Are the Green-New-Dealers Racist? Seems so...

At Townhall.com is an article entitled The All-Natural Death of Sri Lanka which speaks to the Green-New-Dealers desire to have government force farmers to go "organic." Organic farming was never suitable for feeding the whole population of the world. It is a niche farming method involving small farms, using large amounts of labor, and producing less food. I planted brussels sprouts, but didn't spray them, and right on schedule, cabbage worms invaded and destroyed the entire crop. Good thing I can go to the store and get brussels sprouts. But, if the entire farming system is organic, these wouldn't be available, would they? And that is what Sri Lanka is facing.  Worse, with crop failures happening in Sri Lanka, they won't import food from surrounding countries that did not go organic.

This July, political chaos in the South Asian country escalated. International reporting covered numerous human rights violations by the government as well as street fighting and the spectacular storming of the Presidential Palace by a huge crowd of protesters. The angry mob even set fire to the Prime Minister’s private residence. With the political future of the country still hanging in the balance, some media attention has turned to the underlying economic causes. However, amongst those, one organic elephant in the room received suspiciously little media attention.

In April 2021, the Rajapaksa government — the target of the current protests — instituted a sudden and complete ban on non-organic fertilizer and pesticides in a bid to turn all farming organic. Of course, this was not the sole cause of the current economic crisis, which started in 2019. But it served the death blow to an already dire situation. Farming collapsed. As protests erupted, the policy was partially rescinded, but the harvest was already lost, and with it went the livelihood of many farmers. Nearly a third of agricultural land remained unused. Food supplies were affected dramatically with rice production falling by 20%. Food prices escalated, adding to the already rampant inflation. Meanwhile, exported goods, like tea, suffered too. In a country of 22 million people, half a million people sank into poverty.

This is what the Dutch farmers are protesting now, as their government is trying to do the same thing to the Netherlands. And don't think it is not coming here, it is. The people who are pushing this on everyone know that organic methods do not produce as much food as standard methods. They know this will result in famine and hunger, and many of them see this as a feature not a bug. They believe there are too many people in the world, and desire to kill as many as they can by any means necessary.

Oh, and one doesn't like to point out that the people to be most impacted by these policies are "people of color" in places like Africa, Asia, and South America, who are already starving and dieing of famine. So, such policies represent the racism of these Marxists by the very definitions used by them.

We live in interesting times

Andrea Widburg, today at the American Thinker has a post titled A superb article exposes the fissures in America. The article she refers to is at Compact Magazine by Michael Anton entitled They Can't Let Him Back In. It is a rather long article, but this is Saturday, so hopefully you have a little extra time to read the whole thing, it is that worthwhile.

What makes it worthwhile is that it explains in excruciating detail exactly who and why Trump is so hated, and it really isn't so much Trump as his 100 million supporters. The ruling scavenger class despises you and me.  That sort of hatred is only generated by abject fear.  The Liz Cheneys and Adam Kinzingers, not to mention the Mitch McConnels of the world derive their wealth and power from sources outside America. Thus, they view America with contempt and distain. But they are in power now, and consequently will use whatever levers of power they possess, legal or illegal to keep Trump out of power. Anton discusses each of these strategies from Plan A to Plan F. He concludes with this:

On Sept. 20, 1911, the RMS Olympic—sistership of the ill-fated Titanic—collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke, despite both vessels traveling at low speeds, in visual contact with one another for 80 minutes. “It was,” writes maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham, “one of those incredible convergences, in full daylight on a calm sea within sight of land, where two normally operated vessels steamed blithely to a point of impact as though mesmerized.”

Our sea isn’t calm, nor are our vessels normally operated. But we do seem headed for a point of impact, with the field of vision before us as clear as it was on that day. And the regime isn’t changing course. It must want this—or else is so high on its own supply that it can’t see what it is doing.

Rest assured, if what I fear might happen, happens, we will be blamed for it. And the fire next time will make their reaction to Jan. 6 look like a marshmallow roast. I don’t know which possibility is scarier: that they haven’t thought any of this through, or that they have.

Making sure we are on HIS side

Years ago, I told my wife, Mrs. PolyKahr, that smoking would soon be banned. "Oh, that'll never happen," she said. Yet, several years later, President Clinton declared a ban on smoking in all Federal offices. Today, I know only two people who smoke. Now, I do not want to relitigate the "tobacco wars," but it was certainly not put in place out of a regard for peoples' health. Certain big companies wanted to control nicotine for their own profits, and the tobacco companies had to be put out of business for them to thrive.

My bringing this up is to illustrate what Anthony J. DeBlasi is talking about in his article at the American Thinker titled Making Sense of Our Crazy Times

You don’t have to be an old-timer to see how yesterday’s “conspiracy theories” have become today’s realities – how what was “unthinkable” yesterday has become law today. The list of flip-flops between what is “unacceptable” and “acceptable” is very long.

Since I predate television and computers, my perspective of what has been going on in America is also very long. Over the many decades of my observation, I’ve become aware of some of the major impediments to sanity and humanity in this country. They are important enough to harp on, against the growing censorship that would keep them out of view.

So, if DeBlasi "predates" television he must be at least 80 years old, which makes him a full decade older than I am. I remember our family's first television set being installed in our home. No doubt my Dad came to regret bringing the "boob tube" into our home, for it brought all sorts of low brow entertainment with it. Tube time could have been more profitably used studying music, science and mathematics, or reading from the Great Books collection. (DeBlasi also refers, later in the piece to his years as a church organist. While I don't play for church services, I do play the organ, and have great respect for those who do play on a weekly basis. I know how much practice is needed, and they give a great deal of time and energy for others.)

The thing about the "Tobacco Wars" is that for the first time, the Left put it all together to change America.  They had perfected the art of scaring people, they had government, the legal profession, the media, all working together to stamp out and make a substantial minority of people pariahs.  It was estimated at the time that smokers constituted 25-30% of the population.  Yet within a decade, smokers standing outside in the cold and the rain getting their fix would be looked down upon as bad people.  Saul Alinski had written his book in 1971, and the Left had taken it to heart.

DeBlasi names a number of people and movements who have all come together to deal the Constitutional Republic known as the United States of America a death blow.  First of course is the Marxist, Communist Left.

A key impediment to our Constitutional Republic became clear in 1944 when Alexander Trachtenberg (1885-1966) declared at the National Convention of Communist Parties held at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in 1944. "When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of communism; we will not take it under the label of socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been speared too much. We will take the United States under labels we have made very lovable; we will take it under liberalism, under progressivism, under democracy. But take it, we will."

Next, DeBlasi cites an unlikely group of people: so called "Futurists."

Next are the futurists, who for decades have been lecturing, writing and organizing for a global utopia whose outlines have also become clear in this century – a world transformed through technology in which people think and act according to an imposed-from-on-high rulebook – voice of the people be damned. A molecular biologist named Joshua Lederberg is quoted by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book, Future Shock, as saying that “We are going to modify man experimentally through physiological and embryological alterations, and by the substitution of machines for his parts.” Fast-forward to World Economic Forum advisor Yuval Noah Harari who rants with a dead-serious face that society as we know it is over, that mega-technology will alter everything in the coming ultimate Master/Slave World.

As DeBlasi notes, the arrogance and conceit of these people is astounding. Buckminster Fuller styled himself as such, and credited himself with the invention of the geodesic dome. But the name itself shows that more than anything, Fuller was a self promoter with a gift for the word salad. More troubling to me is the current so called "futurist" Yuval Noah Harari, who worries about what to do with all the useless people after machines take over all of our jobs. Yet he is no more thoughtful than the ancient Romans. They had "bread and circuses," while he ponders video games to keep us entertained. It sounds like he is more if a "pastifist." And this is the guy our betters are listening to.

If you believe this, then you also have to believe that the discoveries and contributions of the intellectually gifted of the past and the present were/are without merit or relevance to the progress of the world. And you must also believe that our ancestors have been waiting for these self-appointed lords and saviors of humanity to set the world and its people straight...

DeBlasi also mentiones the churches, which have often strayed from the Gospel and the teachings of the Old Testament. I have mentioned that I left the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for precisely those reasons. They have bowed to the Left and appointed pastors and Bishops who are gay or transgendered. Knowing the problems the Catholic church has had with the gay mafia, I don't understand why they have done so. Nevertheless, I recognized that I wasn't about to change the entire ELCA synod.

A most alarming barrier to sane and humane progress is the abandonment of the original mission of Christian church leaders. I witnessed the growing apostasy to the Gospel during my years as a church organist. I noticed how the Word of God got “updated,” how sin was dropped from Christian teaching, how reference to the original meanings became “bible thumping.” One preacher got herself tongue-tied trying to explain the biblical commandments. What happened in the several churches that I provided music for (including a Catholic one) was clearly a departure from the Word of God and an attempt to dismantle the faith. What clearer indication of heresy in Christendom is there than the appearance of a pope who is more concerned with saving the planet than saving souls, who vilifies the most faithful in his flock, and who pursues goals of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, notorious for their amoral, God-free leadership?

The enormity of this anti-Apostolic impediment to the wellbeing of humanity cannot be overstated. Christians-in-Name-Only have created a backlash that is forming lines of battle between followers of God and followers of “Elites.” Full blame for this rupture in the churches rests upon the shoulders of pastors who have forgotten their mission to lead the times, not follow them.

There are many who believe that the man sitting on Peter's chair is rather the Anti-pope than the Pope. Still, we are born for such times, no? Our only hope is to double down on our faith in God, that he will turn the current crises to His ends. We need to make sure we are on His side.

A Lawyer Cross-Examines the Climate Alarmists

At Townhall.com today, Kurt Schlichter notes what would happen if the Climate Change Cultists submitted to having their so called "science" questioned at Cross-examining the Climate Change Cultists. His point is that in a court room, where hopefully the "truth" is the objective, each side's lawyer is allowed to cross-examine the other sides witnesses. This is done to attempt to punch holes in the other sides claims. A jury (that would be you, in this case) then decides who was the most truthful. But the Climate Change Cultists do not brook any questioning of their claims. But what if they did? Schlichter has the answer:

If you want to watch the pinkos fret, simply state the indisputable truth that what they call “climate change” is a massive hoax. Their fallback is inevitably that “science” – which they purport to love except when it demonstrates that there are only men and women and that you can’t change the sex you are born as – has decreed that because we peons insist on not living in caves like primitive tribesmen (okay, non-binary tribespeople) the Earth is going to cook. And, of course, the only solution is to do a whole bunch of things that leftists always wanted to do anyway. There’s no time to think, no time to reflect, and certainly no time to argue. Why, who are you to question the scientists?

Well, I’m a lawyer. I question scientists for a living.

With that as his opening argument, Schlichter goes on to prove, by a preponderance of evidence that the who Climate Change Cult is a complete scam. Why for instance, do they want to get you into electric cars? Because they don't go as far as fast. It takes a lot of time to charge them up. But what they really crave is to have eveyone living in cities, in apartments. That way, you would probably take public transportaion. So they could control where you went, and when and they could keep you from going if the wanted. Oh, and think of the joys they would have welding people into their homes like they did in China. That's what this whole scam is about. It's about putting petty tyrants in charge of every aspect of your life. Why, they could even force you to eat bugs!

The Stupid Party Strikes Again

 I was supposed to be in Boone, NC today, and out of pocket, but the plans changed.  Mrs. PolyKahr changed her mind, so I am here at Stately PolyKahr Estates and able to post to this blog.  Gentle readers will no doubt be relieved to hear that.

John Green today, at the American Thinker has a good summary of what is going on in Washington D.C. with respect to the assault weapon ban. The title of his piece, Republicans Take Another Run at Lucy's Football, says all you need to know. For those not familiar with the reference, in the cartoon comic strip, "Peanuts," every year as autumn approached, and leaves began to fall, there would be a strip in which Lucy would hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick. Lucy would assure Charlie that this year, unlike all the past years, she would hold the football down until Charlie kicked it. Yet every year she would pull the football at the last moment and laugh maniacally as Charlie kicked at air and fell backwards. It was cruel on her part, and painful to watch. Did Charlie never learn?

Green notes that the Republican trait of "negotiating" in which they surrender a portion of our liberties to the Democrats in exchange for...well...nothing, as being like Charlie Brown always being suckered by Lucy.

Well, a few minutes have passed since then and the Republicans are lining up to prove that the adage is still alive and well in Washington, D.C. After the Uvalde school shooting, the calls for sensible gun control -- from people who want total gun confiscation -- became a cacophony. But knowing that they’d probably control Congress next year, and could do anything they wished to address the problem, wasn’t enough for the RINOs. They decided to throw the Dems a lifeline now. They jumped right on the “let’s make fools of the Republicans again” bandwagon.

They negotiated a gun-safety bill with the Democrats, that was short on “negotiation” and missed the “safety” point entirely. You see, when the RINOs are involved, negotiating means deciding how much of the Democrats wish list they’ll surrender on. Somehow “compromise” never means getting something in return.

In exchange for red flag legislation, they could have demanded concealed carry reciprocity. But they didn’t even ask. In exchange for expanded background checks, they could have included criminal liability for bureaucrats who disclose confidential gun ownership data. But they didn’t. They didn’t even bother to codify disciplinary action for government employees who fail to comply with the regulations -- like failing to report criminal violations to the keepers of the background check database.

While they were having these so-called negotiations, did the RINOs even talk about the Soros prosecutors who have decided criminal charges are something that only applies to Trump supporters? Did they bother to ask if this whole forgiveness is a better deterrent than incarceration philosophy is having any effect on our “culture of gun violence”?

Green sums it all up this way:

The Dems won’t enforce our current gun laws -- which criminals won’t follow anyway. The only people who will comply with more restrictions are law-abiding citizens. They don’t tend to go around shooting each other, because it’s already against the law -- which the law-abiding follow. So, the Republicans have “negotiated” increased restrictions on the law-abiding and the creation of a bunch of tools for leftists to use while harassing gun owners -- and gotten nothing in return. They rationalized it as “common sense” gun laws -- because they didn’t have the common sense to see what this was really all about. Do you get why we call the Democrats the evil party and the Republicans the stupid party? Both titles are well earned.

You will want to read the whole thing. The Republicans have, for as long as I can remember, been a minority party. But sometimes, people who should be Democrats run as Republican for convenience. These are the kind of pols who say "Here are my principles. If you don't like them, here are some others." Maybe it is time to toss some of these people out of the Republican party on their ear?

Out of Pocket

 I will be out of pocket for the next several days.  Family obligations take precedence.  In the meantime, discuss among yourselves.

Democrats Planning To Ban Semiautomatic Weapons In Common Use

The Democrats are nothing if not persistent. Despite the recent Bruen ruling where the Supreme Court struck down the 1911 Sullivan Act that made it so difficult for ordinary New Yorkers to carry a gun for self defense, D. Parker at the American Thinker says that Yep, it's true. They're coming for your guns.

If you wondered why the nation's socialist news cabal American Pravda suddenly decided to drop the terms "assault weapon" and "assault rifle" from their propaganda lexicon, your answer was soon forthcoming in their triumphant announcement of their next onslaught against your sensible civil rights: "Democrats push for 1st semi-automatic gun ban in 20 years."

In a tyrannical two-for-one special, not only have the enemies of liberty of the fascist far left admitted that the whole point of this was to ban weapons in common use, but they're also tacitly defying the United States Supreme Court ruling District of Columbia v. Heller.

...snip...

Most damning is this exchange between Dan Bishop (R) and chairman of the Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler (D) in a congressional committee meeting during the markup of the bill on July 20, 2022:

Bishop: Is there anyone on the other side that would dispute that this bill would ban weapons that are in common use in the United States today?

Nadler: Yeah, that's the point of the bill.

Now, frankly, I don't expect this to go anywhere, at least at this time. I suspect this is designed to rile up the base, and force Republicans to go on record as being in favor of everybody having those evil assault weapons. But what do I know. If they win back the House and Senate, they are likely to push this all the way to the finish line. And if something should happen to one of the textualist and origial Justices who are currently voting to uphold the Constitution...

Another Reason To Think Global Warming Is A Hoax

An interesting look at climate change from an economic point of view. James L. Swafford tells us What Beachfront Property Says about Global Warming. And what it says in a nutshell is that nobody believes the global warming alarmists.  What he is saying is that people are betting money each time a mortgage is made that the property will still be there in 30 years.  I suspect they are right.

Global warming is a crisis no one believes in. At least, most people don't believe in it. The market shows us that. More technically, people voting in the mortgage market with their money on balance do not believe in global warming.

That paragraph says it all. People in the business of making money from loaning money don't believe the alarmists. They don't believe Saint Greta of Thunberg and he 12 years to live either. But even Barack Obama and Bill Gates don't believe it, and they wnat to stuff it down everybodies throat:

Another thing that is true about President Obama and Mr. Gates is they are not smarter and are not able to process more information than the all of us put together that makes up the market. As of now, interest rates on loans for beachfront properties are no higher than interest rates for loans on other properties, comparing first homes to first homes and vacation homes to vacation homes. Thus, all of us — i.e., the market — are not concerned that global warming will affect beachfront property values negatively in the next 30 years.

So, what both Obama and Gates really believe is that they gain more power if the can convince you and me to give up our liberty to them. And they are willing to scare you to do it.

We.re Americans. We eat beef not bugs

 Kurt Schlichter tells us today at Townhall.com Don't Let Them Reset Society To Make You A Bug-Eating Serf. So, the idea that we should eat bugs because cow farts shows the the people who claim "SCIENCE" no nothing about the science involved. Cows eat grass, straw, corn husks and stalks and other stuff we can't eat, turning it into protein and fats that we can eat. Of course, they produce methane and carbon dioxide. But these gases go into the atmosphere where they are taken up by more grass, straw and corn husks. In other words, cows are not adding to the green house gases but are rather part of the carbon cycle. Frankly, I think pushing people to eat bugs is a way to further our humiliation and demoralization.

When did it become okay for Americas to live like mere Europeans, to settle, to compromise, to not expect that tomorrow will be better than today? When our country started being run by the pack of establishment weasels that makes up our garbage ruling class. They stopped being loyal to us and started being loyal to a global ideology that demands a “Great Reset” which, when imposed, would leave us impoverished serfs instead of prosperous citizens. But we don’t have to take it, and we’re not going to.

...snip...

And don’t get me started on the bizarre insistence of the resetters that we all need to give up beef and start eating bugs. I have a better idea. How about we eat ribeyes and burgers like Americans instead of crickets and locust like Third World famine victims?

Perhaps your thinking that our, as Schlichter calls them, " garbage ruling elite", or as I call them, "scavenger class", are total incompetents. They couldn't find their own rear end with both hands. But in truth that is not really true. If the disasters happening to the United States were due to incompetence, some of those disasters would result in the betterment of society. But, let's face it, they all go in one direction. They are all intended to make us as miserable as possible. If anything, the intend to bring about a Hobbsian world for everyone but our scavenger class.

The ruling caste has no intention of you living like a civilized citizen. No, you are their sacrifice, to Gaia, the angry weather goddess or whatever other pagan idol that empty void inside them worships. Your pain is the point. Remember, bullies love the raw exercise of power. Making you miserable is a manifestation of their urge to dominate and crush. That’s the genesis of those seemingly insane moves around the world like Sri Lanka giving up fertilizer or agricultural powerhouse Holland evicting farmers. But these moves - including the destruction of our own energy industry - only seem insane if you refuse to accept their ultimate goal. They want to hurt you. Your pain is a feature, not a bug - which will be your next meal if they get their way.

As Schlichter says, don't let them.

The perfect has been made the enemy of the good

Regis Martin, at Crisis Magazine writes about the Unattainability of Perfect Justice. Thomas Sowell calls it "cosmic justice." But wheter you call it perfect justice, or cosmic justice, or indeed any other name, the attempt always results in massive and gross injustic. As Martin notes:

Those who ignore this ineluctable fact, who disdain to accept the limits of human justice, who wish to deny what the poet Yeats has called “the perpetual injustice of life,” are dangerously romantic, becoming a danger to themselves and to others. It is to engage in a kind of utopian logic, which is a species of idealism wholly illusory and unreal. To be sure, politicians are especially prone, their decisions drawn to what the philosopher Michael Oakeshott has called “making politics the way the crow flies.”

Here is the sin of rationalism, he said, and it has been tried many times in history, most especially in the last century among despots like Hitler and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, with results both predictable and catastrophic. “The conjunction of dreaming and ruling,” he wrote, “necessarily generates tyranny.” There is no humane way, in other words, to make an omelet without breaking a great many eggs. Lenin understood the logic, declaring that the hour had come when, “it is no longer possible to listen to music, because music arouses the desire to caress children’s heads, while the moment has come to cut them off.”

Please read the embedded article. It is true that we can not achieve perfect justice, but as a goal we should attempt to provide equal justice for everybody. But the perfect has been made the enemy of the good. We no longer attempt to provide equal justice, because we can not provide perfect justice.

The Intolerable Acts 2.0

 Long time readers may remember that there was much discussion as long ago as 12 or 13 years ago.  The late Mike Vanderboegh was pretty clear that the patriot movement needed a new Declaration of Independence to tell the world that we do indeed have grievances that are not being addressed, that the government is tyranically rolling over our unalienable rights.  One of the problems, of course, is that we have no way to successfully gather a Continental Congress as they did in 1776.  But, Eric Utter has written the list of grievances for us at The Biden administration and the new 'Intolerable Acts.'

In 1774, the British imposed the Intolerable Acts on the American colonies. These acts, also called the Coercive Acts, were punishment for the Americans' disobedience to the crown, particularly as symbolized by the Boston Tea Party, a rebellion against a (relatively mild) increase in the tax on tea.

My fellow Americans, we have recently been subjected to a second set of Coercive Acts. Call them the Intolerable Acts 2.0.

These acts have been imposed on American citizens by their own supposedly representative government, the Biden administration, as punishment for disobedience to the Democrat party and the Deep State, as symbolized by the MAGA movement and the election of Donald Trump.

What are the new Intolerable Acts? I will list a number of them here for you now, many of them a result of executive fiat, not unlike those directed at the colonists by King George III.

You can read the list of grievances for yourself, and you can probably think of some that he has not mentioned. By contrast, the revolutionary generation revolted over less, but then the goverment they revolted against was far away. Today it is everywhere, and everwhere oppressive. The fact is that Marxism, of whatever stripe, and our Founding with its God given inalienable rights are profoundly incompatible. We need to decide which we will be.

Sorry, Joe, but because Congress won't act does not create an emergency

David Harsanyi, over at Townhall.com yesterday, had an article entitled Biden Has No Right To Declare A Climate Emergency.

The Washington Post reported Monday night that President Joe Biden is "considering whether to declare a national climate emergency" to "salvage his stalled environmental agenda and satisfy Democrats on Capitol Hill." A few hours later, the Associated Press reported that the administration would "hold off" on the announcement as he, presumably, lays the political groundwork to move forward.

There's no "It's Summer" clause in the Constitution empowering the president to ignore the will of Congress and unilaterally govern when it gets hot. The rejection of the president's "agenda" by the lawmaking branch of government isn't a justification for executive action; it's the opposite. The Senate has unambiguously declined to implement Biden's climate plan.

I would note that the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and one day later, Congress declared war. Are we to believe that a response to an emergency can not wait even one day? The real problem is that many of these so called "emergencies" are not really emergencies at all, and so someone attempting to drum up support finds little. In this case, while St. Greta of Thunberg is outraged that the world will burn up in 12 years (the same 12 years they have been predicting for the last 30 years) no one really believes that to be true. If they did, they wouldn't fly around on private aircraft, fo these put out more greenhouse gases than a thousand regular homes.  For at least 50 years, whether the climate was supposedly cooling, or warming, or just changing, the solutions are always the same. Get rid of fossil fuels. Hog tie the United States so that Communist regimes don't look so bad.

Though you have to marvel at the utter shamelessness of Democrats, incessantly warning that "democracy" is on the precipice of extinction, now urging the president to act like a petty dictator. It's been less than a month since the Supreme Court rejected the Environmental Protection Agency's claim that bureaucrats could govern without Congress to regulate carbon (which is to say, the entire economy). What makes anyone believe that the president -- who, incidentally, just got back from begging Saudi theocrats to pump more oil -- is imbued with the power to enact a new regulatory regime or funding by fiat?

We now have senators like Jeff Merkley, who told reporters on Monday that Biden's emergency edict "unchains the president from waiting for Congress to act," openly undermining their oath to the Constitution by attacking the institution they represent. Congress may have spent decades abdicating its responsibilities -- which, despite conventional wisdom, isn't to rubber-stamp the Democrats' agenda -- but its members rarely advocated openly for executive abuse. I guess they're evolving.

The truth is that we need to repeal laws that give the Executive so called "emergency powers."   (At the same time, it would be nice if Congress took back it's power to make law rather than delegating the job to the Executive.  The Constitution after all does not allow the Legislature to delegate their powers. ) When emergency powers have been used, they have either been abused, as was the case with Roosevelt rounding up Japanese Americans, or even if intended for good, as Trump using such powers to erect the wall along the border. A true emergency is pretty clear to all, as is the case of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. 

There is no "climate emergency." There is no reason to limit fossil fuels. We can allow the private sector to sort this out, and leave government out of it.  Indeed, government is usually not the "solution," especially when they have been the ones creating the problem in the first place.

You must place your trust in God alone

 I had read an article at Axios by one Jonathon Swan entitled A Radical Plan for Trump's Second Term, which sounded pretty good to me, if true. I say If true because Trump often, during his first term, did the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt's motto "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Trump spoke loudly but didn't back up his speech with actual actions. So many people should have been fired, or knowing how notoriously hard it is to actually fire someone (I succeeded only once) send them to a do nothing job in Alaska. They can count carribou and make reports.

Trump signed an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.

Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.

...snip...

Trump, in theory, could fire tens of thousands of career government officials with no recourse for appeals. He could replace them with people he believes are more loyal to him and to his “America First” agenda.

Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees.

It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy. The next president might then move to gut those pro-Trump ranks — and face the question of whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy.

So, some of this is inside baseball stuff, but the point he is making is that Trump had an Executive Order ready going into his second term, which would have gotten rid of a lot of those the in "swamp" which is really a part of the Democrat Party establishement. They were the ones throwing sand in the machine for Trump, while facilitating the Biden administrations goals. Of course, Axios is attempting to fire up the despondant Democrat base before the election, and this is one of the ways. Who knows if any of this is true? But it should be.

Over at the American Thinker today, Rajan Laad has an article entitled Axios reveals Trump's plan to take out the deep state. Laad explains in detail how the backroom deals get made, how politicians, on handsome but not extravagant salaries somehow get rich, how justice is corrupted, indeed exposes how things REALLY get done (hint: it is not what you were taught in Civics class.)

It begins with elections.

If a relatively unknown but well-meaning candidate wants to run for office, the swamp places numerous impediments before him.

The first impediment is funding. The candidate first needs to raise millions to fund a campaign, for which the swamp is the facilitator. If the candidate chooses to circumvent the swamp and fund a campaign on small donations from regular individuals, there are challenges.

Firstly, few donate to unknown candidates. Secondly, his swamp-funded opponent, either during the primary or the main electoral contest, runs attack advertisements while the regular candidate has no means to respond. Despite good intentions, he loses.

Hence candidates intending to win have no option but to plunge into the swamp. This enables millions of dollars for their campaign, favorable media coverage, and a few coveted endorsements.

Gentle readers will want to read on. Once you understand "the swamp" and its membership, things that happen that are seemingly inexplicable suddenly become clear. Rush Limbaugh understood. He used to say that he understood these creatures like the back of his hand. Once you see it, you can not unsee it. When you see politicians voting in ways that, if they were serving their constituents, they wouldn't vote that way, you can be sure the swamp has influenced them.  This is how you get Republicans supporting a "Assault Weapon" ban, for example.

This is why you can not trust in men. You must place your trust in God alone.

Shadow Banned?

First off, I came home yesterday from work, and discovered that I had 0, that's a ZERO readers yesterday. I am not sure what I said, but I suspect I have been shadow banned. While it is disconcerting, I must admit that I feel as if I am here making a difference. After all, as the old WWII pilots used to say, "If you are getting flack, you must be over the target." But considering the relatively few gentle readers this blog attacts, I am surprised that Blogger would take notice.

It is only out of our wealth that we can help others

 Today I intend to direct your attention to a rather long article entitled Alex Newman Explains UN Agenda 2030 Behind Farming Restrictions at the Epoch Times. But in a nutshell, these and other effects of the so called Great Reset are nothing more than the old Soviet Union plans to control people world wide, are nothing more than the Chinese Communist plans to do the same thing, are...well, you get the idea. They want to eliminate private property because that gives people the power to say "no!" They want to control food because when you are starving, you may do things you otherwise wouldn't. And frankly, a lot of them believe there are just too many of us, and they intend to "solve" that problem via their policies which will kill a lot of us. They believe that technology will be able to do most jobs, so what to do with the rest of us? Not believing in human ingenuity, they think they must keep us entertained with video games and twitter wars. There view of humanity is truly twisted.

So, gentle readers, get a cup of coffee, and sit down when you have perhaps 30 minutes, and read the above article. I will be worth your while. The Bible is often cited as a source for belief in the Communists ideas, and especially in the Book of Acts one can find some support, in that many new converts sold what they had and gave it to the Apostles to distribute to the poor. At the same time, Paul famously said that those who don't work don't eat in 2 Thessalonians 3:8 & 10. But what is also implied here is that the laborer is entitled to the fruits of his labor, and it is out of these fruits that he is able to help others. The Communists and Fascists would make the state the beneficiary of the fruits of labor of its subjects. This goes against Biblical teachings. We mustn't sell our land or our rights for a mess of pottage! Remember that Abraham, God's chosen, whose seed would one day save all mankind, was wealthy and owned many possessions.

For another take on the subject, Crisis Magazine has an article by Michael D. Greaney entitled It's Time For A Greater Reset. As Greaney makes clear, there is a way to allow workers to gain ownership over their work, to in other words build capital and wealth. For it is only out of our wealth that we can help others. King Arther Flour seems to be such a company, and there are others.

Schlichter: Who Will They Get to Do the Tyrant's Dirty Work?

Kurt Schlichter has a question: Who Will They Get to Do the Tyrants Dirty Work? Spoiler alert: Schlichter sees a need for a lot of good guys with guns in our future. As he points out, one man apparently held off 30 cops armed with AR 15s for an hour and a half in Uvalde, Texas.

If 30 local cops who knew the families of the kids being slaughtered refused to put their asses on the line to take on one untrained civilian half-wit, what's going to happen when they are told to go get a few million citizens with ARs (and other modern weapons), many of them with military and law enforcement training, who are ideologically committed to defending their Constitution and all the rights actually found within it?

Think the thugs might hesitate?

Schlichter starts out by noting that we can not expect the be protected by the governemtal forces be they the police, sheriffs, or FBI SWAT teams. But if we normals can't expect to be protected, neither can the tyrants.

The shameful video of Uvalde cops cowering in the hallway while some freakish mutant murdered little kids brings to mind an important point. It's not a point about the cowardice of badly-led police officers – that point has been made. It's not the hygiene focus of the guy who paused just standing there to splurt a dollop of hand sanitizer into his paw. It's not even about the fact that we normal citizens cannot rely on the forces of the government to protect us.

It is the fact that the members of our garbage ruling elite cannot rely on the forces of the government to protect them.

Several points come to mind here. First, the government forces were never intended to be our personal bodyguards. They are not the "first responders," we are. Second, we need to get rid of so called "gun free zones" which for someone intent on mass murder are simply target rich killing zones. The more places such people have to cont on the presence of concealed carriers who may take action to stop them, the better for everybody else, especially our school children. Third, there may come a time when we will need to, as Jefferson put it, "refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants." It probably would have already happened had we not had the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

It is beyond dispute that the left has moved from leveraging private power (via their corporate allies) to control us to using armed thugs to do it. Right now, they do it behind the veneer of the justice system, but as we have seen, that play has a SELL BY date. So what happens next? History provides a clear answer for that question – more and more armed force is used against opponents, with less and less attention paid to maintaining the pretense of a fair and neutral judicial system. From Stalin through Hitler through Mao through Castro, socialists always – always – end up sending men with guns to suppress the uppity. Don't think Biden or his heirs won't if that's the price of keeping power. They are already setting the stage – you are not a mere opponent if you liked Trump. Why, you are a treasonous insurrectionist traitor! They hate you, and they don't hide it.

...snip...

Who would do their dirty work, and when it comes to it, would they be any more proactive in facing millions of armed patriots than the Uvalde cowards were facing one mutant in a schoolhouse?

And so we come back to the question asked in the title. There will of course be people willing to go after their countrymen and neighbors, sadly. There always are. But as Schlichter makes clear, the advantage of such people is organization and the fact that they can muster enough force to overwhelm the bad guys. But if we organize, and there are millions of us, we prevail. It would not be easy, and we have probably gone beyond the point when we could have prevailed with little cost to us. So be it.  Oh, and I have ordered Schlichter's new book We'll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.

Don't believe the Left. Guns Do Save Lives

 According to D. Parker at the American Thinker Leftists can't deal with the fact that guns save lives. <sarcasm on>The proximate cause of this observation is the shooting in the Greenwood, Indiana mall by an evil miscreat with an AR 15. Unfortunately for the Left, he was quickly killed by a concealed carrier, severely limiting the death and carnage the murderer could cause. So sad.<sarcasm off>.  D. Parker writes:

Anti-liberty leftists are missing the point entirely complaining that the Greenwood good Samaritan violated their nonsensical gun free massacre zone rules.

Does anyone want to guess why the mass murdering miscreant chose that place to try and make a name for himself? Could it be that like many other murderers, it chose a massacre zone, a place that deprives the innocent of their God-given right of self-defense?

For some strange reason, anti-liberty leftists think that silly little signs and codes of conduct that say ‘No weapons’ are going to work, even though they’ve never worked before.

The latest revelation is that the good Samaritan ‘violated’ the sacred massacre zone rules of the mall, entirely missing the point that the mass murder also violated that rule. Given that a good guy with a gun stopped this crime in progress, does anyone want to guess how long this story is going to stick around? You can almost track the coverage in real time on sites like memeorandum ‘an auto-generated summary of the stories that US political commentators are discussing online right now’. Had this been the proper kind of crisis, the coverage would be expanding to no end.

As is so often the case, the Left has applied moral equivalency to cry and complain that some mean concealed carrier spoiled their narrative. Boohoohoo. But the truth is that guns do save lives.

It is true that these mass murderers are not often stopped by a concealed carrier with a gun.  But then, concealed carriers are not deputized to act as police.  We are not a public service like, for example, amateur radio operators which are a public service.  Those in law enforcement are trained to handle a number of diverse situations that include the use of deadly force.  Those who choose to carry a gun do so for self defence and the defense of their families.  Concealed carriers have a much narrower reasons for carrying a gun.  If a concealed carrier chooses to act to stop a mass murderer, he should be seen as a Good Samaratan, taking great personal risk for strangers.

The way that guns save lives  far more often is by de-escalating a situation.  The fact that one person has a gun, and is willing to use it if the other person doesn't stop what he is doing has a way of making someone think twice.  In my own case, I didn't even have to reveal the gun, I just had to reach under my jacket to get a firing grip, and the would be thief turned tail and walked the other way.  I hope he has another way to make money, by the way.  But he didn't get to make money at my expense that day.

Satan Must Be So Proud of His Minions

 Eric Utter at the American Thinker today has a story telling us Canada's devolvement into Socialist government is truly evil. The story is entitled Canada's "expert" panel recommends the mentally ill be candidates for euthanasia.

Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAiD) law is already the most permissive euthanasia and assisted-suicide legislation in the world.

Understandably controversial in itself, there are many horror stories surrounding its implementation. For example, as lifesitenews.com recently reported,

A 71-year-old widower was admitted to a Southwestern Ontario hospital after a fall. His family says during his admission he contracted an infectious diarrheal illness. He was humiliated by staff for the smell of his room, his family said. He developed a new shortness of breath that was not comprehensively assessed. In this context, a hospital team member suggested he would qualify for MAiD. The team said he had end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and it was terminal. The patient was surprised by the diagnosis but trusted the team. Within 48 hours of his first assessment, he received a medically assisted death. Post-mortem testing showed he did not have end-stage COPD. His family doctor, when notified of his death, also stated he did not have end-stage COPD, but the team had failed to contact her when they were assessing his history.

Oops. Sorry.

Oops indeed. The doctors involved should have at the very least lost their licenses, and perhpas been put in prison. After all, they had murdered this man. But because it was "legal" no charges were preferred.

Nonetheless, the Great White North’s federal “expert” panel on MAiD has recommended mental illness be added to the list of maladies making one eligible for MAiD……apparently without any legislative changes. How nice, euthanasia by administrative fiat. What could go wrong?

To some degree, mental illness is in the eye of the beholder. It can be quite subjective and has historically been used as a tool to advance totalitarian political agendas. Hence, the gulags and “re-education camps.” Don’t believe in global warming? Are you an anti-vaxxer? Trump supporter?! Didn’t vote for Xi jinping Justin Trudeau? Driving an 18-wheeler in a “Freedom Convoy?” Then you are, sadly, mentally ill.

The addition of the "mentally ill" to the list of those who can be murdered by doctors working for the state is fitting. Since the Soviet era, mental illness has been used as an excuse by the government to target those who dissent. Often, these dissenters have simply been thrown into institutions. But Canada is taking it to a who new level with the killing of these dissenters by the state under the guise of "euthanasia." Satan must be so proud of his minions.

You Can't Ignore the Laws of Economics Anymore Than You Can Ignore the Laws of Physics.

Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker today has a post entitled The war on fossil fuels is ending - and the good guys are losing today. Widburg writes:

There are several entities that saw a benefit in declaring war on fossil fuel: The environmentalists who are so historically illiterate that they believe a world without fossil fuels will be a bucolic paradise, rather than a Hobbesian nightmare; the leftists who want to break the West to rebuild it as a socialist paradise; the Great Reset/New World Order crowd, which envisions happy, possession-free serfs; and the Chinese, who foresee a bloodless conquest of the West which, believe me, will not be anybody’s paradise. While the winner among these groups isn’t clear, the loser is coming into focus: Ordinary people across the Western world.

The latest example comes from Germany. In 2018, President Trump warned Germany, which was proudly shutting down its own coal production and refineries, not to become dependent on Russia’s oil and gas:

Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation. That is why we congratulate European states, such as Poland, for leading the construction of a Baltic pipeline so that nations are not dependent on Russia to meet their energy needs. Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.

Germany and other European countries, basking in Greta Thunberg’s approval and wallowing in their virtue, sneered at Trump’s words and went their own way. And then, in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. There is no “I told you so” big enough to encompass Trump’s prescience.

As an aside, this situation illustrates the problem with so very many people who do not understand basic scientific principles, or history either. Scientific principles tell us that the Sun, despite being hot, is actually a very diluted energy source. The Sun gets temperatures on earth as much as 120 degrees Fahrenheit at most. But most of the earth, most of the time, is much cooler, thank God. In case you hadn't noticed, to melt steel in a blast furnace, to take one example of energy needs in an industrial society, you need 2732 degrees F. And then there is the fact that solar panels are notoriously inefficient, converting only 17% of the solar energy that falls on them into electricity. Wind turbins suffer similary problems in terms of producing energy. Producing either solar panels or wind turbins have huge environmental problems that environmentalists overlook in their haste to get rid of fossil fuels.

But, okay, let's say that we cover enough of the earth with solar panels and wind farms to supply enough energy to power our society and of course, charge our electric cars. How much habitat would that remove?  Why is it okay to remove habitat for solar panels, but not for housing?  Aren't we always told we are destroying the environemt as it is? In Eastern North Carolina, solar panel farms occupy land that was fertile farm land.  We are used to contradictions from the Left. They are the masters of congnative disonance. But really, what is going on?

My friend Wolf Howling has put together a list of the disasters unfolding across the world—Holland, Sri Lanka, Ghana—thanks to naïve governments or opportunistic elites who threw all their eggs into the green energy basket. Obama was willing to do that to America but Trump gave us a four-year respite.

Now, the Democrats are again trying to suck us back into a pre-modern time, although it’s unclear whether our ultimate overlords will be homegrown socialists, New World Order elites, or the Chinese. (The environmentalists are useless; they’re part of the wrecking ball, not part of the next phase.) Even though Congress refused to sign on to the madness of the New Green Deal, Biden’s rogue administrative state is going full speed ahead.

If you want to understand the massive fraud that’s being foisted upon us by multiple groups, all anxious to end the West’s centuries of dominance and, especially, the prosperous Pax Americana, take the time to read the too-little-heralded testimony that William Happer and Richard Lindzen gave in Congress last month. We are the victims of an enormous con that threatens to throw the world into darkness—and we’re currently beginning the very last battle in this sustained war.

So, what the beneficiaries of this climate change madness are hoping to gain is power, and of course, wealth. And they really don't care about the rest of us, as long as we service their needs like good little serfs. I did mention that too many are unaware of history. But the 19th century ended just 120 years ago. This was a time when the average person lived his or her entire life within 10 miles of where he was born until the invention of the bicycle. Horses were harnessed for power, but of course horses left bacterial laden manure everywhere, increasing deseases. Child birth was a true hazard to many women, and most children died within 5 years. Cancer and heart attacks weren't a problem because the average age at death was 40. The average person literally worked themselves to death. that's what the climate alramists have in mind for us.

Fianlly, I had a post the other day entitled It Is You Choice in which I alluded to the belief among the World Economic Forum scavengers that most of us constitute "useless" eaters. What these paragons of economic thought have not factored in, is that the luxuries we take advantage of, and they truly are luxuries, is because there are so many of us. People create markets. Without people and their needs and wants, there are no markets.  Most of these items would be prohibitively expensive if made a few at a time, even for the rich. You see, most of them would not even have been invented in the first place if there were not enough people who could afford to buy them. One can not ignore the laws of economics any more than one can defy the laws of physics

One Hour a Day

 Something different from my normal commentary on political issues, I want to discuss music.  I am not sure if I have discussed music before, but I am an amateur musician.  I have played the trumpet, and I play the guitar badly.  I took up playing handbells at church this last year.  But my first love is the organ.  I have owned a Thomas organ in the late1960s, and acquired a good deal on a Kimball organ in the late 1990s, and then in 2010, I bought a Lowrey Majesty organ.

Now, before I got the Thomas I studied piano for a number of years.  The piano is the usual first instrument for organists, but in truth the only similarity to the piano is the fact that both have keyboards.  The piano has definite pitches and tones based on where on the keyboard one plays a key.  Middle C is always Middle C on every piano.  But on the organ, the pitch and tone of a given key depends on which stops are pulled.  A 1' flute played on the C at the midpoint will have a very high pitch, while a 16' diapason will have a low pitch at the same key.  And it is the mixing of the various stops that gives the organ its many voices.  And of course, when one plays a pipe organ, the effect in a church or cathedral is profound.  the power of a pipe organ should be experienced by everyone.

The other difference is that when a key is struck on a piano, the sound decays with time whether you keep the key down or not.  The volume of a vibrating string becomes less each time the string vibrates back and forth  from one side to the other.  But an organ sustains the volume of a key as long as it is kept down (and as long as the boys pumping the bellows keep working.)  so there are a number of fundamental differences in techinque for organ and piano.

The organ is not as popular an instrument as the piano, for reasons I will discuss in a minute.  But because the piano is a popular instrument, and many pieces of music have been composed for it, much has also been written about how best to practice the piano.  So it was that I came across a book recently entitled Playing the Piano for Pleasure. The original book was written by Charles Cooke in the 1930s, and this edition was published with a foreward by Michael Kimmelman. The book is full of useful tips for anyone playing any keyboard instrument. But before Cooke gets into the meat of playing the piano for pleasure, he makes the point that what he is writing about is for the amateur, not the professional.

Cooke points out that the recording of music had, even in the 1930s, made professional musical performances ubiquitous. The ability to switch on a radio or put a record on a turntable and hear a professional performance had changed peoples relation to music. Formerly, people entertained themselves, their families and friends by playing music themselves. Thus we all experienced live music, and more of us played an instrument. But with the advent of recordings, people began to look at their own playing as being somehow not as "good." But, as Cooke makes clear, amateur playing may not be as good as a profession, but that doesn't mean that it should not be pursued. After all, many people play golf, for example, even though most will never by good enough to play on the tour. They play for the joy and benefits of playing even if they will never be good enough to play professionally. Music should be the same.

Cooke suggests that for amateurs, the playing should occupy no more that one hour a day. He breaks up that hour into portions devoted to site reading, technique and repertoire. Most of your time should be devoted to perfecting and playing repertoire, but at least 10 minutes should be devoted to site reading and 10 minutes to techique. Site reading is more important than most realize. A competent site readers is valuable as an accompanianist to other instruments and to singers. Such a pianist will always be welcome.  As for techniquie, one should practice scales, and fingerings.  Many times in classical pieces, one may wnat to have an extra hand with 12 fingers on it.  But with proper technique, one can play these seemingly impossible pieces with the 10 fingers everyone is born with.

I said I would discuss why the organ is less popular than the piano.  Organs have traditionally been very expesive to purchase.  The Lowrey organ has a number of automatic funtions that make it possible to replicate an entire band or orchestra playing a given piece, but these organs cost around $50K when new, so only older people could afford them.  Unfortunately, Lowrey has gone out of business though you can still buy them used.  But, buying a piano to play is not the major investment that it was in the 1930s, when Cooke was writing, or even the 1950s when I was young. The advent of digital electronic pianos has brought the prices down.  And electronic pianos don't need to be constantly tuned, which is an expense as well. You can buy a digital piano for as little as $800, as opposed to a traditional piano at $10,000 for an upright. 

If you always wanted to play the piano, I encourage everyone to start now. You will be surprised at what you can achieve by spending just one hour a day.

Tucker Carlson: Biden Sells Out America to China

 Another post by Thomas Lifson today at the American Thinker is entitled Tucker Carlson drops the hammer on Biden's selling out America to China. You can watch the segment of Tucker Carlson Tonight in which he spends the first half hour of his show pointing out the ways in which Biden has harmed the United States by selling out to China. This seems to me to be treason, though I of course am not a lawyer, and the lawyers these days define the law differently than when I was young. But, the truth is that while the Biden crime family is the latest beneficiary of China, government and corporate officials have been doing this for years.

Please watch the Tucker Carlson monologue embedded in the post. If you haven't set Tucker Carlson Tonight on your Tivo, I can not recommend it enough to gentle readers. He is currently the most interesting personality on television. That may not be a high bar, but it is nonetheless true.

The Failure of the Green Agenda Becomes Apparent

 Thomas Lifson has two posts at the American Thinker, on two separate days dealing with the Green...er...Socialist agenda. The first post entitled The revolt against green tyranny has toppled its first government as farmer protests spread across Europe. The government Lifson is writing about is Sri Lanaka, where farmers have been forced to eschew chemical ferilizers. As a result, there are food shortages in Sri Lanka, and people are starving. Note, of course, that this always happens. Most will not remember the Soviet's five year plans, but these plans always predicted increased grain, and always failed. Why? Because farm policies were promulgated by ideologues, not farmers.  Lifson also highlights farmer protests in Europe, where the Netherlands has proposed similar ideas, forcing half the farmers to lose their businesses.  I would also note that the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of food in the world.  

The other post is entitled The global warming fraud reviealed in one graph. You need to look at the graph, embedded in the post. The gap between predicted by computer models temperatures and actual temperatures as measured by both satallites and weather balloons grows as the years go on.

Please go read both posts. They are not long, but they both point to the failure of the green agenda. Organic gardening may work on small farms and gardens, though I have my doubts. Every year the deer eat my tomato plants, and cabbage worms invade my brussels sprouts. But at large scale, organic farming doesn't work. We can not feed all 7 billion of using green farming.  That doesn't mean that we destroy the earth, but at the same time we must use the technology to feed the world.   We don't want to go back to plowing the ground with a stick drawn by water buffaloes.

Any Government That Doesn't Trust You With a Gun Should Not Be Trusted

 Long time gentle readers will know that I have occasionally tendered the notion that the National Firearms Act, or at least parts of it, are Unconstitutional.  Now, I am no expert on the Constitution. I am not even a lawyer, so I have only a layman's understanding of it.  But I am not, apparently, the only one.  Ted Noel at the American Thinker has an article today at that caught my eye entitled While SCOTUS is at it, The National Firearms Act is Largely Unconstitutional. The National Firearms Act (NFA) was passed in the 1930s, during a time when Prohibition had empowered the mafia, of which Al Capone was the most notorious. At a time when the police were usually armed with .38 revovlers, hunting rifles and shotguns, the Thompson machine gun seemed to out gun the police of the era.

During Prohibition, Al Capone’s Chicago gang made the Thompson submachine gun a symbol of gang violence. The “Chicago Typewriter” could empty a hundred-round drum magazine in under ten seconds, and make headlines, while occasionally perforating both targets and bystanders.

Congress saw an opportunity to “do something,” and “wasn’t willing to let a ‘crisis’ go to waste.” The ultimate result is the National Firearms Act of 1934 (“NFA”), which was later amended by the Gun Control Act of 1968 (“GCA”). The net result is that certain firearms and firearm-related items have seriously disfavored status, completely unrelated to anything having to do with crime or Constitution.

The NFA states that for certain items such as machine guns and suppressors, the purchaser must pay a $200 tax and then wait for extended periods for the federal government to decide that it’s okay for him to have the item. But the Supreme Court said in Bruen that “lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”

Just so. Years ago, many states in the Jim Crow south had what were called "poll taxes" that were meant to keep blacks from voting. The Supreme Court finally struck down the last of these poll taxes in 1966 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. A Constitutional right can not be burdened with a tax, thus the $200 tax part of the NFA should be struck down on much the same principle. As for the wait times:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“BATFE”) routinely violates this idea with wait times of a year or more before issuing permits. Granted, they’re purchase authorizations, not carry permits, but the same idea applies. When you have a constitutional right to a weapon or suppressor, all other considerations require extremely careful examination.

You can read about Noel's experience getting a supressor, which is another NFA item, in excruciating detail. This shouldn't happen in the United States.

Then there is the fact that the whole thing is quite arbitrary, and to make matters worse, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) acts with breathtaking arbitrariness and capriciousness. This is not how bureaucrats should operate. They are public servants after all, and should act scupulously within the law.  To make matters worse, the ATF is notorious for being against the civilian ownership of guns, doing everything legal, and some that are not legal, to restrict as much as possible gun ownership.

And that may be the best reason to strike down the NFA.  The ATF shown itself to be extremely anti-gun for civilians. Not their own guns of course, but yours and mine. Any government or government agency that does not trust us to have guns should not itself be trusted.

It Is Your Choice

 Eric Utter discusses the causes of the farmer protests in the Netherlands in a post at the American Thinker entitled That's a great way to hasten national suicide!. The proximate cause of the farmers' ire is a climate proposal by the government that would put a half of them out of business.

Dutch police recently shot at tractor-riding farmers who were protesting a preposterous government climate proposal in a northern area of the Netherlands. The Dutch government purportedly plans to cut in half so-called greenhouse gas emissions from bovine farts and belches, farm animal manure, and the use of ammonia in fertilizer — by 2030. Government officials say the plan is necessary to reduce these "harmful" pollutants, but the farmers say the government's new standards would destroy their livelihoods. So, in recent weeks, they have organized a nationwide protest against the despotic plans.

If the proposal is approved, to meet the government's emissions target, farmers would be forced to reduce the number of livestock they own. Moreover, farmers whose animals produce large amounts of ammonia would have their farms purchased by the government. To that end, a government representative recently stated: "The honest message ... is that not all farmers can continue their business."

"Not all farmers can continue their business"? Because the government won't let them. Wow. I guess it's no longer just COVID that governments use to determine if you can keep your business.

Didn't they tell us we all need to eat a vegan diet? And didn't they tell us that we can't use chemical fertilizers. So, that leaves us with animal manure and compost. Yet they want to eliminate the animals too. Hmmm. Is it possible that Klaus Schuab and his scavenger brigade want to starve us to death? We know that some of them are convinced there are too many of God's images in the world. Is that why Bill Gates is buying up farm land? Here's another question: Are we going to let them?

It Is A Time to Choose

 Tom McCaffrey has an article today at the American Thinker entitled Where Science Ends and Morality Begins that makes the point that the climate change scare, and the green new deal are all smoke screens for socialist government that will leave everybody but the scavenger class poor and without rights of any sort. The truth is that man has survived through both colder and warmer temperatures than today, and that man is not really having much affect on climate temperatures. Another truth is that we could have "clean" electricity by simply switching to nuclear energy.

We are left to assume that today's astronomical prices at the pump ($6.78 for hi-test in California town yesterday) are only temporary and that prices will return to lower levels after the transition to wind and solar is completed. But this is pure fantasy. Wind and solar power are far more expensive sources of energy than fossil fuels. That's why coal, oil, and gas became our predominant sources of energy in the first place. The only reason there are wind and solar to speak of is that the government has subsidized their development with taxpayer dollars.

But why would environmentalists want Americans to spend more on energy? Because they believe that wealth is the great enemy of the environment. People in poor countries don't mar the natural landscape with superhighways and factories and shopping malls and skyscrapers. "In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun," wrote Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich in 1975.1

...snip...

Climate change doomsayers never specify what would be an ideal temperature level for human purposes. Yet this is an interesting question, considering that average temperatures have varied dramatically on Earth, even during man's short time here. But the premise behind the effort to eliminate fossil fuels — and economic growth in general — is that nature knows best. Whatever nature serves up, whether it be warmer or cooler temperatures, would be better for man and other life forms than any change in temperatures that might result from human activities (not that such activities are in fact causing climate change to any significant extent).

He goes on to point out that in his home state of California, one must fill out a boatload of paperwork, and expend considerable capital before one can turn the first shovel of dirt on one's own property. While it is less onerous elsewhere, the truth is that a maze of local planning boards and supposedly environmental laws have had the same effect in most places. But if you must first get permission to make changes to your property, are you really the owner, or merely renting from the government?

Would we still consider America a free country if writers had to seek government approval of their manuscripts before they could be published? Land use censorship is every bit as pernicious as any other form of censorship. Indeed, in the absence of private ownership of land, no other rights are possible. Try to imagine freedom of religion if the government controls all the land; have you tried to erect a Christmas creche on a public square lately?

The first plank in Marx's Communist Manifesto called for the abolition of private land ownership. The complete absence of individual rights in Marxist countries like the Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Castro's Cuba was not an idiosyncrasy of those regimes, but a logical concomitant of state ownership of land and capital.

Under the Biden administration, we are getting a foretaste of a green future. The high costs of gasoline, heating oil, and electricity; the consequent high prices of everything else; the food shortages; and economic recessions will all be permanent features of a green America. Tried flying lately? Consider the phase-out of air travel to be already underway. Supply chain problems causing empty shelves at the store? Not to worry; when "buy local" is your only choice, you won't have to worry about supply chains.

Hidden in the above is the truth that the all the "green" excuses are just masquerades for the transition from a free America to a Communist America, built on the Chinese model. Klaus Schaub's saying that you will own nothing is the desired end state. You will not own a car, or a house, and what you will be allowed to have will be determined by the state.

You will not have rights either, they would be denied. This blog would not be allowed to be published. Oh, and paper books would be outlawed too, making it possible to change the content as the state sees fit. Thus getting a copy of C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters would be impossible. People will be encouraged to engage in silly pursuits on social media when they are not working for the state. And yes, you will need written permission to travel. Oh, and the dream of killing off the "useless" among us would at last be realized. What a glorious world, if you are among the "elite." Not so much for the rest of us.

Don't like arbitrary government mandates? Don't like what the COVID lockdowns did to your constitutional rights? Don't like seeing the rule of law abandoned before your eyes — from our open southern border to the homes of our Supreme Court justices? Consider all this your introduction to socialist governance.

...snip...

Yet science says we have no choice but to prohibit the use of fossil fuels — according to the environmentalists. Science says that we have no choice but to surrender our freedom and our prosperity. But the choice whether to extinguish the use of fossil fuels is not a scientific one, any more than the choice to consider all men equal was a scientific one. It is a moral choice.

In truth, science says nothing. Science is a tool used to discover the physical facts around us. But we are the ones who interpret the facts that science makes available. And those choices are just that: choices. Are we going to choose to give up our rights, our rule of law, our Constitution, indeed our freedom to return to a feudal society that subsists and did paleolithic man?

The Left is the Aggressor in the Culture Wars

Todd Starnes brings us the news that Biden Is Raising of Taxpayer Funded Atheists at Townhall.com.

The government recently announced plans to fund a program that would send Americans abroad to promote atheism and humanism in South/Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East.

The program would be funded by your tax dollars - as much as a half million dollars per organization.

They are literally going to use a government tithe to spread a godless message of hopelessness to the world.

This strikes one as being illegal. The First Amendment of the Constitution states that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And it seems that at least one Congressman sees the same defect with Biden's screwy idea:

Congressman Jim Banks, the Republican from Indiana, is demanding answers — writing in a letter to President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken that it’s unconstitutional for the government to convert people to the atheist way of life.

He said it’s one thing to be tolerant and respectful of those who don’t believe in God.

"It is quite another for the United States government to work actively to empower atheists, humanists, non-practicing, and non-affiliated in public decision-making," the letter read. "Any such program – for any religiously-identifiable group – in the United States would be unconstitutional."

The idea that our tax dollars are being used to convert people to a godless, heathen lifestyle is appalling.

The Founders envisioned that the goverment would take a neutral stance on religion, neither endorsing one religion over others, or ecouraging atheism. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is wrong on the merits, but of course free to be wrong. The First Amendment was designed to protect the churces from the government.

But atheists do not need protection, indeed have never needed protection from the government, for it takes no notice of them. Indeed, the Engles v. Vitale ruling striking down a nondenominational prayer in NY schools was an example of the bullying that is typical of the culture war. The Left is always the aggressor in these affairs.  Why?  Because no one prays who doesn't wish to.  He can say the words, but he must mean them in his heart for them to be effective.

The Supreme Court Seems on the Right Track

 Ann Coulter, over at Townhall.com tells us What Liberals Get Wrong About the Second Amendment. And one of the things they get wrong is the so called "musket" argument.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (Democrat) and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (Democrat) both think it's quite brilliant to claim that, if we care what the framers of the Constitution meant, then the Second Amendment applies only to "muskets"!

In The New York Times, a couple of professors (Democrats, but you knew that) asked: "Is a modern AR-15-style rifle relevantly similar to a Colonial musket? In what ways?" They liked their argument so much, the op-ed was titled, "A Supreme Court Head-Scratcher: Is a Colonial Musket 'Analogous' to an AR-15?"

[Frantically waving my hand]: Yes, professors, it's exactly analogous.

The Second Amendment does not refer to "muskets"; it refers to "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." "Bear" means to carry, so any handheld firearm carried by the military can be carried by the people. Just as the musket was once carried by our military, the AR-15 is a handheld arm (technically, the less powerful version of the automatic M-16) carried by our military today. As soon as the U.S. military goes back to muskets, then muskets it is!

One bone I have to pick with Ms. Coulter is that she really should properly label the people trying so hard to grab the guns.  These people are not "liberals;" they are Leftists. Leftists are Marxists of one stripe or another, whether Communist, Fascist, Progressive, or any of the other names they use for themselves to try to hide the fact that they are Leftists who desire to rule as dictators.  Power is their one and only goal.

Leftists pretend that the Second Amendment stayed static in the year 1791, while every other provision of the Constitution advanced with the advance of technology.  We are to believe that only muskets were envisioned, yet the same Founders could foresee the internet, modern presses, and so forth.  Clearly, this is illogical, and even Leftists know it.

In truth, if we were following the Constitution, everyone who wants one would have a select fire M4 carbine rifle and a supply of 5.56 NATO rounds just in case of a need to defend the homeland.  Oh, and they would qualify with them periodically as part of the militia.

Menwhile, Ted Noel tells us that It's Really Time for SCOTUS to Put Restrictive Gun Laws to Bed over at the American Thinker He cites a number of laws around the country where courts have used one or more of the so-called "balancing" tests to uphold what are really unconstitutional laws.

With Bruen, SCOTUS made it clear that citizens in all fifty states must be permitted to carry guns. But in its zeal to make narrow rulings, the Court just made more work for itself. The Court overruled New York’s “may issue” carry permit regime, to which the state simply said, “Up yours!” and passed a new law that basically made the entire state a “sensitive area” in which guns cannot be carried.

...snip...

But that’s not the only work the Court left for itself. Lower Courts have twisted themselves into an ouroboros to avoid the plain language of Heller and MacDonald. With Bruen adding to the library of Second Amendment decisions, SCOTUS sent several cases back to lower courts for reconsideration.

These include Young v. Hawaii, Duncan v. Bonta in California, and of course, the latest monstrosity in New York. The problem is that in these rulings, the courts almost always find that the governmen'ts interests outway the indivicual's interests. But this is just made up nonsense created by the courts to justify a predetermined outcome. As Justice Thomas noted, such “interest balancing” tests violate the basic premise that “when the Second Amendment‘s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.”

The conservatives on the Supreme Court have it right. The Constitution is fairly clear, because that was the intent of the Founders. Leftists, in trying to make the Bill of Rights meaningless, keep trying to obscure the facts, to smear the truth with a mountain of lies, misdirections, and nonsequiters. Such is the current claims that the Founders only intended to protect people's right to keep and bear muskets.

The conservatives on the Supreme Court are on the right track. I hope to see more of these kinds of rulings. It is high time we returned to governing this great nation according to the actual Constitution.

Highland Park Is Nothing Less Than Terrorism

John F. DiLeo, writing at the American Thinker has an interesting point of view conerning the Highland Park shooting. He believes that there is Much More than Murder in Highland Park. For DiLeo, shootings like that at Highland Park represent nothing less that terrorism. You will want to read DiLeo's piece to understand from where he is coming. But essentially, by creating fear, the shooter drives people away from gatherings, parades, political events, as well as parties and concerts. Yet we are free people, and used to social gatherings.

The First Amendment guarantees us – as Americans – the freedom to peaceably assemble.

To gather together in large crowds – whether for parades or festivals, political conventions or rock concerts, movie theaters or dance contests, shopping malls or baseball games – is more than a Constitutional right; it is part and parcel of our society.

Terrorism – whether blatantly political or not – is, at its core, an attack on the freedom of assembly.

...snip...

We don’t know, at this writing, whether this particular perpetrator was inspired by Antifa or Occupy or ISIS or any other specific group. He may have thought he was acting out all on his own. But no matter whether he - or any other event-focused mass murderer for that matter - was consciously motivated by a political philosophy or not, the end result is certainly political, in that the result serves the Anti-American terrorists’ goal.

And that may be the point, after all. Illinois already had so-called "Red Flag" laws, and the perpetrator was known to the police, who visited his home, and confiscated his knife collection. At that time he alledgely made threats to kill his family. that is enough to trigger red flag laws and to at least have him involuntarily committed for evaluation. This act would have shown up on a background check, and prevented him from obtaining a gun. If the law enforcement people took their own laws seriously, the perpetrator of this shooting seems to be the type of person for whom "Red Flag" laws were written. The law failed...again.

July is Gun Pride Month

 I cherish all my rights as an American citizen: my right to practice and express my religion wherever I deem necessary, my right to speak freely without government interference, and all the rest, written and unwritten.  But first and foremost, this is a gun blog because I value my Second Amendment rights as the guarantor of all the rest. So, it should come as no surprise that I think that D. Parker has a great idea with The Top Five Reasons to Celebrate July Gun Pride Month at theAmerican Thinker. How did I not know about this? Tom Knighton, of Bearing Arms originally proposed it in 2019! In any case, Parker list 5 reasons we all should celebrate:

1. It's good fun, and it is. Before the pandemic I used to get down to the range a couple of times a month. I may not be the best marksman, or the fastest on target, but I had fun, and the other people at the range were likewise fun loving, knowledgeable, and helpful. I even took people to the range and they became gun owners as well.

2. Even True Liberals Recognize the Importance of the Second Amendment. He cites Namoi Wolf, who, inspite of being a liberal, and a feminist, has publically recognized the need for the Second Amendment to protect everyone's rights. Without our equal rights to free speech rights and the rest of them, none of us can advance our interests, and we become simply serfs, cogs in the machine.

3. Leftists Hate Liberty and the Tools that Preserve It. This may be the best reason.

This is the hard truth of the matter. You almost get the impression that they actually believe their own labeling at times. Remember, they are people who attack liberty at every turn, who would like to go back in time to an ancient ideology that has never worked.

Anti-liberty leftists can BS with the best of them, but it’s their contradictions that catch them every time. They used to take offense if you questioned their patriotism, now they openly say 'F-- the Fourth' and hurl their America-hate in our faces.

4. Because we Need to Talk About the Second Amendment Outside the Hysteria of a Tragedy. The Left loves to dance in the blood of the victims of mass shootings. But really, all shootings are tragic. We are all created in the image of God, though some of us ignore that fact. But the truth is, the problen is not guns. As has been pointed out numerous times, pretty much anything can be a weapon, from rocks to iron pipes, to screw drivers and knives, to women's hosery and ropes.  For doing a lot of damage quickly, an automobile is always a handy weapon.  No gun needed.

The fact is that guns save lives, so liberty grabber leftists have to keep discussions on the subject within the confines of the emotional hysteria of a mass murder tragedy. It maintains a negative association with the subject matter and always casts it in a bad light. Gun Pride Month pushes back on this as a way of having calm discussions on the issue.

5. The United States Wouldn’t have Gained Independence Without Guns.We often point out that the rights specifically acknowledged in the Bill of Rights are rights that pre-exist the Constitution; they are not granted by that document. In the case of the Second Amendment, the Magna Carta had previously acknowledged the right if Englishmen to arms. Thus, we had them to assert our independence when our then goverment, the King of England became tyrannical. Or, as Naomi Wolf wrote:

The last thing keeping us free in America, as the lights go off all over Europe -- and Australia, and Canada -- is, yes, we must face this fact, the Second Amendment.

I can’t believe I am writing those words. But here we are and I stand by them.>/em>

So, Happy Gun Pride Month!

It May Be Time to Admit That Some in Our Polity Are In Thrall to Satan

 Today is the 4th of July.  A day to celebrate the founding of the United States of America with its divinely inspired Constitution.  Last night, we heard fire works going off within a mile of our house.  This happens every year, and we will no doubt hear more tonight.

But it is also a time to face up to some realities.  Inflation is burning through our pay checks.  Gasoline is becoming unaffordable.  Food shortages are predicted, and already there is a shortage of baby formula.  Meanwhile Biden tells us to suck it up because this is a time of war.  Really? Is what is going on in Ukraine really our war?  If it is so important to defend Ukraine's borders, what about our own?  Shouldn't we secure our own borders before we run around the world securing other people's borders?

Then there is the obvious meddling in the various Republican primaries to try to ensure that either way, either a Democrat or a RINO gets elected. Krystal Matthews, South Carolina Senate candidate suggested Democrats run as "secret sleepers" in Republican primaries. I think this has been going on for years, actually. Then there are the out of state billionaires trying to buy an Arizona Senate seat. This display shows Democrats dislike of Democracy itself, for they don't want to let the people choose.

Today at Townhall.com Kevin McCullough tells us Why the Left Truly Is Evil, (Not Stupid!) And by the Left, he means the entire Democrat party at all levels. McCullough gives a number of examples, from the vehement hatred of anything to do with the Make America Great Again agenda and the blatent lies of Trump coorperating with Russia. Then there is the worship of Moloch as they shout their abortions, meanwhile advocating for the release of murderers and rapists. In New York, they have just disarmed pretty much everyone except the criminals.

In America this minute leftists can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. They are pushing an agenda that is evil. They are hellbent on accomplishing it and they are saying so publicly.

...snip...

When asked directly by a CNN anchor on live camera, “What do you say to a family who can’t afford $4.85 a gallon for months, much less years?”

Brian Deese a top economic advisor to *President Biden responded in essence by saying that the “stakes are too high” and that this is about “the future of the liberal world order,” and that they’d “have to stand firm.”

In other words families who can’t afford to pay double or triple for the energy they need to merely survive must absorb the punch to the face and make the sacrifice for the greater good. And if we can’t do so, tough bananas our sacrifice will have been worth it all.

...snip...

They are willing to impose suffering onto the people they work for in order to bring about their newly enlightened, “we know better than you,” reality. This is Hitler gassing humans, Thanos snapping his finger, Stalin executing dissidents, and Bin Ladin toppling buildings—all for some greater good.

And it’s not just energy, this group doesn’t care if babies have formula, your family has food, or if women bleed out from their monthly cycles.

Please, gentle readers, please read all of McCullough's article. Then ask yourself if July 4, 2022 might not be the day that we finally admit that there is a large segment of the polity that is in thall to Satan