Greetings all [Insert obligatory "I'm not dead yet!" comment here].

In case you didn't know, It really takes me several days to make a post. Once my subconscious selects what I'm going to write about, I must do research and Grok on it until fullness is achieved. Only then do I get to sit down and actually start hitting the keyboard.

The main issue is I have been writing more for a book I publish on my other site, and working on the next version of the application for that same site. That and home maintenance, day job, family time and more have prevented me from doing the Groking necessary to make me happy and proud of a post.

The other issue is this extremely polarized political environment. I have lost several friends over the differences of our political stances, and my time on Facebook has left me angrier than ever. In response, for my own mental health, I have stepped back from FB. I have stopped following all my friends (even those whom I agree with) and my feed is now only game-related.

I have decided to step back from here as well, knock some major projects IRL out and regain my center. I will be back, timetable unknown. I won't even speculate because something could change and destroy that schedule. As I like to say IRL, "I'm always here except when I'm not." If I can post, I will. But keeping to a set schedule is impossible for me right now.

In the next day or so, President Trump will nominate someone to take the seat on the SCOTUS vacated by Ruth Bader-Ginsburg on her death. There will be no hearings to vet the nominee, it will likely go straight to a floor vote and enough Senators have already expressed support to make sure the nominee is confirmed.

And this is all the Democrats fault. Let me retrace the steps so it makes sense.

Cloture is a procedural term used by the Senate to force the end of discussion on a bill. It's covered in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2: "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings..." Cloture is not a vote on the bill, just a vote to end the debate and send it to the final vote. It is used to prevent or end a filibuster. Since the Senate was first constituted, cloture was set at a supermajority of 2/3rds or 67 votes. This was to force both parties to work together to accomplish the objective.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a contentious piece of legislation. Southern Democrats held a filibuster that lasted sixty days. It lasted that long because it was difficult to get enough votes to force Cloture. Due to that bill, in 1974 the Senate voted to change the Cloture votes from a 2/3rds majority to a 3/5ths majority, or from 67 votes to 60. There was also an amendment for a "Two-track" system, meaning that a filibustered bill would not bring the entire Senate to a halt.

In the late 1990's and early 2000's the Democrats (who almost always vote as a monolithic block, very few "rebels") started taking advantage of the narrow Republican majority by threatening a filibuster on anything the Democrats didn't like. Since the Republicans didn't have the votes to invoke Cloture (and they wouldn't get any Democrat support), it was either hold firm and let the bill die, or the Republicans had to negotiate with the Democrats to change the bill until both sides could agree on it. Frankly, this is how it should be to prevent the "Tyranny of the majority" as referenced by our Founding Fathers. It is also the polite way of doing things.

Well, that came to an end in 2013, when a Democrat-controlled Senate decided to eliminate Cloture for Cabinet appointees and non-SCOTUS judgeships. A simple Democrat majority could now enact the "tyranny of the majority" and ram those nominations through and Republicans couldn't do a thing about it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, "You'll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think." When Republicans got control of the Senate again a few years later, they changed the rules, eliminating Cloture for SCOTUS nominations.

Then came Kavanaugh. A man of impeccable character and unquestioned reputation. Who was accused by a woman who appeared out of nowhere and accused Kavanaugh of a crime thirty years prior when he was a teenager. She never filed a police report and remained silent as the Senate vetted and confirmed him for lower federal judgeships. The people she listed as witnesses to this act publicly stated that they don't remember the party in question where this assault allegedly occurred. Kavanaugh had over fifty female staffers and clerks who had worked with him over the years publicly state that there wasn't even a hint of impropriety from him.

Kavanaugh could never have been convicted in a court of law for the crime he was accused of, but he was accused, tried, found guilty and executed in the court of public opinion based on one fact: he was nominated by Donald Trump.

In the end, thanks to crybaby Democrats who throw a temper tantrum every time they get told "No," from now on it will be likely that any such votes will be held, up or down, by the majority party without giving the minority party a say at all.

Think of this as a street fight. Both sides initially agree to "Marquess of Queensberry" rules, but then one guy pulls out a pipe instead of his fists and whacks the other guy. Later on in the fight, when the pipe guy is knocked down, he drops the pipe and says, "can we go back to the original rules?" What do YOU think would be the prudent course of action? Drop the issue, be sporting and continue to go by the rules, or take that pipe and beat the cheater with it hard enough that the cheater will never think about cheating again?

We must not have beat them enough yet. Senator Chuck Schumer has publicly stated that if the Democrats gain power of all three branches of government, they will a) grant statehood to Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and maybe even create the State of Jefferson (splitting Oregon into two states). This will give the Senate six more Democrat Senators, as all of the named areas are deep Blue territory. Once they have done that, they will "pack the court," which means increasing the size of SCOTUS from nine Justices to at least fifteen, then appoint hard Leftist Justices that would have made RVG blush to make sure that any strict Constitutionalist Justices are in the minority for at least the next century.

Until Democrats show contrition, apologize and reinstate the 3/5ths Cloture rule while they are the majority, the Republicans will play by the Democrats rules, which is to say there are no rules.

When I worked in the healthcare field, I worked with (and even for) a lot of organizations that had a pretty Liberal mindset for the director and the staffs. They did wonderful work, no "but" involved. Okay, so there is a "but," that's related to the symptom vs. the disease (in a general, not a medical way). The director and senior staff of these organizations spent a lot of time fundraising. Organizing and holding events, getting donations from corporations, philanthropists, etc.

So I'm watching an interview of Kim Klacik (Republican running for US House MD7 covering Baltimore) and she started talking about having a non-profit to help young girls who had a plan to go to college or to work and not pop out babies and live off Welfare. Klacik's organization got these young ladies prom dresses so they could celebrate Prom. She managed to acquire a bunch of donated prom dresses, and the girls said, "Eww. 1982 wants their prom dresses back!"

At this point, most Liberally-minded organizations would have pretty much said, "Pick one or get your own." What Kim did was sell those dresses on-line. That raised not only enough for the young ladies to get dresses they liked, but there was enough left over to get a whole makeover.

But wait, there's more! Kim was talking with one of the mothers of these ladies, who said, "I want to go back to work, but I don't know how." It turns out that the young lady was regularly doing homework by candlelight because her mom couldn't afford the utilities. As a result, Kim's organization pivoted and helped women fresh from incarceration, rehabilitation and homelessness get proper clothes and makeovers for job interviews for women referred to her by non-profits working in these areas. She finished off with, "We've helped over 200 women become gainfully employed and over 30% have obtained financial independence."

Why this is critically important is simple. If the single mom is barely surviving on public assistance, she can't afford to send the daughter to prom, or many other things. But to help the mom, that's another issue entirely! An employed mom through budgeting and saving CAN afford prom, utilities, better clothes and all of the other things that moves their lives from "surviving" to "thriving."

Compared to my experiences with the Liberal non-profits, Kim's direction and shift is inconceivable. Again proving the adage, "Liberals count how many people are on their assistance, Conservatives count how many people no longer need their assistance."

BTW, here's her campaign ad:

In the TV series Babylon 5, the character Londo Molari once said, “Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in one package. How efficient of you.”

I got turned on to this video over the weekend. It’s Reggie Cannon, a Soccer player for the FC Dallas team. He was “disgusted” at the fans reaction to him, both teams and the officials kneeling during the National Anthem before the game. “You got fans booing at you for taking a stand for what they believe in.”

So Mr. Cannon let me explain this to you in simple terms.

You are an employee of the soccer team. You are paid to kick a ball around a field. The soccer team has the money to pay you because fans buy tickets so they can sit in the stadium and watch you play in-person. Your team also gets income from commercials sold during the game and the sale of merchandise with the team logo. You personally get cash for every purchase of your team jersey.

In case you didn’t know, the first rule of business is don’t anger your customers, especially if the customers spends discretionary cash for your services. Why shouldn’t you anger your customers? Because, silly boy, they stop attending your games. The stop watching your games on TV. They stop buying team merchandise. No customers == no income == Billy boy is unemployed.

You have the right to protest for or against any ideal, organization, whatever. That’s your right and government cannot interfere in that exercise. I’ve consistently said that since Kapernick started taking a knee. If you want to go out into the streets, attend rallies and so on to advance your cause, go for it! I have no problem with you doing that.

However, when you introduce politics into the one thing in my life where I don’t want politics, I’m not going to watch you. I used to watch sports to get away from politics. Now that baseball, football, basketball and now soccer has decided that the players can throw politics into my face, I no longer watch sports. At all. I wouldn’t watch a game of anything even if you paid me $1,000 an hour.

So, Mr. Cannon, I suggest you SHUT YOUR EFFING PIEHOLE AND LISTEN TO WHAT YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE TELLING YOU, before you don’t have any customers to listen to. Grow some humility and respect for others while you’re at it.

Let me start off and separate "Absentee balloting" from "Mail-in balloting." Much like the legal/illegal immigration issue, the differences between these are critical.

I want to talk about a "chain of custody" first, so you understand what it is and why this chain is critical. Many important things, when sent from Point A to Point B, require a chain of custody. When a police officer picks up a piece of evidence from a crime scene, they drop it into a bag and a piece of paper describing all of the particulars of the evidence and their name and they sign it. "Glock 19, Serial VG253US, 12:35pm, 8/16/2020 Officer John Doe." When the officer hands that bag off to someone, they make sure the person taking possession signs that chain of custody. By both of their signatures testifying the hand off, the receiving person agrees the evidence they are receiving is what the officer giving it to them says it is.

If that chain of custody is broken, that evidence can no longer be used. Why you ask? Because it might have been tampered with, or replaced and thus renders it useless as evidence. If the chain is unbroken and the evidence is altered, then there is a list of suspects. Case in point, The St. Louis McClusky's who defended their property against trespassers with an AR-15 and a pistol, Her pistol was intentionally rendered inoperative by the McCluskys' long before that incident. They reversed a part that rendered the firearm unable to function. Well, a lab technician took the pistol apart for inspection, assembled it together correctly, then test fired it and didn't document that it was received in an inoperable condition. You see the problem here?

Police evidence, samples for medical testing, certified mail and more are all subject to a chain of custody, because the consequences of a broken chain are too terrible to contemplate. Wrongful conviction, someone unnecessarily undergoes chemotherapy, a person loses their home because they didn't get the notice, that's what I can think of just off the top of my head.

So, onto voting.

Voting is the most important duty a citizen has. It's your chance to tell the government what to do. If you don't vote, you have no leg to stand on when you bitch about how things are. To accurately gauge the will of the people, on a set day we all go to our respective polling places, verify we are who we say we are and make our voice heard. I remember when the first free elections were held in Iraq after Saddam was removed from power, you had to stick your right index finger into a pot of ink to hand your ballot in. This prevented a person from voting multiple times because you had a temporary sign that you couldn't hide to show you had voted. You couldn't scrub it off that day, but it wore off naturally in a week or two.

An absentee ballot must be specifically requested by the voter, and a substantial reason must be attached. You are going to be out of the state/country, you are an invalid and cannot travel, something like that. You can't get an absentee ballot if you're going to be at home and able to travel to your polling district on election day or during early voting. Absentee ballots also account for less than 5% of ballots.

Our current voting system looks like this:

In the days before an election, the voting machines are scanned for viruses and malware, then certified by the Election Commissions IT Department, and sealed to detect tampering. They are kept under custody until they are set up at the respective polling places. The polling workers keep custody of the machines until the end of the polling time.

When the voter arrives, their valid ID is checked against the voter rolls. If unverified, they can still cast a provisional ballot, which will be counted if or when the person's eligibility to vote is verified.

After the polls have closed, two people break the seals on the voting machines, recover the cartridge that has recorded the votes and place them into a sealed box. The custody of the box is then passed to the police, who run with lights flashing and sirens blaring to the election commission, who pass the custody of the box of cartridges to the election commission and the cartridges are downloaded and the votes counted. A similar process is used for paper ballots. The serial numbers are logged and a chain of custody for those ballots are maintained until they are counted at the election commission HQ. At no time is there an undetectable opportunity to alter the recorded votes. The veracity and security of the machines and whose who use them are unquestioned. Fake ID's not withstanding. But that's a subject for another post.

This mail-in voting is something completely different. Under this concept, the county governments will send out a ballot based on their list of voters at that moment, accuracy be damned. The reports of voter rolls being years out of date are too numerous to mention. The county mails all of these ballots out, people fill them out, sign them, send them back and they're counted. What's the big deal?

We have already seen multiple instances with this year's mail-in voting where dozens of ballots sent to people in apartment complexes are found on the ground or in the trash. Does this sound secure? A person in an apartment gets multiple ballots, for themselves and the last five years of tenants. Do you think there is the possibility of voter fraud?

Then there's the other side of that coin: Disenfranchisement. If the USPS delayed the transport of the ballot to the voter or back, or lost the ballot entirely, that persons vote won't be counted. If the vote gets to the election commission too late by either USPS delay or the sender mailing it too late, their vote is lost.

I am reflexively sarcastic and hyperbolic a lot of the time. My next sentence, I assure you, is deadly serious and worries me to no end. I have a reasonable fear, if there is a nation-wide requirement to perform mail-in voting, that there will be 67 million write-in votes for Hillary Clinton.

Seriously, people are seriously talking about blindly sending out millions of ballots, in the hope they reach their addressee. Then the person who the ballot is meant for properly fills out the ballot and sends it back. And that the USPS delivers that ballot in time to be counted. Each of these leaps of faith, if they were to be done physically, I'm thinking Seven-League Boots kind of level here.

This goes well beyond wishful thinking. This goes way beyond delusion. This will not be successful by any metric a reasonable person would use. My paranoid side is telling me that if Trump wins, it will provide a context for Leftists to continue their chant of "Illegitimate President!" because of all of the holes and doubt in the accuracy of the votes cast in the light of mail-in voting. If either Hillary or Kamala get into the Oval office (it could be both, you vote for President and Vice-President separately), the United states will have achieved three firsts.

• First woman president
• First President for Life
• First American Dictator

Don't doubt me.

A couple of core tenets of Conservatives have been to keep government as small as possible and the laws few and simple. We as a group do not want a powerful government with extensive power and numerous laws it can use to persecute (and prosecute) “unliked people.” We realize that if we draft such powers and laws, they will eventually be used against us.

But the Leftists have pushed and championed “hate crime” laws, which tack extra penalties upon the offender if there is a difference between the offender and victim in skin color, gender, sexual preference or almost anything else.

The differences are (not all of these are applicable in all states):

• Age
• Ancestry
• Creed
• Disability
• Ethnicity
• Gender identity
• Marital status
• Membership in the armed forces
• Membership in civil rights organizations
• National origin
• Perceived gender
• Race
• Religion
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Skin color

Mind you, in some cases you don’t have to be convicted of a crime first. And all that happens is having it labeled as a hate crime just makes the punishment more severe. All the prosecutors has to prove that the crime was motivated by one of the sixteen disparities listed above. Most states restrict these hate crimes to violent felonies, but in 1987 California made all violations of the law potential hate crimes. So I guess trespassing by walking across someone’s yard can get it labeled as a hate crime if the proper conditions are met.

Let me say it again, hate crimes only increase the punishment. The crime was committed, but just punishing them for that isn’t enough. You have to look into the heart and mind of the person to see why they did it just to add a few more years of prison time.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Georgia just passed House Bill 838, which was spawned off the hate crime bill 426, laws passed in the wake of the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

838, which goes into effect 1/1/21, will make it a hate crime to intimidate any first responder.

Chapter 8 of Title 35 of the GCA (Georgia Code, Annotated) will now read:

35-8-7.3. A peace officer shall have the right to bring a civil suit against any person, group of persons, organization, or corporation, or the head of an organization or corporation, for damages, either pecuniary or otherwise, suffered during the officer's performance of official duties, for abridgment of the officer's civil rights arising out of the officer's performance of official duties, or for filing a complaint against the officer which the person knew was false when it was filed.

[…]

35-8-7.4 (b) A person commits the offense of bias motivated intimidation when such person maliciously and with the specific intent to intimidate, harass, or terrorize another person because of that person's actual or perceived employment as a first responder: (1) Causes death or serious bodily harm to another person; or (2) Causes damage to or destroys any real or personal property of a person because of actual or perceived employment as a first responder without permission and the amount of the damage exceeds $500.00 or the value of the property destroyed exceeds $500.00.

(c) Any person that violates subsection (b) of this Code section shall be guilty of the offense of bias motivated intimidation and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by imprisonment of not less than one nor more than five years, a fine of not more than $5,000.00, or both.

(d) Each violation of this Code section shall constitute a separate offense and shall not merge with any other crime.

(e) A sentence imposed under this Code section shall run consecutively to any sentence for any other offense related to the act or acts establishing an offense under this Code section.

(f) Charges of violating subsection (b) of this Code section shall not be prosecuted by way of an accusation but only by indictment or special presentment by a grand jury."

So let me spell this out to for you.

1. You physically hurt a first responder, even make him feel bad about his job, or even file a false complaint against him, the first responder can sue you in civil court. That’s going to be expensive right there, defending yourself, then comes the payment of damages. You’ll need to sell your house, car, wife and the kids to raise the cash you’ll need for this, win or lose.

2. You’re convicted on return of a “true bill” by the Grand Jury. No trial, no defense. Here’s an extra 1-5 years and a fine of up to $5,000. I might be reading it wrong, but I’m not seeing a stipulation for conviction of the base crime. You could get acquitted by a jury for the base crime, but you’ll still do time just because the grand jury thinks you’re a bad person.

If you do get convicted of the base crime, “consecutively” means that once you would’ve been released from custody for the base crime, you stay incarcerated and the clock on the hate crime starts. Normally, most multiple sentences run “concurrently,” or at the same time. You serve time for the longest sentence.

If this doesn’t scare you, you’re not paying attention. And all of you Leftist rioters out there, go ahead and shine that hand-held industrial laser into the eyes of a police officer and blind him. You’ll get a garnishment on every source of income you will ever have, including your Social Security.

You Leftists started this, you Leftists championed it, advocated, cajoled and pushed for hate crimes legislation. And now Karma will bite you in the ass for it. Because the laws meant to punish “racist haters” has now been turned on you. Enjoy.

One of my Markisms is “Always vote. There may not be anyone you want to vote for, but there is always someone you want to vote against.”

I have been politically aware for a bit over 25 years. I knew there were Democrats and Republicans and elections and all that, but I never gave it too much mind.

I became acutely aware because I started noticing the hyperbolic rhetoric by the Democrat leadership. “Republicans want to poison the air and water!” “Republicans want to cut Social Security!!” “Republicans want to shove grandma and her wheelchair over a cliff!!!” You get the point.

Every election cycle, this bullshit got a little bit worse. “Racist” started making it into the anti-Republican rhetoric. “Homophobic,” “Misogynist,” “Islamophobe” and recently “Transphobe” over the years also became common terms used by Democrats to describe Republicans. In the last Presidential election cycle, Hillary started calling anyone who dared oppose her ascension to the Presidency “Deplorables.”

Now, as individuals, you, me and the other 320 million Americans, how many times have we seen a genuine change of heart from a person who was verbally bullied and degraded by another person? Cowed into silence, perhaps even submission, but an honest change of heart?

I’m pretty sure a tally of such anecdotal stories from all of us would precisely equate to zero. We all individually know that you can browbeat a person to do something, but not change their heart.

So why is it done on a national level? Why do mass numbers of Leftists believe verbally harassing and browbeating half the country will lead to victory? In every venue, in every conversation, in every encounter where anything remotely political, when a person expresses an opinion that’s even 0.000001% different from another, they are verbally and sometimes physically beaten?

This is why Donald Trump was elected. Because half of this country just got sick-and-tired of being called unpleasant names. Of being mislabeled, browbeaten and lied about. Republicans didn’t elect Trump, the hatred of Democrats drove them to vote Trump. Personally, I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. I will in November because the thought of a Leftist in the Oval Office terrifies me.
And today, just how many Democrats have done the #WalkAway and left the Democrat party? They probably didn’t become Conservatives or Republicans, but thousands and thousands of now-former Democrats will no longer vote that side of the ticket because of the hate. These “WalkAwayers” are also discovering that for as much Leftists hate Conservatives, those who left the Democrats are getting much worse, by their now former friends.
And Trump has done something no other Republican has done since Reagan. Trump has been his normal self (“a Queens guy”¹) and has sent every last bit of guff and snarky comments made to and about him right back in the faces of the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) with interest. Trump would abandon Twitter in a heartbeat if the Democrats and the media didn’t go into seizures every time he Tweeted something. Trump’s using Twitter as a Leftist cattle prod to great effect.

I believe this is Trump’s election to lose. Short of a major catastrophe on his part, Trump should win. But that still means that every person on the Right has to still get out and vote. And bring a few friends with you. You need to vote Republican, from Trump to the dog-catcher. If we do this, many of us will be surprised to find out that many Democrat friends and acquaintances voted the same way.

Why would Democrats cross the aisle you ask? To answer that question, I only have to point to the Draconian policies of Democrat governors, mayors, city councils and just about every elected Democrat.

From Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer “you can’t go out and buy seeds”, to District Attorney Kim Gardner prosecuting the McCloskey’s for defending their private property and even altering evidence. (Patricia’s gun was inoperable and the McCloskey’s knew it. The DA’s office assembled it so it would work). The Minneapolis City Council is violating their own charter by abolishing the police, and if you didn’t hear about it, there have been riots, fires and vandalism every night for the past two months in Seattle. The Mayor joined the rioters and has done nothing to quell the violence. Crime has been spiking by 200+% in these cities because the bad guys know there’s no police to stop them.

New York, Minneapolis, Detroit, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, they all share one common trait (beyond the recent riots and burning): They have been run by Democrat Mayors and City Councils for decades.

All of the Democrat-voting residents of those cities have hopefully come to the realization that they have backed the wrong donkey. Their presumptive presidential candidate is undeniably deep into dementia (I am sorry to hear this. My mother and grandmother suffered from that at the end of their lives. I wish that fate on no one.). The short list of Democrat Vice-Presidential candidates are all ultra-hard-Leftists. And that’s depending on Biden even getting the nomination. One of these VP candidates will likely end up with the nomination if Biden can’t take it. This has got to give some intellectual pause to every reasonable person who counts themselves as a Democrat.

So while they may say “Biden all the way” in conversation with their friends, when they get to that voting booth, their finger will only pause over Biden before moving on and selecting Trump.

¹ I don’t know many people from New York, but it was explained to me that “Queens guys” have a big chip on their shoulder. Brooklyn guys are tougher, and Manhattan guys are richer, which leaves the Queens guys like the dorky kid always picked last for sandlot baseball. Queens guys will get in your face at the drop of a hat, which explains a lot about Trump.

If you never studied American History, you probably don’t know at the time of the founding of this country, German was almost made our official language.
So, I am going to discuss some German words that were first used 80+ years ago and how they are especially important today.

Sturmabteilung – “Storm Detachment“ (SA) in English, was a paramilitary group that was the official name of Hitler’s goon squad. Known more universally as the Brownshirts, this nickname came from the WWI military surplus shirts they wore as a uniform.

It was the job of the SA to disrupt the meetings of any political organizations that the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or the National Socialist Workers‘ Party (We call them Nazi's) didn’t like. They would fill up the meeting halls, preventing those who wanted to hear the speaker from attending. They would also block access of people to the meeting. During the meeting the Brownshirts would disrupt the proceedings by shouting political slogans to prevent the speaker from being heard. And just for fun, they would beat people up before, during and after the meetings. Not to mention other random occasions.

I seriously cannot tell any difference between the actions and tactics of Sturmabteilung and Antifa.

Kristallnacht – “Crystal Night” or "Night of the Broken Glass,” was a pogrom (violent riot aimed at the expulsion or extermination of particular ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews) that took place in November of 1938. This destruction was carried out by our friends the Sturmabteilung. and earned that name from all of the broken windows of Jewish businesses.

Now the recent events in Minneapolis, Seattle, Detroit, Baltimore, New York and other cities. The unrest in these cities are not pogroms, but I cannot over stress the property damage, the deaths, the destroyed small businesses and the fear of those regular people caught in the middle of it. All of it caused by a very small minority of people who have no problem terrorizing people and destroying property to get their way.

I bring these points up because those who are controlling and financing the Leftists Useful Idiot Foot Troops like BLM, Antifa and others are at odds with each other. While the nominal objective of these groups is to disrupt the system enough for Trump to be defeated in November, I’m sure there are others that are pushing to escalate the violence to make sure Trump is reelected.

If Trump is reelected, he provides a reason (and a target) for the continuation of these violent radical groups and Leftist Rage in general. They will continue to try and assail Trump, like the ocean waves against an ocean cliff. With probably as much effectiveness. If Trump is defeated, the foot troops will have no target for their violence, and like a rabid attack dog on the loose, will eventually end up turning on their masters.

Which bring me to my next German words:

Nacht der langen Messer – “Night of the Long Knives.” In June and July 1934, About eighteen months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the Bundestag, Hitler ordered the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo (secret police) to execute the leadership of the Sturmabteilung, which had dared to start voicing opinions of their own. Hitler did this to consolidate his power because the SA would be a threat to him if they acted under their own authority.

The radical Leftists have been trained for the past few years to basically be like an attack dog to attack the government. If the Democrats win the White House, Antifa/BLM/NFAC won't stop attacking the government. They've been trained and conditioned to attack and won't understand the change. Much like when Leftist-indoctrinated children accosted Diane Feinstein in her office about not "doing enough" on climate change. Except the children weren't armed with frozen water bottles, Molotov cocktails and lasers.

So here is my dilemma:

Do I vote for Trump and hope he wins, meaning four more years of Antifa/BLM/NFAC protests, riots and property damage,

-or-

Vote Democrat and watch the Democrat president announce that “The full weight of the federal government will be brought to bear on these ‘terrorist groups’ to eliminate their threat to the people and the government,” sending the various Alphabet Agencies to round up and disappear all of these radical Leftist people. Which is what eventually happens to the useful idiots. The 60's are replete with examples of Democrat State and Local governments who didn't hesitate to "quell uprisings," why should the "Burning 20's" be any different? It is not in dispute the Obama Administration used the "full force and authority" of the Justice Department to unlawfully investigate and wire tap members of the Trump campaign. Why not send out the "Jack-booted thugs" against some "disorganized rabble-rousers"?

This, my dear readers, would bring about the last German word I wanted to introduce to you, Schadenfreude. This means, “Joy derived from the suffering of others.”

It would induce in me great joy to see not only the violent rioters of the past few months duckwalked into court, convicted and given lengthy prison terms, but also those who actively fought to depose Trump since 2016, culminating in his Impeachment.

The Smithsonian put this rather racist “infographic” up the other day (and pulled it down just as quickly) and I just had to say something about it. So, let’s take this apart, section by section. Before I begin, some historical context.

When Mankind transitioned out of the “hunter-gatherer” stage about 12,000 years ago, we had eight major “groupings” of people. North and South America, East and West Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Asia and Australia. 12,000 years ago, the climate changed. It stopped raining and dried up. In four places (South America, Northern India, Syria and Egypt) Man developed the plow and learned to farm. That was the beginning of civilization. Being able to grow more food than you needed led to pottery to store the food, writing to mark whose food it was and all the rest.

Egypt and Syria are close enough to Greece for the Grecians to learn about this. Surplus food meant you could have people who weren’t farmers. This brought about philosophy and government.

Next, let’s jump ahead to 1492 and Columbus “discovering” the Americas (he never actually set foot on the continent until his third voyage, and even then it was South America). Let’s look at the world as a whole at that point.

The Americas, Africa and Australia were still in the “Stone Age” of technological advancement when White Europeans got to them. India and Asia had made technological advances (China had gunpowder and the printing press centuries before Europe) but didn’t do anything with them. They reached a certain tech level and stopped.

Before you start spouting Leftist tropes about how the Native Americans, et. al., were “living in harmony with the land,” let’s mention the downsides of that lifestyle. High infant mortality, human sacrifice, slavery, cannibalism, any wound could kill due to no medicine beyond a salve or two, shall I go on?

Rugged Individualism:

Until the founding of the United States, you mostly had Nobles and Everybody Else. Serfs were slaves, beholden to their Lord for a safe place in the walls of the castle when trouble roamed the land. It was the Greeks that came up with this idea of individualism. Their thinking about things like that has led to our concepts of this today.

Family Structure:

Most of this comes out of the 50’s, and is more of a straw man than anything else. The nuclear family (male and female parents protecting and raising their children) is a concept that just simply works. It has worked since we started keeping records of things like that, for multiple thousands of years. For the case “against” the nuclear family, I point to the Great Society. For the past 50 years, that has been a sociological experiment within the Black community where the nuclear family was purposefully destroyed. Just look at the results as of today and tell me the results are good or even acceptable. And broader studies across all racial lines have shown children from single parent homes do poorer than children raised in nuclear families.

Emphasis on Scientific Method:

The “scientific method” is the process to develop a theory, develop a model and a method to measure and test it, then test it to see if it works, correct errors, test again, and keep doing that until you prove or disprove the theory (or come up with a new one).

That method has led to the computers you’re reading my words on, the car you drive, literally everything in your world right now down to the fork and spoon in your silverware drawer. And this is a “bad thing” because it was developed by ‘White people’ how? Would have these things be “better” if they had been developed by non-Whites? Or are they just tools without intent or care if they are used correctly or incorrectly?

History:

Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as saying “History is a set of agreed-upon lies.” There is no definitive source for the phrase “history is written by the victors.” But that is also true. History comes from the words “his” and “story.” Go ahead and call it sexist, it doesn’t bother me.

As far as giving women the right to vote and things like that, the experiment is still ongoing and I’m doubtful for a positive outcome on this experiment (that’s SARCASM).

Protestant Work Ethic:

Let’s turn these points backwards:

• Easy/no work is better than hard work
• Play before work
• You can meet your goals without working hard.

Can anyone realistically accept and promote those points? I thought not.

Religion:

Yes, in the United States, Christianity is the religion of the majority of people here. Non-Judeo-Christian religions are foreign (the word itself means “from somewhere else”), that’s a fact no matter what you say about it. In fact, Judeo-Christian is itself “foreign” to the Americas itself since it came about from somewhere else.

“No tolerance for deviation from single God concept.” In the comments below, please provide news articles where Christians firebombed or destroyed any polytheistic (that means more than one God) churches. I’ll wait but I’m not holding my breath.

Status, Power & Authority:

These points are male-related and I will not deny that. It’s how men keep score and since we’ve walked upright, it’s always been a “mine is bigger than yours” kind of competition.

Future Orientation:

Really? Really?? Do you want to make sure you’re around tomorrow? If you die, your children won’t want? That when you get too old to work you can live off your savings?

Time:

Time is a limited commodity, no matter how much you deny it. You spend the first third of your life learning just to be self-sufficient and how to interact nicely with other people. If you squander that time, you will perpetually suffer after that.

In conclusion:

A good portion of the bullet points (oh, gosh! Did I trigger someone with that gun-related microaggression of “bullet points”? Isn’t the term “triggered” also a gun microaggression? Get a life and get over it) of this “infographic” are sophistic strawmen, but in each case, I suggest you reverse each bullet point and ask yourself, “is that the kind of world I want to live in?”

If you’re tired of living in this world of “Whiteness,” no one is stopping you from divesting yourselves of all clothing and technology and going off to live in the wilds. Please do as a matter of fact.

History is brutal, only Big Brother types will deny that. There is war, hate, racism, genocide, slavery and so on. But there is also Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” AC/DC’s“Thunderstruck,” the works of John Coltrane, C.S Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and way more.

In order for Man to do great things of good, he must also be equally capable of evil things.

Just on the off chance you haven’t read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, please do so, especially for the line “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

The other day I came across California’s ACA5, and I shit you not, this is serious, this has passed the State Assembly and the State Legislature and I don’t have any reason why the Governor won’t sign it into law.

Here is the abstract of the Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 5. All emphasis is mine.

The California Constitution, pursuant to provisions enacted by the initiative Proposition 209 in 1996, prohibits the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. The California Constitution defines the state for these purposes to include the state, any city, county, public university system, community college district, school district, special district, or any other political subdivision or governmental instrumentality of, or within, the state.

 

This measure would repeal these provisions. The measure would also make a statement of legislative findings in this regard.

I really can’t make this stuff up. Leftists have always sought to segregate minorities. From the Antebellum Jim Crow laws, to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), more recently segregating college dorms, graduations and more by race and even gardens in CHAZ/CHOP.

Sure, they say “It’s to create safe spaces where minorities can gather together without being microaggressively and systematically oppressed by Whites,” but it sounds to me like those White Leftists are really saying, “We don’t feel safe unless they’re over there and we’re over here.”

We also have the tired old trope of the Bigotry of Low Expectations, “Minorities can’t succeed unless they are helped because they can’t do it on their own.”

Which leads to the very first “WHEREAS” of the bill (emphasis mine):

WHEREAS, Equal opportunity is deeply rooted in the American ideals of fairness, justice, and equality. Programs to meet the goals of equal opportunity seek to realize these basic values. Equal opportunity not only helps individuals, but also helps communities in need and benefits our larger society. California’s equal opportunity program was upended by the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996; and

Now go back and read the abstract of ACA5 above, especially the part I underlined. Never mind these Leftists are overriding the will of the people to grant preferences to whatever group is deemed “worthy” to receive special treatment. And when one group is “more equal” than another, than those “not more equal” groups are actually “less equal.”

“Preferential treatment” to any group or individual is a pretty term that still means “discrimination,” just to someone else who isn’t “more equal.”
Think about it like this:

Democrats, from the founding of the party, have fought and worked for a separation of the races. The Blacks are to be “kept in their place.” Again, I mention Jim Crow and Plessy v. Ferguson. The KKK is and was nothing more than a group of cowardly rabble-rousers who have to hide their faces, lest they die of embarrassment because they were and are nothing but bullies.

In the 60’s, they saw terrorism and lynching becoming passé. So, in the infamous words of Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson, “I’ll have those N****** voting Democrat for a hundred years.” So they switched tactics to a “compassion model.”

Use federal government programs to drop the quality of the public schools to the point most Blacks are barely literate. Use Welfare to cut the father figure out of the family. Encourage the woman to have many babies by different men. Then, they concentrate all the poor Blacks into “the Projects.”

It’s been proven that a person attains the level of their five closest friends. That works both up and down. What better way to “keep the Black man down” than to use other Blacks?

Then we have the “Black Leaders,” who are nothing more than third-rate hucksters. They take the simmering anger and desperation of a Black person’s daily life and use an event like Michael Brown, or George Floyd and whip up the people until there are riots, looting and burnt out buildings by the score. Then, the “Black Leaders” extort “donations” from corporations and cities “so your property doesn’t burn.”

We had a dozen cities burn, millions of dollars in property damage and I don’t know how many killed over bad police procedure that killed a man with a felony conviction record, yet not a peep from anybody about the death of Breonna Taylor. This was a lady who was doing it right. She was a first responder and a productive member of society. Breonna was killed in an epic-level botched and unnecessary raid a month before Floyd. I would have a lot more empathy if those cities had burned due to Taylor’s murder than Floyd’s murder.
Then you have the Washington Post trying to debunk President Trump’s statement:

“You hear about certain places like Chicago and you hear about what’s going on in Detroit and other — other cities, all Democrat run,” he said. “Every one of them is Democrat run. Twenty out of 20. The 20 worst, the 20 most dangerous are Democrat run.”

And you know what? The WaPo is technically, but not realistically correct. 85% (17 of 20) of the overall most violent cities are Democrat run. Two Independent-run cities (#11 and 12) are on the list and one Republican-run (#17). I would call 85% “the vast majority.” Adjusted for population, an Independent-run city comes in at #5, the other 19 cities are Democrat-run.

Let’s list the active Democrat parts of the platform that leads to segregation:

Poor quality inner-city public schools that have dropout rates of 30% and higher, with most teachers who do care, but administrators who don’t and largely disinterested parents.

Democrats and teachers unions fight school vouchers at every opportunity, a chance for those kids to escape and learn in better environments.

Active dissolution of the nuclear family in lower economic levels, with a perpetual cycle of “help” that doesn’t solve the problem, which is to escape that class.
Forced congregation of lower economic class people together and thus in their daily lives don’t have anyone to look up to. From having a father as a child to a mentor as a teenager and young-adult.

Affirmative action. While this was sold as a “go with the minority when the two are equal,” in practice it translates out to “putting minorities into positions that they are not prepared to handle.” Admitting someone to a college with low test scores and academic record, regardless of race, astronomically increases their chances of failure. And failure here means no degree, no good job prospects and a huge student debt load with no hope of paying it off.

Again, “separate but equal” facilities in higher education.

But don’t worry, California will solve the problem. With the elimination of Prop 209, California eliminates meritocracy in by using a person’s skin color as the major point for selecting, rather than considering a person’s level of knowledge and skills.

To misquote Thomas Sowell:

Liberalism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

I refuse to celebrate the 4th of July. I am proud to celebrate Independence Day.

Today, July 2nd, was the day that the Declaration was actually signed by the fifty-six brave men who affixed their signatures to this Declaration. As Ben Franklin put it so eloquently, "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Nine men did not live to hear of Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. Many others lost their families and fortunes. So they fulfilled the last part of this Declaration:

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

If you have never actually read the Declaration, listen to this. It will be the most impactful 15 minutes of your life.

I love free speech. The unfettered freedom to say what is in your heart and soul. This is why I will support any organization to broadcast their beliefs, no matter how hateful I or anybody else believes their words to be. Because if they have the confidence to spew their hate openly, we can find them if or when the time comes.
I, like many other Americans, support the concept that Black Lives matter. A Black person’s value as a human being is totally equal to the value of a person of any other color. Not any less, nor any more.

The organization Black Lives Matter, is another matter entirely. I was turned onto this Tweet from Davis Reaboi the other day. I went and found the source, a July 2015 interview by Jared Ball interviewing Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of BLM the organization.

Mind you, this interview happened ten days after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges in the death of Trayvon Martin.

Some of the first words out of Ms. Cullor’s mouth at the 2:00 mark shows her only interest in the truth is hiding it. She can’t mention Mr. Zimmerman’s true Hispanic heritage, since in the Leftist world Hispanics are victims, just like Blacks. And it’s “bad for the optics” if someone from one victim group victimized someone from another victim group. The clear answer to solve the problem is to pretend the killer isn’t part of their victim group. Which is why she referred to Mr. Zimmerman as a “light-skinned, White passing man.” She also did not mention the fact that when Trayvon was shot, Trayvon was on top of Mr. Zimmerman and Trayvon was in the process of beating Mr. Zimmermans’ head into the sidewalk. But hey, facts don’t matter when you’re pushing an agenda.

The point to pay attention to is at the 7:00 mark when Ms. Cullor says,

“We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself, and Alicia [Garza, another co-founder] in particular, are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.”

Take that for what you will.

If you were wondering why Mr. Ball was offering up softball questions, it’s because Mr. Ball is a hard-core Leftist as well. To prove that point, I found this video where at the 2:30 point he says “unicorns, democracy and freedom” are myths, but the most important part is at 7:00, when Mr. Ball invokes Marx and Engles in a positive context.

Mr. Ball is a man of many talents, from a college professor, experience with Mixtapes (no comment, I know nothing about what those are) and a published author, namely of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power.

So, here we have two people, in non-confrontational situations and free to assert what they truly believe in a safe environment. And through the magic of media, we can see them and hear their words and understand their intent. Which should scare the crap out of most people.

Some people will always be attracted to any idea or position, under the guise of “it’s an idea that sounds good” rather than a “good, sound” idea. I can’t change that, nor would I want to.

I want these people to be heard, because eventually enough will come out that they will, like Maximilien Robespierre, come to an untimely end from the mob they created.

Free speech rocks.

The death of George Floyd was an entirely avoidable death. The officer who knelt on his neck will be held criminally and likely civilly liable as well. The chaos from that tragedy has been massive, horrible and planned.

The other day in Atlanta, a couple of officers were called to a Wendy’s because a man fell asleep in his car in the drive-thru. After 40 minutes of the police calmly talking with him (the entire video is at the end of this article), the person, Rayshard Brooks attacked and knocked down two officers, grabbed the Taser from one of the officers and started to run off. One officer tried to Taser Mr. Brooks as he ran off. Mr. Brooks then turned around and pointed the Taser at an officer. Mr. Brooks was promptly shot dead for his efforts.

Let me explain why Mr. Brooks was given the treatment he received. Yes, a Taser is a “less-than-lethal” weapon. It is meant to incapacitate the target. It can be lethal if the person being Tased has a pacemaker or heart condition and the electricity from the Taser disrupts the heart or pacemaker.

It has come out (that’s why I delay my commenting on things like this) that Mr. Brooks had multiple felonies on his record and he was on parole at the time of his death. This article has footage of the actual moment Mr. Brooks was shot just in case you’re still clinging onto the fantasy that Mr. Brooks was innocent and undeserving of being shot. Mr. Brooks started to fight when he was told he was being arrested, which meant he was going back to jail, being on parole and all. That’s why he resisted. And just in case you didn't hear about it, both officers rendered first aid immediately to try and keep Mr. Brooks alive.

Consider this possible evolution of events: Mr. Brooks shoots an officer with the Taser, incapacitating him. Mr. Brooks then relieves the helpless officer of his (lethal) firearm and kills one or both officers. Any human being, officer or civilian, in such a situation, must act under the premise that this is Mr. Brooks intent. To act like Mr. Brooks would not do something like that is stupid and the probable result is a dead officer. This was a justified shooting, six ways from Sunday. The officer acted appropriately to defend his life and the lives of others.

For any of you who thinks what I just described is BS, read this: Man who shot trooper on Route 33 gets up to 110 years in prison, because the same thing happened. Two police attempted to arrest this man. When the critical moment arrived, the officers hesitated using lethal force and Daniel Clary shot both officers with one seriously wounded.

This one happened in West Memphis, AR, about 20 minutes from my house. Two dead officers that went horribly wrong in the space of about 30 seconds.

Back to the point at hand. In the wake of officers defending their lives and the lives of others, what does the Mayor of Atlanta do? Fires the officer who killed Mr. Brooks and called it “murder” before the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has even completed their investigation. The police chief also resigned, the circumstances and reasoning around that are unclear.

This event and the nationwide calls by Leftists to “defund/disband the police” has sent a clear message to every police officer in every department across our nation: Leave or stop doing your job.

Baltimore has already had a taste of that. After the riots over the death of Freddie Gray and the Mayor sided with the rioters over the police, well, this USA Today story explains it:

Just before a wave of violence turned Baltimore into the nation’s deadliest big city, a curious thing happened to its police force: officers suddenly seemed to stop noticing crime.

Police officers reported seeing fewer drug dealers on street corners. They encountered fewer people who had open arrest warrants.

Police questioned fewer people on the street. They stopped fewer cars.

In the space of just a few days in spring 2015 – as Baltimore faced a wave of rioting after Freddie Gray, a black man, died from injuries he suffered in the back of a police van – officers in nearly every part of the city appeared to turn a blind eye to everyday violations. They still answered calls for help. But the number of potential violations they reported seeing themselves dropped by nearly half. It has largely stayed that way ever since.

“What officers are doing is they’re just driving looking forward. They’ve got horse blinders on,” says Kevin Forrester, a retired Baltimore detective.

I will make clear they still responded to 911 calls, but the officer-initiated contacts dropped, as it says below, by 70 percent.

Millions of police records show officers in Baltimore respond to calls as quickly as ever. But they now begin far fewer encounters themselves. From 2014 to 2017, dispatch records show the number of suspected narcotics offenses police reported themselves dropped 30 percent; the number of people they reported seeing with outstanding warrants dropped by half. The number of field interviews – instances in which the police approach someone for questioning – dropped 70 percent.

And because of that, murders, felony crimes and drug-dealing skyrocketed. We are now seeing similar results of Baltimore. Crimes are skyrocketing in Seattle, Minneapolis, D.C. and New York, everywhere there are strong calls to “defund the police.”

Now that this mindset has spread nationwide, police officers are either resigning from the job or not doing their job. They know which side of their bread is buttered. Their jobs just went from hazardous to dangerous, from both the people they contact on the streets and their management structure. A clear message has been sent out that police are not wanted, their city will not have their back and there is literally no reason to have a job like that anymore. We’re talking about a job that has a high risk of death or major disability, for not a lot of pay, and now they’re about as welcome as a turd in the swimming pool.

So my advice to you my dear readers, is if you can, to acquire a Concealed Carry Weapon permit and start carrying a weapon to protect yourself and your family. Very soon there could be no more “Thin Blue Line” as we currently know it that separates people from the two-legged animals.

I’m not going to advocate to you for a specific weapon, a type of weapon or a caliber. All I ask is you get a weapon you are comfortable with. One that you can quickly bring to bear and accurately use. I suggest you rent several from your local range or shoot with your friends until you find the weapon that works best for you. Practice regularly with it. Practice on a static range and a practical range. The static range for accuracy, the practical range to practice accuracy, speed, target recognition and on-the-fly problem solving under stress.

A self-defense firearm is not like a fire extinguisher where you can put it in your cabinet and forget about it, then have the time to read the instructions on how to use it before fighting the fire.

You might want to get a shirt like this to remind you of the responsibility carrying a weapon entails; Teespring.

Raw video of entire encounter:

In the wake of the protests and rioting over the death of George Floyd, I thought I would provide some context and perspective.

First of all, the death of George Floyd and everyone on the list I have acquired are tragedies, individually and collectively. The police officers who were criminally liable should not have been shielded by “qualified immunity.”

The data I am working off of is from The Washington Post which compiled the fatalities data, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics from which I derived the estimated number of annual police-civilian encounters. Before I get into this, I wish to note that George Floyd is not on this list. I searched by name, by city and date. He is not in here, but 40 people who died after him are.

So on to the data. According to the WaPo data, between 1/2/2015 and 6/8/2020, over a span of 1,984 days, 5,401 people died in police encounters. That’s an average of 2.72 people a day. Out of that 5,401, 352 were unarmed, 162 were “undetermined” and another 227 had no information at all, the field was blank. If I wanted to be strict with the data, I would have stayed with the declared unarmed. However, I am including all three of the categories, to make the case against the police as strong as possible. Of those 741, a total of 261 were listed as Black or no race given. Again, I am including the “no race given” to maximize the case against the police.

I also want to lay out up front that Blacks are on this list in every metric I looked at were at least double than their percentage of the general population. Overall, 24% of the deaths were Black, and 34% of those killed had a gun. And 73% of the “unarmed” deaths were Black.

According to BJS, in 2011 there were 62,936,500 police-civilian encounters, where the civilian was 16 or older. That works out to be about 172,429 every day. Over the 5 ½ years of this data, that daily average works out to be 342,098,674 total encounters. Say this aloud to yourself: “Five thousand four hundred deaths out of three hundred forty-two million encounters.”
Percentage chance:
Total Encounters 342,098,674

Black or no race given

* Unarmed/Undetermined/Blank

Let’s put these numbers into context. Let’s say I ask you to walk into a room, with the prize being you get to go home afterwards. If I told you that you have a 99.99843% of coming out alive, would you walk in? Because that’s what the 0.00157% means. If you have a 0.00157% chance of dying, you have a 99.99843% chance of surviving the experience.
In order to reduce all numbers to the same unit, that 261 works out to an average of 47 people a year. Please tell me, as far as the entire nation goes, how can the deaths of these 47 people a year be in any way construed as a “systematic extermination of Blacks”?

Let me put it this way. With a limited pool of resources (time, money, public sentiment, etc.), which group would benefit the most to get a 50% reduction in deaths? Which group do we save first?

47 unarmed Blacks die at the hands of the police every year
-OR-
2,600 Blacks die at the hand of other Blacks every year. Source

WHICH ONE WOULD YOU THINK IS A MORE PRESSING PROBLEM?

WHICH ONE CAUSES MASS PROTESTS?

Which way does our priorities lie? Which one of those numbers seems to be more important to us?

In summary, every person who died in police custody died unnecessarily. Each and every officer responsible should and must be held liable, criminally and civilly, for their actions. Abolish the qualified immunity. Abolish the police unions that protect the overly aggressive bullies. Quickly fire officers that have justified overaggressive complaints against them. Don’t hire officers from other departments with proven complaints against them. Arm them with bodycams, for the protection of the officer and the citizen. PAY THEM MORE so quality applicants can be attracted.

If, IF we do all of these things and a couple more, then the deaths will drop and maybe the people can start trusting the police again.

…of Authoritarianism is about to expire. Unless you opt-out now, your trial of Authoritarianism will activate automatically and no cancellation or opt-out will be possible for a minimum of 50 years.

The past couple of months have been right out of Robot Overlords. People are forced to stay indoors and forced to have contact tracing. Those that dare to go outside without permission are dealt with harshly.

Then we have an incident that causes mass protests. Ironically, George Floyd was in Minneapolis because his job in Texas was declared “non-essential.” Anarchists use the cover of the protestors to riot, causing massive property damage and looting businesses. This violent activity is considered to be “acceptable” by the feckless Overlords, while the peaceful protestors are kept off balance by the random behavior of law enforcement. The LEO’s either lead with their batons, let the protestors (and rioters) do what they want or surrender to the protestors. The proper thing to do would be to constrain and respect the protesters, and baton the rioters and looters six ways from Sunday.

Over the past couple days, the spineless government of Minneapolis has decided to copy The Purge by “defunding” their police department. While I can imagine the chaos and property damage that will ensue, I don’t want it to happen. Maybe those newly armed liberals (6 million firearms have been sold since our “free trial” started, most to first-time gun owners) will take to the streets and protect each other. Or, maybe, the gangs will start openly selling “protection services.”

And it is in times like these when all people want is some stability in their lives. Women want safety to make sure their children survive. And this is the exact moment when government offers to all of us the promise of “safety”… at the cost of freedom.

Don’t take it, it’s a sucker’s bet. Government cannot ever deliver on the promise of “safety.” There are too many things that they offer to protect you from but cannot deliver. But they always collect the price.

So what have we here? Authoritarians demanding your confinement until “a vaccine is found.” Considering the aspects of COVID-19, the absolutely best we can hope for is an annual shot like for the flu, which is hit-or-miss (and more miss than hit). Of course, this is for “your safety.”

The government also offers to “pay you” because they said they have a power they don’t and forced businesses to close without cause.

At the start of this crisis, our national debt was about $24 Trillion. To put that into perspective, imagine stacks of fresh, new $100 bills. If we stacked all of those bills 30 feet tall, we would cover approximately 7 acres, or about 28 average-sized urban home lots. That’s an entire subdivision, stacked 30 feet tall, of nothing but fresh $100 bills. The federal government added, in the last 90 days, another five lots of 30 foot tall stacks of $100’s. We went from 28 lots to 33 lots in three months. Over the last few years, we’ve been adding about a third of a lot a year. We’ve added five lots in 90 days. And we’re fixing to do it again.

To be perfectly clear, I don’t want government to have this kind of power. I don’t care who’s in charge unless it’s Christ Himself, no. Governments who have this level of power and control over the people do not willingly surrender it.

So let’s review our movie similes.

For the past 20 years, we’ve pretty much been flipping back and forth between Brazil and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Covid-19 brought us Robot Overlords and over the weekend we’ve degenerated in some places into The Purge. If We The People don’t so something quickly, we’ll end up with the government from V for Vendetta. If we let that happen, we’ll have to do something between V for Vendetta or Red Dawn to get back to where we’re supposed to be. A limited and minimal government that maximizes individual freedom and personal accountability.

This video sheds some interesting perspective on things as well:

I originally had a "Rioting Do's and Don'ts" post here, since I ass-u-med that the rioters in various cities now burning were the protesters. Then the videos at the end of this post came to my attention. Last month in this post I spoke about "bad actors" who didn't start this whole chain of events, but are happy to take advantage of the situation to further their agenda.

In this video, Tim Pool talked about how pallets of bricks are mysteriously showing up when there's nothing under construction nearby. This falls squarely under the category of "Things that make you go hmmm..."

In this video, Tim expands on the prior video by talking about more "pre-staged" palates of bricks, bottles of gasoline and water (rioting can leave you dehydrated, dontchaknow) for use by rioters.

In other news, there is clear evidence the violence around the White House over the weekend was pre-planned and coordinated. There are people in organized groups using the anger and outrage of the lockdown and the death of George Flynn as cover to start riots to try and topple our social structure. These instigators are mixing in with the legitimate and peaceful protesters, then causing property damage and looting. Once the mob mentality takes over, these instigators get away during the ensuing chaos and come back the next night to start it all over again.

Make no mistake about it, there is Evil afoot. There are people who want to bring this country down, and they are willing to build that house on as many dead bodies as they can. These people must be brought to Justice.

The Founding Fathers had a very clear vision of the country they founded. This country was founded on the concept that the Citizen is Sovereign (not those nonsensical "sovereign citizens") and the government serves the people, not the people serve the government. The concept that the citizen receives their Rights and authority from God (or the Universe) and delegates some of their authority to the government to handle issues that are larger than themselves. Those Founding Fathers also had the mindset of "the laws should be as few as possible and able to be understood while running."

The United States Constitution (and the state Constitutions) were written in such a way as to clearly declare what the Citizens allow the government to do, and no more. The Bill of Rights were additional constraints upon the government. There are twenty-five clear and separate points in those ten Amendments. They don't grant these Rights to the Citizens, they recognize that the Citizens have them already and the government is not to constrain them. "Congress shall make no law...", "The Right of the People... shall not be infringed." "...[B]ut in a manner to be prescribed by law." The phrase "The Right of the People" appear in the First, Second and Fourth, while the mention of "The People" are in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

Here are the direct and attributable quotes from our Founding Fathers:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” – James Madison, Federalist 45, 1788

“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition.” – Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 1791
Limited Government

“[T]he general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.” – James Madison, Federalist 14, 1787

“It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” – James Madison, Federalist 48, 1788

“I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

“The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 33, 1788

I brought all of this up because every law, every regulation, every statute, rule and ordinance that affects the Citizen and has a penalty attached for non-compliance, is ultimately enforced at the point of a gun. It doesn't matter if the crime is first-degree murder or failure to stop during a right-hand turn. A refusal to accept or perform restitution ultimately leads to a law enforcement officer pointing a weapon at you.

I need to explain this, because you probably don't understand this. LEO's do not carry weapons to enforce the law. Their badge and authority do that. The weapons are to protect themselves and others. An LEO must not lose an altercation with a citizen. To do so would damage or destroy any respect for their authority. Let's take that traffic stop. Normally, you're pulled over, you're issued a citation and you're released to go on about your day. For just a minor traffic violation, the LEO can only detain you until you have received and accept the citation. If I refuse to sign and accept the citation, the officer now has the authority to arrest me. If I refuse to comply with his demands to submit to arrest, he has a "Scale of Force" that dictates the level of force they are allowed to use. When an LEO has decided by your refusal of his commands that you need to be arrested because you have disobeyed his lawful orders, you're going to the local lockup. Once this starts, the officer cannot back down and "forget the whole thing" without direct orders from their superiors. At this point the officer will start up that "scale of force" to obtain your compliance. If you resist hard and violently enough that he believes his life or the lives of others are in grave danger, at that point he is justified in pulling his weapon and shooting you until you die or are rendered unable to resist his actions to arrest you.

That's a power you should be scared of, and why the laws should be as few as possible. George Washington is incorrectly attributed to saying this, but the words ring true no matter who said them:

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

And in the midst of this COVID Crisis, we see exactly this. James Madison said this:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

To paraphrase Madison, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which grants the ability to the federal or various state governments  the power to close businesses nor confine the people to their homes without just and specific cause." There is no "in case of [whatever] clause" that I can find. There is a very good reason for that, as

Show me where the federal, state or local governments can force a business to suspend operations because that business is "non-essential." Non-essential to WHOM? That business is certainly essential to putting food on the table for the families of the business owner and employees. I understand and accept closures of a specific business based on "nuisance" or "health and safety" violations, but not whole industries because a bureaucrat thinks it's not critical for the economy.

Maybe I should put it this way because when I get into discussions about this, the "other side" misses this very important point: I have zero problem with government informing the public of the hazards of this disease and asking citizens to socially distance, restricting the number of people that can be in a building at any given time, wear masks, wash their hands, glove up and all of those things. We cross into "Police State" territory when the government authorizes the police to arrest and punish people for leaving their homes or operating their businesses.

When dealing with artwork, there is a concept known as "Provenance," which is a documented trail of ownership of the art in question. This "chain of custody"  proves that this work of art is the real artwork. Think of a  "Certificate of Authenticity." What I am meaning is when a mayor, governor or president issues the Executive Order, proclamation, memo, whatever, it (should) quote the applicable law that is being invoked. The provenance of that law (and thus the EO) needs to be derived, ultimately, from the Constitution, either the state or federal. If it can't be, then it's not a proper law.

In the end, if the government has the power to do things like this (and we let them get away with it), like "declare an emergency" to deny us our liberties, with the definition and declaration of "emergency" left up to the bureaucrats, then anything and everything can be an emergency.

That should scare the crap out of you.

Today, if you don't already know it, today is Memorial Day, where we remember those Citizens who left home to become Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen and never made it back home again.

Don't thank a veteran for their service today, this is not our day. If you want to thank someone, go to a Veterans cemetery and gaze upon the rows of simple white markers. Tread softly, heroes lie sleeping there. Thank these men and women. From the Concord Green to the desolation of Afghanistan, passing through places like Bunker Hill, New Orleans, Cold Harbor, Gettysburg, the Alamo, Belleau Wood, Normandy, Anzio, Bastonge, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sahn, and a thousand more places. You might not be able to find these places on a map, but just the words should bring tears to your eyes because of the sacrifices made for you. If you feel nothing, then I pity you. I suggest you read about them.

This Day is not for car sales, or just a day off work. While you're outdoor grilling or enjoying time with your friends and family, stop for a moment. Come together, hold hands, bow your heads and say "Thank You" to those who surrendered their lives and futures for you. Say a prayer for the families of those who never came back that they heal from their loss.

“Privilege” is an act performed by a person upon others. It takes the form of a person doing something for another person, which can include shielding a person from a bad thing. Some classic examples would be two men facing charges and are identical but for their skin color. The Black man receives a harsher penalty than the White man. If enough individuals collectively make similar decisions, than I can understand those who believe there is a societal privilege, but it’s still an individual’s choice.

A friend (I’ll call him “Frank” for brevity) recently related his personal example about his “White Privilege.” Frank was driving his vehicle shortly after having his car broken into by having a back window smashed out. There Frank was, driving from point A to point B, minding his own business when all of a sudden his car was boxed in from all sides and eight officers surrounded his car, guns drawn. Frank froze, kept his hands on the wheel and confirmed with the officers what he was going to do before he did it and was given permission. It was then determined that a wanted felon had the same make, model and color vehicle as Frank, all the way down to the busted out rear window.

After the police determined that Frank was not the wanted felon, the police apologized and Frank was allowed to be on his way. As he drove off, his thought (as was relayed to me, and I am paraphrasing) was, “If I had been a black guy, the police probably would have shot me.”

Let’s look at this encounter from one of the officer’s perspective, we’ll call the officer “Bob.” Bob is a human being, just like Frank. Bob wants to do his job, get paid for his efforts and go home to his family at the end of the day, just like Frank. However Bob, unlike Frank, routinely encounters people who are either a) genuinely bad, or b) having the worst day of their lives. Bob carries a sidearm (and more firepower in his cruiser) not to enforce the law, but to improve his chances to go home at the end of his shift. Bob doesn’t get to shoot people without good reason, which is 99% of the time, the bad guy was going to kill or seriously injure Bob or innocents.

Every encounter Bob has with people while he’s in uniform has a significant chance of ending with Bob dead on the ground. Bob has to have the base mindset that any traffic stop or any on the street encounter will be his last if Bob doesn’t act like the people in the encounter won’t kill him the first chance they get. If he loses that mindset, that’s when he really will end up dead on the roadside. Bob had a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) for a “Gold 1979 Cadillac with missing drivers-side rear window, Felony warrant out for owner of car matching this description.” Bob sees a vehicle matching that description, calls it in and coordinates his fellow officers to surround and immobilize the vehicle and see who’s driving.

Bob, a survivor of a thousand traffic stops, of which fifty went bad for whatever reason, is now downloading his personal experience into his reflexes. Out of those fifty “bad stops,” 60% were Whites, 40% Blacks. Ten of those stops had armed people actively resist and tried to shoot Bob. Seven Black people, 3 White people.

Suspecting the driver of this vehicle has a felony warrant out for them, Bob already knows that this stop has a high probability to “go bad” very quickly. He sees a white guy behind the wheel. Does Bob stop pointing his weapon at the driver? No. Does he lower his “shoot first” state of alertness? Maybe a little, because in his mind, White guys are (slightly) less dangerous to him.

The driver can feed into this situation as well. A driver who sits still, hands on the wheel and says, “Tell me what to do officer” has a lower percentage chance of getting shot than a driver who responds, “Yo pig! What the f**k is it this time?!” A driver who moves around in the vehicle after stopping, reaching under the seats, reaching for the glove box and such significantly increases that driver’s chance of being shot.

Can the chance of being shot be lowered to zero? No, it can’t. During any police encounter, there is always a chance of the civilian being shot by the officer. A bad confluence of events can always happen to leave an otherwise civilian in the encounter injured or dead.

There are at least 15-20 factors that can feed into the chance a police officer shoots the civilian. From dinner last night giving Bob “intestinal distress,” to his sergeant chewing him out at roll call on the low end, to something in the hands of the civilian and the civilian not doing what he’s told on the high end.

The biggest determining factor is more Blacks give police problems than Whites. I personally think this issue come from both sides of the encounter. I will not deny “Driving while Black” exists, I will not deny confirmation bias, or perception, or any sociological and racial tendencies that escalate such encounters. There are no innocent parties in this.

Frank and I are going to disagree with my assessment. He thinks he didn’t get shot because he is White. I firmly believe it was because he didn’t move until he was told to and he did exactly what he was told.
We do hear about police killing civilians. We should hear about it and those events should be investigated. I also believe that 6 months of analyzing the dash cam footage frame-by-frame and a couple hundred hours of research should be used be used to find the truth, not to see if the officer was to blame. The officer has to make an assessment of what the person is doing, determine if they are a threat (all information is incomplete BTW) and make a life-or-death decision, me or him, in 0.6 seconds.

I am reminded about a 12-year-old Black teenager. He had a toy/pellet gun that was painted black all over, covering the orange muzzle and other parts that would easily identify it as a toy and not a real firearm. The officer yelled “halt,” the teenager turned toward the officer, weapon in hand and got shot for his efforts. For a time I recall, gangsters would spray paint their real firearms orange to look like toy guns, with the intent of having that officer hesitate just long enough for the gangster to shoot and kill the officer.

You know what we don’t hear about? The 125,000+ daily police encounters where no one gets hurt and most everyone goes home.

I am willing to stipulate for the sake of argument that the base data in this article, Police kill about 3 men per day in the US, according to new study, is accurate. But there’s no context about this. I can think of three different ways someone can end up dead from a police encounter:

• Violently resisting arrest
• Suicide-by-cop
• Error by police or civilian

Once we know the numbers of each of these categories, then we can start asking intelligent questions and really get a handle on this problem. I’m sorry to say the article doesn’t answer those important and pertinent questions.

Just to put things into perspective, every day in the US, 9 die from drowning, 16 die from getting run over while they were a pedestrian, 36 die from falling and 40 people die as the passenger in a motor vehicle.

In any given year, your chances of being killed in a police encounter are around 1 in 277,500. The chance of that happening over your lifetime is 1 in 3,840. Now, to be killed in a police encounter, you must first have a police encounter. If you don’t engage in criminal activity (and thus earn major attention of the police), I’m moderately sure those chances will get significantly better.

In the end, as I started this, there is no “societal” privilege, only the choices of individuals. We have very little control over the decisions of others whom we haven’t met yet.

I realize we will never really know exactly how COVID-19 crossed from animal to human. Between the paranoid level of secrecy and “saving face” of the CCP and the lack of information about its’ first start on humans, anyone who really knows will ever tell.

It is my suspicion, like many others out there, that some bungling maintenance tech didn’t repair some of the clean room equipment properly, leading to a worker getting exposed and the worker unknowingly carried it home to spread to the rest of us. If the CCP had weaponized it and wanted to unleash it on the world, I would have done it the 12 Monkeys way. Get vials with the virus onto multiple long international flights at the same time, making it impossible to pin down the “patient zero” and the origin of the virus.

Something like this COVID-19 outbreak concerns me, but it doesn’t scare me.

What scares me is there are groups of people out there, with access to the keys of power that were waiting for a crisis of this scale to trigger their contingency plans.

Hang with me on this. Think about what we’ve been through in the last couple of weeks.

• The federal and state governments ordered private businesses to cease operations. I don’t see that power granted to the government in the Constitution.
• The debt of the federal government jumped over 8% in just the past few days. It’s now over $25 Trillion.
• The shutdown has thrown more people out of work than we had out of work in the Great Depression.
• The US economy will drop at least 10-15% before it has a chance the economy can recover. This will not be a “V”-shaped recovery. It’s more like a fully-loaded semi- going from 70 to zero by locking up the brakes. Before it can get rolling again, you have to get the truck straightened out, check the load for shifting and start rolling again. It takes more effort and a lot longer to go from 0 to 70 than 70 to 0.
• Between the drop in the economy and the boost in the federal debt, our debt ratio now over 105%. We owe more than we can generate.

Now, when a country owes more than it’s worth, well, just plug the word “hyperinflation” into your favorite search engine, with words like “Weimar Republic,” “Zimbabwe,” “Venezuela” and “Greece.”

We have also seen absurd levels of restrictions placed on the American People. From being arrested for kayaking in the ocean alone, to not being able to buy things like vegetable seeds, to a woman who was arrested and jailed for making a choice of opening her nail salon so she could earn money to feed her hungry children, and then the judge demands an apology from her, this shit has got to stop.

Logic and common sense reasoning demands the conclusion that there are individuals and groups with ill intent towards the United States and the American people out there. We see people every day actively working towards tearing this country down to the bedrock and rebuilding it in their twisted image. From those who developed Common Core Math, the Affordable Care Act, to those at the highest levels of the federal government now exposed as actively trying to pull off a silent coup through lies, misinformation and more.

I’m not saying these groups are coordinated. I actually kind of wish they were. It would be easier to stop this madness by finding one spot or several places where the proper application of force could bring the whole plan crashing down. But there’s no coordination or unifying plan. It’s like 40 six-year-old children running amok in the classroom with one teacher trying to regain order. There are children coloring on the walls, taking a crap in the teacher’s desk drawers, smoking weed in the corner, setting the curtains on fire, destroying furniture and more.

The difference between a conspiracy theory and a real conspiracy is, if you can tie up all of the loose ends into one nice, neat package, it’s a conspiracy theory. Real conspiracies are just like freedom and a healthy economy. Everyone is acting in their own best interests and on their own agenda. There are loose ends all over the place like you just flung an entire pot of spaghetti all over the kitchen.

I don’t know how or even if it can be stopped. All I can hope for is the Americans of today bring forth the spirit of their forefathers. To have a natural skepticism and suspicion of the government. To look at what’s going on and knowing the difference between the government asking for social distancing, wash your hands and all the rest, versus the government deciding what businesses get to remain open, then using the police enforce those decisions. To have the backbone for when the government tries to go too far, the citizens say “NO” and have the firepower to make it stick.

What I am seeing right now is a test run. Tests to see how far government can push, how much the people will take and if we can be psychologically manipulated into acting against our own best interests to comply with government mandates.

Here’s what should keep you awake at night. Right now there are people taking notes on everything that worked and didn’t work. When we get out of this, those “bad actors” are going to go back to their think tanks and revise what they have and run some trial tests here and there to see if they can work out the bugs for the next time.

And mark my words, there will be a next time.

I have had too many things to say about the current events, and have been too busy surviving to codify them. This guy has. Read and heed.

There will come an incident, as there have been before, when good people will have to stand up against the overreach and oppression of a government gone bad, as they have had to do in the past.

At the center of that incident will be a man, or a woman, or a group of people. They will, naturally, be on the “wrong side of the law,” because the laws are now used to enforce political power, and not to protect liberty.

The people at the center of this incident will not be perfect. They will say wrong things, they will hold opinions you will find reprehensible. This has all happened before. The militia on the green at Concord who stood against the Redcoats were on the wrong side of the law, and many of them held opinions you would disagree with. The men who held the Alamo for ten days against Santa Ana and the Mexicans were wrong on the law, and were no doubt mostly racists who spoke poorly and were unenlightened. But they were right to stand against governments that have become wrong.

Like them, at the center of the next incident, there will be people who will not be personally likeable. There will be people who are, in a very real sense, criminals. They will be people who should have done things a different way. But the time will have come – and you will recognize it – when all lovers of liberty will need to stand together to tell their government that it has gone too far, that it must back down, that it must surrender its illegitimate power, and return to its proper boundaries or else face the bloody constraint imposed on it by a free people.

If we let this moment pass because the people at the center offend us somehow, because we mistakenly think that the people at the center of the incident must be wholly right for the government to be at all wrong, if we adopt the notion that for any of us to be free, we must first all be perfectly virtuous, then we risk losing our last opportunity to make our government respect its own lawful boundaries and return to its proper place in our lives.

When that time has passed, we’ll recognize that, too.

-Paul Mitchell

Don't let that moment pass. You'll be scared, unsure and more. But don't let that pass by. As Ronald Reagan said,

"If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth."

So, the other day a friend tagged me on FB with this article and explained “This is why I left the GOP during the Reagan years.” I understand and sympathize with him, that's when I started becoming politically aware but stayed politically quiet for the same reasons. I don’t know if he followed my suggestion to read my thoughts on Trickle-down economics, but here it is again anyway. The Ultimate Strawman.

Let’s get right to the article in question, What don't most conservatives realize?

First of all, I commend Mr. Kruger for coming to his own conclusions, despite being raised in such a uni-polar household and community. I disagree with his assessments on a core level. Let me explain.

In the 80’s, the Conservatives made a large and fundamental error that has since been corrected. They attached their religious philosophy to their political ideology. This was a case of "I believe in God, therefore everything I think and say is good and proper.” And thus was born the Moral Majority. That backfired on Conservatives, just as the rabid beliefs of Liberals concerning global cooling warming cooling climate change, transgenderism, guns or Trump are alienating huge sections of the American populace from having calm and rational discussions on those subjects and more.

Today, Conservatives on the personal level are returning (unknowingly) to William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman and others. I agree with Mr. Kruger and the philosophy of Buckley, “Let’s take our time and think through all the ways any proposal could backfire.” I think any change to a new (or return to an old) way of doing things should be discussed openly, frankly and sincerely. I am totally against instances where one side hurls epithets to the other or exercises the “Heckler’s Veto” when opposing voices want to speak. Once a method is clear, try it with the intent of doing it more when it works, abandoning it if it doesn’t work. And it shows your bias if you say, “It didn’t work because we didn’t have enough funding or didn’t try hard enough.”

Let’s get on with the point-by-point:

Before I begin, I just want to note that I believe a large part of Mr. Kruger’s anger and resentment might flow from his disdain of his brother-in-law, who’s evidently a Ben Shapiro fan. The BIL has a Shapiro “Liberal Tears” travel mug.

1. You’ve redefined conservatism to mean “reactionary.”

I haven’t seen an original, forward thinking idea out of conservative circles since I was a kid.

Obviously, he hasn’t been reading my blog. ;-)

They don’t see the concept of conservatism as tapping the brakes on the wide-eyed and sometimes overly idealistic utopianism of liberals. They see it as their mission to undo it all. To say not only no, but to actively undermine and dismantle anything done by liberals because it was done by liberals.

“Tapping the brakes” won’t do the job when we’re ready to launch off a cliff like Thelma and Louise. From Common Core math, to mandating Americans purchase overpriced and inadequate government healthcare (and pay for it even if they don’t want it), to out-and-out abolishment of the Second and Fourth Amendments, the list goes on-and-on. These major changes came almost overnight, forced by government and without discussion or heeding the will of the People. You don’t think stopping anything that occurs like that is worth stopping? If a Republican administration started using the power of the Executive branch to mandate the actions of the Press, or a Republican Congress made laws for “reasonable restrictions” on news organizations, I would oppose that just as actively as I oppose what I mentioned earlier.

And the bit about Alan Alda’s “tax cuts” from The West Wing, seriously, do you believe that was anything approaching reality? That was a caricature of a straw man, written and produced by people with openly liberal views, which was performed by an actor who also holds liberal views. Another caricature of a straw man was when in season 5, President Bartlet’s daughter Zoey was kidnapped and he stepped down via the 25th Amendment, leaving the Speaker of the House (John Goodman) as Acting President. His first comment as President? “Let’s blow some shit up.” Bad examples that only proves my point, not his.

I am not for “undoing the 20th Century.” Women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Acts, the continued elimination of discrimination (not just racial) are all good things. I stand against any act of government, or social more that I believe, when sifted through my core principles, hinders the individual unnecessarily or without justification.

2. You have a nostalgia for that which never really was.

Conservatives love to wax poetic to me about the great halcyon days when America was the shining city on a hill. When the markets and the men were free and liberty flowed in every stream. When the families were nuclear and divorce was rare and people had morals by gum.

[…]

It’s bullshit. It was always bullshit.

Then comes the (semi-rhetorical) question

First and foremost, freedom and prosperity for whom?

Human beings, as part of our physical and mental composition are imperfect. We never get it right the first time, and rarely even through the 25th time we try. There was still racial discrimination, and sexism, and a whole lot more back then. Then we came to a point where things like that became unacceptable and they changed. It doesn’t matter where the first push for change came from, it only matters it happened.

Freedom is a zero-sum game… to the Left. In the past 20 years, they have been systematically expunging any non-Liberal belief from universities across the country. Liberals (the big “L” kind) are acting like they believe that any position on any subject that does not coincide to six decimal points to the Groupthink must be destroyed, even if it’s a fellow Liberal. Just ask Rebecca Tuvel. It’s especially important to take heed of the quote at the end of the article.

Could you lose your job at a higher education institution for saying the conservative thing? Yeah, you could. Guess what? For most of U.S. history, that’s what it was like being a black guy saying something about racial injustice. It’s funny how conservatives didn’t seem to have a problem back then and were enshrining that lack of a freedom into law.

For this, Mr. Kruger is correct. From the 1950’s and before, any Black man who became angry and voiced his displeasure over his treatment would be branded an “Uppity N*****” and have the crap beaten out of him and/or lynched. It started changing in the 60’s and we don’t see that any more, do we, Mr. Kruger?

Today we have college groups like the Young Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation who invite speakers like Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klaven, Allen West, Dinesh D’Souza and more to a campus. The more Leftist campus organizations would hold protests with physical disruption (blocking halls, taking up auditorium seats, yelling during the event, etc.) at a minimum. The more extreme end is the threat of or actual violence, making the damage or security costs prohibitive and the event gets cancelled.

Now I call on anybody to show where this was done by Conservatives against a Liberal speaker. Not just on a university campus, but anywhere.

To get on to his next point:

Ah, all those regulations, you say? You’re mad because you wanted to drain that wet patch on the back 40 for a few extra acres and some gubbmit stooge came around and fined you over it. It’s your property, right?

Yes, it is my property. That’s one of the cornerstones of the United States. I should be able to do with my property as I please. In this case, you have a patch that floods occasionally and you want to build drainage in so you can use it. Then an EPA (who has SWAT teams by the way) inspector declares that occasionally wet patch as “protected migratory bird wetlands” and now you can’t get near it.

I do a lot of work with administrative law. Every regulation is written in blood. They all exist because someone decided to be an asshole and caused damage saying, “Well, it wasn’t illegal!”

I hate to tell Mr. Kruger this, but every regulation is not “written in blood.” I could write a 4,000 word treatise about federal regulations and their unconstitutional impact on citizens, but this article is not that time or place. Here’s one rule not “written in blood.” In the 80’s, The BATF just made up a regulation that “Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant” (APCP for short) was a “low explosive” and they had the power to regulate it. APCP deflagrates, but does not explode. This compound is used as solid rocket fuel and was used in the Space Shuttle’s two SRB’s. It’s the only solid propellant that is “man-rated,” meaning it’s safe enough for people be launched into space on it. BATF didn’t even follow their own rules to determine if this was a Low Explosive or not. This meant citizens interested in high power rocketry had to have licenses, special containers to store and transport APCP, were subject to inspections and more. It took over 20 years and millions of dollars in legal fees to slog through the federal court system to get a judge to vacate that regulation.

I will agree that every safety regulation is written in blood, I’ll give him that. I am naturally distrustful of unelected bureaucrats who write regulations that have criminal penalties attached to them. I don’t care if Congress passes a skeleton bill which includes an “All federal agencies tasked with regulation and enforcement of this law may pass, as they deem necessary, additional regulations.” My elected officials are accountable to me for their actions every so often. If they have angered myself and my fellow citizens enough he's out of a job. I have no such authority over a bureaucrat. So by default, I don't want him to have such power over my life.

The very Framers that conservatives so often revere to me believed in ordered liberty. Not just the famous Jefferson quote about your right to swing your fist ends at my face. They generally agreed that all liberty came with responsibility, and I’ll happily point you towards the writings of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau that they were directly influenced by regarding that.

The Founding Fathers believed in maximum personal freedom and minimal government interference. They also believed that the laws should be written in such a way as to be understandable while running. I can’t comprehend most bills passed by Congress today sitting down and with six weeks uninterrupted reading time. Open up any volume of the Federal Register and you will quickly understand.

Responsibility is an internal thing. A person who has the moral code to “do the right thing” has that responsibility within himself, to be imposed on him by himself alone. Accountability is the term used to describe the result of the government imposing penalties on a person for violating a law or regulation.

3. You are a lot more racist than you really understand, and your tolerance of open racism in your coalition makes you complicit.

First point here: If I see discrimination of any kind, imposed on any person, I promise you I will be in the asshole’s face like R. Lee Ermey. I’m pretty sure I speak for most Conservatives as well.

On the liberal side of things, we have the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” How condescending do you have to be to believe things like “These Black people can’t do it on their own. They need our help” while actively engaging in malfeasance. Just to be clear, misfeasance is when you see a disabled person in a wheelchair tumble out of it and fall to the ground, and you walk by without helping. Malfeasance is when you give them a swift kick to the head or break their chair while they’re down.

The biggest malfeasance done to Black society was committed by just the simple rule of denying Welfare to a married couple, but giving it to an unmarried mother, the more kids the better. This more than anything (but public schools are a close 2nd) has led to most of the racial divide today. Blacks in the 1940’s had an illegitimacy rate of 14 percent. Today it’s 75%.

4. You have just as much a problem with “identity politics” and “virtue signaling” as liberals, if not more.

Before I get in on this section, Mr. Kruger’s examples are all virtue signaling, no identity politics. I don’t have a problem with virtue signaling, as that falls under the whole “freedom of expression” thing. As far as identity politics goes I do have a problem with that, because when a political party does that, because it means a voter’s skin color or any other externally measurable demographic is more important than the actual thoughts, beliefs or needs of the individual.

Pre-COVID, Trump boasted “the lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks since the numbers were kept.” I don’t see that as identity politics because the unemployment numbers were at historic lows for everybody, not just Blacks or minorities in general. Trump didn’t work to lower just the unemployment for Blacks, he did it for everybody. Contrasted with the Democrat message to Blacks and the elderly, “VOTE FOR US OR ELSE THE REPUBLICANS WILL CUT YOUR BENEFITS!!!!!”

I’ve been told by prominent conservatives on Quora over and over again that they don’t like liberals because of the “identity politics” and “virtue signaling.” The implication of this is that conservatism is purely merit-based and doesn’t play identity politics at all.

This is bullshit. This has all the self-awareness of a dog licking its balls in public.

Conservatives openly complain that the United States should be a theocracy based on Christianity.

Um, not that I’ve heard of since Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. Get with the times, dude.

The ones that are more subtle about it talk about “religious freedom,” but when it’s time to protect religious freedom for Muslims, they’re dead silent or pushing resolutions to ban Muslims from holding party leadership. (This was an actual caucus proposal at a Republican caucus in Minnesota and it almost passed.) [Note from Mark, this happened in 2018]

Two points on this: First, it DIDN’T pass, so a majority of Republicans involved didn’t like that idea. Second, I’ve looked at several news stories on it. It was introduced at the precinct caucus level (Coon Rapids-Brooklyn Park, find it without Google, I dare you) out of the 4,000+ precincts in Minnesota. So 0.00025% of precincts has a person who liked this idea. If it passed the district caucus, from there it would have had to go through a Congressional district caucus before making it to the state caucus. I can’t find where it was voted down.

Now with any large group (Left and Right) there will be some fringe people. When a supporter of Bernie Sanders shot up the GOP Congressional softball team, I don’t know of any Conservative who blamed anyone other than the shooter for the tragedy. No Conservative tried to say “Bernie told him to do it!” So don’t blame all Minnesota Republicans for the bad actions of a few.

(Just as an aside, Liberals love to blame the NRA for mass shootings, even though none of those mass shooters were NRA members. I’m moderately sure most of the armed citizens who stopped mass shooters mid-rampage are NRA members)

5. You seriously have a problem with corruption and skirting the law.

Really. I am all for equal application of the law. I don’t check for political affiliation at all when it comes to bad actors. The difference between “skirting” and “breaking” the law are just like tax avoidance and tax evasion. In both cases, the former is legal and the latter isn’t.

Tell me, how many major news reports have you seen concerning Tara Reade? If you haven’t seen it, Ms. Reade has accused then-Senator Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993. Just as a comparison, how many reports did you see about a teenage Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulting a girl in the early 80’s? Don’t you think that such a serious accusation against a presidential candidate should get as much, if not more investigative reporting and coverage than a Supreme Court candidate?

As far as two GOP Senators who sold stocks after a meeting and before the market dropped from COVID (Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler), Burr has asked for an Ethics investigation into his actions and they are presumed innocent until proven guilty (that’s another cornerstone of the United States, just in case you haven’t heard of it).

Then you bring up case after case of Republicans who violated the law, were tried and convicted, removed from their office and sent to prison. Other than a slight mention of the “Caucus Scandal in the early 2000’s,” you don’t bring up any Democrats walking the line.

In fact, you say this:

Over the last 30 years, a stunningly high number of conservative Republicans have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and ended up with prison sentences compared to their liberal counterparts. If you want to complain that liberals do it just as much, then you have to at least tacitly admit that conservatives are just that much more incompetent at hiding it. [Bold is me]

So you’re tacitly admitting Dems do break the law, but for whatever reason don’t face prosecution. You’re putting better criminals into office than we are. Is that really a boast you want to be proud of?

The first step to solving any problem is to admit you have one. Conservatives, you have a hell of a problem with your own ranks when it comes to law and order.

Yes, we do. We admit it, confront it and send the guilty away. We don't cover it up like a cat does his business in the litter box. Mainstream Republicans disavow racists like the KKK and other groups. Democrats can’t seem to disavow violent Leftist groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter and more. You might want to start admitting to those problems on your side.

6. Your demonization of intellectuals and science is going to get us all killed.

I’m not demonizing scientists. I can get behind the demonizing of agenda-driven intellectuals who distort and mischaracterize falsehoods meant to goad regular people into advocating for a position based on “sound good” soundbites, rather than “good, sound” facts. Like the whole “97% of climate scientists…” line. Invariably, it’s con jobs like that (big problem, need to act now, no time to think) which result in more power for government and less power for people.

I also have a problem with the NOAA guessing for massive amounts of climate data, or ships at sea being used to collect ocean temperature data (the ships are hot, so they distort the data. That’s kinda important to know), or “proving” global warming using data from a weather station that wasn’t even built at the time.
The rest of it is all poorly-made strawmen. I don’t want polluted air or water for my descendants, nor do I know of anybody that does. The United States is getting cleaner, because we’ve found ways to minimize or reuse byproducts that used to be just dumped. When was the last time you heard of a river catching fire? I also realize that renewable energy technology is not to a technological level that can replace our current infrastructure. I fully support renewable energy that does not negatively impact the environment. It’s just not economically feasible right now. To totally stop or vastly curtail the use of fossil fuels will kill billions from starvation, because the trucks that bring food, medicine and other goods from farm and factory to table will stop running. Forcing the current renewable technology to replace fossil fuels will likewise crash the economy, again leading to mass starvation.

For Conservatives banned from speaking on college campuses, here’s some articles on it. 1 2 3 4 5. Just as a note, when The New Republic and Washington Compost notices and says something about it, it’s probably pretty bad.

And for the record, here’s a video of Ben Shapiro being an asshole as he’s turned away from speaking on campus.

Of course, Mr. Kruger ends his rant with a disclaimer. “You, you’re okay. It’s all of the other assholes saying they’re Conservative that is why I’m ranting over this.”

Mr. Kruger is entitled to his opinion. I’m just showing up with facts.

If you'll recall, In January 2020, a new Virginia Legislature was seated, with both Houses of the legislature and the governorship firmly in Democrat control. One of their first legislative actions was to introduce a massive anti-gun agenda. Just in the transition period after election day, because those Democrats were so loud in their anti-gun campaigns, eighty-six out of 95 counties in Virginia (90%) along with over one hundred municipalities declared themselves as "Second Amendment Sanctuaries." Thousands of protesters showed up (armed) to the state capitol on January 20th to protest these laws. In February, the Legislature passed most of them and on April 10th Governor Northam signed these points of that agenda into law:

• Requiring background checks on all gun sales in Virginia
• Re-instituting a limit on handgun sales to one a month
• Increasing penalties for recklessly leaving firearms near children or failing to report a lost or stolen firearm within two days
• Allowing localities to set their own rules on the presence of firearms in public
• Prohibiting those subject to a protective order from possessing firearms
• Creating a "red flag" law that allows law enforcement to temporarily seize a gun from a person deemed to pose a danger to themselves or others

Now let's break these out:

Background checks. Federal law requires Federal Firearm License (FFL) holders, which are gun stores, pawn shops, gunsmiths and individuals who buy and sell 20+ weapons a month, to perform a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) using the information a buyer/seller writes on a BATF Form 4473. Private sales did not require any kind of state or federal involvement in the firearm transfer. Now, private sales must also be done at a gun store, et.al., because citizens do not have access to NICS, only entities like law enforcement and FFL holders.

One-a-month: One of the ways I illustrate how stupid or hypocritical something is is to switch gender roles or the item in question. So if you replace "handgun" with "roll of toilet paper," it sounds beyond ludicrous, right? There you go.

Penalties for being reckless. I have to ask, who would define "reckless"? The government. If I left an (unloaded) firearm near an infant, or near a teenager who is mature about the handling of firearms, I could fall under that "reckless" definition if the prosecutor wanted me in prison. This is also one of those "after the fact" kind of penalties, like where a drunk driver who mows down a group of people is given a speeding ticket, on top of the DUI and counts of vehicular manslaughter.

Reporting stolen firearms. Let's say I'm out of town for a month and my residence is unoccupied during that time. During the second week, someone breaks in, steals my firearms and the next day kills someone with at least one of them. I'm not going to report my guns as stolen until I return in a couple of weeks because I don't know they're gone until I get home. I would be guilty of that "crime" because I didn't report it fast enough. Frankly, if I did report it in their (arbitrary) time frame, that wouldn't have stopped any of the crimes committed with my firearms, so what's the sense of this?

Local control of laws. The state government controls the issuance of things like concealed carry permits, even if they are done on the county level. This is a very stupid idea because if I have a STATE carry permit and I travel from Town A to Town B through Town C and the Town C police arrest me because they have more restrictive laws than A, B or the state, that's just not right.

Protective orders and red-flag laws. This is a total abandonment of due process of law and the concept of "innocent until proven guilty," and the level of abuse will be (and has been) epic. Swatting is similar. If I didn't like someone I knew that owned a firearm, I could take out a restraining order on them, or just called the police and say "Bob is standing outside in his front lawn, naked, with a beer in one hand and a rifle in the other, screaming at the moon." Under this law, the police would come and confiscate Bob's firearms and hold onto them until Bob proves a negative (he wasn't doing what I claimed).

And what's coming will be even worse. This, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is exactly what an overbearing government looks like and the exact reason why the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment to prevent government from doing garbage like this. And now because of COVID-19 and the heightened potential for a general breakdown of civilized society when the supply chain is disrupted or runs dry, the need for citizens to have the ability to defend themselves has never been greater. The best possible tool a person can have in a situation like this is a firearm and the will to use it.

A firearm (and the mental will to use it) is the only effective way a person can defend themselves in SHTF situations. Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee might be able to take on three gang-bangers armed with 2x4's, but I promise without a firearm you can't, especially if you're protecting children or other innocents.

Please, if you have, or intend on acquiring a firearm with the intent of self-defense, please get the training necessary to quickly and accurately operate that weapon, and you know in the deepest parts of your soul that you could kill another person. If you know you can't "drop the hammer," to defend yourself or others, don't buy it. You will not shoot at that critical second, you'll end up dead and the bad guys will have another weapon.

I am hearing about suppositions of "Trump delaying the election" and I thought I would add to the pile.

Any delay of elections for any reason will always be a "never nope" for me. That's not a "slippery slope," that's a cliff that would lead to the Banana Republic "President for Life" kind of crap, I don't care who is in the office. This could have been 1987 in the waning days of Reagan's second term and I would still give an unequivocal "no." However, many of the Leftist Media, who have accused Trump of powers that a) Obama had already usurped and b) powers they now are clamoring he use, are inducing panic by putting forth the supposition that "under what circumstances could Trump delay or suspend the election in November?"

The funniest one I could find said, "the Presidential line of succession would kick in, as Trump and Pence's term expires on 1/20/2021, possibly putting Nancy Pelosi (or another Democrat if they keep the House) as President. Sorry, if there's no presidential election in November, there's no House election either. No election, the entire House leaves office on January 3rd, because that's when their term expires. Now, 35 Senators (33 + 2 mid-term appointments) would also leave office and that would leave 31 D's, 2 Independent's and 30 R's in the Senate (and a Quorum), so there's a chance that a Dem would be the Senate President Pro Tempore on 1/20/2021. But there will be zero to do, as all spending must start in the House, which will be empty.

The second part of this that I'm going to emphatically "Nope Out" of is everyone voting from home, either by mail or over the Internet. Both of these have a 104% of massive fraud. And I would question the validity of the election no matter who won. Trump, Biden, Sanders, even Tom Hanks. I believe and have repeatedly stated there needs to be some effort made by the individual to be able to express their vote at the ballot box. The chances of catching COVID-19 from going through the effort of going to your polling place and voting are almost zero if you take the proper precautions.

I believe the risk is worth it to keep alive a tradition that we have been doing for over 230 years now, which is the peaceful transfer of power every four years as chosen by the people. It is traditions like this that make the term "American" special. The concept that the power flows from the people to the government, not the government to the people is unique in the American State and always has been. I don't what that to change and I will violently oppose any intent to change that.

As I write this on the morning of April 5th, the world-wide total is 1,218,000+ confirmed cases of COVID-19/SARS-2 and 66,542 deaths. In the US, those numbers are 312,250 and 8,503.

I am referring to information in two articles, Coronavirus patients over age 80 have a death rate of 15%. Here's the death rate for every age bracket. And The 2019-nCoV Statistics Are Misleading: Why Everyone Already Knows And Acts Like This. I am also referring to CDC data on the H1N1 Influenza pandemic we had a couple of years ago.

Before I get into numbers, let me tickle your brain with this:

For the 2009-2010 H1N1 “Swine Flu” pandemic, plus from March to November 2014, we had several people appear in the US with the Ebola virus. Thankfully, the Ebola did not turn into a pandemic. In each case, the media took the path of “inform, downplay, do not induce panic.”

COVID-19 is admittedly different. “The Common Cold” is caused by several strains of viruses, namely rhinovirus, coronavirus (other than -19), respiratory syncytial virus, influenza and parainfluenza. The (rightfully) scary part of COVID-19 is that it is contagious before you are symptomatic, which is not usual.

Back in January, the media (and Democrat leaders) were in a “dismiss” mode, telling people to “go to Chinatown, get out and mingle,” and “Trump is a racist for calling this “the Chinese Disease” or whatever. Yet, why are the media in a “panic, upplay, misinform” mode today instead of doing what they did for H1N1 and Ebola? Because by and large the members of the media hate Trump. The media realized in February and March that they can use this crisis as a weapon against Trump to make him unelectable in November.

Do I think this can turn serious? Yes. Do I think it’s time to panic and or respond reflexively? No.

Now we can talk numbers.

For the H1N1, 76% of the fatalities were between 18 and 64. For COVID-19, 80% of the deaths so far are from people who were 65 and older.

If we take the deaths and divide them by the number of confirmed cases, my calculator shows a 2.71% fatality rate. Having a certification as a Project Manager, I am aware of a term used in risk management called “known unknowns.” This means “we know this thing is a risk to the completion of the project, but we don’t know how big the risk actually is.”

The second article uses math to explain a “known unknown” about disease, which is “how many people contracted this disease but recovered without specialized medical treatments”? Basically, if someone got sick, used OTC medications to address the symptoms and got better without seeing a doctor, they would fall into this “known unknown.”

This article came up with an admittedly very loose supposition that for every confirmed case, there’s an average of 4.3 cases that went unconfirmed and unnoticed. But even if that number is 2 undiagnosed cases for every confirmed case, that would change things drastically. In that case, including our known unknown of 2:1, that’s now 8,291 deaths against 917,460 infected, and we now have a death rate of 0.9%. And if we went high on the estimate, say 6:1 known unknowns, that’s 2.14 million infected and that death rate drops to 0.4%.

So here’s what we have to realize, then ask ourselves.

• COVID-19 is here to stay. Just like the cold, influenza, Conjunctivitis, AIDS/STD’s, we will never be rid of it. An annual vaccine might be developed, but get used to it folks.
• We really don’t have to change our behavior to keep it under control. What stops the spread of viruses in general are frequent hand-washing and not touching our eyes/nose/mouth/face after we touch potentially infected surfaces. We just have to do it all the time now, not just when we’re symptomatic.
• COVID-19 disproportionately affects the elderly and those with serious issues, especially respiratory-related conditions.

With those points out on the table, and now knowing what we know about the modality, methodology and fatality profile of this disease, do you think it’s justifiable to shut down the entire United States, or maybe just insulate/isolate those at the highest risk of dying from this?

Looking at the fatality rates, if you’re under 50 with no co-morbid conditions, you have a 1% chance of dying from this, if you even contract it at all. Statistically, you have a higher risk of dying in a vehicle crash commuting to work and home every day.

Knowing all of this, which sounds like the rational choice?

Shut down the entire US economy and everyone self-isolate for the foreseeable future?
-OR-
Get most people back to work, use appropriate anti-viral protocols (hand-washing, no face touching, etc.) and minimize exposure to those most vulnerable to sickness, namely the elderly and those with pulmonary issues.

I’m going to take the reasonable risk and go with the latter.