Tag: President Trump

‘The Courage to Be Free’: A Book Review

 

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is to be gravely regarded.  Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.  It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1961

This is a quote that Gov. Ron DeSantis chose to place in his new book, The Courage To Be Free, and sums up the contents of this book.

I happened to catch the last few minutes of an interview by Mark Levin of Gov. Ron DeSantis. Levin commented that he read the book and found it was not your typical political read. He said to DeSantis that the governor doesn’t attack his competitors in the upcoming race in this book. It is a snapshot of how he grew up and how he came to make the choices he’s made. He wants to give people a picture of who he is — as a person, a governor, a husband and father, and a candidate for president of the United States. If Levin was impressed, I wanted to read it, and I am also impressed.

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Instead of running several doomed primary campaigns for the Republican nomination to the tune of hundreds of millions if not over a billion dollars, wouldn’t that money be better spent on ground game and lawfare for the general? This is Charlie Kirk’s argument; he calls it a barricade of money – that Donald Trump will […]

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“Already Gone” by the Eagles Well, I heard some people talkin’ just the other day And they said you were gonna put me on a shelf But let me tell you I got some news for you And you’ll soon find out it’s true And then you’ll have to eat your lunch all by yourself […]

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I understand that President Trump has flaws. I understand that some MAGA-sympathetic people want a more appealing version to replace Trump, and I understand why they’d want that. I understand that people think DeSantis can be that more appealing version. There’s only one problem for the MAGA sympathizers: President Trump has announced that he’s running, […]

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General Milley AWOL

 

General Milley is still Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As such, Gen. Milley is “the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the principal military advisor to the president, the secretary of defense and the National Security Council.” So, when the President’s team decides to use Marines in dress uniform as part of his speech attacking half of the American public as domestic enemies, the Chairman bears some responsibility. Yet, he has been uncharacteristically silent. I am shocked, shocked!

General Milley was not nearly so reticent on another occasion, as I noted in “Esper, Milley, and sports as political events.” As Milley proclaimed before a graduating class of senior service college students (O-5 or O-6 rank):

As many of you saw, the result of a photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week has sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society. I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer it was a mistake that I learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it. We who wear the cloth of our nation come from the people of our nation. And we must hold dear the principle of an a-political military that is so deeply rooted in our republic.

27 Boxes

 

Have you heard that 27 boxes of “documents” were accidentally shipped to Mar-a-Lago that were supposed to remain at the National Archives? This is the first time I’ve heard about this — how about you, average Joe and Jane American citizen? Whoopsie-daisy! A boo-boo? A big boo-boo?  Trump shipped back 15 of the boxes but what about those last 12, and what was in the boxes he shipped back that is now concerning? This is confusing. We are hearing about classified this and declassified that, so what’s going on?

If there’s one thing I like, it’s old school. I like real books, real rock-and-roll, popsicles in summer, funny comedies that made me laugh before going to bed, and chalkboards. Remember chalkboards? I used to have to stay behind in grade school to clean the chalkboards with a big wet sponge. “Don’t forget to clean the chalk tray, and make sure there’s fresh chalk for tomorrow’s lesson.”

Well, Glenn Beck pulls out the same chalkboard and offers a lesson. He simplifies a curious but relevant timeline between the — whoopsie-daisy! — accidental shipment of documents from the National Archives, the events that took place after, and the raid on his home, Mar-a-Lago, while Trump was out of town. His former wife had sadly passed away and his family was in New York.

William Barr: Knave or Fool

 

barr durhamCount me among the many conservatives conned by Attorney General William Barr. I praised and promoted his public performance more than once. As evidence drips out too late, or conveniently delayed, it appears Barr was an old fool, a duplicitous knave, or both. We see this in the Michael Sussman trial and in 2000 Mules showing the clear smartphone geotracking evidence of illegal ballot harvesting in the critical swing states.

Now the Federalist asks why Barr sat on evidence that showed senior FBI officials lied to senior DOJ officials responsible for legal oversight of the FBI operation.

It is perplexing that no one within the FBI has been held accountable for the many lies told at the March 6 meeting. This fact is all the more perplexing as it was Durham who originally turned over the March 6 notes to Sussmann’s defense team.

Yes, Deterrence Works Against Russian Leaders

 

POTUS DIMEFIL@susanquinn rightly raised concern about the collapse of our deterrence capability against the world’s bad actors. This was entirely avoidable. We know that military deterrence backed by the full spectrum of instruments of national power DID stop Putin from making any further territorial advances so long as President Trump was in office. This makes the Russia hoax and the rest of the long resistance by the deep state, abetted by Lyin’ Paul Ryan and Mendacious McConnell, and the 2020 Big Steal, again abetted by the deep state (including frontman AG Barr) and the RepubliCAN’Ts, all the more outrageous.

To review, the instruments of national power can be organized as DIMEFIL:

Diplomatic: Trump and Pompeo encouraged and cajoled foreign governments to stand up for themselves, to take their own security seriously, contrary to Mattis and the rest of the bad actors treating foreign governments as charity cases with fragile feelings.

Trump Should Get Ready to Rumble on the Radio

 

President Trump has been effectively throttled by the social media billionaires, cut off from all dominant media megaphones. He has a way out by hybrid political warfare, linking the growth of Rumble to an old-school media play: talk radio. Trump should take a lesson from the Gipper, providing a modern version of Reagan’s 1976-1979 daily five-minute radio commentary. Conservative talk radio networks would surely fight to get such a huge audience draw.

President Trump is trying to shape Congress through endorsements, yet his endorsements are not necessarily having the powerful positive effect they did during his first term in office. This is because the general public, even the general primary electorate that might turn out in GOP primaries this year, is not hearing constantly from President Trump. He cannot build a new social media architecture fast enough and attract enough eyeballs and ears to make a difference in this crucial year. So, he must go old-school with a new twist.

Fake Conservative PAC Attacks President Trump Endorsed Kari Lake

 

red and black heartA shadowy fake conservative political action committee ran an attack ad against Kari Lake, running for Arizona governor this year. The ad ran on the Sunday, final day, broadcast of the Waste Management Phoenix Open. This Professional Golf Association event is unique in its working-class, people’s tournament atmosphere, with a raucous crowd lining the course and no silence for every golf stroke. CBS carried the WM Phoenix Open, making this a large local market event in the hours before the Super Bowl. A quick search of both the state and federal databases shows this shadowy PAC is entirely off the radar. A reasonable conclusion is that we are seeing a technically independent Mitch McConnell/Kevin McCarthy/establishment GOP attack on the MAGA candidate.

The Waste Management Phoenix Open was great viewing, on the course or on-screen, with a hole-in-one on both Saturday and Sunday. “Clean up on 16” was the call on the famously loud hole with multistory viewing stands.

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Vladimir Putin is a Russian leader, in the long line of the czars and their nominally communist successors. Calling him a KGB thug or using “tzar” as an epithet obscures the reality. Czar or tzar, a Russian ruler is a ruler in the context of Russian history and culture. Any czar worth his salt would […]

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MAGA Community Raises $2.2 Million for Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, Who Has Publicly Insulted Trump

 

The majority of Americans were outraged by the Biden administration’s monumental failure of leadership during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is viewed by many across the political spectrum as the greatest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history. The decision to abandon Bagram Airfield, leaving behind advanced military vehicles, weapons, and equipment valued at over $80 billion, before withdrawing Americans and our Afghan allies led directly to the deaths of 13 service members and the Taliban takeover of the country. To compound matters, this administration shamefully broke the once sacred military commitment to leave no American behind.

China has stepped up its intrusions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. Over the weekend, the country sent 77 military aircraft into the space, its boldest provocation yet. In addition, a spate of reports in the past few days allege that our greatest geopolitical foe may have just occupied Bagram Airfield.

President Trump speaks on 9/11

 
tribute in light

Photo by Anthony Quintano

 September 11, 2021: President Trump released two videos for 9/11, remembering our losses and encouraging Americans that we would be great again, that the Biden front of the radical left would not keep us in danger for much longer. This morning, he walked into a New York Police Department precinct and a NY Fire Department house, spending about a half hour in conversation with them, no prepared answers on note cards, no handlers.

Dog Bites Man: Trump (voter) hating Media Lies

 

In another “dog bites man” story, we now know that the Democrats and their professional propaganda wing, the media, lied like rugs about President Trump’s walk through Lafayette Park. Everybody knew. Now a career bureaucrat, with long service under Bush the Younger and Obama, has put his official stamp on the truth of that day.

Who is Department of Interior Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt?

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President Trump spoke at the North Carolina GOP convention dinner on June 5, 2021. His platforms do a poor job of generating transcripts, but Rev.com is on the job. Additionally, a local CBS affiliate got the raw video, in two parts. President Trump introduced and endorsed Republican members of Congress, the lieutenant governor, and a […]

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Black Mothers Matter

 

For decades, the burden of fear and grief occasioned by murder and maiming has fallen disproportionately on black mothers and grandmothers. Somehow this has not been of great concern to civil rights groups and leaders. Black lives snuffed out by the local extensions or agents of transnational criminal enterprises apparently do not matter to millionaire athletes, and are at best inconvenient to the Marxist millionaires and parlor pink billionaires behind Black Lives Matter. There are no massive marches to take back the streets, to demonstrate solidarity against the gangs. It took President Trump to finally move federal authorities to seriously target the most dangerous habitual criminals and the organizations that terrorize our fellow Americans into silence.

President Trump’s play to do well by doing real good was an existential threat to the Democratic Party and the congressional RepubliCAN’T leadership, so 2020 had to be worked the way it was. Despite their worst efforts, truth has slipped through, pointing to gains in votes, not so much because black men respected his image of strength, but because black women, along with Hispanic and Latina women, shifted significantly to support the reelection of a Republican president. He had spent his first term hammering away at jobs, better jobs, sentencing reform, and security on American city streets. He enthusiastically welcomed black women to speak to the nation from the White House. He demanded justice for grieving black mothers whose children had been gunned down, lining up federal officials and commanding them to speak and act decisively with the considerable weight of ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshal, FBI, and DOJ resources applied in Operation Legend.

Walter Mondale, Proudly Progressive Democrat, dies at 93

 

Walter Frederick “Fritz” MondaleVice President Mondale, former senator from Minnesota and vice president to Jimmy Carter, has died at the fine old age of 93. He was a proud progressive from Minnesota who got his start in politics at age 20 by successfully getting out the vote in a Republican majority district for Hubert Humphrey’s 1948 Senate run. Mondale, on graduating college, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1951, but was not deployed to Korea. On completing his enlistment, Mondale used the G.I. Bill to attend law school, during which time he married Joan Adams, his one and only love for the rest of their lives together, until she died at age 83.

In 1976, Walter Mondale helped balance the Democrats’ presidential ticket with the nuclear engineer Navy officer and peanut farming Southern governor, Jimmy Carter. Mondale helped deliver Minnesota for the Democrats in 1980, 46.50% to Reagan’s 42.56% and Independent John Anderson’s 8.53%. He had no political reach beyond his home state, however, as the electoral college map shows:

electoral college map 1980

The Pandemic Under a Hillary Clinton Administration

 

The late, great Rush Limbaugh used to say, “‘What If’ is a children’s game.” But I’m a kid at heart. This is all silly speculation, but what might the pandemic look like today if Donald Trump had lost in 2016 and Covid-19 had struck America under Democrat Executive Rule?

  1. There would have not been the Trump travel bans. When Trump proposed bans on international travel, particularly from China, the Democrats accused the President of racism. If those bans hadn’t been imposed, perhaps the United States would have been struck with more cases earlier resulting in many more deaths.
  2. All states would have been forced to impose lockdowns. A complaint that continues from many Democrats is that Trump didn’t act boldly enough and force all the states to enact lockdowns and mask regulations. Now we have empirical evidence that shows that states that enacted harsh regulations are often doing much worse than states that allowed more freedom.
  3. The Supreme Court would not have struck down the harsh lockdown regulations imposed by states such as California. “But Gorsuch” is still a Never Trump mockery, but without Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, but instead justices chosen by Hillary Clinton (nominees that surely would have had a diversity of pigment and sexual proclivity, but not thought) would have upheld all of the violations of the First Amendment rights to worship and assemble.
  4. There would be less effective treatments for Covid-19. The Trump administration encouraged experimentation in treatments for Covid-19 and was often mocked for doing so (“He wants to inject people with Clorox!”) But the stoppage of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in recent days reminds us that under Democrat regimes, there is “an abundance of caution” which doesn’t allow for expedient medical experimentation by rather allows bureaucrats to slow every process.
  5. We would still be years away from an effective Covid-19 vaccine. Under a Clinton administration, there would have been no Operation Warp Speed. Every rule and procedure the FDA has put into place demanding slow and rigorous studies to be performed before the next step in vaccine research and production could be taken. And any vaccine for Covid-19 would still be a distant hope.

This is all speculation, of course, fantasy really. But as for me, I have little doubt, that the United States, and the world, would be in a sorrier state today if Hillary Rodham Clinton had been the 45th president.

Justice Thomas Concurs, Slams Big Tech

 

Justice Clarence ThomasJustice Clarence Thomas has, for a second time recently, rung the alarm bell about the tyranny of Big Tech. Instead of empty posturing, like every Senator and Congress-critter, Justice Thomas paints a road map for legal strategies and arguments to put the tyrants firmly under controls that restore our Constitution. Justice Thomas just needs the right case and three men and a woman of courage to join him.

Justice Thomas wrote his latest concurring opinion in the context of a case against President Trump, where a lawyer alleged President Trump violated the Constitution in blocking this individual from @realdonaldjtrump on Twitter. The case being brought against the president, the name of the case, when it was dismissed as moot by the U.S. Supreme Court in the first week of April 2021, had changed to BIDEN v. KNIGHT FIRST AMENDMENT INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIV. Justice Thomas points out that “public forum” law does not fit well with online platforms. He then outlines two other doctrines that have a long legal history of application to private businesses: “common-carrier law” and “public accommodation law.”

If part of the problem is private, concentrated control over online content and platforms available to the public, then part of the solution may be found in doctrines that limit the right of a private company to exclude. Historically, at least two legal doctrines limited a company’s right to exclude.