teams that have discovered fraud where the experts said there was none.

I led the team that built the fraud detection engine for the largest online auction house on the planet. They were on the front page of USA Today because some mother never received that gift for her child after sending in her last dollar. The auction house publicly said their multi-billion-dollar brand was in jeopardy.

I led industria-scale fraud investigations in the biggest of the big leagues, and proved fraud.

...snip...

Well, my team built a cyber-fraud technology and solved the problem. We broke insurance fraud rings where the insurance firm’s 30-person, police trained, 25-year experienced fraud team said there was no fraud...

So, what does this expert in fraud have to say about the 2020 election?

My team and I know industrial-level fraud and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the 2020 presidential election had massive, organized, discoverable fraud in most of the swing states.

Valentine notes that the places to start looking for fraud are the places that have already been identified. He takes the situations that we all know about by now, substitutes more common types of fraud for election fraud and then asks the reader wouldn't such a situation raise red flags? You can decide, but read the whole article. But what allows this industrial scale fraud take place in broad daylight, and then gaslight the public with constant claims of "no evidence" while at the same time deplatforming those who are trying to bring it to the public? Interestingly, that is the subject of another report by Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish entitled Democrats Outsource Political Repression to Coprorate Monopolies.

Democrats love public-private partnerships and they outsourced political repression to the private sector. The Constitution has inconvenient things to say about freedom of speech and so the Democrat government of elected and unelected officials outsourced the problem of censoring and suppressing speech to the handful of Big Tech monopolies of the internet.

That same old document written by old white dead men, not to mention centuries of jurisprudence and tradition, prevents the government from kicking down your door in the middle of the night for wrongthink. But nothing keeps corporations from firing you for wrongthink, for being related to someone who committed wrongthink, or for insufficient political correctness.

The public-private partnership between big government and big monopolies is based on Democrats and corporations doing the dirty work of repressing each other’s opponents.

Corporations can’t write regulations that suppress competition from upstart rivals, and so the government steps in and keeps the marketplace under the control of a few cartels. And the government can’t censor, deplatform, fire, bankrupt, and bar its political opponents from speaking, flying, and doing business. But the monopolies it’s been partnering with can and do.

This political Strangers on a Train arrangement goes much more swimmingly because both the government Guy and the corporate Bruno are eager to take care of each other’s dirty business.

What we are seeing is the practical effects of having one party in control of the levers of power, and perhaps more importantly, having so much power concentrated in the Federal government. We need to find a way to rein in this Federal behemoth.  Oh, the Left will keep a few tame Republicans around to give the appearance of  two parties.  Sort of like newspapers used to keep "tame" conservatives around like George Will.  I think we need to return to these United States, rather than the United States.

Baking Bread with 4,500 Year Old Yeast

 I have mentioned that I bake sourdough bread, right?  Indeed, on Tuesday I baked 2 loaves of sourdough with rosemary.  It smelled wonderful.  Then, today, out of the blue I find that the Xbox inventor bakes bread with 4,500 year old yeast. My own starter is a continuation of a 400 year old yeast strain. but, a 4.500 year old yeast?

Seamus Blackley (who invented the Xbox gaming system) posted on Twitter how he, together with a pair of scientists (an Egyptologist and a microbiologist), collected yeast from 4,500-year-old Egyptian pottery. They took samples from containers they suspected were used for bread-making and beer-brewing in Ancient Egypt. Blackley kept a single sample of the antique yeast and used milled barley, as well as Einkorn flour to ‘awaken’ the yeast. After a week’s worth of patient waiting, the scientist was ready to start baking! (The microbiologist is going to make beer next!)

That is, of course, incredible. If you are a bread enthusiast, you should check out Blackley's tweets as he takes you step by step through the process. Very interesting, and very cool.

What We Need Is A New Party

 I have been a registered Republican all of my adult life.  But I have not been radically so.  For example, I could not vote for Dole for President, so voted for Clinton...to my eternal shame.  Even though I knew that Obama was a Marxist, he admitted it in his book, I never said that he wasn't the President, or that he wasn't MY President.  But the time has come, and I have to admit that I do not feel that the current administration is either the, or my President.  Like Kurt Schlichter, I have taken to referring to him as President Asterisk.

My reasons for feeling this way is because it looks to me that the presidential election was stolen.  So, it was interesting to see that Newt Gingrich, of all people, feels the same way. His reasons were written in an article at The Washington Times entitled Why I will Not accept Joe Biden as President.

In this context, let’s talk first about the recent past and the presidency.

In 2016, I supported an outsider candidate, who was rough around the edges and in the Andrew Jackson school of controversial assaults on the old order. When my candidate won, it was blamed on the Russians. We now know (four years later) Hillary Clinton’s own team financed the total lie that fueled this attack.

Members of the FBI twice engaged in criminal acts to help it along — once in avoiding prosecution of someone who had deleted 33,000 emails and had a subordinate use a hammer to physically destroy hard drives, and a second time by lying to FISA judges to destroy Gen. Michael Flynn and spy on then-candidate Donald Trump and his team. The national liberal media aided and abetted every step of the way. All this was purely an attempt to cripple the new president and lead to the appointment of a special counsel — who ultimately produced nothing.

Now, people in my world are told it is time to stop resisting and cooperate with the new president. But we remember that the Democrats wanted to cooperate with Mr. Trump so much that they began talking about his impeachment before he even took office. The Washington Post ran a story on Democrat impeachment plots the day of the inauguration. In fact, nearly 70 Democratic lawmakers boycotted his inauguration. A massive left-wing demonstration was staged in Washington the day after, where Madonna announced she dreamed of blowing up the White House to widespread applause. These same forces want me to cooperate with their new president. I find myself adopting the Nancy Pelosi model of constant resistance. Nothing I have seen from Mr. Biden since the election offers me any hope that he will reach out to the more than 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump.

So, I am not reacting to the votes so much as to the whole election environment,

(As an aside, I would note that in the process of executing this resistance, the trust that people have placed in whole institutions and agencies has been torn asunder, probably for a generation at least. While most FBI agents are probably good people, one can no longer trust any of them. The discovery that the CIA, the NSA and other agencies like the IRS are being used against us have pretty much raised our natural suspicion of government to red alarm levels. The fact that it is YOUR money being used AGAIST YOU makes it all the more galling.  As I write this, I suspect it is being tracked by an NSA algorithm, and who knows, perhaps Google is shadow banning this blog with the tacit approval of the Party.)

Please read Gingrich's article.  It is well written, and he manages to capture the frustration a lot, maybe 75 million of us feel right now.  But, I highlighted the article in order to bring up what I feel may be a way forward for us.  More about that below.

I mentioned that I have been a lifelong Republican.  But the Republican party no longer represents me.  I have not changed.  I am still the Constitutional conservative I have always been.  But I now have to finally face the fact that what we have in Washington today is not two political parties, but what has been described as a Uniparty...or just The Party.  There is the Left wing, the Democratic Socialists, Communists, Fascists, Progressives (these people rename themselves constantly to escape the bad publicity they inevitably engender), and the McConnell wing of The Party.  Neither wing of The Party pays any attention to the Constitution.  They have been playing us for suckers, and we have let them.  I would also note that just like during the post Civil War, the Democrats had the militant wing of their party, the KKK, they now have the BLM and Antifa.  And if you do not see coordination, command and control there, you are not looking.

So, what is to be done.  I have talked to many conservatives, and to a man and woman, most believe there is no point to voting, because they recognize that since there will be no consequences for openly stealing an election, it will be done again and again, effectively ensuring that they will not have a voice in government.  The Party hopes that by an aggressive program of attacking conservatives, and if necessary "re-educating" them, and...well...other more aggressive means, they will be able to tamp down any dissent.  I suspect they are making a big mistake.  But don't interupt the enemy while he is making a mistake.  That advice comes from Napoleon, not Sun Zhu.

Meanwhile over at the American Thinker Allen Gindler has an interesting article entitled Where to Find a Principled Right Wing Party. Gindler suggests that we make our own. It has, I would remind you, been successfully done before. In 1854, in a school house in Wisconsin, a group of abolitionists got together and founded the Republican party. By 1860 they had elected the first Republican president. Meanwhile, members of the Whig party either joined the Republicans, or switched to the Democrats, depending on their own personal believes about slavery.  In either case, the Whigs died out, or maybe became the Northeast wing of the Republicans.  Who knows?

Today, the issue is not slavery, but the more basic and universal parts of our founding documents, life, liberty, and property.  The Party believes you have too much of all of these things.  Indeed, they don't believe that you have a right to any of them.  For the most part, they don't even believe in a Creator who grants you these rights.  Instead, they believe that these and other rights are granted by government like little treats for good boys and girls.  But don't eat them before dinner!

Gindler writes:

Which ideas are right-wing? First, rightists' views contradict the principles of the socialists. If socialists encroach on private property rights, restrict individual freedom, and welcome forced redistribution of wealth, then the right wing is against all this. The right wing firmly defends private property and individualism and restricts compulsory wealth redistribution. Second, the right wing allows dissident thoughts to be heard, which cannot be said about the left. Third, the right wing has nothing to do with racism and nationalism. Unfortunately, they simply could not effectively defend themselves from the left's defamatory labels.

The problems listed above — the attitude toward private property, the degree of individual freedom, the scale of the redistribution of wealth — have been the main topics for discussion from ancient times to the present day. These questions are relevant and currently confront American society. Amazingly, the answer to those problems from both major parties is almost identical. Both sides are irresponsible squanderers and redistributors of wealth, who are trying to solve all issues by involving the state in the economy and in all other spheres of life.

Thus, we observe a blatant dichotomy between the right-wing ideas and the ruling elites' practical politics, no matter which — Democratic or Republican. This has become most clearly seen for many Americans right now. The Trump presidency has many historic achievements. However, the most important result of his tenure was the exposure of the rottenness, duplicity, and hypocrisy of the American political elite. He tore the masks from the faces of hideous hypocrites, sacrificing himself and his family. These sacrifices will be in vain if the MAGA movement is not organized under the flags of the new party. After all, it is already clear that MAGA in the GOP framework is a road to nowhere.

Trump proposes starting a new party called the Patriot Party. A good start. We need to begin the process of party building at the local and state level. At the Federal level, I think we need to include these items: 1) Reaffirm the Declaration of Independence; that our rights come from our Creator, 2)that the purpose of government is to secure these rights, and 3) that our Federal government should only exercise those powers vested in it by the Constitution.

To facilitate this platform, perhaps it might be a good idea to have as one of our platform goals the repeal of the 17th Amendment. You can read about the reasons why the 17th Amendment was ratified. But I think the states are important stakeholders in the Federal government. The Federal government is, indeed, a creature of the states; the states are not provinces of the Federal government.  The people have the House.  If the States have the Senate, and if we can keep the Electoral College, I think power will be fairly diluted. As it stands, we are getting closer and closer to a democracy as opposed to a republic. And a democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner.

Oh, and you are not a wolf.

Why The Left Suppresses Free Speech

 Today, at Townhall.com Dennis Prager discusses why Left must suppress free speech. It is, of course, because they have to suppress any dissent. Their ideas do not hold up when faced with dissenting opinions:

Let us begin with this fact: The left always suppresses speech. Since Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, there has been no example of the left in control and not crushing dissent.

That is one of the important differences between liberal and left: Liberalism and liberals believe in free speech. (The present leftist threat to freedom in America, the greatest threat to freedom in American history, is made possible because liberals think they have more to fear from conservatives than from the left. Liberals do not understand that the left regards liberals as their useful idiots.)

...snip...

So, we return to the opening question: Why does the left need to crush all dissent? This is a question made all the more stark because there is no parallel on the right: Conservatives do not shut down dissent or debate.

The answer, though the left will not acknowledge it, is the left fears dissent. And they do so for good reason. Leftism is essentially a giant balloon filled with nothing but hot air. Therefore, no matter how big the balloon -- the Democratic Party, The New York Times, Yale University -- all it takes is a mere pin to burst it.

Go read Dennis Prager's article today at Why the Left Has To Suppress Free Speech. Beside fact that the Left is suppressing our God given right to free speech, they are also deliberately taking away the very purpose of our First Amendment, designed to acknowledge these rights.

Note that the acknowledge of free speech does not permit illegal speech, nor does it condone speech that coordinates illegal activities.  But it has become obvious that the people cancelling conservatives have no problem with violence or illegal activities as long as the illegal activity supports their agenda.

The Truth About Wuhan Virus Vaccine

 Finally for today, is this article from the American Partisam entitled Dr. Simone Gold - The Truth About the CV19 Vaccine. Watch when you have an hour to spare. So this is an actual doctor who does real clinical work of healing real people. And what she is telling the audience directly contradicts what we are getting from all sides. I don't know, of course. I am not a doctor. But my BS detector tells me Dr. Gold is telling the truth. Just sayin'.

Better Late Than Never

 Better late than never I suppose, the Epoch Times is reporting that Chine 'Sought to Influence' 2020 US Election Director of National Intelligence Assesses. Big shock, the CIA management held up the reporting because they didn't want the fact that China had tried to influence the election to influence policy. One might say that with friends like these, who needs foreign spy agencies.  Well, it appears they got what they wanted.  I am looking for a course in speaking Mandarin.

Off the Big Screen and Into Real Life

It has been rattling around in my mind for some time that the current situation and the proposals the Left is putting forth remind me of the Hunger Games. Unlike previous transfers of power, the Left is making lists of people to cancel, indeed their leftist tech giants have in fact canceled the president. A number of Trump staff and Cabinet officials have already been blacklisted by companies for which they might work. Many of those on the Left truly want to either "re-educate" 80 million people who voted for Trump, or they would be just as happy if they were just executed. How else to interpret some of the tweets and posts in this article.

Traditionally, the presidency and control of Congress has switch parties without either party committing widespread violence.  What is different this time?  Well, the first thing of course is that the election was stolen quite obviously and in plain site.  Subsequently, the Leftist propaganda machine has gone into overdrive burying the truth.  The courts have universally averted their eyes, refusing to hear the evidence we have collected, which is extensive and comprehensive. 

Then there is the vindictiveness of the Left.  They display no magnanimity in winning, even if it was an illegitimate win. They should be rubbing their hands together like a movie villain.  After all, they have shown the utter powerlessness of the 80 million people they seen to want to cancel  There will never be another free and fair election, after all. It is as if they believe that they shouldn't have to explain how their policies would be better than the ones we implemented instead.  But the truth is that Trump's policies in fact made the lives of average Americans of all stripes better.  No doubt that angered the Left, but it should have shown them the lies they have been promoting.  But no... 

Today, at the American Thinker, Lynn Lechter has apparently had the same sort of thoughts.  Lechter has a post entitled About the resemblence of Biden's DC with Hunger Games and payback.

The Hunger Games is a trilogy written by Suzanne Collins. A blockbuster in both print and film, it is about a fictional fascist, dystopian country, Panem. Panem is divided into twelve districts, cruelly governed by its Capitol that is populated with haute couture-adorned, tone deaf bureaucrats and a cold blooded leader.

...snip...

In Panem, the Capitol controls all aspects of life. It is heavily guarded and protected from the dirt poor, subjugated peons. It broadcasts propaganda. And to entertain the overworked, oft times dirty and usually hungry citizens, it holds and broadcasts an annual “Hunger Games” -- the cruel fight to the death among “tributes” -- one male and one female contestant from each district. The winner, having killed the other twenty-three contestants, is given a luxurious home and lifetime riches.

The parallels between Panem’s Capitol and Washington, D.C. right now are stunning. Biden and the Democrat majority, on the heels of the Covid-induced locked-down, shut down America, have quickly transformed the Capitol into a punitive, heavily guarded power center.

Lecter goes on to list the many ways in which The Hunger Games seems have preciently predicted what is about to decend on America. Note that today's Psalm is Psalm 13. It seems strangely appropriate to the sitation today.

Calling Out Treason and Sedition

 I came of age in the 1960s.  The country was still fresh off the  McCarthy Era, during which Senator Joseph McCarthy (R Wis) attempted to publicize to the American people the fact that a number of high ranking employees of the State Department were card carrying members of the Communist party, and that the Communists took orders from Communist Russia.  Clearly, these State Department employees were compromised by a conflict of interest.  Do their loyalties lie with the Constitution, or with their Communist masters?  As the Left always does, they attempted to muddy the waters by bringing forth the fact that a number of private citizens were also members of the Communist party.  To be clear, there is nothing wrong or illegal about private citizens being Communist, although as I am about to explain, I question Communists patriotism.

The Left, which includes an assortment of various philosophies including Communism, Socialism, Progressivism, Fascism, Marxism, as well as the many advocates of various Critical Theories, and which I will lump under the umbrella of Collectivist, used the muddied waters to claim that somehow McCarthy was wrong.  He wasn't.  Then as now, the press, the Democrats, the Hollywood establishment, and others in essence "cancelled" McCarthy and convinced most Americans that he was wrong.

The Founders' idea was that "the people" was a group of individuals each with his or her own interests, achievements, and religion and other unique attributes.  They wrote a frame work, called the Constitution of the United States of America to allow for the peaceful working out of these individual interests.  First, they divided up the power into a bicameral Congress, an independent Judiciary, and a relatively strong Executive.  They even made the two Houses of Congress different.  The Representatives would be elected by popular vote.  The Senators would be selected by the states.  Then they limited the power that the Federal government could exercise over the American people, leaving the rest of the power to the individual States.

Note: there are many areas of business for which the Federal government has never been authorized.  Healthcare, Social Security, education, are some of the things not included in the powers delegated to the Fed.  The Supreme court does not escape notice here either for acting, or failing to act to protect the Constitution.  And while a strong and energetic Executive was contemplated, the Congress has delegated far too much power to the President, allowing him to create laws through Executive agencies such that no one can truly understand the law, much less obey it.

The people wishing to have the new Constitution ratified were know as Federalists.  Those that were leery of ever having so much power invested in government were known then as the Antifederalists.  In order to achieve ratification, the Antifederalists wanted a Bill of Rights to make explicit the rights acknowledged in the new Constitution.  Note that the Constitution does not grant rights,.  Rather rights are granted by our Creator.  The Constitution acknowledges these rights.

The rights belong to each of us, and include freedom to practice our religion as we deem correct, freedom of speech, of the press, and other rights such as the right to a trial by jury of your peers.  Then they also acknowledged that we each have a right to keep and bear arms.  And since the arms are also intended to be used in the event of war, we are entitled to keep and bear the arms that a soldier keeps and bears.  Thus, we should be allowed to own and use fully automatic arms like the M16 or the M4.  This may shock gentle readers, but the idea that "weapons of war do not belong on American streets" is totally false.  We should have them on our streets.  It is not the possession of such arms that is the problem, but rather the misuse of them by a small percentage.   

By contrast, collectivists do not believe in individual rights, but group rights.  At various times in history, they have advocated for various classes of people such as "workers" as opposed to "capitalists," or blacks as a class as opposed to supposed "white supremacists."  According to the collectivists philosophy, a person who happens to be black must have the interests deemed to be those of a member of a class known as "black", and must vote those interests.   

Here's the problem with the notion of group rights: Who decides what is a group right?  I have a friend who is a retired Army Military Police officer, who works two jobs, one of which is armed security for businesses.  He is married to the same woman for 30 plus years.  He, obviously doesn't use drugs.  Now, what interests does my friend have in common with, oh...say...George Floyd?  The least important on, how he looks.  But his character is more in line with other normal Americans.  How can anyone define the interests of a class like being black?  And the same is true for each of the other identities and the countless genders the Left promotes.  Their "classes" are based on greed, envy and revenge against the successful.  They appeal to peoples emotions to gain votes. And votes in turn translate into power.  And power is the real point of the upheaval imposed on society by collectivist philosophies.

As an individual, my interests intersect with many people.  But I am not defined by any of them.  My ancestors came from Northern Europe.  My neighbor hunts with guns, while I use guns for different purposes.  I am a Lutheran Christian, married, a father and grandfather.  I am, in other words, a class of one.  And in truth, every other individual turns out to be a class of one as well.  This was the central premise upon which the Founders built a successful, prosperous nation.

So, while being a collectivists of one or another stripe is not illegal, the  fact is that collectivism and the Constitution are diametrically opposed ideas for governing the country.  And since, up until now the Constitution was the way our nation was founded, and since every officer of that government from the lowliest Army private to the people elected to Congress, the Senate,  or to the Presidency have all taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, it is collectivists who are committing treason in pushing their collectivist ideas.

Every time a Congress person suggests kicking another out of Congress because of what they have said or believe, that Congress person at the very least commits sedition.  Remember one of the rights embodied on our First Amendment is freedom of speech.  If one Congressman disagrees with another, their disagreement should be debated in public, and allow voters to decide who is correct.  Yes, of course if someone's ideas truly offend the Constitution, that Congressman can be censured.  But this should be rarely used, and the offense should be against the Constitution, not against the individual's personal sensibilities.   Kicking people out, or cancelling them is the stuff of kindergarten, no mature statesmen.

Every time a member of Congress proposes a bill that limits in any way our right to keep and bear arms they are committing treason.  Sound harsh?  Sorry, but it is true.  The only way that Congress should be regulating arms is in connection with their military utility.  

Similarly, the entire cancel culture project is as Un-American as...well...kimchi or sushi.  Ideas that can stand up to a fair debate (and no, those presidential so called "debates" are not true debates) will in time prove to be the ones that survives.  Of course, because greed, envy, and other evils are a part of human nature, collectivism will always be a temptation.  And, because collectivism always awaits, tyranny, which always accompanies collectivism, is also waiting in the wings.

So, as the Left takes the levers of power in this country, patriots must be unafraid to call out their treasonous and seditious behavior.  And we must call out Un-American behaviors as well (Jack Dorsey, I am looking at you.)  We used to say that while I may disagree with what you say, I would defend your right to say it.  Now it seems that if I disagree with you, I should cancel you.  Frankly, this seems like another new rule the Left is imposing, that they won't like when it comes back on them.

Update:  At the American Thinker today, Jeffrey Folks has an article entitled Our Mounting Orwellian Nightmare where he discusses the current state of culture in the U. S. He doesn't call it treason, but perhaps he should.

Update 2:  At the Epoch Times isan interview with Dennis Prager entitled Reichstag Fire. You will need an hour or so.

We The People Must Make This Right

 I have been noodling over why the haters of Donald Trump so despise him.  They started trying to figure out how to keep him out of office the moment he announced he was running.  As a man who had no political experience, the announcement had to seem like a vanity project for a rich, indulged real estate developer.  But, as we have found out, the FBI, the CIA, probably some other 3 letter agencies, plus the DNC and the Hillary campaign were out to get Trump.

Then he won.  They tried for four years to get him out, and he persisted,  And he kept doing things that the people who voted for him wanted him to do.  It was great.

Yesterday, the new Democrat Congress, with a few Republican turncoats, impeached him for a second time.  Now, at this point, he has 6 more days in office, but they want him gone NOW. 

I have heard a number of theories for why they are so scared of him.  One is that he will trigger the Insurrection Act and start arresting anyone who was involved in foreign interference with the election.  If he was going to do that, he would have already, and he clearly hasn't.  Oh, he will declassify a bunch of stuff exposing these "traitors."  Again, if he was going to do that, he should have done it while he had nominal control.  Indeed, some think he might keep these documents and use them.  Again, if he had them and if he intended to use them, he should have already.  No, the truth is I can not for the life of me figure out why they are so anxious.

Some have speculated that he would run again in four years.  I don't think so for a number of reasons, some discussed below.  But he will be 78 in for years old.  At that age, a lot can happen in four years.

The DemocRats (Read Leftists, Communists, Socialists, Progressives, or the latest flag under which they are fighting.  They change flags like I change underwear to keep their opponents on their heels.) have won.  They, of course, will have no interest in changing election laws because these election laws enabled them to steal an election in plain sight and get away with it.  The Republican party is through, though they may keep just enough Republicans on hand to make their new policies look bipartisan.  But there will never...ever...not gonna happen...ever...be a conservative in the White House again.

At the  American Thinker today, Kenneth R. Timmerman has an article entitled Our Leaders Have Betrayed Us that our institution have all failed us massively:

I’ll wager that 75 million of us have followed pretty closely the drama of the past two months, so there’s no need to recount the claims and counterclaims of election fraud.

The Democrats can say what they want, and pound it into us with the sledgehammers of the national media and Big Tech: they still have failed to convince us that we are wrong.

It’s like that famous scene in the first Star Wars movie when Obiwan Kenobi waves his hand before the eyes of the Empire soldiers. The Democrats keep telling us, those are not the votes we are looking for.

But unlike the Empire soldiers, we are not duped. What we have seen over the past two months goes way beyond dismay or disbelief. What we have witnessed is the utter collapse of the foundational institutions of our republic.

Then, there is David E. Atwood, also at the American Thinker today, telling anyone who cares to listen Why the Right Will Neither Forgive nor Forget. There may be a reason why the symbol of the Republican Party has been an elephant, for these massive beasts are said to remember everything. And what we know, no matter the gas lighting we get from all media, including Fox, is that we have seen the evidence. We have seen the anomolies in the vote counting. We have seen Trump votes disappear only to show up as Biden votes. We have listend to and read the affidavits of actual eye witnesses to election fraud and ballot stuffing. Trumps legal team seems to have gone radio silent, but we saw all that evidence to which the courts turned a blind eye. We will not forget.

The Left keeps poking conservatives in the eye, hoping to provoke a reaction.  We must not react, for that is what they want.  At the same time, the fight we are in is a fight between good and evil.  No, it is not we who will win the fight, but God.  However, we have a role.  One thing is to note those Republicans who voted to impeach with the DemocRats.  They are on the side of evil, and must go.   We must primary them.

At the same time, we must stand for the rights all, not just ourselves.  Every right in the Bill of Rights must be honored even for our enemies.  And not because we are better than they are; I don't believe that is true.  Rather, because that is the only way this works.  Oh, and yes, you are free to mock their stupid ideas.

Meanwhile, here is today's Psalm at The Bible Gateway

Don't Fall For Trap

 Andrea Widburg at the American Partisan today entitled Do not fall for a plot to entrap Second Amendment supporters.

A flyer has been circulating on the internet urging people to attend an "armed march on Capitol Hill and all state capitols [sic]" on January 17. It's framed in terms of standing up for liberty. DO NOT ATTEND. There is a 99.99999% certainty that this is a trap intended to give Democrats an excuse to destroy the Second Amendment and, quite possibly, to cordon off from society all Republicans and conservatives.

She is right that the flyer looks fishy. Of course, I don't believe in rallies any more. They consist of a bunch of people standing and chanting that are far too easily ignored by the people who can actually make a difference. The last rally I think I attended was back in 2005 or 2006. Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea attended and spoke from the back of a pickup truck. We were across the Potomac from the Capitol near the grounds of National Airport. It didn't make any difference. It never does. 

If you want to help the cause, Become a member of your state organization such as Virginia Citizen Defense League, or if your in North Carolina Grass Roots North Carolina. Then sign up to become a part of the team that goes into the legislature and talks to members about legislation. Also, make your voice heard by sending email to your legislators encourgaing to vote in favor of your organization's bills. Large numbers of constituents urging support for a bill has much more effect than attending a rally. But, back to the article:

If you want to exercise your Second Amendment rights, do it the way you have always done it: keep your weapon in a safe place where you can get to it if you need it to defend yourself from imminent harm or if you are engaging in a gun-safe activity (e.g., a firing range or hunting); follow all gun safety rules; and refrain from being stupid — and it would be exceedingly stupid to step into an obvious trap baited by Democrats, the Deep State, Antifa, or some other organization that wants to end the Second Amendment in America.

The Democrats are beginning to sound an awful lot like the Nazis

Tucker Carlson, last night had a truly alarming monologue, and he expressed a sense of alarm.  Andrea Widburg at  the American Thinker has her take on Carlson's monologue at Tucker Carlson's frightening summation of what is happening in America. Of course, go read Widburg's post, and if you haven't yet heard Carlson's monologue, go listen to it at the link in the article.

The usually ebullient Tucker is manifestly upset, even angry at what’s happening in America. As we all must now, to protect ourselves, he opens by stating that his show immediately and repeatedly denounced the violence at the Capitol (true) because his show is completely opposed to political violence and supports law and order.

He then castigated the new selective enforcement of laws, which means they’re not laws or justice at all. They are merely tyrannical whims. What’s happening now is collective punishment, attacking Americans who had nothing to do with events at the Capitol.

One after another, Tucker details the corporate attacks on people who dared attend or listen to the Trump rally – people who had nothing to do with what happened at the Capitol. (We here at American Thinker also condemn strongly the small number of people who engaged in violent and manifestly illegal activity. We believe absolutely in the Constitution and the rule of law. That doesn’t mean, though, that we don’t believe that there were Antifa and other provocateurs in D.C. intentionally inflaming people and inducing them to act illegally.)

Tucker notes that these corporate attacks are not just random events, but in fact coordinated with each other , and coordinated with the now single party in political control of all the levers of power. And yes, I am discounting the Judiciary because they have proved to be gutless pawns of the Left.  He then explicitly states that such coordination is fundamentally illegal, violating both the RICO act and the Anti-Trust act. The are, in other words violating peoples civil rights, yet they are unconcerned that they might be prosecuted.  That is frightening, and it is meant to be so.  Ironically, this is precisely a Fascist tactic, being executed by people claiming to be anti fascist.  The hypocrisy is beyond breathtaking.

Then today, at Townhall.com Dennis Prager has another great piece, this time entitled The 'Good America'

In my last column, I described how I have come to better understand the moral problem of the "'good German,' the term used to describe the average, presumably decent German, who did nothing to hurt Jews but also did nothing to help them and did nothing to undermine the Nazi regime."

Watching America accept the rationally and morally indefensible physical and economic lockdown of the country, I concluded: "Apathy in the face of tyranny turns out not to be a German or Russian characteristic. I just never thought it could happen in America."

In one week, it has gotten worse. Now we are faced with a lockdown on speech the likes of which have never been seen in America. And the parallels with Germany are even more stark. The left-wing party (the Democrats) and the left-wing media (the "mainstream media") are using the mob invasion of the Capitol exactly the way the Nazis used the Reichstag fire.

Note, for those of you who have been denied the lessons history teaches, Prager explains that the Reichstag fire was an event, probably staged by the Nazis themselves, that was then used as an excuse to crack down on the Communists.  For, even though YOU might not be taught history, THEY know it.  Thus Trump supporters are being illegally denied civil rights today. Oh, and the German parliament then gave their new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, the power to make law by decree. Sound familiar? Imagine that the Congress gave Biden (or more likely Harris) the power to decree that all your guns are banned and forfeit immediately.

What the left is doing is announcing -- and enforcing -- that conservatives "do not belong" in our society. The parallels to 1933 are precise. And most good Americans are keeping silent, just as did most Germans. Though they do not risk being beaten up, are Americans in 2021 as afraid of the American left as Germans in 1933 were of the German fascists? We're about to find out.

Prager, a Jew, a musician, political commentator, and author of a series of books on the Torah, is right to speak out, while he can. Hitler, after all killed 6 million Jews in his effort to wipe out the race of people with whom God first made His covenant. But Hitler also killed a lot of others, including Communists, and of course Christians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and critic of the Nazi regime. Form a Christian perspective, there was much to criticize about Hitler and the Nazis.  And whether they intend to or not, the Democrats are sounding an awful lot like the Nazis they denounce.

There is no one to defend you, but you

Today, at the Epoch Times there is an article entitled Amazon To Remove Parler from its Web Hosting Service by Janita Kan.

Parler founder and CEO John Matze said in a statement that the multinational technology company will be shutting Parler’s servers at midnight Sunday, Jan. 10.

Matze has characterized the decision as “an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet.”

He added that Parler may be unavailable for up to a week as they work to rebuild the networking service online.

Of course, I urge gentle readers to go to the Epoch Times and read the entire article. Personally, I trust this outfit as much as I do any news gathering source, so readers here might want to support them financially as well.

One wonders about the gross over reaction to the 6th January gathering of patriots in Washington, DC. But it becomes obvious when you read that the crowd was half a million strong. Trump asked any patriots to come to D.C. to support him, and 500,000 came. That has got to scare the heck out of the Dems. They couldn't draw so many, because frankly their platform is dismal for anyone who isn't a member of the club (and you ain't). And of course, the numbers who voted FOR the president has to scare them as well. That fear draws forth the third article of the Twenty-First Century Rules for Revolutionaries, an article at the American Thinker by Caren Besner:

#3: The revolution must get control over mass media and the education system.

Truth is defined by whatever the revolution says it is, and anyone who dares speak out is immediately silenced. Only information advancing the revolutionary cause may be heard and taught. Once the revolution gains control over mass media, it controls all the information that is disseminated, and once the revolution gains control over the education system, it controls the future.

A few other items to get your blood stirred up this morning: Over at V Dare.com is an article by James Kirkpatrick entitled U.S. Capitol Protest: Ruling Class Tantrum Shows Americans We Must Hang Together. The title includes a reference to Benjamin Franklin's famous quote "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

Power can only be checked by power, and because President Donald J. Trump and the Conservative Movement ™ didn’t oppose the emerging Totalitarian Left when they had the chance, the Historic American Nation is about to suffer real tyranny under the boot of our corporate and political rulers. The good news: the Capitol Hill protest and its subsequent repression was another step in the radicalization, not of the Dissident Right, which already knows the score only too well, but of the mass of ordinary American patriots.

...snip...

Still, there’s hope to be found in this situation because progressives aren’t leaving ordinary Americans any way out. There are no more “conservatives” because there’s nothing left to conserve. There are just patriots on the one hand and collaborators with an increasingly hostile and hateful regime on the other.

If you are fighting a battle, you must leave the enemy a way out, or else you must annihilate them completely. There is no alternative. But a lot of us will succumb even though the cause of freedom, liberty, and Christianity eventually wins. For believe me, these hollow pagan philosophies do not shine a bright enough light in the human heart.

What you must understand, finally, is that there is nothing to defend you, but you. The Constitution is now a dead letter, an historical artifact. Oh, the Left will claim it is outdated. Like the Bible, of course, it is actually a timeless document, but also like the Bible, it has been often ignored and misinterpreted for selfish ends.

I have styled myself a Constitutional Conservative. But as Kirkpatrick points out, there is nothing left to conserve. I remain a patriot, cling to my God and my guns. Obama was wrong though, it is not because I am afraid of people who don't look like me. What a silly notion. No, it is that certain ways of thinking are incompatible with the founding principles of this nation. And it is these founding principles that I carry my Bible, my gun, and revere my God.

Speaking of the Constitution being dead, over at Townhall.com today, Andrew Pollack tells us to Get Ready for the Biden Gun Grab. The socialists will try to frame whatever gun grab they intend to take as crime prevention, or suicide prevention, or to stop school shootings, which always gets the vote of the ignorant soccer moms. None of that is true. What is true is that the Socialists want a monopoly of violence to threaten you with. They know their programs are unpopular. They don't care. However, they do care about their own skins. Of course the NRA and some others may hold out hope that the Supremes may stop them. But the Supremes have shown they are too cowardly. Truly, there is no one to defend you, but you.

Lies That Kill

 From the website American Partisan comes a post Lies that kill a video that discusses the Chinese Communist Party's war against the Falun Gong. Note that Falun Gong is not a religion, in the traditional sense. It does not worship a god. Instead, it is a meditation technique involving bodily movements. In any case, it is not a threat to the Communists. Indeed, one suspects that if it had been invented by the Communists, it would be required. But since it originated somewhere else, the Communists became jealous.

Please go watch the video, and think about what the current deplatforming and cancel culture means for you.  Google is already working with the Communists to put these types of propaganda in place in China.  Do you think it is unreasonable that they might turn their political opponents in the U.S.?  

The So-called "Democrats" Consolidating Power by Censoring Conservatives

 Yesterday, while driving about through the winter weather, I was listening to Glenn Beck as he was talking about the attempt to silence his radio program and kill The Blaze. I came home to find that Twitter had banned the President! The President! Whether you agree with Trump or not, he is the President. Just turn off the President if you don't want to hear what he has to say. All these special snowflakes who claim to be "triggered" by him can, frankly, just not listen. Why does Twitter feel the need to silence the President? But the question answers itself. They are afraid of WE the PEOPLE, not the President.  What they fear is that the President can bring together an army of 80 million people, whereas they want those 80 million people to feel isolated and surrounded.

But Twitter is not just banning the President. It is banning all sorts of conservative sites. So, many of these people, who's views are not wanted at Twitter are switching to Parler. But now we see that Apple prepares to ban Parler from devices as Big Tech purge continues. To be clear, this purge has been going on for much of 2020. Prager University has been complaining that youtube has been banning its content. Youtube is a subsidiary of Google. And Google is in bed with the Chinese Communist Party

Despite Facebook and Twitter hosting extremist activity on their websites, an accusation Apple has hurled specifically at Parler, neither company immediately responded to The Federalist’s inquiry over whether they are also being threatened with de-platforming by Apple. Both Facebook and Twitter have spent years masquerading as objective online platforms while acting as publishers, selectively censoring content that incriminates the companies’ political interests. Their roles as publishers came to full fruition when the companies weaponized their monopoly over the digital public square to suppress stories implicating then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in his son’s corrupt overseas business ventures.

Bongino said Parler has always complied with Apple’s App Store terms of service without compromising its integrity as a free-speech platform.

Apple, a company already facing moral and ethical issues through its dependency on slave labor in communist China, as reported by the Daily Caller, did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.

...snip...

Parler, founded in 2018, was launched to serve as a free-speech alternative to Twitter and now boasts upwards of 18 million users, Bongino told The Federalist, warning that Apple’s “declared war” on the company stretches far wider than just Parler.

“Anyone who doesn’t tow the liberal line, they are now at open war with,” Bongino said, warning that if Apple prevails, there will never be another app that can operate as a free public square. “This is about having a public square where people can speak free of the surveillance state.”

Today, at the  American Thinker Andrea Widburg has an article that goes into more detail on the issue entitled The tech monoplies have sprung into action scrubbing anything and anyone that presents evidence that the capitol riots on Wednesday were instigated by provocateurs infiltrating the Trump Stop the Steal rally.

The tech companies contend that Trump instigated violence and his supporters can no longer be trusted. And no, it doesn’t matter that for much of 2020, Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioted, burned, looted, and threatened, beat, and murdered people. Not only did they stay on social media, but they were also lionized on social media and mainstream media for their thrilling, empowering exploits.

The hypocrisy is, of course, breath taking. There is no logical way to say that one set of rioters was ok, but another was not. Burning, looting, rioting, and murder is never to be tolerated, no matter the cause.  Inevitably, people who had nothing to do with the situation being rioted against become victims.  Property that people may have worked their whole lives for may be destroyed.  It is, frankly never to be tolerated.  But it has been by Democrat politicians and the tech monopolies. 

Speaking of the tech monopolies, they have left BLM and Antifa as well as the Mullahs of Iran and the CCP on their platforms, but have silenced one half of America, while claiming to be just a platform for others to post their content.   Does not BLM. Antifa, the Mullahs, or the CCP offend their "community standards"?  If not, why not?  The internet has been describe as a sewer, and Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and the other tech giants illustrate exactly why that is.  

They are now directly choosing certain content to post, and not other content, which makes them publishers. Speaking of publishers, even book publishers such as Simon and Schuster have canceled publishing Josh Hawley's new book about why we might want to reign in Big Tech.  If he finds another publisher, or decides to self publish, will Amazon refuse to carry it?

This is what happens when private enterprise becomes the town square. It seemed to make sense in a time when the mainstream media was manifestly biased. It never occurred to people that the tech corporations would be just as biased, only with even more power. We currently have a situation in all the President has no avenues of communication because corporations have silenced him. Joseph McCarthy was a piker compared to today’s Democrats.

Update: Over at Townhall.com Matt Vespa tells us that A Liberal Reporter thinks the Liberal-Left is going to be abolutely ruthless. The reporter is Michael Tracey. and he makes explicit that Twitter banning President Trump had nothing to do with "safety" and everything to do with consolidating power. He doen's think liberals will like the new rules. I will close with a quote from President John Kennedy, a nam who owed his postion to election fraud, BTW "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible with make violent revolution inevitable." We used to have a saying, back in the 1960s that while I might not agree with what you say, I will defend your right to say it. The Left has shoved both sentiments down the memory hole.

Taking Guns Doesn't Prevent Suicide

John Petrolino has written an important article on firearms and suicide at  Ammoland entitled Freedom Groups Exploiting Suicide. Spoiler alert: taking guns away does nothing to stop suicide. He has the statistics to prove it.

A hat tip to David Codrea at the War On Guns website.  Petrolino writes:

If Handgun Control Inc (Brady) had any real interest in this subject, they’d be teaming up with the NSSF, because they already have and have had, the go-to program on this subject. NSSF has put a lot of work into suicide awareness and also keeping firearms out of the hands of both children and disqualified persons. Unlike Brady, NSSF puts their money where their mouth is and has distributed over 38,000,000 gun locks, for free, for citizens to use and secure their firearms.

Calling Brady, come in Brady. Are you giving out locks? Do you have what it takes to put your money where your mouth is?

The answer to that is a simple “no”. They Don’t have what it takes. Instead, they are a group intent on stripping people of their rights, while tap-dancing on their namesake’s tragedy.

Look, the gun grabbers are coming after us with a vengence. They have been waiting to have the Dems get in the cat bird seat again, and they can't wait. Of course, they don't really care about suicides, or for that matter crime, including school shootings. No, the real goal is to relieve you and me of guns. They want a monopoly of violence so that they can shove socialism down our throats. And, of course, their "by any means necessary" philosophy means they will use any issue, no matter whether they have to lie or twist the truth. Thank God for John Petrolino.

They Intend For You to be the Sheep

 Last night, Tucker Carlson made something of a fool of himself by condemning the riots that took place in Washington, DC after the Congress certified Asterisk as the new President.  He made up for it to an extent later by expressing the anger and frustration we all were feeling, but a more proper attitude would have been very similar to how the Leftist "journalists" treated the "summer of love." 

Even Asterisk condemned the violence, which is rich considering.  But now, let us consider:  the rioters, some of whom no doubt were Trump supporters (I have no doubt that the riots were started by false flag leftists) were merely following the new rules the Left established this summer.  Indeed, at the  The Federalist today, Evita Duffy has a great piece entitled Spare Me: Biden and the Democrats Never Cared about Law and Order. She writes:

Another citizen unacknowledged by Joe Biden was Sam, an Indian immigrant who owned a family-run car dealership in downtown Kenosha. Sam lost “every dime” he had, and the 20 people Sam employed have all lost their jobs “for nothing.”

BLM rioters burned his lot two nights in a row, destroying all the cars and looting his office before burning that as well. “I’m a taxpayer. This is not the America I came into,” the shattered man said. “What did we do to deserve all this?” he asked. “I’m a minority too. I’m a brown person. I have nothing to do with this.”

...snip...

A young woman I spoke with explained the rationale: “Riots work. Burning down buildings works and it gets the attention of people to make real change… People that aren’t white cis males wouldn’t have rights if it weren’t for burning down a f-cking building.”

...snip...

Let’s not have any false assumptions on who the real condoners of violence are. This summer, Democrat leaders, including Biden, refused for months on end to condemn the seemingly endless rioting. In doing so, they endorsed the rhetoric I heard from the young woman, making them complicit in the destruction of American cities and the livelihoods of countless law-abiding citizens, like Chuck and Sam.

Republican lawmakers, including Trump, have unanimously condemned the siege of the U.S Capitol. You may not know that because Trump is being censored by big tech giants like Twitter and Facebook, who are are invested in the narrative that Trump endorses lawlessness.

So, while yes, the rioting at the Capitol was wrong, and deplorable, let us note that all summer, while the Left was out Burning, Looting and Murdering (BLM) we tried to have our grievances aired the right way, the legal way. We were rebuffed. The truth is that not one time has any court, neither state, federal, or the Supremes deigned to hear our actual cases. We have the evidence, but everyone shut their eyes to it. And the dishonest media kept saying that because the courts refused to hear a case, that meant there was no evidence of fraud. You can not say there is no evidence unless and until a court actually hears the evidence.

Imagine that a close friend of family member has been murdered.  You have the murder weapon with the killers finger prints.  You know his motive, and can place him at the scene.  You have sworn affidavits of witnesses who saw and heard the killer brag in a bar about killing your friend.  You hire private investigators who turn up even more evidence.  But, the county Prosecutor refuses to bring charges, claiming not to see any evidence.  So you bring a civil proceeding of wrongful death, only to have the court claim that you have no standing.  As H. L Menken said: Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

So maybe the Left was right, and you need to burn, loot and murder to get the elites to pay attention to your cause.  That's unfortunate, but thems the NEW RULES, and the Left put them in place. We hope the Left likes living with them.

Next we turn to Kurt Schlichter, a combat veteran and an attorney, who writes at Twonhall.com today an article entitled Welcome to a Wilderness of Lies. Schlichter writes that:

I guess this is all necessary. The structures and institutions of American society have all been in place with little real change for nearing a century. Nothing lasts forever though, particularly when they are run by grifty idiots. The disruption caused by the tech revolution has helped speed up inevitable processes of change – you know, the creative destruction we hear about in unwoke economics courses. The institutions we relied on – our churches, the NFL, the political parties – are now focused entirely upon preventing that inevitable change. The lackluster losers who inherited their sinecures in these institutions (not literally but by being adopted into the establishment by going to the right schools) want to maintain a status quo that is great for them and poison for the rest of us.

...snip...

And they have carefully cultivated a class of drones to support them. You see them on the street, healthy people wearing face diapers as they walk alone. They can’t all have immunity conditions. Most are just brainwashed, and eager to be. There’s this funny outtake of The Office where they elaborately prank Dwight to think he is in the Matrix, and they offer him the blue pill that sends him back into the false reality or the red pill that opens his eyes. He asks for the blue pill. And that’s what so many of the losers who are our fellow citizens want, desperately. They yearn for a blue pill to make the reality go away.

It never occurred to me until recently that maybe a lot of people don’t like freedom. Maybe they are happy enough with Netflix, Trader Joe’s chardonnay, and serfdom.

The emphasis is mine. ...Pause...

I was stunned. But after thinking about it, I realized he is right. Maybe a lot of people don't like freedom. It is, after all, pretty hard. You have to force yourself up every day, find a reason to go to work, and generally live by one's wits.

Schlichter goes on to express optimism about the future, but he notes it will be difficult, and it will take a long time.  Interestingly, the number of Leftists who have assaulted our country for over 100 years is vanishingly small.  Also, the number of patriots who actually fought in Washington's army in the Revolution was no more than 3% of the population.   But Washington had other help as well. The first thing is to find out who you can trust. Keep your list of trusted confederates small.  Don't communicate by electronic means, for they will be hoovering up everything in the electronic world.

Now, to change the subject slightly, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (ret.) has an informative article at the American Thinker entitled Masks Can Be Murder. Of course, Col. Grossman is not talking literally, but rather the psychological effects of a mask when someone so inclined decides to act. And indeed, I have brought this up tangentially, but Grossman has made a study of it. And yes, it is chilling to think about. But this is what adults do in the real world, not to improve their ability to kill, but to improve their self defense. If you are one of these brainwashed souls walking around in a mask, stop it. Stop it now, for you are just making a sheep of yourself, to be shorn.

Please go read all three highlighted articles, and think about them as you go through your day. One other thing before I close, the Democrats (read Communists, Socialist, Fascists, Progressives and Marxists) keep speaking of "our democracy." It was a Republic, which is now gone, sad to say. But in any case, here is a democracy paired down to its lowest common denominator: two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. 

They intend you to be the sheep.

At the very least

As the last line of defense of the republic seems to be crumbling, ponder the Republicans who did it to us.

The feeble Republican Party that neither prepared to meet an obviously unfolding electoral theft nor fought it after it happened, the traitors to conservatism and America within the Republican Party who put style and personal grievance ahead of substance and country (are you listening, G.W. Bush?), and the truly odious NeverTrump commentariat that undermined and sabotaged the President to the point of preferring that America be governed by leftist forces they claimed all their lives to detest, all because of their snobbish dislike of the man who, for the first time since Reagan, fought that left and would have continued his brave fight.

To all of you: Watch, over the coming months, what you have caused. All of it will be for your account. Patriots and conservatives won't forget your treachery.

All of you should be shunned and despised by conservative America for the rest of your lives.

Speak Reality, Speak Truth

 Andrea Widburg, at the American Thinker today has a post on the same article I highlighted yesterday at Dennis Prager's profound and disturbing meditiation on the 'Good German'.

Just as sobering as the willingness to abandon liberty is the American people’s willingness to abandon free speech. Rather than fight back against cancel culture, good Americans fall silent or, when BLM threatens, good Americans raise their fists too.

Prager understands that many Americans have simply been brainwashed. Our media, our educational system, and our corporations (filled with people pumped out by our education system) hate America and Americans. We’re marinated in that hatred. We’ve been primed for decades. The lockdown was the spark. And instead of an explosion of freedom from that spark, we had an implosion of fear and self-loathing.

If you want to reassert your rights, you need to start now to refuse to acknowledge that which is untrue. You can not go along to get along, because they fully intend to use your cowardice against you. Martin Niemoller was a German, Lutheran pastor who, just after the end of World War II wrote a confession, which is memorialized as a poem:

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist 

Then they came for the trade unionists 

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist 

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left 

To speak out for me

See a theme there?  Speak reality, speak the Truth.

Summer of Violence

 Please go to the War on Guns website to find Act of Repudiation. As I have been telling you, but no one is listening, apparently, the summer of violence, of "mostly peaceful" riots is a tool of Marxists as old as the October revolution. As Mr. Codrea says, please make time to look at the film, that is embedded in the post.

See any similarities?

I will start to resist by acknowledging reality

 I have decided to begin the resistance by acknowledging reality at every turn.  I have been noodling about this since New Year day.  Yesterday, while driving, I heard Congressman Cleaver giving a prayer the day before that he ended with "Amen and a woman."  So, here is the first bit of reality.  That was the most ignorant thing I have heard from a supposed "reverend."  The actual word "Amen" can be translated as "so may it be" and comes from the Hebrew, by way of Latin into Old English.  It has noting to do with sex or gender.

Interestingly, Dennis Prager has an article at Townhall.com that tells us what happens when societies abandon reality and forbid the truth. The article, entitled I now understand the 'Good German'. The 'Good German' were the people who didn't hurt the Jews, but didn't help them either. But they were facing the Gestapo if they didn't conform. We, by contrast, have buckled under the threat of being merely shamed by people whose opinion, frankly doesn't matter.  Please go read Prager's article.  Prager, by the way, is a fount of knowledge and wisdom.

So, here are a few doses of reality to start the New Year right.  Black Lives Matter, the organization is a Marxist group, and could not care less about actual black lives.  The truth?  Black lives do not matter either more or less than any other human life.  We each are unique individuals, whose lives do indeed matter much.  Our lives matter to those around us, and those who love us, and who we love.  Note, you should not raise your fist in solidarity with BLM, nor should we ever kneel.  Indeed, no American should kneel to anyone, or anything except the Lord God.

Antifa stands for Anti Fascist.  Interestingly, they use fascist tactics to supposedly stop Fascists.  The irony is astounding.  More ironic, they keep calling Trump and his supporters "fascists" and Trump a dictator.  But Trump has never done anything dictatorial, while governors like Cuomo, Newsom, and even our own Roy Cooper have been very real dictators and petty tyrants.  They have forced people to stay at home, have shut down businesses, and denied people the ability to make a living.

Then there is the whole masks save lives thing.  Masks do not protect one from respiratory viruses, period.  You're not protecting those around you, nor are you protecting yourself.  We need to resist as much as possible wearing a mask.  I don't make a big deal about it, but the more of us who refuse to wear a mask, and resist Unconstitutional dictatorial orders the less effective such dictatorial orders will become.  At some point, they simply can't arrest everyone without losing the ability to govern at all.  This is exactly what we want.

Of course, the Chinese virus is real, and deadly to some, as is the flu.  Indeed, any respiratory virus is potentially deadly to those with compromised lung capacity, and comorbidities.  The body can only handle so many attacks before it begins to fail.  Yet, the Chinese virus has a pretty high survival rate, better than 99%.  Even President Trump a 74 year old who is fat survived with flying colors.  Every death is, of course, a tragedy, but we all do eventually die.

Words are NOT actual violence.  Sorry, but the old saying that "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can not hurt me" is literally true.  Yes, words can be offensive, but whether or not you take offence is entirely up to you.  You control your reactions.  If you become offended, it is not the words that triggered you, but you and your immaturity.  Don't like me calling you immature?  Then grow up, put on the big boy or girl pants, and become a useful citizen making his or her own way.  There are no safe spaces in the real world.  And yes, there is real evil in the world.

Which is why people living in the real world know how to use a weapon.  Most never have to use that weapon, but it is there, just in case.  Most people never have to use their fire extinguisher either.  but they have one.  Of course, I will not pretend to analyze your risks.  That is for you.  But a mature individual at least thinks about things like this, and prepares to protect those under his care.   

I must note, as a matter of reality, that God made man with just two sexes, male and female.  Each sex has a role to play in the family, so both are necessary to raising healthy children.  There are no other genders, no "transgender"   If a man thinks he is a woman, he is confused.  We should not indulge him by referring to him by female pronouns.  The standard pronouns are sufficient for the purpose.  No need to invent new ones.  Also, gay people, cross dressers, furries, and such are people to be pitied, not celebrated. 

So, men are designed to marry women, and vice versa.  A child is born at the moment of conception.  If nothing happens to interrupt the process, the child will grow and in due time be born into the world, and become another unique individual whose life matters.  Therefore, to interrupt that life by having an abortion is murder.  It certainly should not be done casually.  We only execute actual murderers after exhausting every appeal through the courts, and even then, not always.  Do you not see the horrible injustice executing an innocent child?

I will also commit to reading a Psalm a day.  Psalms are prayers.  I pray  every day, it is true, but now I am adding the ancient Jewish prayers as well, because the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Creation, God the Father is real, and to acknowledge that fact is the first step in acknowledging reality.

Please join me in acknowledging reality.  It was expressed, perhaps more artfully by Rudyard Kipling in his poem, The Gods of the Copybook Headings.  There are realities in life that can not be wished away.  It is time we speak these truths to what is becoming our out of touch elites.

The Cheat in Plain Sight

 There are a number of articles today on the issue of the stolen election.  For example there is the article at the American Thinker entitled Proff of fraud may lie in vanishing Trump votes. Andrea Widburg notes that:

The same witnesses who introduced this evidence about the adjudicated ballots were also responsible for evidence showing that the computers, instead of just adding votes as they came in for each candidate, were stripping votes from Trump. Sometimes the votes went to Biden; sometimes the votes just vanished...

Meanwhile, Daniel Greenfield notes at Sultan Knish that the quotation from Stalin, that it's not the voters who count, but the people who count the votes is actually true.

Boris Bazhanov had worked as Stalin's private secretary and, unlike most of the murderous Communist dictator's associates, survived by escaping before he could be killed. Still a young man in his twenties, Bazhanov had seen too much and enough to know what was coming. On New Year’s Day, he fled across the border from Turkmenistan to Persia, then through India, surviving several assassination attempts along the way, before finding refuge in France.

Bazhanov's memoir about his time with Stalin had several titles, it's named Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin in English, but all of the versions lay out the damning story of how Stalin took over the Soviet Union by manipulating the system and ruthlessly purging his rivals.

...snip...

"Do you know what I think about this?" Stalin replied, "I believe that who and how people in the Party vote, is unimportant. What is extremely important is who counts the votes, and how they are recorded."

The quote, despite the attempts to suppress it with Stalinists fact checking Stalinism, is indeed real. But what’s more important is what Bazhanov relates happened after this conversation.

Greenfield goes on to describe the way that Stalin used Pravda to publish false election results. Despite actually losing the election, Pravda articles convince the party members that Stalin had won. Rather like what is happening now with the MSM, only Pravda was more artful, apparently. But the clearest article is at Townhall.com by Kevin McCullough entitled The Cheat In Plain Sight.

They relied upon the data as certified by the Georgia Secretary of State (who should probably go to jail) and they drew their conclusions based on the logs as votes were tallied in real time. So save your breath if you think you’ve already got the answer to their conclusions because the original source material they drew upon is the certified numbers that the state allocated electors for. They are inaccurate. They do not represent the will of the state of Georgia. And they are definitive proof of an overwhelming win by Donald J. Trump—at least in Georgia. It’s all based on one simple idea.

In Georgia’s tabulation process, President Trump repeatedly “lost votes.” Had them subtracted. Had them taken away.

McCullough notes that the Georgia Secretary of State should probably go to jail. I suspect a lot of people whould probably go to jail.