Posts Tagged → citizen
On 9/11, W proved R vs D a false choice
Earlier this month, on the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 plane hijackings and subsequent terrorist attacks against the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the Flight 93 crash at the Shanksville “battlefield,” past president George W. Bush gave some remarkable remarks.
“W” said that today’s law-abiding America-first patriots, who are American citizens with a First Amendment right to peacefully protest, some of whom peacefully protested at the January 6th Washington DC rally against the stolen election and media lies, are the same as the Muslim terrorists who used the jets to destroy over 3,000 Americans on 9/11.
Yep, a supposedly “Republican” former president used his unique opportunity not to promote unity among increasingly fragmenting dis-united Americans, not to promote a sense of solidarity among Americans and other Western Civilizations against the forces of evil that attacked America on September 11, 2001, and who still seek to destroy our freedoms and turn the planet into a shariah-compliant hellhole.
Nor did “W” talk about the racist, violent domestic terrorist groups ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter, whose members have caused billions of dollars of happy-vandal damage and murder across American cities in the past year.
Instead, “W” used the poor behavior of a couple hundred people, some of whom were BLM members and Federal Bureau of Investigation employees instigating violence outside and inside the US Capitol building, to attack and mischaracterize everyone (roughly half a million to a million people) who was peacefully protesting on January 6th, and he used the murderous behavior of the 9/11 terrorists to smear everyone who was not only at the January 6th protest, but who had voted for Donald Trump and who also thinks that America ought to be first and foremost about its citizens and our Constitutional rights.
No other speech given by any other public figure on American soil could have been less accurate or more divisive than W’s ten minutes of infamy at the Shanksville field, that I helped conserve for moments expected to be better than this.
Setting aside all of the Bush family globalist loyalties and warmongering money making at the life-and-limb expense of America’s young warriors, my own takeaway from his speech is that he proved once and for all that there is no real material distinction between the Democrat Party and the Republican Party. Not on the whole. Not really in any deeply meaningful way.
Based on his comments at the Flight 93 memorial, W might as well have been any present-day Democrat Party politician engaging in the dehumanization of their American political opponents.
Both main political parties are run by people who stand firmly against the survival of America as a free constitutional republic, rooted in individual liberty and minimalist government. Both main political parties are run by people who believe they are elite, an entitled aristocracy of sorts without even the noblesse oblige of old, meant to rule over an increasingly disenfranchised, enslaved pool of serfs. Both main political parties increasingly oppose individual freedoms and support increasingly powerful government, with all of the personal invasions and masked thugs that a powerful surveillance state can muster.
W proved that the choice between Democrat Party and Republican Party is a false choice. We can see that these two political parties are really just two well-heeled street gangs battling each other for the spoils of war, taxpayer money, power, and control. Neither party is committed to the individual freedoms of We, The People.
A 1960s philosopher whose name I presently forget, Eric something, quipped “Both the Left and the Right want you to obey them. But the Left also wants you to love them.”
And how right he was! Supposedly representing the American “right,” RINO W makes it clear that neither he nor his fellow Republicans give a damn about what we citizens think of him or them. They think we American patriots are just the same scum of the earth as the Taliban, ISIS, and al-Qaeda terrorists.
At least the Democrat Party is trying to persuade us that their censorship, suppression, lies, stolen education, vote stealing, government spying on us citizens, armed FBI Gestapo thugs at our doors over made-up political accusations, and innocent American political prisoners held in solitary confinement without access to medicine or lawyers and with no formal charges (or no real formal charges that are not laughable, like trespassing) is really for our own good and safety.
I would say of the two political parties, at least the Democrat Party gets an “A” for effort, for cooing lies into our ear. The Republicans are flat-out contemptuous of us; they don’t even care to try to get us to love them!
Why Joe Biden left his bike out in the rain
When I was a kid, a friend of mine left his bike out in the rain like it was no big deal, which caused it to rust and make an annoying squeak when pedaled. It also pedaled harder and went slower than when it was not all rusted up. As a kid you both really need your bike and you also lack the skills to grease up or oil something like a bicycle, so that damned thing was never the same again.
My dad commented on it, saying “He left that thing outside in the rain because it was given to him, he did not pay anything for it, nor did he get it as a special gift, and so he did not value it. He didn’t care.”
And this is why Joe Biden is governing like a drunk slumped over the steering wheel of his veering, lurching car. He didn’t earn the presidency. It was stolen from the American people and handed to him, a failed 47-year-career politician and repeat liar. Because he didn’t pay anything for it (recall he hid in his basement for the entire 2020 campaign), Biden doesn’t value it. Not in a way that shows he cares about it, for himself or the next person in it.
Are you wondering why America is summarily abandoning some 40,000 AMERICANS plus another 500,000 or so Afghani allies in Afghanistan, as our government just walks away from billions of dollars in taxpayer-paid warmaking equipment, machines, and weapons there? Today we are hearing about incredible chaos, desperate people clinging to and then falling from planes leaving Bagram Air Base, the house-to-house searches by the Taliban, as they look for fair-skinned hostages and enemies to behead in the street.
Are you wondering why Joe Biden either takes no questions from the press, or takes only a few carefully staged ones with his handlers literally wiping the food and spittle from his face?
Are you wondering why the Biden Administration is setting a land speed record of proposed federal regulations and rules that will turn American businesses inside out, and overnight turn tens of millions of law-abiding Americans into potential criminals, and saddle American taxpayers with unsustainable debt that no foreseeable generation can pay off?
Are you wondering why the Biden Administration is recklessly calling people terrorists who object to grotesque and patently illegal government overreach, to a permanent fake covid “crisis”, and to stolen elections, and yet says nothing about the actual Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists who just grabbed an entire country away from America overnight?
Are you wondering why Joe Biden is allowing millions of undocumented, undiagnosed, disease-ridden illegal aliens to pour over our southern border with no medical testing or requirements, but simultaneously demanding and coercing regular American taxpaying citizens to live under unconstitutional draconian lockdowns and be guinea pigs for unknown, unproven vaccines?
This is all happening because Joe Biden did not earn this presidency. He did not work for it, he did not win it fair and square, and he does not value it. It was handed to him by a handful of swing states with corrupt cities that manufactured enough votes to say that Biden won the entire state and their Electoral College votes. And like a little kid who is given something without earning it, Joe Biden is just pissing it away. He literally does not care about America.
Joe Biden does care about controlling America, however.
Over the past few months we have all watched the daily official government onslaught against the fabric of America and against the daily lives of its citizens, particularly its white and black citizens, by Joe Biden. It is incredible how quickly America went from a strong bastion of freedom and individual liberty on November 1, 2020, to a giant nation about to collapse and fall into a dozen parts now. On the one hand you might think that president guy is drunk and asleep at the wheel, or that he is a spoiled rotten brat who doesn’t value what he was given.
Or you might think America is being attacked by its own government, like it has been infected by a deadly parasite that turns against its own host body.
Independence Day, because Citizens with Guns
Today is Independence Day, the day that America declared independence from Great Britain in 1776, and formed a new kind of government. Most governments in human history have been dictatorial, tyrannical, unilateral, top-down etc., and America is one of the few exceptions, maybe the only exception, to that rule. Today Britain is barely an afterthought, but we still view the federal government in Washington, DC, with the same skeptical eye we had for British Redcoats in 1776.
Since our founding, America has been and still is a nation of free citizens, with maximum individual liberties and with minimal government interference in our personal lives. The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as amended both make this power distribution arrangement clear. However, this unusual balance of power was achieved only through the application of military-grade force by the citizenry upon the oppressive government and its troops and civilian supporters that sought to crush the free citizens. That bloody fight for independence set the tone we live by today.
Mistrust of government is hard-wired into the American citizen.
Today, despite a wide array of evil forces (teacher’s unions, federal bureaucrats, a national media that is an activist arm of one political party, ‘woke’ corporations, and careerist politicians) attempting to once again crush the citizenry and deprive us of our freedoms and liberty, we are confident of our future.
Why? Because there is no way that a relative handful of rogue, despotic, lawless federal agents and their power-mad political bosses can survive while surrounded by hostile citizens.
Regardless of who you are, once a person has a house and a family, they have just as much to lose as anyone else. Just as these lawless federal agents are warping and breaking American law to illegally punish Americans who they consider their political opponents, these same agents themselves can also be held in detention without bail, without family visits, without access to legal representation, without medication. And just as rogue federal agents have showed up armed and physically aggressive on the doorsteps of harmless grannies and Roger Stone and hundreds of other innocent Americans, so too can hordes of had-enough-angry local citizens show up on the doorsteps and living room floors of these lawless federal agents. Two can play this game.
America was founded on an armed citizenry standing up to tyranny and abuse of power, and while the younger generations might be so badly educated and indoctrinated about this core aspect of American culture that they cannot do anything without first sucking their thumbs in some safe space, there are tens of millions of older Americans who recall our free days, and what sacrifices were needed to get those freedoms and keep them.
America’s Independence Day is not about relaxing on the river on your boat and drinking beer, oblivious to everything real happening around you. This day is mostly about reflecting on how We, The People are going to hold on to what is ours.
America and its government belongs to Us, not to any political party, not to people who figure out how to cheat and game the political system so they have endless ‘official’ power to do whatever they want, not to taxpayer-funded bureaucrats who have been unaccountable for fifty years despite their repeat failures in almost every field of administration. That is not what America ever was or is now about, despite the lawless outrages and assaults on America of the impostor Biden Administration, and too many patriots alive right now are willing to make every sacrifice needed to keep America free. Their passionate spirit will challenge and confront every rogue government and every rogue agent of that illegitimate government to preserve the freedoms we had up until January 21st this year.
Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans! Enjoy your day of freedom now and be ready pass the ammunition (a line roughly borrowed from the battle of Bunker Hill).
Will the US Supreme Court go rogue in the Corlett decision?
The US Supreme Court says it will hear arguments in a major Second Amendment (gun rights) case brought by the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (Corlett, docket number 20-843) against the State of New York.
These two opponents are now met in legal battle, and the US Supreme Court is the final battlefield upon which the outcome will be legally determined. Legal being a kind of tenuous word these days, as all kinds of government agencies have taxpayer-paid staff who now illegally behave any damned way they want, with no legal accountability. The illegal behavior of the “public servants” raises the question whether the official decisions the various government agencies are then issuing are actually legal, and whether or not citizens should give a fig about them.
The case facts (the policy question) of Corlett are right out of the Constitution’s Second Amendment: The right to keep and BEAR arms. New York State says no, citizens have no intrinsic or Constitutional right to carry concealed or unconcealed firearms outside of their homes, without the state’s approval. And thus has New York State made getting a concealed carry license very difficult, and the penalties for law-abiding citizens who do carry without a license extremely harsh.
As you might guess, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association believes the opposite. They contend the plain meaning of the Second Amendment means what it says: To bear arms is to carry them in public, while the keep arms part is about having guns in your home. No license or government approval beyond what the Second Amendment says is necessary to keep or bear firearms, nor is government interference in such an individual Constitutional right lawful.
Moreover, they point out that the public policy question is on their side, because concealed carry permit holders are overwhelmingly law-abiding and safe. It does stand to reason that the people who go through the government red tape rigmarole presently needed to get a carry license are people who innately believe in following the law, in contrast to gang members and other urban scourges who carry and use guns illegally as part and parcel of their daily living. Therefore, New York’s stated purpose of limiting carry licenses for public safety and crime reduction is not only meaningless, because the current policy fails on both counts, it is actually having the opposite result. States with liberal concealed carry laws have seen a greatly reduced amount of violent crime, because would-be criminals understand they may encounter deadly force in response to their criminal behavior.
Many gun owners are excited about this case, after so many years of the Court declining to hear appeals of lower court decisions that were completely contrary to the Heller and MacDonald holdings (which were both strongly in keeping with the plain language of the Second Amendment’s very broad guarantee of individual gun rights). Well, hold your horses, people. The US Supreme Court has declined all kinds of appeals of lower court infringements of not just 2A, but what are in essence complete overturns of Heller and MacDonald precedents. The Supreme Court majority has allowed these lawless lower court decisions to stand. When the Court declined to hear appeals of lower court decisions on gun rights that were contrary to established Supreme Court precedent, the Court was more or less agreeing with the lower courts. The result has been a slow chiseling away of Constitutional Second Amendment rights by political activists sitting on lower courts, a slow erosion of the Supreme Court’s standing among and relevance to the citizenry, and a very clear message to Constitutionalists from all the courts: Do not hold hope for the American court system to protect individual American civil rights.
America’s court system is just as politicized and dysfunctional as the rest of our federal government. This is due to the divergent natures of the two types of people inhabiting our courts: Leftist activists for whom the law means nothing but a randomly opportunistic pathway to implement socialism and tyranny, and moderates who cannot be troubled to make a stand on hardly anything at all. So the moderates get swept away by the anti-law socialists. The Supreme Court is subject to these same forces.
Think about how America is still in the aftermath of the Court declining to hear enormously important cases about how some state administrative agencies (Pennsylvania’s Department of State being one) had unilaterally and illegally changed their state election laws right before the 2020 election, bypassing their own state constitutions and laws. And yesterday the Court sided 6-3 with a criminal illegal alien who fought his deportation on the grounds that the US Government had failed to give him “sufficient notice.”
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
If you are a convicted criminal illegal alien, the US Government and the citizen taxpayers empowering it owe you nothing but a swift kick in the ass on your way out of America.
To be blunt: Because the Supreme Court allowed the 2020 election to be stolen, and would not even hear the monumental legal and policy issues raised during the steal, why would any of us believe they will stand in the way of the government trying to steal our guns?
If any particular official government entity or group of individuals is responsible for the destruction of America’s rule of law, it is the Supreme Court. No wonder fewer and fewer Americans have confidence in or loyalty to this failed government entity.
So, if you are one of the people salivating over the prospect of the Court hereby upholding the Second Amendment rights of the citizen serf in Corlett, you are DREAMING. Do not raise your own or anyone else’s expectations about the Supreme Court now swooping in to set things right on the Second Amendment. If anything, we should be prepared for this lawless body packed with leftist activists and cowards, with just a couple of loyal patriots (the two Constitutionalists Thomas and Alito), to throw the Second Amendment overboard. If anything, we should be raising people’s preparation levels for defending our 2A rights by all means necessary. The US Supreme Court has gone rogue and no American should look to the compromised traitors in it to provide any relief to USA citizens.
So come what may, regardless of what will be the Supreme Court’s latest decision on the Second Amendment, New York State citizens may yet determine on their own what they believe their individual rights to be, and also what the limits are on government interference in the private lives and rights of citizens. After all, both government and these various courts were established to resolve differences in favor of citizen rights that are already very clearly spelled out in our founding documents, including in New York’s own constitution. All of America’s founding documents were written and established to limit government and to elevate the citizen over government, a situation now being reversed in a nationwide atmosphere of autocratic government totalitarianism. New York State being an Exhibit A. Which the Supreme Court may well reinforce in its Corlett decision.
New York citizens may choose to protect themselves as they see fit, perhaps with a concealed handgun minus the license part. Obviously this is presently at some risk to a person’s liberty, due to New York’s anti-Constitution state administration.
And this raises the bigger question here: Will enough Americans rise up and re-assert our collective ownership of this thing called government, which has gone totally rogue and turned against us, the citizen taxpayers? Unfortunately, blood is probably going to flow in answering this question. We freedom loving citizens are being attacked and damaged by anti-freedom people who want full control of everyone and every decision we make. Human history demonstrates that only brute force can determine who prevails in these kinds of contests.
UPDATE: Reading the Washington Post assessment of this case provides insight into the minds of tyrants. The Washington Post wonders aloud what will happen if the Court is “too broad” in its reading of what can only be plainly read as a very broad individual right to keep and bear firearms. As a mouthpiece for the radical Left, the Washington Post sends public messages from elected officials to everyone else, and so they wonder if a “too broad” interpretation of the Second Amendment will result in the Court being “overhauled” by the Democrat Party with an increase in the number of leftist activist justices sitting on the bench. You can’t make this stuff up, and they are proudly stating up front that if the Left does not get what it wants, which is official tyranny via the Supreme Court, then they will artificially install a new Supreme Court that will give them the policy outcome they want, democracy be damned. When people use democratic processes to achieve non-democratic results, you are dealing with pure evil. Well, what am I saying…these people stole the 2020 election in broad daylight, so what else should be expected? My advice: Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves!
UPDATE May 2nd, 2021: The Supreme Court discredits itself yet again. The Court has declined to hear one of the most salient lawsuits of our time, that brought by Laura Loomer, whose weighty complaint to the Court was that the Big Tech digital media are illegal monopolies who illegally discriminate against Americans, and thereby violate citizens’ First Amendment free speech rights. Loomer being the Exhibit A of the moment. And we all know an awful lot of “cancel culture” discrimination by Big Tech has been going on the past twelve months, affecting at least a third of the American citizenry, and you would think a reasonable Supreme Court would want to weigh in on this problem. But no, the Supreme Court continues to behave disgracefully and kick away the sniveling little wretches who keep showing up at the carriage door begging for some relief from their oppression.
This Court is daily diminishing its own usefulness and relevance to the American People, and the only answer why this is, is that the Court’s majority no longer sees themselves as part of the American republic or as guardians of the Constitution that holds the republic together.
If not us, We, The People, then who the hell is the Supreme Court working for? I think the Corlett case is going to demonstrate exactly who the Supreme Court is protecting and promoting these days: Tyrannical Big Government. I hope I am wrong, but looking at all these decisions the Court is making, including Loomer’s case, it is clear the US Supreme Court is AWOL.
Don’t you go and feel all alone if the Court’s anti-Constitution behavior leaves you thinking their decisions no longer have a binding effect on you. The Court is clearly now made of tyrants, and tyranny has no role or place on American soil, and they have no claim on the allegiance of the American citizen, much less our obedience.
FBI now officially a Democrat Party political weapon
Over the past twelve years, the Federal Bureau of Investigations could not prosecute open sedition or treason against the United States of America. “Sanctuary cities” in clear violation of federal and state laws were allowed to flourish and corrode our body politic from within, producing violent South American drug cartels operating freely in American towns that included unsolved beheadings of American citizens and murders of entire families.
FBI leaders and agents have blatantly used their official positions to protect political allies like Hillary Clinton, while using their official positions to attack, threaten, punish, jail and fine innocent people who just happen to be not their political allies. Peter Stzrok, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and many others have used their official taxpayer-funded jobs to politicize law enforcement, thereby destroying the foundations of the rule of law, the equal protection of the law, and official accountability for official malfeasance. In America, all citizens are supposed to be equal, but at the FBI some citizens are “more equal” than others.
The FBI couldn’t find the time to investigate blatant voter fraud in the November 2020 election, in order to promote the fraudulent candidacy of China Joe Biden, nor could it self-police its own rogue agents, nor could it investigate the criminal contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In contrast, now the FBI has agents immediately scouring America for their so-called “MAGA Most Wanted” list of people who briefly occupied the US Capitol building last Wednesday, and the FBI is even now rounding up Republican law makers in Tennessee on obviously fake charges stemming from political differences.
Can you imagine if the FBI had lifted a finger to confront the year-long violent rioting, looting, arson, murder, and vandalism conducted by Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA members? How many lives and businesses might have been saved! And can you imagine if the FBI had compiled a “Black Lives Matter Most Wanted” list of suspects from the various riots around America in 2020?
No, you cannot imagine that? Right, because had the FBI engaged in that kind of overt political statement, all hell would have broken loose. People would have rightly asked “What kind of a federal agency is targeting an activist group by name?” And yet, here we have the very purposeful political statement by the FBI that it is specifically going after “MAGA” people (Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again supporters).
This is not only not right, it is a crystal clear declaration by the FBI that it is an illegal political tool firmly behind one political party, the Democrat Party. The agency does not represent ‘the law,” it represents the un-law, the authoritarian coercive and selective use of illegal and immoral laws for political and personal gain. The agency is now an aggressive political tool for the Democrat Party, much like the East German STASI and the Russian KGB secret police were for their respective authoritarian regimes, acting illegally to advance a partisan political agenda. The FBI is abusing and misusing the law in order to achieve political goals.
This is nuts; it is totally un-American, because it destroys the foundations of any democracy. And yet we have a lot of Americans openly cheering for it. If the shoe were on the other foot, they would be openly rioting over it. So these presently cheering Americans will have to move aside or forgive the others if they riot; this would be consistent behavior, and not the double standard Democrat Party people have become addicted to.
I do not know how much more stomach at least half of American citizens have for this disgusting behavior by our nation’s pre-eminent law enforcement agency, and the political party it has been protecting and promoting for the past twelve years. We have already endured four years of brutal partisan FBI political machinations, including no-knock 4AM raids on innocent people like Roger Stone and General Michael Flynn, and other overtly political statements with guns drawn under color of law by those taxpayer-funded law enforcement professionals. Now we are watching the agency move lightning-fast to round up political opponents and turn them into political prisoners.
If last Wednesday’s peaceful protest in Washington, DC, was any indication of what can happen in America these days, it is plausible to believe that all civilian taxpayer Second Amendment hell can break loose right back over the zero-credibility FBI and its political party. Thomas Jefferson wrote that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants,” because he probably envisioned a time like right now when one group of people would seek official tyrannical domination over everyone else. Jefferson knew human nature back in 1776, and now the FBI is showing us the worst of it all over again.
Enter the Spirit of 1776, you motherfuckers. But the difference between 2021 and 1776 is that in 2021 American citizens will not be staging a revolution against established authority, they are beginning to resist an illegal Marxist revolution implemented through grievously corrupt and audacious political over-reach by the Democrat Party, due to the complete failure of the other supposedly counter-balancing political party to perform its basic functions.
I put all my money on the American civilian resistance, despite the FBI being supported by Big Tech (FaceBook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Apple etc) and Big Media (NPR, NYT, CBS, NBC etc.). At the end of the day, we have free minds and able bodies. Welcome to your own resistance, FBI-ocrats.
The Spirit of the Season
Today is Christmas Day, America’s national holiday at least as much as Thanksgiving Day. It is a day of good cheer, happiness, kindness, family, acts of charity, rest and relaxation; a Sabbath of sorts. Across Western Civilization this day has played several different roles and in different formats over the past thousand years, the earliest being solely religious and quite somber. The later versions of Christmas being a non-offending marriage between Christianity and northern European paganism, and being more celebratory.
Christmas as we know it now is largely a creation of Englishman Charles Dickens, who decried the caste system’s forced poverty and lack of Christian charity in his own land, and whose 1843 book A Christmas Carol championed the triumph of kindness and generosity to all over greed and miserly wealth. A literal ghostly spirit of Christmas invaded old man Scrooge’s otherwise selfish life, and left him a changed man. Scrooge’s personal changes, in the true spirit of Christmas Day, then resulted in a domino effect of increasing happiness and beneficence spreading outward from the formerly unhappy and mean old man to all those around him and beyond.
Dickens’ powerful message was a seed that grew wildly in fertile soil, as the contemporaneous Industrial Revolution had created a great amount of wealth and also a great many have-nots. And a hundred years later downtown Manhattan USA at Christmastime was full of powerful images and themes drawn directly from Dickens’ writings. That resulting Christmas culture has spread far and wide, and is now a mix of all the good stuff, including spirituality and morality, along with some old fashioned American consumerism. This has all morphed into the modern version of Christmas most Americans practice or at least enjoy today. It is kind of a third version of Christmas.
But if we go back to its beginning, Christmas Day is closely linked to Christianity’s predecessor, Judaism, and its own festive holiday of Chanuka. Christmas Day always starts on the 25th of December, which is usually right around the Hebrew date of 25th of Kislev, the start of Chanuka. While Chanuka has eight days, Christmas has twelve (similar to Passover having eight days and Easter’s Holy Week having seven at least, and possibly more, depending upon where one lives). And if we then immediately fast-forward back to the present, we see that Christmas has profoundly influenced the practice and understanding of Chanuka. Chanuka now being a heavily mysticized and joyful celebration of a vague miracle involving some olive oil. If you dig deep, you might get an American Jew to tell you that Chanuka is generally about individual freedom, and freedom of religion specifically.
Truth is, Chanuka was indeed originally about freedom, but the kind of freedom we Westerners no longer seem to value, or which we seem to take for granted.
Chanuka is described at hebcal.com as “Hanukkah (Hebrew: חֲנֻכָּה, usually spelled חנוכה … in Modern Hebrew, also romanized as Chanukah or Chanuka), also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. Hanukkah is observed for eight nights and days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar.”
OK, but what was the Maccabean Revolt, you ask? Ah ha, here we have suddenly discovered the true spirit of Chanuka! And one could surmise, the true spirit of Today’s Christmas Day, as well, heir as it is to Chanuka.
The Maccabean Revolt was a true-life rebellion by a small group of totally dedicated, religiously pure Jewish families against an enormous Assyrian empire that was then occupying then-Israel/Judea, roughly 2,200 years ago. It is the triumph of the little guy over the big bad bully; the triumph of monotheism over evil paganism; morality over immorality. Chanuka is the story of winning freedom by the edge of the sword, at total risk of one’s own survival. Those Jews who then strapped on a sword and successfully fought to the death over several generations to rid themselves of the yoke of Assyrian slavery, then set in motion so many future events. Like the subsequent existence of Jesus, the eventual creation of Christianity, and the resulting creation of Christmas Day by people seeking to directly link the day with Chanuka.
Early Christmas was observed by religious Christians as a day of spiritual freedom, similar to the Chanuka celebration of national freedom and sovereignty, without which there was no spiritual freedom for the Jews, whose Temple service had been disrupted by the Assyrian occupation. Which makes one wonder, in the context of where we are right now, December 25th 2020 , as America is poised to be captured and subjugated by China through its secret treaties with Joe Biden, Big Media, and Big Tech…. what was and is the true, original spirit of Christmas Day, and does it have relevance for us right now?
Religious Christians will provide an orthodox Christian perspective, but it is no stretch to say that today’s Christmas spirit could use a heavy dose of the original Chanuka spirit. We need some of that old time religion. We need a modern equivalent of the Maccabean Revolt against the fraudulent, illegal election that just took place, in which America as we have known her for 244 years is about to collapse and be replaced by repression and slavery.
So, I will raise a glass of eggnog to everyone in the spirit of good Christmas cheer. Salud! And I will also raise the American symbol of freedom, defiance, and sovereignty in salute of the brave American citizens who we know are the last hope of restoring our republic: The American longrifle and its updated equivalent, the AR15.
Merry Christmas! May the ancient spirit of the Maccabees fill every patriot heart.
“Ridgie” no more
In 1998 I joined the Governor Tom Ridge administration in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, fresh off of a solid seven years of DC Swamp. Coming from the Washington, DC, federal bureaucracy, I was considered a professional insider and policy whiz. My own view was that I was a refugee from the anti-citizen, anti-taxpayer, anti-America administrative state that was so crazily overboard that I could no longer work inside of it. My job in the Ridge Administration was as Director of Education & Information on the executive staff at the PA Department of Conservation & Natural Resources (DCNR).
The state civil service bureaucrats in Harrisburg had a name for people like me. We were called “Ridgies,” because we were so dedicated to the unique Tom Ridge way of doing things. And what was that unique way of doing things? What was it about being dedicated to Governor Ridge that earned us this almost mocking sobriquet?
In a word, Ridge was honest. He brought a refreshing honesty and down-home common sense to running government that had not been seen in decades. So different and refreshing was this bright light being shone on The People’s business, that it left those of us who were implementing it with almost Moses-like beams of light emanating from our faces. You could say we were bright eyed and bushy tailed, excited to do our work. We humored the staid bureaucrats, but we meant it and we persevered.
I was proud to be a Ridgie, because Tom Ridge represented almost everything that was good and necessary in government doing the taxpayer’s work.
Fast forward 25 years and holy moley, what has happened…. Governor Tom Ridge has endorsed senile, corrupt, pedophile, racist failed liberal career politician Joe Biden over President Donald Trump. Trump being the Tom Ridge of today, Biden being everything that everyone hates about corrupt career politicians.
All that Ridge’s bizarre endorsement did for me was make me realize that unlike when he was governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge now values the permanent and unaccountable administrative state over the interests of the citizenry. When Ridge was governor, he confronted Pennsylvania’s hide-bound bureaucracies and forced them to serve The People, the forgotten taxpayers who underwrite all of government. Now, Ridge is on the side of that administrative state, a complete 180 degree flip from where he was.
What can account for this change of philosophy? Probably that Ridge Global, Ridge’s lobbying and consulting firm, is so closely tied to that same big government administrative state. He certainly is not advocating for good policy, because President Trump is implementing everything that Ridge used to say that he believed in, and here Ridge is opposing it.
I feel badly that such a good man as Ridge has been flipped by filthy lucre. It is painful to see someone whose good citizen name inspired us, his staff, to be proud “Ridgies,” to now renounce and stand against all he once stood for. The person in whom I put my trust to implement citizenry-saving policies is now an open and proud tool for anti-America forces and activists.
Contrary to what Ridge claimed in his Atlantic article earlier this year, he is definitely not a conservative. Because his policy views are very liberal. And based on the things he routinely says in public, and his consistent support for an obviously corrupt Joe Biden, Ridge can in no way claim to be a Republican any longer. Yet he is using his claim as a “conservative Republican” to advance anti-conservative, anti-Republican ideas and people. This is not honest behavior.
Sadly, Ridge is just as much a part of the fake news as all the other fake news people. In turn, I must now say that I am no longer a “Ridgie.”
Unlike Governor Tom Ridge, I remain on the side of The People. I am still, however, a Trumpie, loud and proud.
USA! USA! USA!
TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP!
We people need to just do what we need to do to move forward
America’s economy is now in artificial tatters, an unnecessary result of very poor public policies in reaction to the Wuhan coronavirus.
Politicians are not going to be able to solve this ridiculous virus panic. In fact, politicians are mostly making it much worse than it really is, and probably they are doing that on purpose. A lust for power, a desire to hurt a political opponent at any cost, even at the cost of hurting and inflicting huge personal losses on the citizens, seem to be the main reasons why governors in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kentucky, and elsewhere have thrown down the gauntlet and are acting like dictators.
The “orders” these governors and local governments have issued are laughably confused, full of inexplicable contradictions and clear violations of Americans’ most basic rights and freedoms. Kentucky’s governor warns churchgoers that he ordered the Kentucky State Police to take down license plates of cars parked in church parking lots on Easter Sunday and other days, so that they can be ticketed later. Michigan’s governor says power boats are not allowed, but sail boats and canoes are OK, but Michiganders may not visit their hunting cabins. In Valley County, Montana, the county health department [I originally and incorrectly wrote that it was Missoula, Montana, the ultra liberal city council there shaping the rest of the surrounding county] issued an order that coronavirus-free people wear pink arm bands in public. Another county in another state went so far as to issue an order that anyone with coronoavirus could be, and probably would be, picked up by the police and involuntarily committed to a special quarantine location. Here in Pennsylvania, Governor Wolf vetoed a bill passed by both the PA House and Senate that brought clarity and structure to his own bizarre order. Wolf now demands that everyone in public wear a mask and that people not wearing masks must not be served in the stores they are in. Local PA townships are not permitted to approve land subdivisions, even though the townships can and do meet by teleconference that pose no health risk to anyone. Home construction is stopped cold, not because Wolf has demonstrated that there is an identifiable risk of spreading a contagious disease from building homes, but simply because he says so.
These orders have nothing to do with actually serving the people of America. They are not actually helping people. The risks of the Kung Flu are obviously much higher in congested places like New York City than in flyover country. These orders are self-serving the politicians with more power and discretion over our personal lives than the political process would ever give them.
And this list of crazy, insane, tyrannical orders over the past few weeks goes on and on. Every one of these orders violates the most essential, core aspects of being an American. Again, with no measurable public benefit and yet at enormous cost to our individual finances.
One good thing that has emerged from the Chinese coronavirus panic is that we all get to see in broad daylight that there are many power-hungry Americans amongst us, who will use whatever power they have to get more power, and to crush dissent, strip us of our liberties, and use overwhelming coercive government force to throw us in jail for made-up violations. We used to laugh that such people could ever exist in our political system! Well, here they are, front and center, and they are no laughing matter!
If ever there was a need for an America with our Bill of Rights protecting individual due process rights and freedoms, this past month has demonstrated it.
So if the politicians are hell bent on screwing up our lives, and destroying America’s economy, then the only people who can fix this is us. You and me. The citizens and local officials who live here, pay taxes here, work here in America. We have to clean this mess up.
It is time for We, The People to put our foot down and show the politicians that despite their crazy power grabs and ridiculous demands upon us, we are going to do what is best for us. We can wear masks and stand apart in public, no problem. We would choose to do that anyhow. But we will open up our businesses again, we will go for walks again, we will drive on the roads for pleasure again, we will approve land subdivisions again, and you can call it civil disobedience, but we will live free again. There is no way any governor is going to enforce their nutty and unconstitutional order by rounding up everyone and putting them in jail.
And if any governor tries to do that, then there is the old tried-and-true torches, pitch forks, and a bucket of hot tar at the governor’s residence to get things straightened out again in a hurry. We are Americans, after all, not sheep.
Rural & Urban People Experience the Virus Differently
Rural and urban people are experiencing the covid19 CCP virus differently. And this means they each experience the various governors’ approaches to it differently, too. Chinese Flu policies impact rural and urban people differently.
In rural America, like Clinton County and Lycoming County here in Pennsylvania, life is still pretty much going on, not quite like normal, but fairly close to normal. The perceived risk from Wuhan covid19 Flu is low. This is because the rural peoples’ observations are not squaring up with what they are being told from their state capital. Rural people are not seeing up close and personal the disruptive chaos and death that is so pervasive in places like New York City and Philadelphia. So their behavior is different.
For weeks the Lowes in Mill Hall, PA, has been standing-room-only parking on the weekends, as local people shop for gardening supplies. Likewise the other nearby big box stores and small hardware stores are also full of people attending to their needs. Life is going on, albeit with some face masks and people clearly trying to steer clear of one another in shopping aisles. The Wegmans in Williamsport, PA, was full of shoppers the last time I was there, and the shelves were mostly well stocked. Notes about limits per customer are placed in all the usual places – TP, canned tuna, milk, bread. Ladies at the checkout are quite tough and firm about shoppers abiding by these limits, and everyone seems to be getting along just fine.
Elsewhere in rural PA are drive-in church services, food takeout, maybe some bonfires with chairs set apart, but still lots of chairs, nonetheless.
Actual Risk vs. Perceived Risk vs. Government Policy
At the heart of this lifestyle difference between rural and urban people is the difference they have over perceived risk, actual risk, and what the government policy says.
When rural people look around and see none of the catastrophic chaos engulfing New York City, they begin to ask simple and necessary questions about the actual risk of the China Flu to them. The actual risk, not the suggested hype or irrational fear stay-the-f#k-at-home perceived risk that is being breathlessly communicated by the cable outlets every minute. Without bodies stacked high, without lots of people becoming obviously sick from the CCP Chinese Flu, and with local health providers like hospitals and clinics operating as normal, rural people begin to question the value and necessity of the government policy that tells them their Constitutional rights must be suspended.
They then begin to question the value and purpose of their own government.
When we hear about the over-reach in places like Kentucky and Michigan, whose governors are literally demanding that people cower in their homes or else face huge overwhelming coercive force and jail time, it is natural for Americans to ask not just what is the value of these policies, but why can’t we have real policies that are tailored to the realities that each community faces. The potential risks of Wuhan Flu are just not the same everywhere.
Rural areas have more room and space between people, fewer people, less congestion, and a lot lot lot less exposure AND a lot less actual risk. Government policies need to reflect these realities. Blanket one-size-does-not-fit-all policies serve no real health purpose. Instead, no matter how well intentioned the governor may be, these blanket policies that are the same in Philadelphia as they are in Lock Haven, PA, make everyone equally miserable, damage all businesses equally, regardless of the health outcomes.
At the end of the day, government action must both balance risks with costs and benefits, while also safeguarding the citizenry’s sacred Constitutional rights. To date, very few states have done this. Instead, almost every state has treated low-risk rural areas the same as high-risk congested urban areas, and hit them all with the same heavy hammer. This makes the whole covid19 reaction thing seem awfully fishy.