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Archive → May, 2018

1,000 welcome guests

Mark Twain noted that both guests and fish start to smell bad after three days. It’s a Mark Twain joke, not meant to be taken literally, wittily observing that well-intentioned hospitality has its natural limits.

A few days ago, I had a different experience with about a thousand guests, international immigrants, migrants, actually. Undocumented visitors, and formally uninvited to America.

For about three or four hours, I sat on the porch with a large coffee on one side, a pair of binoculars around my neck, and a large, heavy book on the other side. As I sat quietly, rarely moving and never moving quickly, I watched as a myriad of neotropical songbirds flitted, hawked, pirouetted, perched, sang, and chased all around the front lawn.

The green lawn is surrounded by a large mature hardwood forest with a high canopy, making it the natural destination for brilliantly colored migratory birds from as far away as Honduras and Guatemala. Gunmetal blue, electric blue, indigo, and boring old regular blue, scarlet, orange, red, yellow, grey, green, and just about every other color combination or version in the rainbow was represented in these tiny little bodies.

Tanagers, flycatchers, orioles (Baltimore and orchard), warblers in profusion, including the mysterious Cerulean Warbler, cedar waxwings, you name it, they were all there right in front of me.

If I had trouble identifying a bird, the binoculars were slowly raised to my eyes, trained on the little bugger, and I then engaged in a promiscuous amount of voyeurism. Reaching to my left for the big Smithsonian Birds of North America book and quietly turning its well-worn pages would usually reveal what I had seen and did not know.

Oh sure, there has been an ongoing battle with a female Phoebe the past three years. She likes to make her mud-and-sticks nest on the frame ledge above the front door. Her construction methods may be fascinating, but her habits are messy. Muddy gravel splashed all over the door, the windows, the porch. Then there are the kids, the poops, and of course we cannot disturb them, so we have to go around and use the back door. Last year she prevailed and caught me at a time when I was less vigilant. Grudgingly I allowed her to sit on her completed nest above the door, and aside from the mess and the Do-Not Disturb sign there, we were rewarded with close-up photos of the cutest little hatchlings and chicks you ever did see. We got to watch them fledge, too.

This year I chased her away and I think she took up a lesser spot in the pavilion, where she alternatively gave me the hairy eye from a perch, and then bombarded the truck daily with her droppings.

Another tiny bird provided a different interaction. Whistling his own song back to him from my front row seat on the porch, I called in a scarlet tanager who perched in a young white pine about thirty feet away, and inspected my odd appearance; I was found to be definitely NOT mate-worthy.

The pleasure gleaned from this quiet, near-motionless, but nonetheless intensely active time is tough to quantify. It is a special and rare time, snuck in during a narrow window in Nature’s endless timeframe. I can say that my heart sang along with those little survivors of journeys thousands of miles long, that my spirits were lifted with each visual treat they provided by wing or by perch, or by song, and that my own singular frustrations were slowly washed away by participating in something much grander, much more important than one man’s concerns:

That deep, quiet, often nearly invisible but enormous and magical ebb and tide of living things across the planet and through our lives. Gosh, are they all magical and their processes are magical, too.

This is a feeling of smallness, completeness, an unusually peaceful sense of place and order that is much more difficult for some of us to find in everyday human life. And yet it is the “natural world.” Think about that! Does it mean that we are living un-naturally?

For hunter-gatherers of old, seeing migratory songbirds probably meant berries and fruits were on their way, and that the known but unidentified Vitamin C in them would replenish the humans’ bodies after a long and planned near-starvation winter period. That is, this incredible migration so many tens of thousands of years old must have had a deep and more specific meaning to our primordial ancestors. Food.

But for us “civilized” people, quiet time, a time and place to contemplate, reflect, and to think is food. Brain food, emotional food, necessary.

Little migratory birdies, you are welcome back to America any time, with or without identification. I hope I get to see you all many more times again in the coming years.

 

Memorial Day: All Enemies Foreign & Domestic

Thank you to all the living military veterans for having provided us Americans with the national security to carry on our stable domestic affairs as if there is not a care in the world.

Your service abroad to our nation makes the whole national enterprise possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Recent horrendous revelations about the Obama Administration’s domestic spying reveal that not all of America’s enemies are abroad, however. We have plenty of them here, on our own soil, doing their best efforts to destroy America from within.

Every serviceman and servicewoman takes the same oath and pledge of office that our elected officials take: To defend America from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

While we know the general temper of most veterans, the question arises about the intentions and abilities of our active duty troops.

Are they ready to defend America against our domestic enemies?

That list would include much of the Democrat Party leadership and most of its elected officials, all of whom have openly launched war against the American citizen, the American taxpayer, America’s domestic and foreign security, and against our Constitution.

The last time the Democrat Party did this, America fought a civil war. And the Democrat Party lost that war. The military heroes did not die abroad in that one, they died right here on their own soil.

One cannot help but wonder what Memorial Day will come to mean in twenty or thirty years…and what kind of military service and sacrifice we will be remembering at that time.

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Post script: A long time ago I was a member of the Democrat Party, some readers might be surprised to learn. As I grew up very rural, my beliefs were pro-gun, pro-life Democrat Party. Back then the only difference between Democrats and Republicans in Centre County was that the Democrats worked in the coal mines, and the Republicans owned or managed the coal mines. Otherwise we were all bound together by patriotic love of country, love of liberty, an appreciation for America’s bounties, as reflected by the Fords, Chevys, and International Harvester pickup trucks we drove, all of which had an American flag and a NRA sticker. Today we would identify Democrats like that as “Blue Dogs,” an animal that is pretty much extinct now. Starting thirty-some years ago, the Democrat Party started to go way off the rails. During the Reagan Administration they were cheering the Soviet Union against America, supporting Cuban tyranny against freedom and liberty, supporting the oppressive, socialist Nicaraguan Sandinistas against the capitalist Contras, and so on. Wherever in the world there was left-wing oppression and tyranny, there was the Democrat Party. At the age of 22, I had enough and changed to Independent, and then a few years later I changed to Republican out of necessity. Today the Democrat Party has become officially anti-America and anti-West and it bears no resemblance to the America-first party of my youth. And to be fair, neither does the Republican Party, the preponderance of its elected officials being committed to becoming wealthy through government above all other things. And if the GOPe folks are unprincipled, self-serving hogs, the Democrats have largely become sworn enemies of everything America. There is a huge difference and it needs to be explained. I am not a partisan person, never was, never will be. And I calls em as I sees em.

Time for a new Dune movie

The 1965 book Dune was to a great extent the basis of most futuristic science fiction books and movies that followed. Star Wars is based on Dune, even beginning on a desert planet where the hero, Luke Skywalker, has been tested and hardened into a ready warrior by the harsh landscape around him, like the Fremen of Dune’s desert planet Arrakis.

“Dune” author Frank Herbert was an eclectic guy, a deep and creative thinker. One might say he was unusual, even by modern terms.

He was against racism but believed in the importance of human genetic improvement through select breeding. Focusing on the importance of tribalism, Herbert nonetheless elevated the self-reliant individual as the highest achievement a person could aim and hope for.

He was for the concretely purposeful use of mind-expanding drugs, such as religious experiences, saw warfare and killing as hardly noticeable inevitabilities in a well-ordered human universe, believed in God and the power of prayer, supported the ongoing evolution of technology, but then elevated the supremacy of human evolution and the human spirit, including personal fighting skills, over that same technology.

If his amalgamation of nearly all current religions on Planet Earth into one or two future strands of religious thought is any indication, Herbert is suggesting that all religions pretty much point us in the same direction, though some are scarier than others.

Herbert was firmly against artificial intelligence and the delegation of human decision making to machines. In Dune, it is the ‘Butlerian Jihad’ that wipes out most computers and all AI, leaving only those computers that could perform the basic elementary functions in lieu of humans, after a close call where AI and its robots nearly took out all humans. On this subject, it could be said that Herbert was prescient and, like many other sci-fi writers, ahead of his time. Even now we childishly rush into AI as if it is just a silly game, when in fact it could quickly kill every human and every other life form on Planet Earth.

In 1984 director David Lynch produced a pretty good movie that captured a lot of the book Dune. No small feat, as most great books result in terrible movies. The David Lynch movie was good because it embraced the book and did not try to dance around it. Its acting was mostly excellent, and some of the scenes are perfectly gritty. But in other ways the 1984 movie is very weak. Its special effects are almost sad, even by the standards of that time. Very 1950s.

A miniseries was attempted years later, and many Dune devotees believed it was a failure in every way. Lacking even the punch of the 1984 movie, it certainly was not what people had hoped for or imagined.

We need a new, updated Dune movie. No, we demand one. A Dune movie that is absolutely true to the book, that has the same quality actors as the 1984 version, and which has updated technology, sets, and special effects. It will have to be long, three hours, to capture the most important scenes and subtle nuances that make the Dune story so powerful.

C’mon, Hollywood, do something good for once. Give us a new Dune movie that is worthy of the name and the book.

Santa Fe School Shooting: Liberal Democrats Sacrifice More Kids on Altar of Gun Control

Another school shooting today, in Santa Fe, Texas.

Yes, a good guy with a gun stopped the shooter, and he could have been stopped sooner.

But stopping that shooter (and the next one) would require taking the kinds of concrete, proactive steps necessary to actually protect the students from harm. It is as easy as having police stationed in the school, or armed guards (including armed volunteers), or arming the staff and teachers who want to be armed.

And these options are all too pragmatic, too simple, too real for liberal Democrats, who reject them all. They would rather use this latest blood in the streets to promote their nation-wide civilian disarmament schemes, because what they really want is political domination over every American citizen.

In fact, sacrificing a few school students on the false altar of gun control is one of those unfortunate but necessary “breaking a few eggs to make an omelette” things that liberal Democrats desire, to achieve their political goal.

The more blood, the more emotion, the more fear, the more crisis, the more they can take advantage of people’s emotions and ram through laws that will do nothing to solve the problem, but which will advance liberal Democrat goals of civilian disarmament.

When the ten-year Clinton gun ban sunsetted in 2004, liberal Democrats admitted openly that it had done nothing to lower crime. But they wanted it reinstituted, nonetheless. The high cost of disarming law-abiding Americans won’t do anything to make schools safer, either.  So why demand this?

Liberal Democrats want absolute control over you and me, folks, and that is all. They do not want solutions. An armed citizenry is the ultimate block against the Democrat Party’s goal of full control of America; this is the “problem” they are really trying to solve.

If you doubt this, look at this phony, illegal “Russia collusion” thing: It is just “resistance” against the Trump administration by any means necessary – legal, illegal, unethical, immoral. Liberal Democrats reject results of elections they lose. They reject laws they don’t like or don’t write. They enable an unsustainable illegal immigration invasion and illegal sanctuary cities to recruit illegal aliens who they want to convert into loyal voters and artificial political dominion. They use the democratic process to achieve non-democratic results.

After the Parkland shooting, liberal Democrats had meetings, marches, protests. Lots of demands. Lots of brutal demonization of the NRA, of law-abiding gun owners, of gun manufacturers, even of the US Constitution.  In all of that activity, they would not address how their liberal Obama-era PROMISE program had caught and released the violent criminal Nikolas Cruz half a dozen times, so that he could finally follow through on his public promises to commit mass murder in his own school.

I am sorry for the parents of the children hurt and killed in Santa Fe, Texas. I am sorry for their parents, and for their teachers and school administrators, and friends. I feel very badly for them, and if they are angry about this, they need only direct their focus on the liberal Democrats and their henchmen (teachers unions) who have blocked all natural, logical, and effective means to preventing these shootings from happening.

Liberal Democrats love political power and gun control more than they love school students. Remember that the next time you vote.

Democrat Party Moment of Truth

If Hillary Clinton had to lie, cheat and steal to prevent Socialist Bernie Sanders from winning the 2016 Democrat Primary Election, then what does that tell us about the overall direction of that political party?

Crazy Bernie could be considered the older hippie generation’s last hurrah. But he wasn’t just that. Sanders was also the younger generation’s biggest hope.

Hillary Clinton is extremely liberal, but apparently not liberal enough for at least 50% of her party. The other half is openly Socialist, a life view and policy choice squarely at odds with everything “America.”

It is so anti-America that I am confused about why Socialism is not considered sedition or treason against America. Freedom of speech does not include making war or  participating in warfare against America from within.

As if Socialism has not been a major catastrophe for every nation that has tried it out, including today’s ultra-violent and tyrannical Venezuela. An American would have to willfully ignore everything we all see and hear about Socialism to vote for candidates who are openly Socialist.

Against this backdrop, enter John Fetterman, Socialist mayor of tiny Braddock, Pennsylvania. Ironically this remote place is named after the fallen General Braddock of imperial England fame, who died during a retreat during the French and Indian war in which George Washington played the central role. So much Western Civilization history in this place for such an avowed anti-Western Socialist.

This past Tuesday Democrat voters selected biker-dude-looking Mayor Fetterman as their party’s choice for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania. Gone from that position is the prissy, abusive, but highly manicured Michael Stack. Good riddance to Stack, you say? OK. We understand. Stack was an arrogant, preening careerist who radiated professional slime. Yuck, no question.

But a Socialist in his place?

In the vote for Lt. Guv, Pennsylvania Democrats split their votes all kinds of ways. So many people ran for that position, there was a Heinz Ketchup 99 Varieties flavor to the choice of Democrat Lt. Guv primary race (as there was for the GOP slate, too).

But now that there is just one Democrat candidate to vote for, and Pennsylvania Democrats have a serious choice. They can openly embrace Fetterman’s anti-America Socialism, or they can vote for liberal Republican Jeff Bartos in that seat.

If Democrats vote for Bartos, it shows they are paying attention to a candidate’s political philosophy, and that they care about Pennsyvania’s future. That is the kind of sophistication and intelligence one expects of mature adults, especially those living in the Liberty Bell State.

But if Democrat voters are so highly conditioned to vote for anyone at all with the simple letter “D” after their name, even an open Socialist, then we know where things lie and what we can expect from at least fifty percent of the registered voters here.  Scary thought for a state that proudly produced the last of America’s moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats.

It will be rough roads ahead for everyone in Pennsylvania if our Democrats elect a fringe kook like Fetterman.

 

Sometimes a threesome just sucks

Welp. Primary Election Day is now behind us. Thank God.

Yesterday’s bright moment was Andrew Lewis running and winning against a large part of the GOP establishment in the 105th State House District.

It lies around out through Harrisburg’s eastern suburbs and could easily swing “RINO,” but yesterday it did not. Proving the power of staying positive and of doing door-to-door, Lewis impressed so many voters that many of them eagerly relayed to us volunteer poll workers their happy experiences meeting him at their home’s front door.

That said, much of yesterday’s political outcomes were unfortunate, for those of us who trust and hope in We, The People and who have learned not to trust the GOP establishment.

Woody Allen once quipped “I believe in relationships. Love between two people is a beautiful thing. Between three, it’s fantastic.”

Well, sometimes that truism just doesn’t hold water, and nowhere was this observation more evident than the results from yesterday’s political threesomes in Pennsylvania.

As we political watchers and participants have seen repeatedly, and as I myself have experienced as a candidate for office, three-way races can and often do allow liberal Republicans to prevail. And in fact, it now seems that the threesome approach is a significant strategy for GOPe candidates.

Yesterday, Dan Meuser won the PA 9th congressional district election (he lives in the 8th District) through the benefit of the two grass roots candidates  (Halcovage and Uehlinger) each siphoning off sufficient votes to allow the establishment candidate to get the plurality. There is some question out there about whether Uehlinger was, in fact, a conservative, or even a Republican; despite getting in the race first, his campaign seemed the least organized. Halcovage was not terribly organized, either, and did not respond to important questionnaires from interest groups. Firearms Owners Against Crime advised voters to select only Meuser of the three candidates.

Actually, Meuser may have obtained more than 50% of the vote, which is an indication that he might have won on his own merits (e.g. he was the only candidate deemed acceptable on Second Amendment rights to FOAC). All his negatives notwithstanding.

One lesson for sure comes out of that particular three-way race: If you cannot present yourself as an organized, credible candidate, then please spare everyone the drama and do not run.

People who wake up on some Thursday morning and say “What the heck, I am gonna run for office” have every right to do so, but recognize that there are consequences to this. Better to have a one-on-one clear choice for the voters. We will almost always have an establishment candidate, so pick the one best grass roots candidate as The People’s champion, and chase off the rest.

In the PA governor’s race, liberal dark horse Laura Ellsworth knew she had no chance of winning. I mean, with liberal policy positions like hers, she should run as a Democrat (she said she would not accept money from the NRA). But run she did, and though she obtained less than 20% of the vote, she siphoned off sufficient votes (especially in Western PA) from true conservative and US Army veteran Paul Mango to get Scott Wagner the plurality.

Mango is from western PA and would have otherwise obtained most of Ellsworth’s votes.

Yesterday I was a volunteer poll worker from 7:00 AM until 7:35PM in the Harrisburg area.

What I heard from GOP voters (and mostly from women over 50 years old) at several different polls was that they were angry at both Mango and Wagner for all the negative ads. They knew Ellsworth was liberal, but they were voting for her as an alternative to the two boys engaged in distasteful roughhousing.

Wasn’t this a variable we were picking up from women voters weeks ago? Yes.

Did someone pay Ellsworth to run? One asks, because she knew her chances were very low to nil, that her liberal ideas and policy positions are way out of synch with the vast majority of Republican voters.

Ellsworth the Spoiler has now burned her bridges with about 40% of the state’s Republican super voters, which even the most obtuse political nerds would expect as a logical outcome.

So why else was she in it? One cannot help but wonder if she was paid to play the spoiler. It was done in the last race I ran in….by someone involved in the race she ran in…so…

When we look at Idaho’s primary yesterday, a similar scene unfolded. The unlikely liberal GOPe candidate beat the conservative, by way of siphoning of votes by a third candidate who himself had no hope of winning.

Folks, the only way these third candidates can run is if they are independently wealthy and just yee-haw running for office; or, they are willing to sacrifice their name in one race by trying to build it up for a future run at some other office; or, most likely, they have “other” sources of income or promises made to reward them for playing the spoiler in the current race.

So, as we move into a more experienced and savvy grass roots political landscape, begun just ten years ago as the “tea party,” we are learning that our own strength can be used against us judo-like by the same corrupt political establishment we are trying to defeat.

Threesome races may look democratic, and it is true that every American has the right to run for office. But sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes those threesomes are designed to undermine the conservative grass roots candidate, and to help the plain vanilla milquetoast establishment candidate win.

Sometimes political threesomes just plain suck. And not in a good way. They can be designed to exploit the big-hearted nature of so many grass roots activists, so that their enemy, the GOPe, can win.

Lesson learned.

Vote for the Boy Scouts tomorrow

While the Boy Scouts are not actually running for office in tomorrow’s primary election, the principles of that venerable American institution are certainly being voted on.

Voted on in the sense that there are candidates who are go-along get-along types, for whom holding elected office is a career, a business opportunity, an ego boost (let’s call all these types “swamp dwellers”).

And then there are candidates for whom holding elected office is a sacred duty of service to one’s fellow citizens. These candidates stand on the bedrock principles that founded America and which make it great. These principles are bound up in the fabric of our institutions, like the Boy Scouts, which taught those values and ideas (self-reliance, accountability, community).

Last week about eight people on the national board of the Boy Scouts of America voted once again to give in to extremist demands aimed at gutting everything the Boy Scouts stand for.

This time this small handful of people voted to change the name of the Boy Scouts to just “Scouts,” paving the way for an undefined, politically correct, genderless soup standing for vague good feelings. Maybe. At the cost of boyhood.

As one might expect, those Americans with the greatest connection to the Boy Scouts as founded have now begun to officially withdraw from the “new” organization. The Mormons were right up front in their abandonment of the sinking ship. Good for them. My own son just found out about it last night. After seven happy years in the Boy Scouts, he said “I do not want to do this, I do not want to participate in this. This is not what I signed up for.”

How incredibly painful.

The gutting of the Boy Scouts is symbolic of the leftist ailment we are experiencing across America and the liberal civil war being forced upon all normal and good Americans.

Those representatives who are supposed to be on the front line, defending us from constant assaults, are actually AWOL or worse, whether they are elected in politics or sitting on non-profit boards.

Across America we see people get elected to office, and they have no intention of doing anything except holding that office. Or worse, using it for self-enrichment or cultural destruction. What is happening on the Boy Scouts board is exactly what is happening across America.

Tomorrow I will be working a voting poll, helping two candidates I like, for the simple reason I believe they are tough enough to stop our bleeding, stop our cultural deflation, good enough to use public office for public benefit. They are Paul Mango and Andrew Lewis.

Locally, here is who I will be or would be voting for:

Paul Mango for governor. Paul is a good guy, a US Army veteran, rated more conservative than his two opponents. Laura Ellsworth is rated as “Liberal,” and moderate state senator Scott Wagner has become the very swamp creature he said he was against.

Peg Luksik for Lieutenant Governor.

Andrew Lewis for state house. Andrew is a fine young man, a US Army veteran, with strong character. His opponent, liberal Adam Klein, is the very essence of the political establishment swamp destroying Pennsylvanians’ hopes, dreams, and rightful expectations.

Either George Halcovage or Scott Uehlinger for Congress, over Dan Meuser. Dan has so many issues, some of which have been listed on this blog, his candidacy is an example of why diligent citizen action is required to hold on to our government. Meuser is DC swamp through and through.

Both Lou Barletta and Jim Christiana are rated as “somewhat conservative,” and neither one impresses very much through some particular distinction. On the one hand, Barletta has earned a good name for himself on illegal immigration (i.e. protecting US taxpayers’ and citizens’ rights), while Christiana is a young go-getter. Either one will be superior to political careerist disaster Bob Casey.

Tomorrow, while I am voting for and supporting particular candidates as a volunteer poll watcher, I am inwardly doing it for the old Boy Scouts and everything they stood for.

I want my America back. I want the old-fashioned values  on which America was founded. I want the Boy Scouts back. Voting for these people above helps us move Pennsylvania and America in that positive direction.

 

Boy Scouts, Supreme Court, Mueller Witch Hunt: One Common Thread

In 1973, amidst an earth-shaking cultural civil war, a divided US Supreme Court legislated a patchwork interpretation of the US Constitution to create a heretofore unmentioned “right” to abortion-on-demand.

Irrespective of whether you agree with abortion on demand as a reasonable or moral policy, or you do not, there are three key facts from this incident that are important today.

First, it marked one of the major milestones in an increasingly legislative judiciary, taking for itself the creative duties Constitutionally assigned to the US Congress (House and Senate).

As constituted, the judiciary is simply supposed to render more or less Yes and No holdings on US laws, deciding whether or not they are Constitutional. Those that are not are supposed to be remanded back to lower courts or sent back to the legislature altogether. Our courts are not constituted to come up with their own ideas and substitute them for the ideas brought before them in lawsuits.

Laws and the ideas in them are supposed to begin and end in the Congress.

Second, in its decision, the Court did mental backflips and logical contortions to arrive at its holding, because nowhere in the Constitution or any of the Founding debate documents is or was abortion mentioned; nor was the legal process or thinking that the Court used to reach its conclusion.

Again, as a policy, one can agree or disagree with abortion on demand, but to reach into a top hat and pull out a new and arguably foreign concept, as the Court did, and declare it protected by the Constitution is really legal chicanery. It is not how American government is supposed to work.

Which leads to the third outcome: out of all this brazen behavior in Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court established a political and cultural precedent for illegal legislating and political meddling from the bench.

This behavior evolved the court system into a de facto government unto itself; all three functions – judicial, legislative and executive – housed in just one branch of government.

Housed with just a five-person majority on the Court.

This last result is the most dangerous to democracy, because it tested the American people’s credulity and patience. The outstanding hallmarks of American government are the separation of powers, the rule of law, and the idea that government legitimacy flows from The People, not from the government’s coercive power. To grant just five people absolute power over an entire nation is to throw America out the window.

Like their European Marxist counterparts, modern American liberals (progressives, Communists, ANTIFA, Socialists, Democrats, whatever) focus their efforts on acquiring power, on controlling decision making, on getting government-endorsed results, at whatever cost, in whatever way possible.

So, judicial over-reach is now a major liberal approach to implementing political change, and changing cultural norms for political decision making.

Thus, Roe v. Wade was not as much about abortion as it was about five unelected, unaccountable people wearing black robes making all policy and legislative decisions about all issues for three hundred and fifty million other Americans.

This behavior is as un-American as anything could be. It strikes a subtle but fatal dagger blow to the American heart, demanding fealty to the rule of law while suspending the rule of law. It really is a coup d’etat.

Several years ago the US Supreme Court did the same thing again with gay marriage as it had done with Roe v. Wade. Instead of begging off of that political issue, because marriage has always been a subject of local and state purview, the US Supreme Court took decision making away from the American People. It created a right that no one had ever heard of before, that flew in the face of thousands of years of human behavior, that should have bubbled up from the local level and worked its way through the legislative process to gain traction among a majority of the American People to give it legitimacy, a real organic cultural belief with roots.

But the Court circumvented all that messy representative democracy stuff, and just implemented the policy and cultural goal they wanted.

(And if you care at all what my opinion is about gay marriage, I don’t give a damn. Marry the adult you want to marry. Go ahead, live your life. Gather together a community or quorum or church or whatever imprimatur you think you need and get married under those auspices. But it is a mistake to demand that three hundred and fifty million other people accept your ideas at the price of their liberty).

So now America is undergoing the Mueller “investigation” of supposed Russian tampering and collusion with Donald Trump so he could win the presidency. After two years of looking, not one shred of evidence has been found, and there is tons of evidence of lots of illegal actions by the prior administration.

Nonetheless a highly coercive and obviously political witch hunt has emerged, with arch criminal Robert Mueller leading the charge.

Why is Mueller a criminal? Because he knows his cause is unjust and dangerous to democracy. He knows there is no evidence for the fake cause of his work. He knows that the FISA warrant upon which his work is based was obtained under very fake pretenses (the fake Clinton-created political “dossier” on Trump). He knows that everyone he has charged is totally innocent or innocent of anything having to do with Russian “collusion.”

Mueller withholds from Congressional oversight the investigation-enabling letter written to him by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which began this witch hunt.

If Mueller believed in the integrity of his work and his mission, he would happily, willingly share the enabling letter with the American People. Transparency, right?

Mueller’s witch hunt is so utterly brazen because it demands the American People abandon their commitment to the rule of law, and instead swear allegiance to raw political audacity and the aggressive exercise of power.

Mueller’s attack on our democracy is criminal because it is the creation of coercive political power by sheer willpower and desire to rule, without a shred of legitimacy behind it. Robert Mueller is everything that America is not.

So therefore, Robert Mueller is a criminal, and he knows it. Mueller and his allies hope that the American People’s loyalty to even a flawed democratic process overrides their disgust at the blatant misuse of the process and their trust. It is a big gamble.

Last week the Boy Scouts of America formally changed their name to the “Scouts,” formally adding girls to the mix.

Just eight or so people on the BSA board of directors voted for this change. Demand for this change did not come up from the ground, from the grass roots, from the thousands of local Boy Scout troops and the associated moms and dads across America.

Rather, this huge cultural change was forced down upon everyone else by a very small handful of politically and culturally radical people.

They know they cannot persuade the Boy Scouts members to agree with this change, so like the other changes made on abortion, same sex marriage, and political election results, the decision is made “from above” and forced down on everyone else. It is just another coup d’etat foisted upon America by liberals.

While we would normally think of the Boy Scouts and abortion and gay marriage and election results being totally different subjects and areas, they do share one commonality.

Binding them all together is the Democrat Party’s war on democracy, its lust for power, its lust for political control and domination over all others, its wish for the destruction of all established norms and expectations so that their version of cultural change will be implemented. By brute force, if necessary.

(For those who care to know, I used to be a Democrat. Today I am a reluctant member of the Republican Party, and, like George Washington before me, I disdain all political parties as an occasional, temporary necessity.)

And from all this, liberals hope to “fundamentally change America” into a Socialist paradise like Cuba or Venezuela, or even like the failed and dead Soviet Union they revered.

Why? Because liberals do not believe in The People. They believe in power and control, period, and that is the common thread connecting all of these disparate issues and topics they are involved in. It is just now that these decisions and changes are so starkly contrasted with how America was founded.

I, for one, do not accept any of this behavior, nor the coup d’etats being attempted against our government and our culture.

Movie review: “White Tiger”

When we think of Russia today and now, our mind might wander off into brutal poisonings of ex-spies across international borders, brutal assassinations of journalists inside Russia, brutal repressions of Chechen independence movements, brutal invasions of South Ossetia, Ukraine, and Georgia (THAT Georgia, not our Georgia), poorly chosen relationships with Iran and Syria, and the current czar riding around bare-chested on a horse with a rifle slung over his back.

Perhaps it was always thus. But if we think and search back a hundred years or more, we will stumble upon buried treasure in the farthest reaches of Russia.

Yes, it is true, Russia was not always just a military force to be reckoned with, it was also a significant cultural center of the very highest magnitude, the very highest achievement. World class music, literature, arts and crafts, poetry, ballet, and so on all were major hallmarks of the Russians.

Not of the oppressed Soviet satellite states, but the actual Russian people themselves.

Rachmaninoff, Dostoyesky, Faberge, and so on, so many great minds contributing in a singularly unique way, native to Russian culture.

Russians had this knack for art that you would not necessarily see if you looked at the simple surface of their culture or landscape. Behind the eightball on technology, Russian writers and poets and musicians bedazzled Westerners with their brilliance and inspiration.

That all started to die in fits and starts after the violent 1917 revolution led by the Democrat Party of that day and place, but nonetheless art persisted until the 1950s, when Soviet socialist control firmly held every thing and every person in its crushing grasp.

To dissent from all that big government with a pink pussy hat or with a snarky hashtag was unthinkable. Not that people wouldn’t try to do it, but the Soviet thought police, much the same as our own politically correct thought police in America today, would catch the thought crime even before it had taken physical form, and, as our own thought police openly wish they could do, WHOOSH, off to a starvation diet in Siberia went that ‘evil’ free thinker.

I am not sure that the Soviets used the words “sexist,” “racist,” homophobe,” “Islamophobe,” and other overdone American generalities meant to crush dialogue and debate, but if they could have used these terms, they would have. Different words then, but the same anti-democracy process then and now.

So for the past seventy years Russia has had an especially harsh Russian winter, art-wise, because of the Soviets and then their control freak successors, whatever Mr. Putin’s political party is named.

To be an artist in that Russian cultural winter was to walk around every day muzzled, daring not to say much less think your own creative thoughts. Too much was at stake.

But somewhere, somehow, that beautiful old Russian voice began to quietly break through the repressive walls. Finding acceptable subjects and means to convey them became a new form of creativity in and of itself.

Nationalism, patriotism, history are all legitimate subjects of artistic creativity, and so Russian artists have adapted. Very, very well. Albeit with throwback Soviet-style imagery, which is lamentable. Gosh, if the Russians could only be our friends…the things we could achieve together.

And so here we now have a truly artistic Russian movie we can all be proud of, in the mould of the old-time Russian artistic capacity. It is called White Tiger and debuted about 18 months ago. I have been wanting to write about it since watching it back then, but as we know, the past 18 months in America have been pretty intense.  Every time I thought I could breathe again, some new issue would pop up. There was more compelling competition for writing space and creativity of my own.

At least this is how I have experienced the past 18 months.

If you are afflicted with a love of liberty, as I am, then you have shared my somewhat anxious condition as the American “deep state,” or Obama holdovers, or career bureaucrats, or whatever you want to call them, have attempted to reverse the outcome of a presidential election they thought they would win and still cannot stomach the thought of losing, by any means necessary. Which means illegal, unethical, immoral, un-American, anti-democratic means.

That all seems to be unwinding now.

And so now, for this moment, I get to bask in the glow of art, thanks to the Russians. And I really mean it, thank you. Seeing this movie took me way back in time to when my own mind was creative and artistic.

Dear Russians, I lift my glass to you: Tvoye zdorovye!

White Tiger is on its face a war movie set in World War Two. It is about Russians versus Germans, good guys versus bad guys, the Eastern European version of cowboys versus Indians. It is also about tanks and heavy armor, about technological superiority versus the grass roots spirit to survive, and history. Lots of history. And lots of action.

At its core, this movie is mythological and Darwinian, with a lot of symbolism, not the least of which is the theme music, an artfully done refrain of Wagner’s pilgrim’s chorus.

If you care to pay careful attention, and walk a mile in a Russian tank tread, you will end up being impressed by this low-budget, high-performance film.

Briefly summed up with no spoilers, the unlikely (and yet so likely…there’s that symbolism thing) Russian hero is reborn, a plausible enough biological fluke consistent with species adapting.

He goes on to learn his enemy’s ways, to anticipate his next moves, and in the end, he goes on a ghostly chase into both past and future, bound up in one of Russia’s most enduring identities: Not German!

And speaking of German, Germany, and World War Two, no better representation of Adolf Hitler has been captured in cinema than the movie’s very last few minutes, where Satan’s boots on the ground has a heartfelt confession with his sponsor, who sits patiently listening in the shadow.

White Tiger.

And as an aperitif, try this Russian music to settle your soul before bed time.

Laura Ellsworth for Governor?

Attorney Laura Ellsworth is running for governor of Pennsylvania.

I have heard her speak at length, and heard her debate, and she is impressive. She is the kind of person I would want representing me as a lawyer: Articulate, earnest, knowledgeable.

She would also make an interesting college professor, or a policy think tank analyst.

But is she right for governor of Pennsylvania? As a Republican?

Polls by everyone – Democrats, Republicans, independent research firms, including your aunt and your auto mechanic, show Ellsworth getting somewhere between five hundred votes and five percent of the primary vote on May 15th.

Not nearly enough to win by any way possible. Mango is barely trailing Wagner by a percent or two, statistically tied.

Laura Ellsworth is as liberal policy-wise as her choice for US president in 2016, John Kasich, who she joyfully announced she wrote in on her November 2016 ballot (i.e. she did not vote for Trump).

She is big on gun confiscation from law-abiding citizens, one of those big government elitist feel-good actions that has zero relationship to crime reduction and lots of conflict with the constitution.

She has the foolish America-is-too-big-to-fail attitude toward illegal immigration, which she does not oppose.

She is in lock-step with the teacher’s unions on a variety of policies, not the least of which is continuing Pennsylvania’s broken and punitive property tax system that leaves about ten thousand elderly grandmas kicked out of their own homes every year to pay some teacher’s gold-plated pension.

None of these are conservative policy positions.

And Ellsworth refuses to talk substantively about the bigger political and cultural context, the larger world surrounding Pennsylvania. Such as the criminalization of policy differences through phony investigations as the Democrat Party’s new approach to losing elections (which is what the Communists successfully did in Europe). Such as the implications of the illegal, unconstitutional Mueller witch hunt. It is as if Ellsworth lives in a Western Pennsylvania bubble full of cool ideas.

This is hardly the stuff a worthy, sturdy governor is made of.

Then again, she has now been endorsed by former governor Tom Corbett, one of the modern era’s most failed, incompetent, though ethical, governors.

Because of his grossly negligent political incompetence and 40-grit sandpaper communication style, Corbett was soundly rejected by his own Republican voters in his quest for a second term in 2014. So accepting his blessing to run for governor is like lighting yourself on fire and then hoping someone nearby has a fire extinguisher.

By the obvious measure of the Republican electorate’s mood, Ellsworth is willfully tilting at windmills here. She is not a serious candidate.

Yesterday I had an illuminating conversation about this governor’s race with a long-time woman friend. She is a lawyer and a lobbyist, smart as hell, articulate, principled and tough. She was a Paul Mango supporter.

She said that watching Paul Mango and Scott Wagner duke it out with negative ads was like watching two school boys fighting at recess, with all the other students standing around yelling, and she doesn’t like it.

So she is going to vote for Ellsworth, as a protest.

When I pointed out that voting for Ellsworth is literally throwing away your vote, and most likely helping Scott Wagner get elected, she sighed deeply.

“I know. I feel like I can’t win here.”

I don’t think my friend is alone. Most older women do not like conflict, especially this kind of warfare going on between Mango and Wagner.

With about 40% of the likely Republican voters still uncommitted to any candidate here, there might be a lot more women voters like my friend than we expect.

Tell you what, as a conservative Republican voter for a long, long time, I have never been in this position before. It is a bittersweet feeling.

Never before have I seen a situation where the third candidate made it likely that the most explosive, confrontational, wrecking-ball candidate would get elected. But that is what is likely happening here.

If enough people like my friend vote for Ellsworth, then Ellsworth will end up taking away just enough votes from Mango to help Wagner win.

While I am supporting Mango, the fact is that Scott Wagner will be better on most policies than current governor Tom Wolf. And a lot, lot more destructive of the political establishment than Mango will ever be. Usually, it is the other way around in three-way elections, where the most liberal establishment candidate gets elected due to the presence of the third candidate.

So once again, politics makes strange bedfellows and it is full of irony. Laura Ellsworth is such a liberal candidate that her candidacy will cause the most confrontational, anti-liberal, anti-establishment candidate to get elected to governor. You could not write a political thriller more complicated and unlikely than this.