Posts Tagged → fight
DUNE 2 review
Dune captured my young imagination like no other book- not Tolkien’s trilogy, not Starship Troopers, and like Tolkien’s books and Starship Troopers, Dune shaped just about every subsequent sci-fi book, movie, comic book that followed.
Several attempts have been made to capture Dune’s magic in movie form. Prior to the latest two movies, the best known and best produced was the 1984 version with all-star cast Kyle MacLachlan, Sean Young, Sting, Jose Ferrer, Brad Dourif, Richard Jordan, Patrick Stewart, Jurgen Prochnow, Kenneth McMillan, Sian Phillips, Freddie Jones, Linda Hunt, Jack Nance, and other stellar actors. Look up any of these names and you find a talented lifetime actor with lots of real acting gigs to their credit. And as expected, the 1984 Dune movie was very well acted, much better than the latest versions.
Where the 1984 movie was deficient were some of the special effects, and yet some of its special effects were so good that they are repeated in the latest two Dune movies. Fact is, special effects have really improved since 1984, and of course this is where the 2021+2024 Dune movies shine.
If the 1984 Dune movie struggled to get everything just right and onto the screen in a logical flow, which sometimes left it congested, Dune 2 simply ignores certain critical story elements and throws scenes up on the wall, take them or leave them. There is a lot of character and story development in 1984 Dune that is absent in Dune 2.
One scene I was hoping to see is where Fayd Rautha is confronted by the last three Atreides warriors in his gladiator ring, and one of them is not drugged. That fighter just about kills Fayd in the knife fight. In the book that scene takes time to play out, and one gets the impression that Fayd is too used to mock-fighting drugged opponents who cannot possibly bring their full skills or physical power to bear against him. In Dune 2, Fayd just rolls right over his opponents 1-2-3, and there, it’s done. No suspense, no close calls, no embedded darts being painfully but artfully used as improvised armor against Fayd’s quick blade.
The Mentats are pretty much nowhere to be found in Dune 2, which is odd. Dune makes it clear up front that computers and artificial intelligence were banned from human possession, because the computers tried to kill off all the humans and take over their planets. Which gave rise to the Mentats, human computers whose loyalty is first and foremost to fellow humans. Dune 1984 does an outstanding job showing the central role of the Mentats, whereas Dune 2 has none.
One of the biggest deficiencies in Dune 2 is the final battle between Paul and the Fremen, and the Emperor’s forces. Little of the battlefield set-up is explained in Dune 2, and the action just kind of rolls along. The sand worms show up, but not grandly. Maybe the director expects the audience has prior knowledge of the storyline? Plus there are way too many lasers used in Dune 2, because as we do already know, if a laser hits a personal shield, an atomic explosion happens at both ends, killing both parties. Thus, knives and swords were much more handy. I guess lasers look too cool on the big screen to pass up, even if they are not in keeping with the book.
Or Dune 2 could have incorporated the original “weirding” voice module, the Atreides’ secret weapon that is both super high tech and weirdly organic. Dune 1984 did a great job showing how the weirding module greatly enhanced the Fremen fighting ability, thereby enabling them to take on the fully armed Harkonnens. None of this is in Dune 2, strangely.
The 1984 movie ending is far, far superior to the ending of Dune 2: Paul’s raw power is displayed in his fight with Fayd Rautha, whereas in Dune 2 a lot of stuff just doesn’t make sense. Like how does Fayd stab Paul so many times, and why doesn’t the scene follow the book, which is so good, and why doesn’t Paul cut loose after killing Fayd, crushing him and the stone floor with just his voice, thereby demonstrating his overwhelming physical/mystical messianic power…instead of just kind of standing there looking over his defeated enemies….? Curious minds want to know.
Nothing in Dune 2 shows Paul’s slow discovery and then development of his messianic powers, despite that being the entire purpose of the Dune story. Nine hundred generations of careful breeding and genetic modification were supposed to result in the messiah, who could bend space and time on his own, and in Dune and the 1984 Dune, those responsible for creating Paul are amazed that he actually happened. I am amazed that Dune 2 shows its audience almost none of this important part of the overall story. Paul’s emergence and ascent as the universe’s messianic all-powerful super-being leader is the entire point of Dune. How did it evade the producers of Dune 2?
Dune 2 should have just taken the 1984 film and used every scene, every prop, every script and line, and simply updated the actors and the special effects. Oh well. Opportunity missed.
Well, I paid fourteen bucks to go see a Hollywood movie. First one of 2024 and probably going to be the only Hollywood movie I see this year. Regal Cinemas now has assigned seats, which in theory is a nice thing, and which in the theater itself bore no resemblance to the seating map offered on the computer screen when buying my ticket. I did get to sit up front and enjoy the effect of a full size movie screen, which is a lot of fun. It is a shame the movie was not what I expected, or what it could have been, or should have been.
Nice consolation is that I can watch my 1984 Dune DVD at home, as well as watch the excellent cut scenes on YouTube. Hate to say it, Dune 1984 is in many ways much better than today’s Dune 2, but Dune 2 is worth seeing, if you have any affinity for the Dune story. It’s all fun.
Fayd Rautha (Sting) having fun biting Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) in the 1984 Dune last knife fight
Hanukka’s message to Americans
While Christmas is the national holiday of America, Hanukka is the other big holiday happening now. Today is the last day, and it is worth taking note of the meaning this religious holiday can and should have for all freedom-loving Americans.
Let us reflect upon what the message of Hanukka is and should be for Americans, because God knows, we are all in need of inspiration right now. Especially as we daily recognize ever more just how rogue and turned against us citizens our own federal government has become.
Hanukka is the commemoration of an unbelievably heroic and unlikely war outcome 2,300 years ago by a band of ferociously patriotic religious Jews battling against one of the regional superpowers of their time. In short, when Alexander the Great died, his Greek empire was divided into large parts, each run by one of Alexander’s generals. Seleucus was one of those generals, and while his life was a whirlwind of cloak and dagger politics, leading massed battles, and shifting political alliances, he ended up founding one of the regional empires. The Seleucid Empire included all kinds of remote areas and sleepy places and small peoples that the Greeks did not really care about, including the nation of Judea and its natives, the Israelites/Judeans/ Jews.
But the powerful Greek Seleucids ended up caring very much about the relatively small and highly religious Judeans, because most of the Jews would only go so far in pledging their loyalty to the Greeks, due to religious differences. While in general the Greeks had a very broad and inclusive view of culture, what was then called the pan-Hellenic, and while the Jews could go along with a lot of cultural differences so long as their religion was not compromised, the Greeks did require a basic fealty to their most important values. And those polytheistic values strongly antagonized the Jews’ monotheism.
It must be said that the resulting civil war was as much between religious Jews and Hellenized Jews as it was between religious Jews and the Greeks. Essentially it was the Orthodox Jews vs. the assimilated and very liberal Jews and their protectors, the Greeks. This fact obviously has great implications for the tensions between religious Jews today and their more liberal and religiously distant brethren.
An armed showdown began when the Seleucids erected their own statues and began sacrificing pigs in the Jews’ Great Temple. You know, the same large hill whereupon another uninvited, rogue, imperialistic and colonizing symbol has been erected, namely the golden dome of the rock. And so a Jewish priest names Mattathias (essentially Matthew in today’s English, a name familiar to Christians) picked up a sword, killed some bad guys with some gutsy moves, and started a Jewish rebellion against an overwhelmingly superior military force.
The Greeks and their liberal Jewish allies responded with force, and the Orthodox Jews fled their homes in Jerusalem to the Judean Hills, where they eked out a meagre existence in caves and remote washes where the Greek patrols did not go. Using hit-and-run guerilla war tactics over several years, Mattathias and his sons’ troops eventually wore down the Greek resolve, to the point where headlong massed battles resulted in smaller forces of Jews utterly annihilating their opponents.
Following the final battle, when the Jewish “Maccabees” returned in force to Jerusalem, they found the Great Temple ransacked and wrecked. Despite a great desolation upon the land, as a result of this terrible civil war, the religious Jews were able to scrape together enough pure olive oil to re-light the gold Menorah in the Great Temple while they also pulled the religious service back together, too. That fact about the olive oil has become kind of a materialistic Christmasized silver and blue tinsel fairy tale about a miracle, and thus great emphasis has been placed on the “miracle of the oil.”
Truth is, this “miracle of the oil” is almost a Monty Python sketch of what really happened, because the true miracle of Hanukka was that the tiny force of true believer Orthodox Jews was able to defeat a much more powerful but spiritually flaccid enemy. Where have we seen this same kind of scenario play out elsewhere in history? Hmmm, my fellow Americans?
The message of Hanukka is that no dark, evil force can defeat goodness and righteousness. This is the true miracle of this holiday, that a small band of humans, led either by George Washington or Mattathias the Priest, can defeat hordes of knuckle dragging barbarians. This is a message of inspiration that all Americans need right now, because we are now facing a terrible plague of evil, moral rot, and sadistic cruelty emanating from the present interloper rulers of our nation’s capital. Many people predict America is heading for a civil war, or at least an armed contest between the central government of Washington, DC, and the rest of the country. Hopefully, our election system is not so corrupted that we can vote our way out of this mess.
Don’t worry, Americans, because if you call upon God and are willing to sacrifice and take risks, like the Orthodox Jewish Maccabees did 2,300 years ago, then you can, we can, miraculously re-take the America that is ours from those who have risen up to steal it and make us all subjects and slaves to their evil power.
My fellow Americans, take heart from the history of Hanukka that you, too, can be successful against what look like overwhelming odds.
The light of freedom shines bright, including in our hearts and our spirit to fight for what is right
As goes Israel, so goes America
Lots of my fellow conservatives are poo-poohing Israel’s war for survival, because “that’s over there, and we are doing just fine way over here, so why should we either care or get involved?”
I am an America-first guy. No ifs ands or buts, America comes first in all things. Behind this commitment is a simple calculus: If America falls, every other cool place will also fall. And when we say fall, we mean the end of individual freedom across the planet. America is the last bastion of individual freedom; there is no other place for freedom loving people to go. And no one else will bail us out if America does fail. So, America first means an absolute commitment to preserving the highest and best freedom on Planet Earth. It is here that I make my stand. I hope you do, too.
Years ago a reader of this blog asked me to write about Agenda 21, the United Nations targeting of individual freedom under the guise of better health and better environment and so on. Agenda 21 is the usual Marxist pablum of do-gooders without a thought for its inevitable negatives. The gist is that whatever the UN wanted to achieve with Agenda 21 was good, and no one was ever asking about the down sides, the costs, the consequences. The reason I neglected to address Agenda 21 until right now is that a literal hailstorm of attacks on America from top to bottom was well under way, and still is, and I believed then that while Agenda 21 might appear to be a big part of the problems the USA was experiencing at the time, the truth was that a lot of other hidden efforts were much more dangerous.
Well, fast forward almost ten years and here we are, a constitutional America literally under siege from every angle, from every corner, even from within our own government. Agenda 21 might be interesting, but there is a lot of other evil crap that will be fatal to the American republic literally right in front of our faces. Turns out that Agenda 21 alone is kind of quaint policy debate stuff. Fact is, America is under attack by much more, much worse crap that doesn’t even have a catchy name.
Three weeks ago, a lot of conservatives might have had truly mixed feelings and mixed thoughts about Israel. Most conservatives like that Israel is a democracy, that it is a Western nation with the rule of law, that the people there speak great English, and that Israel has always been a close and important military ally of America. On the other hand, a lot of conservatives are mistrustful of the tangled web of official relationships between Israel’s government and our own. And many resent their tax money going there for whatever (about 90% of the American taxpayer money that goes to Israel pays for Israel to buy American-made weaponry).
However, since the bloody October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, conservatives have had another growing concern: Will this latest war become yet another place for young Americans to fight and die, pursuing vague goals and intangible results…all while the war machine cha-chings up the bucks.
Here’s the thing, folks. All of the above is true, and it is also possible for America to support Israel without sending any troops, and really just being more of a cheerleader as Israel cleans up the trash. But don’t think that what is happening in Israel can’t or won’t happen here in America. Don’t think you can simply close your eyes and ignore what is happening “over there” because it is not happening “over here.”
Because the same kind of people trying to destroy Israel also live right here in America. And they want to destroy America for the same reason they want to destroy Israel.
I think it is just a matter of time before America is attacked in a hundred different locations by a hundred different attackers, all driven by Islamic supremacism. I am not alone in saying this, because you don’t have to have a great analytical mind to know that the hundreds of Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Chinese literally walking over America’s southern border all pose a huge threat to our people. They are not here to hookem horns party hearty and watch a football game. They are here to hurt us, to kill us, to destroy our civilization, to strip us of our rights, and to make us submit and to force convert us all to some other belief system.
So, Israel is the canary in the coal mine for America. If Israel falls, then whoa, America, you are really on your own, and we had better be on our guard. The same forces that could destroy Israel could destroy America. Don’t get complacent and say to yourself “Eh, that’s happening way over there, it doesn’t involve me, and it can’t happen over here.”
Not only can it happen here, there are hundreds of Iranians and Syrians and others from known terrorist countries living here right now. They will blow us up for the same reason Hamas is trying to blow up Israel. There is no separating America from Israel in this regard; both countries are hated by primitive, evil savages for the same reason. Interestingly, while some of the $85 billion worth of American weapons summarily abandoned in Afghanistan by the Biden Administration are showing up in Gaza, used against Israelis, one can’t help but wonder if they will also show up back here in America, but this time in the hands of our enemies.
When I was a kid and got into fistfights, and someone’s older brother jumped in to help his jerk little brother kick my ass, and I found myself outnumbered, I always appreciated having someone unexpected jump in on my side to help even the odds. Teams have a way of reinforcing each other, increasing their chances of survival. Israel right now is doing OK and doesn’t need America to jump in militarily. America doesn’t have to necessarily fully jump in on Israel’s side right now, but we had better be watching closely what happens there and what is happening here at home. Because as Israel goes, so goes us, so goes America.
PAGOP a gutless, soulless, heartless pile of
The Pennsylvania Republican State Committee met last week. Annual meetings can be useful, and they can be indicative. My impression is the meeting was more indicative than useful.
One of the indicators standing boldly and studiously ignored in every room like an elephant, or something, was the reality that the PA GOP is financially broke and filled up with “decision makers” incapable of breathing life back into the dying body. The PAGOP sold its downtown Harrisburg headquarters that was but a short walk to the PA Capitol and all the elected officials therein, and it now occupies rented space on the outskirts of town in the PA Dental Association building. Truly a downfall measured in miles.
The reason the PAGOP is in financial trouble is that it has lost its raison d’etre, its purpose for being, its reason for existence. Few people are left to support it. Like most Republican Party apparatuses across America, the Pennsylvania Republican Party exists for the sake of its own existence. That is, the group has no discernible set of principles or even values outside of electing people from deep within its own ranks. More or less a social club.
It is a group not only living in a van down by the river, not metaphorically speaking, because the Pennsylvania Dental Association is actually right next to the Susquehanna River, it is also a trademark in search of a product. What was accomplished at this gathering of PAGOP muckety mucks and who’s whos? Endorsement votes, that’s what! Yes, this group of three hundred-and-some people gathered together to vote repeatedly against the interests of their own voting base. With millionaire GOPe consultants taking notes on the rollcall votes.
See, the PAGOP specializes in endorsing establishment caricatures, I mean characters, who are people most closely aligned with the personal pocket books of the members of the PAGOP. These endorsed candidates need not necessarily stand for anything of substance. Rather, they must be socially acceptable to the gathering. That is to say, non-threatening, genial, kind of milquetoast, definitely not making any waves.
And it is this kind of political candidate whom the Republican voter despises most of all. Over and over, Republican voters say they want the Republican party to stay out of primary elections and just let the Republican voters sort it out. No unfair advantages to be given to any particular candidate, just because, say, they happen to be golfing buddies with some PAGOP muckety muck. Instead of genial personalities, the Republican voter base wants barroom brawlers, candidates who say unvarnished truths, people who are like the voters and who actually stand for something and who are willing to take risks and make sacrifices to see those beliefs through to the end.
Nope. The PAGOP held its annual ritual seance behind closed doors, to hell with the broken hearts and shattered dreams of the actual voters who get Republicans elected. To wit: Not one mention of election integrity at the gathering. Not one mention of the mechanics by which actual living citizens vote for the candidates they support. And this is important because ever since the election of 2020, all the basic rules of fair, transparent, accountable, and democratic voting have been thrown out the window in Pennsylvania. Our state has no voting laws. Instead, we have a gigantic vote stealing scheme vs. a bunch of milquetoast, genial, go-along-to-get-along weenies who are all too happy to say “Awww shucks” when they lose so they can get back to their expensive fundraiser or dinner out, tab paid by the lobbyist host.
Republican voters have been screaming about election integrity, and absolutely no one at the 2023 PAGOP state committee gathering said a damned thing about it. And until something is done about the lawlessness engulfing Pennsylvania elections, Republicans will continue to artificially lose election after election. And the PAGOP seems perfectly OK with this fact. Think on that….
One more example of the cost of this official spinelessness: Last year someone submitted a draft resolution to their X__ County Republican Committee, stating that the committee would stand in solidarity with the roughly one hundred January 6th political prisoners being held illegally in dangerous conditions, uncharged, beaten by the Washington, DC prison guards. Not a peep was heard in response, and so the resolution was submitted yet again to the committee leaders. Months went by, and nothing was heard.
If county Republican Committees cannot stand in solidarity with Republican political prisoners illegally held in dangerous and filthy jails, then the county Republican Committee stands for nothing. Zero. Contrast this weak stance to the way the Left bailed out even the most felonious of their arsonists and murderous looters in 2020, across America. No one was too violent or evil to be bailed out of jail by Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party.
If the PAGOP and its 67 county subsidiaries will not fight fire with fire, or at least try to put out the fire, or at least show some back bone and support for its base, then the PAGOP will cease to mean anything. And as we see, the PA GOP does nothing except police its own internals. So it really stands for nothing.
Heads up: Josh Prince is running for Commonwealth Court, and he deserves your vote. Josh has represented me in years-long litigation with Harrisburg City over its illegal anti-gun rights ordinances. So far, Josh has won every round with the city’s lawyers. See? Josh Prince embodies the fighting spirit that the Republican voters crave, and so Josh deserves your vote. Please vote for Josh Prince on Primary Election Day, which is May 16th, 2023.
Democrat Party steals White House – A-OK, Americans briefly occupy their own Capitol – ‘arrest everyone’
America is in the rubber-meets-the-road period of a full blown authoritarian Marxist revolution aiming to destroy our constitutional republic.
The Democrat Party uses blatant election fraud to steal the presidency right in front of our faces, and then two Georgia senate seats, and we are told by the mainstream media that we must shut up, sit down, and do what we are told. Then, a few hundred thousand patriots assemble peaceably in Washington, DC, to air their grievances. A handful briefly occupy the US Capitol, which is known as The People’s House, four of whom are executed in cold blood by the US Capitol Police, and suddenly the Democrat Party-run media are telling us that every single protestor there must be rounded up and jailed as well as anyone who supported them.
No mention of the four executed protestors, or even an acknowledgement that quite a few ANTIFA guys got into the Capitol and raised hell.
The hypocrisy of this situation is glaring, because we just experienced a solid year of violent BLM and ANTIFA riots that were driven by Democrat Party politicians and their media and tech arms, like MSNBC and FaceBook. Entire cities were destroyed or set back on their heels for decades to come, without any repercussions at all. None, zero.
This situation is exactly how the Communists took over Eastern Europe in the 1940s. They used the appearance of democracy to achieve power and non-democratic results, like locking up their innocent political opponents on fake charges.
Folks, we have a full on illegal takeover of America happening right in our faces. How many Americans are willing to live under the Democrat Party’s ruthless tyranny is a big question.
Another big question is what the hell is the purpose of the Republican Party, if most of its elected members are unwilling to mount any kind of resistance but are actually all too happy to help the Marxist takeover happen?
Vice President Mike Pence is a shameful example of this spineless attitude. Pence said on Wednesday that “the Constitution constrains me” from sending the contested Electoral College votes back to the several states for a re-certification, and so he certified the utterly false Electoral College votes that gave the presidency to a fraud, Joe Biden.
Hey, Pence, the US Constitution and the laws from it actually enabled you to do exactly what was needed. And did you not notice that your supposed political opponents, the Democrat Party officials, do not feel constrained by anything? Not laws, not rules, not decency, not a democratic spirit, and certainly not the US Constitution. Now that you gave them the power, the Democrat Party and their allies in Big Tech are blowing up the Constitution.
Guess this end result makes Mike Pence really committed to the Constitution…
If elected Republicans continue to play nicey-nice by the most restrictive interpretation of the rules and laws, while their opponents are falsely accusing and jailing good people without any regard to law at all, then there is no official opposition to the Democrat Party’s evil. And so there is no purpose to the Republican Party. A political party that cannot stand up to what has just transpired is not worth being called a political party.
Let’s face it, as so many people have said for decades, the GOP is truly a country club, a gentleman’s club, a social club, an investor’s club, a blue blazer and short hair and and khaki pants club, an elitist snob club; it sure as hell is not a political club or political party.
I have run against the GOPe three times (in a Republican congressional primary in 2009-2010, a Republican state senate primary in 2012, and another Republican state senate primary in 2015 that I bowed out of after severely injuring my left knee while hunting), and each time the Pennsylvania Republican officials and GOP money men fought harder against me than empty suit VP Mike Pence or Senator Mitch McConnell just fought against this Marxist takeover of America. In 2012 the Pennsylvania Republicans actually gerrymandered me out of my own State Senate District #15 at the last second, and it took the PA Supreme Court to throw that out and put me back in, a historic decision. Then the PAGOP ran two people against me, and their chosen candidate beat me with I think 43% of the vote, only to lose to the incumbent Democrat state senator that fall.
If the GOP has more fight against America-loving conservatives than it does against open Marxists seeking to overthrow the rule of law, then what the hell is the purpose of the GOP? Not much. Seems like America needs a Patriot Party to supplant the failed GOP. Yes, third parties always enable the Democrat Party, but so what? So does the GOP!
The GOP welcomes all the hypocrisy, sedition, treason, and lawlessness that the Democrat Party and its adjuncts in Big Tech and Big Media can daily assemble, just so long as the existing GOP elected officials maintain their jobs…
Folks, this is not the political arrangement planned by America’s founders in 1776 or in 1787. If Americans wish to hold on to their most basic freedoms, then they must organize right now and plan on mass direct action against the lawless theft of our government. Think of yourself as living in 1776, and act accordingly.
24 hours after election, GOP still asleep while Democrats are at war
America is in trouble, no two ways about it.
Seems like the only person actually fighting for America is Donald Trump, his kids, and a small handful of elected senators and congressmen.
Meanwhile, the Democrat Party has not let down for one minute. They have maintained a war footing against their political enemies that is both admirable for its forcefulness and disgusting for being anti-America in every way. But the Democrats are playing for all the marbles, all the money, all the power, and so they do not let up. It helps them that they have the mainstream media on their side as their mouthpiece and running interference for them.
But the Republicans could respond. If they had any fight in them to do so.
Here’s a suggestion: US Senate leader Mitch McConnell could tell the Democrats that their un-American sham kangaroo secret court so-called “impeachment” thingy will not be honored in the US Senate. The senate will simply not consider it because it is so obviously flawed, lacking that due process thing and transparency thing and witness cross-examination thing America is known for.
But instead, McConnell says that the fake impeachment hoax will not prevail in the senate, meaning he will honor it despite its flaws. Why should he even buy in to the whole premise in the first place?
Turns out the GOP dropped the state of Virginia, didn’t bother to even field candidates in 30 of the state house and senate seats up for election yesterday. No door-to-door. NO FIGHT. So the Democrats took the governorship and both legislative houses.
Even as the Democrats reveal their party to be a giant crime syndicate that uses government to make billions of dollars and to crush people who get in their way, the Republican Party seems willing to just stand there and do nothing.
So, yes, conservatives have some happy Election Day 2019 results, but there is a cultural revolution that needs to occur within the GOP itself if winning is going to be more than haphazard. The “Flaccid GOP Syndrome” has been an issue for me personally for ten years, as I have previously run for office several times over that period, and have encountered the self-aggrandizing, self-adulating, self-protecting, non-performing RINO career officials and staffers riddling the Harrisburg Capitol building and Washington, DC. These people care about themselves, not you, not me, not Pennsylvania, not America. When they wake up in the morning, the first thing they think about is “How is today going to be good for me?”
So they don’t fight. Fighting makes waves, it’s risky. And they don’t want to risk their comfy careers!
I promise you this is the truth about the vast majority of the elected officials and their staffers here in Harrisburg and Washington. No political party can sustain wins and long term success when it is so inward looking and so self-interested. Politics in democratic societies is a substitute for war and violence. So in order to be truly successful, a political party must use the principles of war.
The Democrats have a screaming mob and lots of violence, and it could be met head-on, to the GOP’s advantage. Instead, the GOP just steps out of the way and hopes the howling mob will keep going and bother someone else along its path, not realizing that the zombies will eventually get them, too.
My “I voted Today” sticker on a Filson vest
PA senate floor scrap is microcosm of GOP vs Dems nationwide
If you pay attention to politics, and why else would you be one of the three readers here on this blog than you are a political junkie, then you know that one hoax after another has been trotted out against the president since he took office, in an effort to blunt his presidency.
If one hoax doesn’t work, like the “Russia collusion” thing that the chief “investigator” himself (Mueller) torpedoed in public, then another one is tried. Latest and greatest hoax is this Ukraine thing where one political party tries to cover up their corruption in the Ukraine by accusing the president of doing something wrong when he literally calls for an investigation into the corruption.
As ridiculous as this is, there is an arrangement that has taken shape in Washington, DC, and across America. Basically one political party is at war and uses anything available to them to advance that war, at any cost, and the other political party is kind of dumbfounded like a deer in the headlights.
One political party is throwing dust up in the air and running around screaming, or allowing ANTIFA Brownshirts to attack peaceful protesters while the city police are illegally told to not protect the peaceful protesters, while the other political party stands there slack-jawed, incredulous that anyone would abuse our governmental system so badly. That the DOJ is AWOL on ANTIFA and anti-civil rights mayors who enable their violence does not help.
If you want to watch all of what is happening in Washington, DC, and Seattle and Portland and Minneapolis and Charlotte, in a nutshell, then watch a fascinating fight on the Pennsylvania senate floor (below) where the Democrats throw the law and senate rules right out the window, and in response the Republicans mill around like a bunch of confused and rattled little school girls while one of them barks repetitively for a very long time about how the Democrats WILL follow the rules and hand over that microphone right now.
Which the Democrats do not do, of course. Instead, they do exactly what they want to do, which is to take control of the senate through lawless chaos and anarchy. They have zero respect or use for the law, or the rules, because at the moment neither suits their purpose. Wait until the rules and the law finally DO suit their purpose, and then watch out! They will bring a hammer and a sickle down on anyone standing up to them.
So, like what happens in DC, the Pennsylvania senate Republicans here are basically standing there flat-footed, dazed, confused, addled, with Jake Corman barking “Point of order! Point of order!” like a worn out old dog whose angry bark is all it has. He has no bite.
Sad thing to me is that Jake is not a small guy, physically. He should have some confidence to stand up to his political opponents. I wanted to fist fight him a few years ago, but he wouldn’t stoop to it, and now here he is facing off with a real live Democrat insurrection, and he can’t even muster the courage to storm the podium and wrestle back the microphone and control of the senate floor. What a loser!
Jake, you are a weak kneed little girl, because all your career you have had everything handed to you. When you are needed most, you don’t have the strength of character to stand up and fight.
Lawless Democrats, confused, spineless Republicans, just like across America and in DC.
By the way, this lawlessness is exactly how the Communists took control of eastern Europe, because the good guys/better guys were too proper, followed ‘the rules’ even when there were no rules, and thereby failed to assert themselves when their leadership was most needed. The good guys lost.
Here is the amazing video.
[Screen grab] Pathetic and weak career politician Jake Corman barking like an annoying little lap dog at the mean Democrats who have stolen control of his precious senate floor process. Corman is surrounded by a bunch of little school girls dressed like men, who mill about confusedly. This is a snapshot of what is happening Across America as lawless Democrats take control while mystified Republicans stand around and ineffectively say “Hey, you can’t do that, you’re not allowed to do that.”
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.
I love America. That is why I fight for her
I don’t doubt that the people on the left “love” America.
What I also know is true is that their definition of “love” of America is 100% the opposite of mine.
My love of country is frequently called “jingoistic” in online debates, a term once used by America’s arch-foe, the Soviet Union, and their treasonous allies planted on American soil.
The left’s “love” for America is for its rich opportunity to be turned into a fantasy utopia, the likes of which Marxists have been pursuing one way or another for over 100 years.
Leftists would take all of our material success until now, and convert it into state-controlled property, to be doled out sparingly to everyone equally. That policy failed awfully in the Soviet Union, but as someone once close to me used to say, “Communism failed only because the Soviets did not implement it correctly. It is otherwise a great thing and still ought to be pursued.”
The Soviets failed, and the Berlin Wall fell (25 years ago), because a tidal wave of individual hope for freedom and liberty continually corroded state power; eventually, the system just leaked throughout its faulty pipes.
The left would ignore all that and return us to those dark days. Oh sure, they don’t say the days will be dark. Neither did the Soviets, and neither do the Chinese or the North Koreans – they all say things are just rosy.
I love the America that was founded in 1776 and 1787 and 1794 and 1812 and 1867 and 1922 and 1948 and 1954 and 1964 and…….Yes, America as it was founded had the tools built into it to overcome the many challenges the young nation inherited (slavery and abolition) and later worked through (women’s suffrage, Negro voting rights, etc.).
America is not perfect – what nation is? – but America is perfectly designed and built to successfully process all challenges.
The challenge we face now is the same we faced when the Soviets had their agents working to damage us on the home front. We face domestic political opponents who really do not believe in the America as it was founded. They do not really love America, as it was created. They are like little Benedict Arnolds, riding through the countryside at night, doing their utmost to un-do all the goodness.
I and tens of millions like me, however, we do love America as it was founded and as it has progressed since its founding. And we will not sit idly by as our great nation is “transformed” into something unrecognizable. Our fight is as much with liberals in the Democratic Party as it is with liberals in the Republican Party, and there are plenty there, too.
Speaking of the traitor Benedict Arnold, he was caught by two ragamuffin Patriot soldiers, more militiamen than regulars, and he offered them huge sums of money if they would but let him go to his British handlers waiting for him not far away. Our two boys were destitute of money, but not of spirit, and in their ragged clothing they held him at the end of their loaded barrels and marched him back to patriot lines.
Today, people like me, no matter how much money is thrown at us, for or against us in supportive politics or opposition politics, we are going to keep on fighting to bring back the America we once knew – The America that offers full and equal prosperity to all who are willing to work hard and contribute to a society bound by Constitutional obligations and opportunities, and nothing more, or less.
If you want freedom, you are going to have to fight for it
Nevada senator Harry Reid changed the US Senate rules last year, which may not sound like a big deal. But those rules had been in place for about 215 years, a significant portion of America’s existence.
The former senate rules ensured that a slim majority of senators could not win important votes by a slim majority of votes. Important votes like confirming federal judges, whose stamp on the nation’s character lasts for decades. Some federal judge nominees are extremists, nakedly partisan political activists who only wear the black robes for effect, not because they are truly dignified and above the political fray. The former rules prevented those extremists from being confirmed to the bench unless a super-majority of US senators agreed.
Harry Reid’s rule changes allowed his party to ramrod through a whole freak show of kooks, anti-American anarchists, and other assorted wing nuts. These are not people dedicated to serving American citizens; these people are at war with the America we grew up with. They think that Communism only failed because the Soviets didn’t implement it correctly, not that Marxism is a bad idea.
Last week I sat about ten feet away from where US Senator Pat Toomey was speaking at the Perry County Republican Committee Fall Dinner (kudos to county chairman Don McClure for getting Toomey to speak to us). Sure, Toomey said a lot of good stuff. But then he dropped a bombshell, even worse than his ill-fated anti-gun legislation last year: If the Republicans regain the US Senate in two weeks, they will return the Senate rules back to the old set.
Toomey said that this would be done to “prove” that Republicans are “better” than Democrats.
Well, what the hell, Patrick? The liberals are playing to win, to win everything, to win all the power, to take over the entire nation, and the Republican party establishment is engaged in a game of checkers.
In Houston we got to see what Liberals-Gone-Wild really looks like, as the new mayor there served subpoenas on many of the pastors in the city, who had dared to exercise their First Amendment rights and oppose the mayor’s policies. In other words, the only free speech under liberals is speech that they approve of, using the full force of government coercion to achieve their goal. In other words, we are in a fight for survival, for the basic core of American democracy. We have to win this fight, because if people like the Houston mayor win, if people like Barack Hussein Obama win, every citizen loses.
Here’s the thing that people like US Senator Pat Toomey just do not understand, that they will never understand: A gentlemanly duel with the liberals will not succeed.
Instead, a bar room brawl is what is needed, and frankly, it is what is desired by the disaffected grass roots activists who otherwise fuel the Republican party.
If you want to hold onto your freedoms, you’d better fight like hell to hold onto them, fight at least as hard as your opponent, if not harder. That means letting the people who changed the US Senate rules learn to live with that change under Republican administration. The Republicans should run the US Senate for at least one year, maybe two years, under Harry Reid’s new rules.
Any Republican senator who cannot support this stance is not really committed to winning back the America that the liberals have dramatically damaged over the past six years. Republican senators who are only committed to the meaningless game of checkers, to the effete gentlemanly duel, what are they doing there?
Step aside, Patrick. The rest of us are rolling up our sleeves and grabbing something solid and heavy to set this situation right. That’s right, that heavy lifting is always left to the grass roots activists, isn’t it….