The Real Threat to Our Democracy

I have always been told that President Nixon’s actions in covering up the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel was a severe threat to democracy in American history, and so Nixon was obliged to resign. I have also been told that President Trump was such a grave threat to our democracy that he should have been impeached not just once but twice. If this is the standard, then what are we to do with a president whose administration colludes with big tech to suppress negative stories even before it is elected? Then, once elected, this administration attempts to establish a Board of Disinformation that actively creates an atmosphere of censorship that even a totalitarian regime such as the People’s Republic of China might envy.

Difficult as it might be to believe that something like that could happen in America, this was precisely the intention of the Biden administration and the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. As Jazz Shaw over at Hot Air reports:

It would appear that Alejandro Mayorkas has “some ‘splainin to do,” as the kids like to say these days. As you may recall, the Biden administration briefly attempted to set up a Ministry of Truth under the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year. The quickly abandoned office was fancifully named the “Disinformation Governance Board” and it was planned to be headed by Nina Jankowicz, who quickly left the government after the effort was curtailed and went on to register as a foreign agent for Great Britain. When Congress looked into the attempt to establish the board, Mayorkas offered lengthy testimony as to what had been going on and sang lofty praises of Jankowicz. But newly revealed documents presented by Senator Josh Hawley and others strongly suggest that the board had progressed far further than Mayorkas testified and he seemingly lied under oath about some of the details

During his testimony in May, Mayorkas claimed that the Ministry of Truth had only been in its planning stages and that the board “had not yet met” to plan any actions. But the leaked documents show that the board had initially met on Feb. 4, 2022, and had continued to schedule weekly meetings thereafter, despite not having been formally approved or established.

Further, the documents indicate that the board’s plans to partner with the Big Tech companies were “far more extensive” than Mayorkas or the Biden administration ever revealed. The Disinformation Board planned to meet with Nathaniel Gleicher of Meta, who was in charge of the company’s security policy group when they acted to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.

These revelations only serve to add another layer to the cake of badness surrounding the Biden administration’s coordination with social media platforms in an effort to suppress free speech in the name of “battling disinformation.” These efforts to enlist the aid of Big Tech to silence voices critical of various government policies are a clear violation of the First Amendment’s assurances of the right to free speech. They should be seen as obvious justifications for the impeachment of not only Mayorkas but Joe Biden himself. Of course, with the Democrats still controlling the Senate, that will almost certainly not happen, but this is a worrisome sign of how vastly the federal government has grown out of control and how the fundamental rights of citizens are being trodden upon or simply disregarded.

This attempt to give the federal government, in conjunction with Big Tech, the ability to censor dissenting voices is a threat to our liberties greater than anything Nixon did in the Watergate scandal. Nixon was only trying to cover up a tawdry and pointless effort by his campaign workers to attempt to influence the election of 1972. The Biden administration has been conspiring with social media gatekeepers to suppress information damaging to the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects. They have been attempting to establish totalitarian control over social media. That is a direct threat to the first amendment and to the constitutional order that guarantees American liberty. That is far worse than any other scandal in recent history.

The Biden administration must not be allowed to get away with this. Joe Biden must be impeached and removed from office along with Alejandro Mayorkas and anyone else implicated in these actions. The Department of Homeland Security should be abolished, along with the whole surveillance state that was set up in the wake of 9/11. It is becoming increasingly evident that the greatest threat to our lives and liberties comes not from Islamic terrorists but from our own government using the powers we have entrusted it to fight the threats from without, turned against us. We need to pare back the state to its constitutional limits if we’re to have any hope of maintaining the legacy of freedom bequeathed to us.

 

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Democracy Deniers

Everyone else is talking about the failed red wave in the last midterm elections, so I might as well put in my two cents worth. That is probably what my opinion is worth, but I might as well. It ought to have been a wave election. The alleged president Joe Biden is historically unpopular. The economy is doing poorly, with levels of inflation not seen since the Carter years. Biden is senile, and the United States has become a laughing stock under his administration. The Republicans should have won big. Why didn’t they?

There has been a lot of blame attached to President Trump, particularly from the establishment, Never Trump Republicans. It has to be admitted that thanks to the lying propaganda of the mainstream, Democratic (but I repeat myself) media, Trump has become toxic among large swaths of the public, particularly the low-information voters. Yet despite the narrative that Trump-backed candidates were losers, the vast majority of his candidates won the election. If there is anyone who deserves blame, it is more likely to be the Republican establishment, particularly Mitch McConnell. It seems obvious, to me that McConnell, along with most of the rest of the establishment Republicans, would prefer to be in the minority. This preference may be either because being in the minority absolves them from actually governing, or because they prefer to be in the junior wing of the elite uniparty rather than allow the people to have a say on governing the country.

But all this discussion of which Republican is at fault for the party’s disappointing showing in the last election is ignoring the elephant, or rather, the donkey in the room, the question of fraud. I do not know to what extent fraud determined the results of the elections of 2020 or 2022. I cannot prove that there was any fraud at all. The fact is, however, that it is all too easy, in many states, to commit election fraud. I do not believe that it was a coincidence that the Republicans did well in those states like Florida or my own state of Indiana, which have made some effort in securing our elections, while the Republicans did more poorly than expected in those states that did not. Call me cynical, but it seems to me to be obvious that where it is easy for people to cheat, many people will cheat. If you do not want people cheating, make it difficult to cheat. I do not believe that the Republicans are more honest or virtuous than the Democrats, yet it does seem that the Democrats are the main beneficiaries of electoral fraud in this country. The Democrats are certainly the ones who have opposed even the most elementary measures to secure our elections while sponsoring a ‘For the People‘ bill that would entrench fraud on a national scale while overturning what limited protections the Republicans have placed against electoral fraud.

The Republicans need to make election integrity an issue, perhaps the issue. Election integrity laws should be in place in all fifty states. This means everyone should be required to show proper identification at the polling place. Ballots should be paper, not electronic. Absentee voting should be limited to voters who legitimately cannot be physically present at the polling place; the physically disabled, soldiers deployed overseas, etc. There should be no same-day voter registration, no unsupervised ballot drop boxes, no ballot harvesting, no early voting, and no mail-in ballots that are not postmarked on or before election day. Ballots that lack a clear chain of custody should not be counted under any circumstances. Elections in states that fail to take these common-sense measures should be regarded as suspicious as best and assumed to be fraudulent.

The Democrats will, no doubt, call these measures acts of racist voter suppression. The fact is, however, that people of all races are more likely to vote when they see the process as honest. Why bother to vote when the outcome is already determined? Isn’t it racist to assume that Blacks or Hispanics are somehow incapable of acquiring documents that prove identity when it is all but impossible to get along in our society without some way of proving identity? The Democrats will continue to call those of us who are concerned with election integrity democracy deniers or election deniers. I would say that it is the Democrats, who stand in the way of election security who are the true democracy deniers. A government that is put into place through fraudulent, rigged elections can hardly be accurately described as democratic. People who are concerned about ‘our democracy’ can best show their concern by ensuring our elections are fair and honest.

COINTELPRO

Lately, there has been increasing skepticism among conservatives about the Federal Bureau of Investigation among many on the right. The raid on Mar-a-Lago, the involvement of the FBI in the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer, and perhaps the ‘insurrection’ of January 6, harassment of prominent Trump supporters such as Mike Lindell, and arrest of pro-life activists have all contributed to the impression that the FBI has become a corrupt and repressive tool of the Democratic Party and the deep state elites.

This new skeptical attitude represents a sea change in the positions of the Right and the Left. It used to be liberals who expressed doubts about the power and possible civil rights violations of federal law enforcement agencies while law and order conservatives have tended to blindly support the police at every level and ignore all but the most obvious cases of corruption and violations of civil rights. Now that the force of the federal government has become increasingly weaponized against conservative dissent, the Right is awakening to the very real dangers of an over-powerful FBI. The Left, which now benefits from the increased repressive power of the federal government now supports federal, though not local, law enforcement, and we see the strange spectacle of the same people who urged defunding the local police suggesting that questioning the FBI is somehow unpatriotic and taking the side of the domestic terrorists.

The fact is that contrary to what many conservatives believe the corruption of the FBI is no new thing. The FBI has, in fact, been problematic since its beginning, with a long history of civil rights violations and prioritizing suppressing dissent over fighting crime. Most people have been unaware of the dangers posed by the FBI because they have generally targeted unpopular fringe groups. It is only recently that the FBI has used its power against mainstream organizations. The danger has been there all along, however.

To see the threat the FBI has posed to our liberties, one needs to look no further than COINTELPRO. According to Wikipedia, COINTELPRO was:

a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations

COINTELPRO began in 1956 and only ended when the program was revealed to the public by the Citizen’s Commission to Investigate the FBI in 1971. The Citizen’s Commission managed to steal documents from an FBI office and get them published by the Washington Post. Congress subsequently investigated COINTELPRO as part of the Church Committee’s general investigation of illegal surveillance and covert actions by intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the U. S. government.

The targets of COINTELPRO included:

 feminist organizations,the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement and Black Power movement (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party), a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and far-right groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States’ Rights Party.

Now, to be clear, most, if not all, of these organizations deserved at least some scrutiny from law enforcement. The Communist Party and associated Socialist organizations were, at least in theory, committed to the violent overthrow of the US government, and the Communists were funded by a hostile foreign power. The Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers were both racist organizations with a history of violence. Not all of the anti-Viet Nam war protestors were peaceful flower children. It would have been entirely appropriate for the FBI to conduct surveillance on many of these groups. Indeed it might have been negligent for them not to keep an eye on them. The problem is the FBI did much more than simply watch these groups. The FBI actively sought to harass, break up, and discredit organizations that held unpopular fringe political opinions. The FBI’s methods included:

• Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit, disrupt and negatively redirect action. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
• Psychological warfare: The FBI and police used myriad “dirty tricks” to undermine movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials, and others to cause trouble for activists. They used bad-jacketing to create suspicion about targeted activists, sometimes with lethal consequences.
• Harassment via the legal system: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, “investigative” interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.
• Illegal force: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations.The objective was to frighten or eliminate dissidents and disrupt their movements.
• Undermine public opinion: One of the primary ways the FBI targeted organizations was by challenging their reputations in the community and denying them a platform to gain legitimacy. Hoover specifically designed programs to block leaders from “spreading their philosophy publicly or through the communications media”. Furthermore, the organization created and controlled negative media meant to undermine black power organizations. For instance, they oversaw the creation of “documentaries” skillfully edited to paint the Black Panther Party as aggressive, and false newspapers that spread misinformation about party members. The ability of the FBI to create distrust within and between revolutionary organizations tainted their public image and weakened chances at unity and public support.

These methods go far beyond what ought to be acceptable for a law enforcement agency in a free, constitutional republic. These are police state methods, the sort of procedure you might expect from the KGB or the Gestapo. All of the members of the political organizations targeted by the FBI had a perfect right to belong to and promote the ideology of those organizations so long as they obeyed the law and abstained from violence. There is no law, and ought not to be a law that prohibits anyone from being a Communist, a Black Panther, a Klansman, or anything else they want to be.

COINTELPRO officially ended in April 1971. The FBI was supposed to have ended the illegal surveillance and harassment of law-abiding citizens, but there is good reason to suspect their illegal shenanigans have continued. Over the years, members of fringe movements on both the right and left have complained about the FBI’s actions. Lately, the FBI has been more blatant in its actions against groups deemed to be threatening to the political order, and as the FBI, along with many other federal agencies, has become less professional and more politicized under the Obama and Biden administrations, it has increasingly targeted mainstream conservatives.

The history of the FBI has generally been that of a rouge agency that threatens rather than defends the life and liberty of American citizens. A law enforcement agency with wide-ranging powers and contempt for the rights of the American people has no place in a constitutional republic. If there is, indeed, a need for a federal law enforcement agency like the FBI as part of our government, it should be an agency of strictly limited jurisdiction and under the oversight of Congress. I do not believe the FBI can be redeemed or reformed. It must be defunded and abolished.

Trump for President 2024

When Donald Trump began his run for president back in 2015, I was a Trump skeptic. I did not think Trump was a serious candidate. I did not believe he had any chance of winning the Republican nomination, much less the general election. If Trump were nominated, I thought he would be a sure loser against Hilary Clinton. If by some miracle, Trump won, I was sure he would govern as a mushy moderate centrist. Trump’s political stands in the past gave me no confidence that he would turn out to be a conservative president.

Indiana doesn’t hold its primaries until May, and by that time. the once enormous Republican field had dwindled to just two candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. I voted for Ted Cruz. By that time, however, it was obvious that Donald Trump was going to be the Republican nominee for president, running against Hilary Clinton. Since I knew that Mrs. Clinton was as corrupt as her husband and a leftist ideologue, I resigned myself to voting for Trump as the lesser evil.

A strange thing happened in the campaign, however. The people who supported Donald Trump were really enthusiastic about their candidate. Trump generated more enthusiasm than any Republican candidate in recent memory, he was no Mitt Romney or Bob Dole. The people loved him. More importantly, the people who opposed Donald Trump seemed to really, really hate him. The Democrats have always announced the current Republican presidential candidate as the latest incarnation of Adolf Hitler, but this time they seemed to mean it. Even more interesting, many Republicans and conservative pundits expressed the opinion that Trump was unacceptable as a political candidate and would support Clinton as the lesser evil. It seemed to me that all the people I really hate really hated Donald Trump. That led me to believe that he must be doing something right. I began to paraphrase Matt Stone’s comment about liberals and conservatives saying that I hated Donald Trump, but I really fucking hated the people who hated Donald Trump.

Trump won the election, of course, and he exceeded my expectations. Trump turned out to be, in many ways, the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan himself. Trump appointed conservative justices who respected the constitution to the Supreme Court and made the entire judicial system more conservative. He encouraged manufacturers to return to the US, and the economy was booming, with record lows in unemployment for Blacks and Hispanics. Trump didn’t manage to build the wall on the southern border, but illegal immigration slowed to a trickle. Trump was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to initiate any new military actions, but he managed to promote peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. He was a successful president despite having both political parties and virtually the entire media against him. So, while I was a reluctant Trump voter in 2016, by 2020, I was an enthusiastic Trump supporter.

Naturally, our elites couldn’t have an outsider have a successful presidency, especially when the President’s Make America Great Again agenda proved so beneficial to the American people and so inimical to their own interests. They certainly couldn’t have him reelected for another four years. As the 202o election approached, they made every effort to ‘fortify’ the election to ensure Trump’s loss. The COVID pandemic provided a perfect pretext to destroy the economy with lockdowns and illegally change the electoral laws in key states, making fraud by mail-in votes much easier. Social media companies suppressed information about the criminal acts of the Biden family while spreading misinformation about Trump. Finally, on election night, they resorted to blatant cheating then Trump ‘lost’ the election.

By all indications, Donald Trump is planning to run again in 2024. I have had somewhat ambiguous feelings about this. Right now, Donald Trump is seventy-six years old. In 2024, he will be seventy-eight, the same age Joe Biden was when he entered the White House. While Trump does not show the obvious signs of dementia Biden has shown, I wonder if Trump will be too old for the j0b. In addition, there is no denying that Trump has been a polarizing figure. If half the country loves him, the other half certainly hates him with a passion. Maybe the Republicans should go with a younger, less obnoxious candidate. Maybe, they should nominate a candidate who supports Trump’s policies, but that lacks Trump’s offputting persona, someone like Ron DeSantis, perhaps.

I was leaning towards that position, but recent events have caused me to change my mind and support Donald Trump for 2024. First, there was the unprecedented raid on Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. Then the alleged President denounced the half of the country that supports Trump as ‘semi-Fascists’ and a threat to ‘our democracy. The elites who have spent the four years of Trump’s presidency hating him and everything he stands for still hate him and anyone who supports him. As Trump has said, “They don’t hate me. They hate you. I’m just in the way.”

In his first term, Trump had managed to expose the corruption and rottenness of many of our institutions. In his second term, he might be able to purge the putrefaction in the system. That is why they hate and fear him. That is why they hate and fear we the people. That is why Trump must be elected to a second term in 2024. That is why I have put aside all of my reservations and enthusiastically support Trump for president in 2024.

Mar-a-Lago

I think I can safely say that with the FBI’s raid of President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar A Lago on August 8, 2022, America is no longer the constitutional republic we have grown up in. We are now well on the way to a complete transition to an authoritarian banana republic complete with an arbitrary, politicized justice system, rigged elections, a state controlled new media, and a tyrannical disregard for the fundamental civil rights of the citizenry.

Here is Mr. Trump’s statement on this disgraceful affair.

These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.

The political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!

Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 E-mails AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable. She even took antique furniture, and other items from the White House.

I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before. The establishment hated it. Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican Party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.

I will continue to fight for the Great American People!

Robert Spencer says it best:

When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s home on Monday, a key aspect of what made the United States of America great and free has been lost, and likely cannot be recovered. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson detested one another for years before their eventual reconciliation, but neither one used the agencies of the U.S. government to hound, persecute or discredit the other. Other bitter political opponents throughout the history of the republic have never before used the government’s own mechanisms of justice to do injustice to their foes. Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their henchmen have brought America to a new phase of its history, and it is not likely to be one that is marked by respect for the rule of law or defense of the rights of individual citizens. Instead, we are entering an ugly age of authoritarianism, in which the brute force of the state is used to bend the people to the will of the tyrant.

This is banana republic stuff. This is the kind of thing that moved Woodrow Wilson to intervene militarily in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua, explaining: “We are friends of constitutional government in America; we are more than its friends, we are its champions. I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men.” Wilson was an authoritarian scoundrel and one of the worst presidents we have ever endured, but much as he hated Theodore Roosevelt and feared that he would be reelected to the presidency in 1920 (instead, Roosevelt died in 1919), Wilson never had rogue government agents raid Roosevelt’s home looking for something they could use to pin some crime on him.

 

The lesson is clear: in America today, in the corrupt kleptocracy of Joe Biden, you have to have the right opinions. Then all doors will open for you and you can even break laws with impunity, and have no fear of prosecution. But if you dare to dissent from the opinions of the elites, prepare to be hounded by the new super-IRS and the weaponized FBI, and you’ll face raids, and prison, and who knows what else is coming.

Precisely. The sole purpose of this raid is to find something, anything they can use against Donald Trump to prevent him from running again. What’s next? Will they arrest Trump on trumped-up charges and then announce he committed suicide? Or perhaps he will have a “heart attack” while in federal custody. I feel like a crazy conspiracy theorist just writing this, but apparently, they are done even pretending the rule of law is operative in today’s new America. 

Meanwhile, the Republicans are having fits. It remains to be seen whether they are all talk or will actually do something to stop this lawless regime. Honestly, I am not confident that they will finally grow a spine.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is promising an investigation if the Republicans win control of the House of Representatives. 

Yes, that will work. 

What is Mr. McCarthy planning to do when Attorney General Merrick Garland simply refuses to cooperate with any investigation just as Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder did? Is he going to call on the Justice Department to prosecute Garland? Is he going to call on the FBI to arrest him? Does Mr. McCarthy honestly expect the the politicized Justice Department that authorized this unprecedented and illegal action against Donald Trump to suddenly start following the law? Who does he think he’s kidding? What’s to stop the FBI from declaring that McCarthy was involved in the January 6th “insurrection” and harassing him?

If by some chance the Republicans do manage to gain a large majority in Congress and Congress is still an actual independent branch of government after this year, the second thing they ought to do is defund and ultimately abolish the FBI. (The first thing would be to impeach Joe Biden on charges of treason and abuse of power.) Abolishing the FBI might seem a radical step, but I would argue that the mere existence of such a powerful agency is a radical departure from the founding fathers’ conception of how the federal government should operate. They would be appalled at the scope and power of the federal government today and would rightly be concerned that an unaccountable federal law enforcement agency would be more likely to be used to oppress the citizenry than to catch lawbreakers. This is precisely the sort of thing that caused them to rebel against King George III.

The existence of a centralized federal law enforcement agency like the Federal Bureau of Investigation has always been problematic in a free, constitutional republic such as ours, given the enormous temptation for such an agency to become an American KGB or Gestapo, as President Harry Truman had warned in 1948

We want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him

Mr. Truman would be alarmed, though hardly unsurprised at the extent to which the FBI has become nothing more than the Praetorian Guard for the nation’s ruling elite. The legacy of the FBI in recent decades has been one of an increasingly politicized and incompetent rogue agency. I doubt this is actually a recent development. Even in Truman’s time, Hoover seemed more concerned with harassing dissidents than fighting crime.  He was more interested in surveilling the minuscule Communist Party than confronting the Mafia, which he denied even existed. I suspect the FBI’s reputation for crime fighting rests more on Mr. Hoover’s ability at spin than on any real prowess in catching the bad guys. Even if Hoover’s reputation was entirely deserved, the extent to which he violated the civil rights of so many Americans more than outweighs the good he did. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has become a threat to our liberties. It is today an even greater threat than it was in Hoover’s days. It should be abolished. If there is a need for a federal law enforcement agency, it should be one kept on a very short leash with limited jurisdiction and under the supervision of our elected representatives. 

In the meantime, we should remember the lesson from the Mar-a-Lago raid. We no longer live in a country with a government of the people, by the people, and for the people but one that is of the elite, by the elite, and solely for the elite. 

Ditch Mitch

By all accounts, the Republican Party should have a great showing in the midterm elections this November. Most pundits believe that the Republicans will almost certainly win control of the House of Representatives and they have a more than fair chance of gaining control in the Senate. The Republicans, being the Stupid Party, however, will probably manage to screw up what should be the biggest red wave in decades. Mitch McConnell, in particular, seems to be trying his best to make sure he remains the Minority Leader in the Senate.

Jeffrey Carter explains why the Republicans need new leadership

The Republicans looked like they would win the Senate and the House this fall. The Red Wave was real. It still might be but Mitch McConnell is doing all he can to screw it up.

The Republicans are known as “the stupid party” for a good reason. As a former resident of Illinois, I have experienced the stupidity of the Republican Party firsthand. Democrats run Illinois and have for a half-century. Republicans scream like two-year-olds and when they are handed their goldfish crackers they keep quiet and roll over while the adults eat steak.

There is no crime in changing out of poor leadership. Lincoln ran through a lot of generals until he landed on US Grant. General George C. Marshall got rid of all the top generals ahead of WW2 and restaffed the entire general cadre with younger generals that could fight the next war. Companies get rid of poor-performing executives all the time. McConnell is a poor leader because he enables the worst in elected officials.

Top movers and shakers in the party will tell you that Mitch is a “knife fighter” and he did do that with the SCOTUS. It took balls of steel to derail Merrick Garland’s nomination and it looks genius now given that Garland has proven to be nothing more than a third-rate apparatchik at the Department of Justice. He thinks nothing of using the government power of his office to attack political rivals. But, one victory doesn’t make a season. Do you want to be the NY Yankees or the Cleveland Indians?

At his core Mitch is GOPe and GOPe is not good for the United States. Instead of a fast double timed march to socialism or corporatism, it’s slower. GOPe doesn’t ruffle feathers and won’t actually change anything.

He goes on to give some good reasons why Mitch McConnell should go, but I have an even more fundamental reason why we need to ditch Mitch. The man is simply too old. Right now, Mitch is eighty years old. He has been in the Senate since 1985. Now, I realize that advances in science and medicine have made it possible for people to remain relatively vigorous even into old age, and maybe eighty is the new sixty; but the fact remains that the human body, no matter how healthy, begins to shut down in the seventh and eighth decades. I cannot believe Senator McConnell could be as effective a legislator as he was in his prime.

Moreover, the fact that McConnell has been in the Senate since 1985 marks him a relic of a different era. When Mitch McConnell began his career, Republicans and Democrats may have differed on the policies they advocated, but politicians in both parties still wanted what was best for America. That was the time when Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill could put aside their differences and have dinner with one another. Those days are over. The Democratic Party is no longer the party of FDR, JFK, and LBJ. It is not even the party of Bill Clinton. The far-left, America-hating extremists who are only interested in seizing power and fundamentally transforming the United States into a socialist totalitarian despotism have taken over the Democratic Party. The debate between the parties is no longer what would benefit the country but whether the country deserves to be benefited at all. Mitch McConnell and all too many older Republicans do not seem to understand that times have changed. Bipartisanship and compromise are no longer desirable ways to produce needed legislation but steps toward the dissolution of our country. If Mitch McConnell can not be made to understand the old ways no longer work, he needs to be replaced by someone who does.

Some more here.

A November Surprise?

I read an interesting article about Joe Biden and the upcoming midterm elections at Yahoo News the other day.

Little is going President Joe Biden’s way as the summer lull sets in before the crush of midterm elections.

Gas prices are up; his approval rating is down. A conservative Supreme Court majority is hacking away at his agenda by abolishing federal abortion rights and undermining environmental protections meant to curb climate change. His own party is losing patience, fearing that any chance of consequential change while Democrats control Congress is vanishing.

“There needs to be urgency and action,” said Rebecca Kirszner Katz, who was an aide to the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “Folks have been saying since the day Joe Biden was elected that we need to move fast. There are a lot of things we need to get done for the American people.”

I think that Mr. Biden has done quite enough to the American people. Note the bias though; “abolishing abortion rights”, “undermining environmental protections”.  I would say that the recent  Supreme Court decisions have gone a long way toward restoring constitutional government.

Biden has been rolling out plans to cope with the mounting crises. He has a three-part plan to reduce inflation. Another plan to suspend the gas tax in hopes of bringing prices down. Then there’s his long-shot plan to enshrine abortion rights into law by suspending the Senate filibuster rule requiring 60-vote supermajorities.

Is Biden planning to reverse his cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline? Will he allow more leases on federal lands to develop our energy resources? Will Biden cut the red tape to allow more refineries to be built? Probably not. Biden is not going to do anything to reverse the bad decisions that caused the inflation and high gas prices. Instead, the man “elected” to restore the democratic norms destroyed by Trump is going to weaken our democratic norms to appease the most extreme Democratic constituencies.

“He has to change course,” said a Democratic congressman, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting the White House. “His numbers are in the toilet. Whatever he’s doing is not working.”

“There needs to be urgency and action,” said Rebecca Kirszner Katz, who was an aide to the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “Folks have been saying since the day Joe Biden was elected that we need to move fast. There are a lot of things we need to get done for the American people.”

Biden has been rolling out plans to cope with the mounting crises. He has a three-part plan to reduce inflation. Another plan to suspend the gas tax in hopes of bringing prices down. Then there’s his long-shot plan to enshrine abortion rights into law by suspending the Senate filibuster rule requiring 60-vote supermajorities.

Inside the White House, though, advisers grasp that what’s required aren’t just plans, but votes. The 50-50 split in the Senate between the parties has proved an insurmountable obstacle for Biden’s grandest ambitions — to expand the social safety net in ways that insulate the most vulnerable Americans from economic shocks.

“He has to change course,” said a Democratic congressman, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting the White House. “His numbers are in the toilet. Whatever he’s doing is not working.”

“There’s a benefit to having the president out there every day using his executive power to show the country you’re fighting for them,” the Democratic lawmaker said. “And it’s almost like he’s hiding. He has the bully pulpit, and he’s either hiding behind it or under it. I don’t know where he is.”

The problem is that every time Biden makes a public appearance, his poll ratings drop, for good reason. People can see just how incompetent and senile the man is. The best strategy for the Democrats might be to hide Biden in the basement of the White House and hope people forget he’s the alleged president.

Allies say that Biden, along with others in the administration, will take better advantage of their megaphone in the run-up to the midterms, portraying Republicans as out of touch. Biden, they said, is energized by the Roe v. Wade decision, which may be a prelude to future Supreme Court rulings rolling back rights to same-sex marriage and contraception.

Unpopular presidents tend to fare poorly in midterm elections. But Biden-world sees an opening to defy the historical trends, springing from some of the same setbacks that have so angered the Democratic base.

“I can tell you that on the street, what you hear is a bubbling, seething cauldron of anger at the Republican Party for putting in these antediluvian judges who think they can take us back to the 18th century,” said Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington state. “My spidey sense and the polling indicate it’s going to help people decide not to vote for the red team.

That bubbling, seething cauldron of anger that Mr. Inslee is sensing is from people finding themselves unable to afford to buy groceries, fill their car’s tanks or walk the streets in safety thanks to policies promoted by the Democrats. I have a feeling that trying to distract voters from their misery with shiny objects isn’t going to help the blue team this time.

Most Democrats fret about a midterm wipeout, but recent polling shows grounds for optimism. Bryan Bennett, a pollster for Navigator Research, a coalition of progressive pollsters, noted that something “weird” is happening in this political moment. Biden’s approval rating is hovering around 40%, which suggests that Republican victories in the November midterms will be not so much a wave as a “tsunami,” he said. And yet in polls pitting generic Democrats against Republicans in congressional races, Democrats perform better than expected given the president’s low standing. Indeed, since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, three polls came out showing Democrats leading Republicans by anywhere from 3 to 7 percentage points.

“It’s a new election,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg wrote in a blog. “The chances of the anti-MAGA majority showing up again — as it did in 2018 and 2020 — have increased dramatically.”

I take it that the Democrats are going to repeat their strategy of 2020 and cheat whenever and wherever possible. It may be harder to cheat in 435 Congressional and 35 Senatorial elections than it was for the presidential election, but they may manage to fortify the results of some close elections. I hope the Republicans are watching out for a November Surprise this election cycle, but they are the stupid party so I’m not terribly optimistic.

The Evil Party and the Stupid Party

It is often said that the Democrats are the evil party and the Republicans are the stupid party. If there is any doubt that the Democrats are indeed the evil party, consider the complete meltdown they are having over the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe versus Wade. Keep in mind that the Court’s decision on Dobbs versus Jackson Women’s Health Organization does not actually outlaw abortion anywhere. It simply refers the matter back to the states, where state legislatures can settle the question democratically. The idea that the people of each state can decide for themselves what to do about abortion ought not to be controversial yet the Democrats are furious over the possibility that fewer infants will be murdered in the womb. That is evil.

Let’s be clear about what the debate on abortion is really over. It is not about women’s bodies or reproductive health. It is about murdering human beings before they are even born. Killing an innocent person is always an intrinsically evil act, whatever the justification. Deliberately killing an innocent human being can only be justified if it is necessary to save the life of another human being, and even then, it is a lesser evil rather than a positive good. A mother who kills her child is performing an abominable act, one that is contrary to nature. Abortion is always an evil act unless it is done to preserve the life or health of the mother. A political party that supports abortion right up to the moment of birth can only be called the Evil Party.

If the Democrats are evil, the Republicans are stupid. I do not believe that any other political party in the history of politics has demonstrated quite the knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as the Republican has consistently shown. As it stands, due to the catastrophic record of the alleged president Biden and the Democrats in Congress, the Republicans are poised to win huge victories in the November election. All Republicans have to do to ensure a red tsunami this fall is to avoid alienating their base into staying home instead of voting. What are the Republicans, at least the GOP leaders in the Senate doing? Working to alienate potential voters so that they will decide to stay home by supporting a highly problematic Democrat “gun safety” bill. Fourteen Republican Senators, who ought to have known better, including Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Indiana’s own Todd Young, along with the usual traitors like Mitt Romney voted to support a bill that will do nothing to make our streets safer but will help to abridge our constitutional rights.

Alienating your supporters to appease people who will never support you is stupid. Making compromises with people who believe that compromise means you give up something you want while they give up nothing at all is stupid. Making compromises with people who view each compromise as just another step towards their long-term goals is stupid. Breaking promises to your voters and refusing to fight for your principles in the face of opposition is both cowardly and stupid.

The leaders of the Republican Party are, for the most part, either stupid or cowards. Why should we continue to vote for people who will not deliver? Maybe we need a new party in America. Instead of the Evil Party and the Stupid Party, maybe we need a Smart, Good Party.

Roe Hysteria

If the leaked draft of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion is any indication, the Supreme Court may soon be overturning Roe v. Wade. Naturally, the Democrats are throwing a fit. They are getting out their Handmaid’s Tale costumes

 

Women’s fashion after Roe is overturned

and predicting that overturning Roe v. Wade will result in back-alley abortions all over the country, a ban on contraceptives and interracial marriages, the segregation of LGBTYQEIEIO children in classrooms, dogs, and cats living together, and other signs of mass hysteria.’

 

They should calm down. The only thing that overturning Roe v. Wade will do is return the issue of abortion to the state legislatures, where it rightfully belongs. It is likely that the more conservative states, like Utah or Alabama, will either ban or place severe constraints on abortion, but more liberal states, like California or Massachusetts, will continue to permit abortion right up to the moment of birth. Those states in the middle will place varying restrictions on what point in pregnancy abortions are allowed, as the people of each state see fit. 

It is usually best to resolve contentious social issues like abortion through the democratic process of compromise, give and take, and consensus-building rather than have solutions imposed by judicial fiat. Solutions that develop that way may not be to everyone’s satisfaction; the best compromises leave everyone equally unhappy, but everyone feels as if they have had some input into policymaking rather than having policies imposed upon them. Given that a consensus on any controversial issue is impossible in a continent-spanning nation of more than three hundred million people, controversial issues like abortion ought to be resolved at the state level rather than trying to impose a one-size-fits-all solution for the entire United States. Diverse nations need diverse policies. I thought that the progressives support diversity, but perhaps that is the wrong kind of diversity.

If the Supreme Court had not legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade, some general consensus would have evolved over time. The consensus would have changed as public opinions about abortion changed. It is most likely that abortion would have been legalized in most states during the 1970s. Then, in the more conservative 1980s, many states might have imposed more restrictions on abortion, perhaps limiting abortion to the first trimester. If public opinion on abortion changed, the laws concerning abortion would change. That would be the democratic and diverse way to address contentious social issues. I thought the left was in favor of democracy and diversity. Perhaps that is the wrong kind of diversity, while they are only really in favor of ‘our democracy’ as opposed to real democracy in which people govern themselves.

The Democrats are fond of calling pro-life positions extreme. If this is the case, they have nothing to worry about. If the Republicans adopt extreme positions on abortion or any other social issue, they will be punished at the ballot box. Perhaps the Democrats realize that it is their own position, permitting abortion right up to the moment of birth for any conceivable reason, is, in fact, the extreme position.

Americans are deeply ambivalent about abortion. Few Americans want to see abortion banned altogether, yet more and more Americans are coming around to the idea that abortion is morally wrong. A majority of Americans may believe that women have a right to choose whether to get an abortion, yet many feel that this is a choice women ought not to make. Even most pro-choice Americans do not believe that late-term abortion should be permitted. If there is any consensus at all on this most contentious issue, it is that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, not that women should shout their abortions.

By imposing a solution by fiat and cutting short the necessary debate necessary in a democracy, Roe v. Wade played a not inconsiderable role in making American politics more divisive and polarized. In the end, overturning Roe v. Wade might be one of the best ways to purge some of the poison from American politics and restore some degree of civility. Unless the Democrats decide the resolve the issue the way they tried to resolve the last major issue they were on the wrong side of.

Elon Musk Buys Twitter

So, Elon Musk has bought Twitter for $44 billion. Musk’s decision to acquire Twitter seems to be due to his concerns about Twitter’s policy of censoring political opinions in particular  Twitter’s suspension of the Babylon Bee for the hateful conduct of identifying Dr. Rachel Levine as a man, even though he is, in fact, a man.

                                                   The New Boss

Mr. Musk promises to make Twitter a free speech platform once again in his words:

Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated

and

I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.

Frankly, I wish he had spent that $44 billion on his spaceship to Mars or improving the Tesla. I am sure Mr. Musk means well, but I don’t think there is any way to save Twitter. The problem with Twitter isn’t just the arbitrary and one-sided censorship that the current management of Twitter is employing. The problem runs deeper than any particular policy that Elon Musk or anyone else could change. The problem with Twitter lies in the nature of the platform.

I have said in the past that if the Devil wanted to devise a social media platform to turn people against one another and make the earth more like Hell, he would design something very much like Twitter. The 280-character limit does nothing to encourage careful, nuanced discussion or even discretion. Instead, Twitter rewards the quick zing, the snarky comeback with the rush and excitement of seeing your tweets retweeted and commented upon. If Elon Musk really wants to help everyone, the best thing he could do would be to shut down Twitter altogether.

Still, it has been both fun and instructive to observe how leftists have come out against freedom of expression. They were never really in favor of the concept of free speech, or really, of freedom in general, but after the events of the last few years, they have taken the masks off, figuratively speaking, that is. They still insist on masking up against COVID. Ever since the announcement that Elon Musk was buying Twitter and intended to make it a free speech platform, we have been warned repeatedly of the dangers that free speech poses to “our democracy.” Robert Reich warns us that:

Musk says he wants to “free” the internet. But what he really aims to do is make it even less accountable than it is now, when it’s often impossible to discover who is making the decisions about how algorithms are designed, who is filling social media with lies, who’s poisoning our minds with pseudo-science and propaganda, and who’s deciding which versions of events go viral and which stay under wraps.

Make no mistake: this is not about freedom. It’s about power.

In Musk’s vision of Twitter and the internet, he’d be the wizard behind the curtain – projecting on the world’s screen a fake image of a brave new world empowering everyone.

In reality, that world would be dominated by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science or the common good.

That’s Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. And the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth. For the rest of us, it would be a brave new nightmare.

You may have noticed how dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and all the rest have all been staunch defenders of the freedom of the people they have ruled to say whatever they wanted. Reich, and many other leftists, are saying that someone rich and powerful like Musk or Trump may use Twitter or any other social media platform to spread lies and misinformation, therefore social media companies and perhaps the government should be able to control what is said. In other words, to protect “our democracy” from would-be dictators, it is necessary to act like a dictator and control what can be said, shutting down purveyors of misinformation. This doesn’t make much sense, but little of what the left believes these days makes much sense.

I wish Mr. Musk well in his efforts, but I don’t think I will be reopening that Twitter account that I never even used. I think that we would be better off if we all started to talk to each other instead of tweeting at each other