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.

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Letter Published In WSJ Responding To Senator Johnson's Op-ed

"Hi Doug - I am very much looking forward to your post midterm autopsy." - a note received a few days after the midterms from a charter member of the blog & former candidate for state assembly whom I admire very much.

I have been working on a midterm election analysis, mostly from re-reading many of the posts since the 2020 presidential election, which provide a lot of big clues along the way as to what happened on November 8 & why.  This analysis will be issued after the Georgia Senate runoff election on December 6 when the makeup of the Senate will be known.

In the meantime, below is my letter published in the Wall Street Journal today that responded to Senator Ron Johnson's (R, WI) op-ed of November 10 entitled "A Governing Agenda for Senate Republicans."  I point out that Johnson's fine agenda, presented in an untimely way, pertains to part of the analysis I have made so far, especially where he questioned how bad it has to get for people not to vote for the Democrats.

Dear Editor:

About halfway through reading Mr. Johnson's excellent points, I realized that his op-ed was a few days late.  If the Republicans intended to do anything like what he writes, they would have campaigned that way.

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.

***

"(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%.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Midterms Provide An Opportunity To Check Biden/Harris Progressive Agenda

Progressivism is defined as a philosophical movement intent on "progressing" or moving beyond the principles and practices of the American Founding.  This movement has accelerated in recent years to not only moving beyond but to tearing down America - our holidays, statues of our history, renaming schools for people we honor, & finding everything rotten with America - the most generous country in the world.  If you don't agree, name another.

Sadly, the Progressives have been able to gin up factions that spread discontent when & where there should be none.  

Teaching critical race theory in schools, starting with telling seven year olds that their parents are racists & continuing the brainwashing right through college with Marxist training that life is a class struggle not a unifying experience of cooperation like in a free enterprise system where everyone is free to rise to whatever level of happiness & satisfaction their talents take them has become the Progressives' standard indoctrination.

The ten most dangerous cities in America have Progressive Democrat mayors.  These mayors work hand in hand with George Soros funded DAs to form the basis of the soft on crime movement where criminals are let loose within hours of being arrested to terrorise communities all over again.  This feeds on itself so that a demoralized police force is seeing retirements & resignations go up while applications for new officers are way down amid calls to "defund the police."  Who wants the police defunded in their communities or neighborhoods?  Who else would you call for help other than the police if you see a violent crime being committed - like in your own house?

We are being taken for a ride by the Biden/Harris administration coupled with a Progressive Democrat controlled House & Senate.  As much as I have come to dislike the Republican Party, the only practical way to stop us from being taken further in a fundamentally bad direction by Biden/Harris is to vote for Republicans in the midterms so that Democrats lose control of Congress.  This will provide a constitutional check on Biden/Harris.

The enduring power of the Constitution is not that it is words on a piece of parchment but rather the structure of the government it created, & particularly the separation of powers, provides an opportunity @ times like this to reign in a rogue Executive Branch.  Midterm elections provide a mid course correction opportunity - & one is needed now.

Subscribers to this blog have told me they are paying as much attention to the midterms as they do to a presidential election because of the importance of putting a check on Biden/Harris.  Left unchecked by an invigorated newly elected Democrat controlled Congress with even bigger majorities means we can't count on Manchin & Sinema to be the last line of defense again.  Eliminating the Senate filibuster, packing the Supreme Court with Progressive justices who ignore the Constitution, & admitting Washington DC & Puerto Rico as states are some of the threats that will be made good if just a slightly bigger Democrat majority in Congress, than we have now, prevails in the midterms.

Biden campaigned for President as a moderate who could unite the country, but he has followed AOC, Bernie Sanders, & Elizabeth Warren to such a great extent, that he is so all-in the Progressive movement that he nominated the first Black woman to the Supreme Court who was so "woke" she could not say what a woman is because she is not a biologist.  Who could think her obvious attempt to hide something during her confirmation hearing will turn out well for America as she sits on the bench of the Supreme Court?

Every Democrat in the House has voted to support the Progressive Biden/Harris administration well over 90% of the time (my Congressman votes with Biden 99% of the time & with Pelosi 100% - sources FiveThirtyEight & Propublica respectively) & it is this lockstep in a fundamentally bad direction that calls for an overwhelming Republican victory on November 8.  Democrats do not deserve to be reelected.

Below is a recent article by Dennis Prager, regular columnist on the Right & Free blog that I subscribe to.  Dennis provides a vivid account of America's societal breakdown that can start to be turned around on November 8.

Parental Authority Is the Basis of Civilization by Dennis Prager

As most Americans now realize, America is experiencing a societal breakdown. This should be obvious to anyone, even those facilitating this breakdown as they openly acknowledge they seek to break down American society.

This is a society that teaches its youngest citizens a suicidal lie: that America was founded in 1619, that it was built on slavery and that even today it is systemically racist. At the same time, it does not teach the fundamental moral fact that every culture practiced slavery — Arab, Muslim, African, Asian, Native American — and usually more viciously (e.g., Arab slave masters routinely castrated black slaves so that they could not reproduce) than in America.

This is a society that robs its youngest of sexual innocence. Teachers — nearly all of them women, the sex that society has always regarded as the natural guardians of sexual innocence — now routinely sexualize young people with discussions of sexual behavior and by having drag queens perform for them.

This is a society that has taken as a given that there are more than two sexes; that has Jewish and Christian clergy sign emails with "preferred pronouns"; that will praise the Disney Corporation for dropping all references to "boys and girls" from its theme park announcements.

This is a society in which refusing to say that men give birth can lead to social banning and the loss of one's job and income.

This is a society that encourages violent crime. It elects prosecutors who allow violent criminals to avoid having to pay bail. Its elites advocate defunding police. It keeps raising the dollar amount of stolen goods that constitutes a felony. In short, America is now a society in which the dominant message to would-be criminals is that crime pays.

This is a society in which fewer and fewer young people are marrying, fewer are having children, and more and are having children without being married, usually without a father in the life of the child.

This all began with the demise of moral authority — and moral, social and intellectual chaos is the inevitable result.

Prior to the 1960s, America had moral authority — God, country, parents, the Bible, teachers, police, and clergy.

Not one of them is a normative authority today.

Starting in the 1960s, each one was overthrown. The '60s motto "Never trust anyone over 30" perfectly embodied this — given that every one of these was older than 30. Soon, teachers were called by their first names and frequently talked back to, even cursed; on college campuses, "America" was often spelled "Amerika," and the flag is now declared a symbol of white supremacy; police were referred to as "pigs"; clergy were rendered irrelevant; the American motto, "In God we trust," was ignored or mocked; and the Bible went from the dominant book in American life to the trash heap of history.

Most important, parental authority rapidly declined.

Moral stability — in other words, civilization — is dependent on parental authority. Once that breaks down, all the others mentioned here also break down.

If you look at the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, you will notice that each tablet has five commandments. The first five are laws between man and God, while the second five commandments govern behavior toward fellow human beings (do not murder, steal, etc.). The first four "rest" on the Fifth; and the second four "rest" on the Tenth.

Taking the second tablet first, the four commandments that precede the Tenth depend on obedience to the Tenth Commandment. When people murder, commit adultery, steal or offer false testimony, it is almost always because they "covet" what their neighbor has — his property, his animals, his spouse.

Likewise, the first four commandments regarding God as the One Moral Authority rest on people obeying the Fifth Commandment: "Honor your father and mother."

Parental moral authority is the vehicle to divine moral authority. That is why the Fifth Commandment, to honor one's parents, is the only human-to-human commandment on the first tablet. It is also the only one of the Ten Commandments that promises a reward — "that your days on the land will be lengthened" and "so that it goes well with you." You will have a long-lived civilization and things will go well with you when parents have moral authority.

Beginning in the '60s, parents stopped telling their children what to do and instead began asking them to do things. Parents became much more interested in being loved by their children than in being honored by their children. Children stopped fearing parents, and parents began fearing their children. Parents became much more interested in their children's feelings than in their behavior.

Today, elementary schools and high schools work to diminish all parental authority. The most obvious example is hiding from parents that their 10-year-old says he or she is not their biological sex. And should a parent tell his or her 10-year-old, "This is not so, you were born a boy and you are a boy" or "You were born a girl and you are a girl," those parents run the risk of having the child taken away from them, not to mention severe condemnation from doctors, psychotherapists and social workers.

One result of the breakdown of parental authority is that we probably have more child-parent alienation than at any time in American history. There are millions of parents whose adult child will not talk to them — many of them because of the way the parent voted (if the parent voted for former President Donald Trump, not if the parent voted for Hillary Clinton or President Joe Biden).

The bottom line is this: when parents don't rule the home, chaos will rule society. And chaos always breeds tyranny. So, the choice is stark — either we have strong parents, or we will have a strong state.