About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Midterm Election - First, Do No More Harm


Special note before reading the post:

Early voting has started across America & it signals a very heavy Democrat turnout for the 2022 midterm election.  Based on data from states with party registration & the U.S. Elections Project more registered Democrats than registered Republicans have already voted with the heaviest early voting recorded in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, California, & Texas.  As of November 1 more than 27 million ballots had been cast of which 909,003 (71% registered Democrats & 20% registered Republicans) were cast in Pennsylvania - more than 4 times the number of ballots cast in Pennsylvania in early voting in 2018. 

The Harvard Youth Poll has determined that once again @ least 40% of people 18 to 29 plan to vote & by a 57% to 31% margin they favor Democrats - a margin that has increased 5 points since Spring.  These young voters are impressed by Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, the student loan debt cancellation program, & the bipartisan gun reform bill.

A word to the wise:  to those who see that the government has become large enough & powerful enough to overwhelm the will of the people, elections are the one way we can control or reform a direction of the country we don't like.  The above statistics do not reflect polls or opinions but rather the energy of the Democrat party during the 2022 midterm election - in 2022 Democrats already have won special elections in New York & Alaska & defeated a proposed state constitutional amendment to restrict abortion rights in conservative Kansas.  It will take the largest Republican turnout possible to keep the country from further aligning with the Progressives' rejection of our founding & the continuous rise of bureaucratic despotism.

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"(For the) first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if, in fact, things continue down the path they are going.  We've got a guy I know fairly well.  He's not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.  We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy & the Cuban missile crisis.  We're trying to figure out what is Putin's off-ramp." - Joe Biden, speaking of Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons in his unprovoked war against Ukraine following Russian setbacks in that war.  Biden, the American Commander-In-Chief, is a slightly senile elderly man who is in possesion of the nuclear launch codes & whose party controls both chambers of Congress.


 click on photo to enlarge

Recently I heard many Progressive Democrat commentators say that Republicans have no answers for any of the issues of the day.  Almost immediately I thought of the crime surge in NYC, caused by soft on crime DAs, that includes random & unprovoked attacks that precludes many tourists & business people from going into the city.  Lee Zeldin, Republican candidate for Governor of NY, pledges that, if elected, he would fire Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg on Day 1.  Now I am usually not a one issue voter but if I lived in NY that would be enough for me to vote for Zeldin.  How can people live where violent repeat criminals are put back on the street within hours after being arrested?

Well, this made me think of other issues of the day:

1.  The highest inflation in the country in over 40 years - started to increase the month Biden took office;

2.  Wages have not kept up with inflation - the year over year real average hourly inflation adjusted earnings have declined every month since Biden took office;

3.  The U.S. has the highest gasoline prices on record - Biden looks to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, & Iran to increase production but not America (Biden cancels Keystone XL pipeline the afternoon of inauguration day, January 20, 2021 & signs an executive order suspending new oil & gas lease sales on federal lands & waters the first week in office);

4.  Emergency oil reserves are released to artificially lower gasoline prices in the short term - to increase supply & appease Green New Dealers by not drilling for new oil, Biden has released 1 million barrels of oil per day for six months from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) planning to replace this oil in the SPR when prices fall to $67 to $72 per barrel.   Oil futures traders would like to know when that is.  Saudi Arabia plans to keep oil prices in the range of $90 to $100 per barrel for the immediate future & the December 2023 Crude Oil, Light Sweet Futures Contract (NYM) settled @ $75.04 on October 20.  Only 400 million barrels of oil remain in the 714 million barrel SPR holding capacity for a real emergency & the inflation brought about from shifting from releasing reserves to refilling them during an emergency is unimaginable.

5.  Mortgage interest rates are @ a 14 year high;

6.  Over 7,000 migrants cross our southwest border illegally every day (record 2,721,269 enforcement actions in FY 2022) - Kamala Harris says the border is secure;  The 2,721,269 figure is larger than the population of 15 states, all but our two largest cities, the total U.S. military, & the active duty militaries of both the Chinese & Russians.

7.  Democrat calls for defunding the police & abolishing both the Border Patrol & ICE have spread to demoralizing the military - the Army made only 75% of its FY 2022 recruiting goal & the Navy was short about 200 officers.  Unbelievably, only one-quarter of Americans between 17 & 24 are eligible to serve being disqualified for obesity, addiction, & criminal history.  Only a very small percentage of those who are eligible even want to serve, having formed unfavorable opinions of the country & the military from government school indoctrination of America being a racist imperialist country.  Also, people feel Biden deserted Americans on the Afghanistan battlefield where ten Marines, two soldiers, & one Navy corpsman were killed during the Afghanistan 2021 politically motivated withdrawal that left $80B worth of equipment that armed the Taliban & gave them an air force & 16,035 pairs of night goggles.  The Biden goal of having a "woke" military that is so politically correct that it emphasizes diversity & sensitivity training over unit cohesiveness & combat readiness has deteriorated very far into the dangerous depths of social justice & equity thereby making the military less prepared to defend the nation than it should be.

8.  Through executive order Biden is transfering student debt of 43 million people (i.e., voters) to taxpayers by canceling up to $10,000 in student loans ($20,000 for those with a Pell grant) & through a proposed income-driven repayment plan (i.e., payments are based on income not the size of the loan) wipes out the remainder of the debt after participants pay a fraction of the balance in monthly payments for 10 or 20 years.  This action ensures that colleges will continue to increase tuition.  The courts have issued an injunction temporarily preventing Biden from proceeding with the plan.

9.  School boards prevent parents from engaging in their own children's education - Critical Race Theory (CRT), that sees literally everything through the lens of race, is taught to young children so that they come to regard their parents as racists.  Black Lives Matter & a false history of America presented in The 1619 Project are supported by teachers' unions.  Teachers sexualize young children including having drag queens perform.  State abortion laws vary across the country - click here & here for updates - & most states do not require parental involvement for a minor getting an abortion meaning a teenager can pretend to go to school in the morning, have an abortion, & return home that afternoon without any parental involvement.

10.  Criminals know that they can smash & grab in highly organized efforts with little fear from law enforcement like in San Francisco where  shoplifters know that California state law holds that stealing merchandize worth less than $950 is just a misdemeanor, meaning that law enforcement will probably not get involved, especially knowing that prosecutors let shoplifters go free.  In 2019 New York passed a cashless bail law meaning that state judges cannot hold defendants based on their perceived dangerousness for most misdemeanors & some nonviolent crimes - those so accused are back on the street within hours to menace the public again.

The above ten issues of the day I thought of off the top of my head & anyone paying the least bit of attention knows that Republicans, unlike the Progressive Democrat commentators who say otherwise, have great solutions like drilling for oil to return America to an energy independent net exporting nation, securing the southwest border, & throwing criminals in jail.  When you look @ these simple solutions you realize that all of the above issues were purposefully imposed on America by the deliberate design of Biden/Harris to fundamentally transform America into a whole different country from what she is even today after plenty of transformation under BO.

The transformation is centered around AOC's Green New Deal (GND) which in reality is the largest expansion of government since LBJ's Great Society.  AOC's pledge to get America off fossil fuels by 2030 explains why Biden cannot allow drilling for oil to relieve the high gasoline prices.  The GND also includes universal healthcare, government job & housing guarantees, & a host of impractical ideas like replacing air travel with trains & upgrading & retrofitting every building in America to make them more energy efficient while @ the same time making the citizenry poorer & more dependent on government.  The GND is more about AOC's economic agenda for America & less about eliminating carbon emissions.

Former Reagan speech writer Kenneth L. Khachigian touched on all the important issues of the day when he recently wrote in the WSJ "For Republican candidates now in tight races, your opponents aren't "progressives" caught up in "woke" agendas. They are power-seeking lovers of big government tied to the extremist views of Joe Biden, who has wrought inflation and economic chaos, adopted a divisive, leftist agenda, and given us a laughingstock vice president who believes the border is secure.  No Republican candidate should allow an opponent to remain silent about the rot that eats at America's great cities with crippling price increases, crime, lagging schools, deadly drug use, homelessness, and an invasion of illegal migrants."

As for me, I am looking to vote for someone I think will just stop the Biden/Harris onslaught.  We know Biden will not drill, will not protect the southwest border, will not back the Border Patrol & ICE, or support cities & states fight crime so what we need in Congress are people who will not let it get any worse by not bringing up any large spending bills for instance.  Just stopping the Biden/Harris agenda the next two years goes a long way toward solving our problems.

The field of candidates is before us & we know that all but a very very small handful of Democrats in Congress have supported Biden/Pelosi/Schumer over 99% of the time so the answer to breaking this destructive lockstep is to vote Republican.

I met my Republican House challenger, Tom Kean Jr., over ten years ago & project that over time he will have a Liberty Score of F @ about 45%.  Normally I hate this type of candidate that votes for America only about half the time.  But you can see that it will be enough to accomplish my goal of just stopping Biden when you consider that his opponent, Democrat House incumbent Tom Malinowski, voted with Pelosi 100% of the time & has a Liberty Score of F @ 3%.

8 comments:

  1. Doug - According to the podcasts I listen to Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs, & others they are forecasting a red wave. I didn’t get that impression from your posting.

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    1. I’ve watched many debates - the republicans candidates are fighting hard. If the Republicans show up, and I think they will, we should do well. I’m still coming to terms with the hate that the old guard has for Trump. Also, I’ve noticed that hate is contagious. I’m trying to be optimistic, however, if I factor in all the entitlements the are allotted my optimism quickly fades

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  2. I think it was PA. where the mail truck burned up, with poles so close it might take one mail truck with a lot of mail-in ballots to allow the worst in history candidate to get elected.

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  3. Well said Doug!! I hope that the public wakes up and starts to reform the government by voting for officials who will work for the people.

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  4. Doug – Re:
    Biden looks to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, & Iran to increase production but not America (Biden cancels Keystone XL pipeline the afternoon of inauguration day, January 20, 2021 & signs an executive order suspending new oil & gas lease sales on federal lands & waters the first week in office);
    There were 2 contrasting energy policies then and remain now.
    (1) The one above that Biden implemented can be summed up as follows: Despite knowledge that the US produces world’s cleanest fossil fuels ( and that Green energy needs more time to be a real replacement), we will shut down our fossil fuel industry ASAP, beg dirty fossil fuel producing countries to make up the slack. We know this will produce more carbon and our air quality will continue and accelerate its degradation (check out co2.earth). But we believe we can fool the citizenry and remain in power. Yes we are fake environmentalists BUT our main goal is to destroy Capitalism in the US. We listen to AOC who is on record stating “Capitalism is not redeemable”.
    (2) We will increase production of world’s cleanest fossil fuels. We will research and invest in Green Energy and hope it can start soon to significantly replace fossil fuels. BUT currently there is no evidence to suggest this will occur in the immediate future. We must protect our financial positions and follow true entrepreneurial policies that work: do NOT destroy a product that works until you have proof and a timeline to replace it with a better product. This is Capitalism at its best.
    My current Rep NJ-11 Mikie Sherrill is a fake environmentalist. Her challenger Paul DeGroot is pro-energy Independence and understands the above entrepreneurial mindset.
    I am a true environmentalist, have enjoyed running in parks and near the Jersey Shore away from busy roads. I appeal especially to all Athletes to vote only for true environmentalists.

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  5. Doug - Excellent and informative post. A Republican House/Senate must consist of strong & courageous members to affect any significant change.

    Since I'm back in Chris Smith's District, what is his "Liberty" rating?

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    1. Chris Smith is graded F @ 46%. Similar to what I project for Tom Kean Jr.

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