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Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin

I have watched the fascinating interview with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin by journalist Tucker Carlson, and if you have any interest in world politics, you should watch it too, right here.

So the mainstream establishment politically partisan leftwing activist media, and their political members like Hillary Clinton, have all piled on Tucker Carlson for doing this interview. I don’t see why, except that the establishment media is jealous, or maybe afraid. Unlike the establishment media people, Tucker Carlson doesn’t ask softball questions or act like a fawning stooge.

He asked logical questions of Putin that visibly provoked Putin quite a few times. In fact, Tucker Carlson asked questions I would not necessarily have thought of, like if it is OK to carve up modern Ukraine among its former occupiers, as Putin stated, then is Putin advocating for giving northern Ukraine to Viktor Orban’s Hungary? Would Putin be ok with Poland taking a big piece of Ukraine, too?

Putin did not like those questions! He oh-so-very-clearly dislikes being challenged and is not used to it.

For his part, Putin was fascinating. He gave an impressive recitation of Eastern European history, beginning at the year 862, from memory. While I have studied the history of Europe a lot, I do not think I could give you all of the “who kicked Mary and who hit John” moments that make up the chaotic past and present of Eastern Europe, much less Western Europe, from memory.

One area that Putin was clearly not being truthful about was this “Denazification” of Ukraine justification-excuse for invading Ukraine. Yes, there were Nazi collaborators in World War II. There were also Ukrainian Communists in World War II. Russia also committed a genocide-by-forced-starvation against Ukraine, called the Holomodor, in great part in retaliation for atrocities committed by Ukrainians against Russians not too long before. There is indeed a long history of blood and feuds here.

Putin also stated that Poland collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. Yes, the same 1939 Poland that was invaded and crushed by the German Nazis, supposedly did it on purpose to help Germany. Despite the fact that it was the Soviet Russians who committed the Katyn Massacre of the Polish elite. Obviously Poland did not welcome or collaborate with the German Nazis, but Putin says they did, and moreover, that the Poles were themselves Nazis.

This is nonsense. It is not factual.

But, like I say, you have to hear this interview yourself to understand how the Russians really think, or at least how they want you to believe they think.

Whether or not Putin actually believes his own propaganda, it doesn’t matter. He says it, and to me it sounds crazy, but I will bet that a lot of other Russians believe the same things. Which is why these interviews and dialogues are so important.  We humans should strive to understand one another. Or at least lie to each other, mutually. Some sort of understanding emerges, and if it prevents bloodshed, cruelty, and crying children and destroyed civilizations, then probably for the good.

Putin very clearly has a passion for the region and for Russia, which is to his credit. Because the one thing that has caught the fancy of a lot of Americans is that Putin loves his homeland Russia. If there is one thing that at least half of America admires it is an appreciation for one’s nation, and so Putin’s clear love of Mother Russia resonates with them.

Putin’s love of country, to the point of waging an illogical, incredibly destructive, and probably illegal invasion-war against Ukraine, is something we no longer see in America’s politicians.  No, America’s politicians are largely fat globalists, citizens of the world, moral relativists who enter Congress worth fifty cents and who are then worth $29,000,000 three terms later. American politicians love money, not America, and they are allowing America to be invaded. American politicians are selling America to the highest bidders, most especially Joe Biden, whose literal name Joe Biden is all over illegal bribe and graft checks and money wires written by Chinese businessmen to him and his son Hunter Biden.

Putin doesn’t put up with traitors, which a lot of Americans find refreshing and wish would be the norm once again here in America.

Putin gave his perspective on his region’s history, which is obviously from his own view. I know for a fact that asking a Ukrainian citizen will result in a different view on a few of those same exact facts. Same goes for people from Poland, Lithuania, Finland and many other nations around there. For the past few hundred years at least, that big grizzly bear Russia has had its grip tightly on so many of its neighbors. And from the Russian perspective, this is normal and perfectly fine. If you are Kazakh, or Tajik, or some other ethnicity, you probably disagree with Russia’s actions.

One of the regions that Russia invaded and absolutely stomped to pieces in recent times, unarmed civilians and all, was Chechnya. Back before YouTube became all censorship oriented, you could watch actual video footage of Russian soldiers laughingly executing unarmed Chechen civilians in their ragged clothing, mothers and fathers, grandmas, and then walking on to the next rustic stone farmhouse and doing it all over again. I really defy anyone to try to justify this barbaric behavior. Same goes for Ukraine now.

And Putin complains that the CIA was responsible for Chechnya’s response…

Other items that fascinated me are Putin’s view on his experience squaring off against and sometimes trying to work with the CIA and American political leadership over the decades. He seems genuinely flummoxed why American leaders and bureaucrats alike do not trust Russia, even post-Soviet Russia. It is helpful to me to closely watch Putin’s face as he voices his disbelief, and his reluctant acceptance of realpolitik, over the proxy wars and NATO maneuvering along Russia’s borders.

Maybe he really does believe what he is saying.

Long ago, a friend of mine who taught Russian history and military doctrine at the US Army War College in Carlisle, PA, pointed out that over its long history Russia has never had democracy or representative government. Russian culture has always favored some sort of headman, dictator, Tsar, whatever, and so, believe it or not, today’s Russia with all of its obvious problems, and its journalists being thrown out of windows, is still relatively open and free compared to its history and its potential now and future.

In other words, as ruthless dictators go, Putin is not so bad. He could be a lot worse.

In any event, Tucker Carlson has done a good deed here. He sat down and had an honest-to-goodness real and very long interview with a head of state that no one in the American political-media establishment wants us to hear from.

You should ask Why the American political-media establishment wants us to be shut off from Putin’s perspective. Is it because so many American bureaucrats and politicians have been privately and very illegally benefiting from Ukraine’s oil and gas business, and from its illegal bioweapon labs set up at the behest of Dr. Mengele Fauci and American Big Pharma companies? These illegal relationships have been coming to light in the past few years, mostly now as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Watch the interview, and be thankful that a free America still exists in part, despite the Biden Regime’s best efforts to turn America into a violent police state, and freedom never being free and having to be occasionally renewed by the blood of patriots and tyrants alike.

UPDATE: Tucker Carlson goes food shopping in Moscow. Whoa.

Joe Biden incompetence/ corruption = Ukraine invasion

The only reason Russia felt comfortable invading Ukraine yesterday is because corrupt senile pedophile Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel.

The only people Joe Biden is dangerous to are innocent, law-abiding Americans who oppose Biden’s lawless fascist dictatorship. The Russians sure as hell are not scared of him.

Joe Biden’s word salad public statements about “our hearts and prayers are with the Ukrainian people” etc etc are not only not presidential, they are a clear signal that the Biden Regime intends to let Russia do whatever they want to do, and America will do nothing but send fondest wishes via Twitter to the Ukrainian people and the thousands of Americans now abandoned in Ukraine.

An administration worthy of being called “American” would have at least negotiated the escape of our American citizens now stranded in Ukraine, before giving Russia the green light to invade. But this Biden Administration is not American. Rather it is an assemblage of anti-Americans whose job it is to destroy America from inside.

Need an example? Why is Joe Biden shutting down domestic American oil and gas production, while openly committing to continue purchasing RUSSIAN oil and gas? This weakens America, artificially raises the price that Americans pay for oil and gas, and it greatly strengthens Russia.

Biden’s bizarre anti-America arrangement ain’t high-end, complicated economics, people. This is Econ 101, the kind of super simple economics most college graduates were taught their first year, and that non-college graduates of Life College had to learn the hard way on their own. The things that Joe Biden is doing can only damage America and Americans, and in fact they are greatly damaging America and Americans.

If you are an American citizen still loyal to Joe Biden, then shame on you. You must really hate America and your fellow Americans. You would not tolerate this malfeasance from any politician in a different political party, and this misplaced loyalty really highlights the silliness of political party loyalty.

How the hell can American taxpayers be loyal to any political party that does this much serious damage to America?! How much damage do you think America can sustain? What the hell do you think will happen to your life and your family if this wanton destruction is allowed to continue?

Anyhow, it is Joe Biden’s weakness that invited the Russians to invade the Ukraine, and China will now probably follow up with an invasion of Taiwan. Both of these dictatorships know that they will not face any real, meaningful resistance from Joe Biden.

Instead, Joe Biden is obsessed with trying to criminalize his own domestic political opponents, so he can eliminate them altogether and establish one-party rule over Americans. So he and his successors can act just like Vladimir Putin.

And while we are on the subject of Russia and American presidents, if President Donald Trump really was a Russian asset, as the Democrat Media constantly alleged for four years, then why the hell didn’t Russia invade Ukraine when Trump was president? Why did they wait for this weak, old, child-sniffer Joe Biden to dodder up to a microphone and mumble some meaningless words?

I am amazed that anyone with half a brain could ever believe the utter crap that comes out of NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, PBS, MSDNC, Washington Post, New York Times etc. Everything these partisan outlets say and write is designed to promote one political party. They are not in the news business, they are in the propaganda and brainwashing business, and if in this day and age when there are so many different news and information outlets available to anyone with an iota of curiosity, you are nonetheless still listening to what these mainstream media outlets say, then you are brainwashed. Or incredibly lazy. Stick your finger in an electric socket and wake the hell up, before it is too late for you, for your retirement fund, and for your family members.

Everyone have a nice weekend, and enjoy the fabulous fireworks display in Ukraine over the coming days, brought to you by day dreaming, child-sniffing Joe Biden.

 

January 6th DC Protest: I was there, what really happened

Getting the entire January 6th DC protest story out is going to take time, but it is important to address the totally fake narrative about it being pushed by the fake news media, the entertainment industry, the Big Tech industry, the lawless Democrat Party, and even the cowed Republican Party establishment.

For the record, I arrived at the Washington Monument around 10:00am and worked my way down the slope until there was no room left between us and the White House.  From there we marched to the US Capitol, where I was

in the Rotunda [the outside rotunda, not the one inside the Capitol building] [UPDATE 8/18/22 I have been told by several people, including a federal agent, that I have mistakenly mislabeled where I was. After consulting official maps of the US Capitol, I can’t find an official description for the precise open area out in front of the Capitol where I stood. Bottom line is I stood way the hell outside the Capitol building, in an area that was designated for protesting] about twenty feet behind the barricades. I stayed in that general location for a couple hours until later. My story here begins in the Rotunda.

The US Capitol Police used peaceful protestors for target practice. All around me and just in front of me, US citizens who were legally, peacefully protesting were shot in their faces by explosive flash bangs, rubber bullets, pepper gas bombs, tear gas bombs, and bean bags. I have video and photos of all of this activity that I took on my own phone, which I will post here later today [Update: Now that the FBI/KGB is on an illegal witch hunt to make examples of even lawful, peaceful protestors who were there, using pictures taken at the event to identify 100% innocent people to hunt them down and unlawfully prosecute them, I will not be posting them].

I saw nicely dressed men in business suits and dress shirts with their faces blasted by explosives. The Capitol Police were not aiming for our feet, but for our faces. I was shot right under my chin with a large rubber bullet by one of the police officers who we watched take careful aim at individual protestors who did nothing more than sing the national anthem, chant, and wave signs and banners. I was also hit with many other rubber projectiles, and I was gassed three times, once badly.

At no time did I or anyone around me throw anything at the police or try to attack them. We were exercising our Constitutional freedoms, and the Capitol Police attacked us. On our way out of the protest and back to our bus, we met a nicely dressed man with blood on his hands and clothing, who calmly told us that he is a physician and had been standing with the tiny woman who was shot in the neck by a Capitol Police officer. He, the doctor, tried to resuscitate her, but he described how purposefully mortal her wound was, and how he had personally witnessed the police officer taking careful aim at the woman’s neck. She has now been identified, but I cannot now recall her name [UPDATE: Ashlii Babbitt]. She was a peaceful protestor who could have been easily neutralized with any sort of non lethal force, had the police officer really felt threatened. He chose to execute her, instead.

If anyone is curious about why presently free Americans reacted to official violence with some force of their own, then this description of events explains it. We peaceful protestors were violently attacked by the US Capitol Police for doing nothing more than peacefully protesting. Violence will beget violence, and nothing stokes a violent response more than un-earned official violence against innocent civilians, like yesterday.

Fresh in our memories yesterday were the many violent riots in 2020, where ANTIFA and BLM destroyed entire cities, violently attacked police, passersby, counter demonstrators, and business owners… WITH NO ACTION BY THE POLICE. And with total support by the mainstream media and big tech, whose members stood in front of burning buildings and pronounced the violence as “mostly peaceful protests.”

Fresh in our memories were the Code Pink invasion of Congress, followed by the shrieking howls of the mad as anti-Kavanaugh people invaded the US Senate chamber. Again, with no consequences from either political party or from law enforcement or the media or from Big Tech.

So I witnessed a double standard yesterday that is being promoted today by the mainstream media industry and the Big Tech industry, which is that conservative peaceful protestors are actually “domestic terrorists” and “racists” and “white supremacists.” In fact, about 25% of the protestors around me were black, Latino, and Asian. There were a lot of Asians with us, I would say evenly split between Vietnamese and Chinese. Not a white supremacist movement at all, but a simple freedom movement.

This double standard is obviously evil on its face, but it serves an even more evil political purpose. Patriots and conservatives are being set up to be de-legitimized so they can be attacked by both BLM and ANTIFA people, and soon by the official state apparatus, like police forces everywhere, the FBI, the ATF etc.

If you have read this blog for any time, you know my positions on most political issues of the day. You know that I believe the 2020 election was stolen in an ultimate act of Democrat Party lawlessness, a lawlessness that has defined that pro-slavery political party since 1860 and which in modern times has led to so-called “sanctuary cities” and a widespread failure to enforce the laws on the books to protect American citizens. A suspension of the most basic civil rights.

To me and others like me, we believe the Democrat Party to be a certified domestic enemy of We, The People. The Democrat Party’s lawlessness and attempt to enslave us all to Big Brother Government must be resisted at all levels by Americans everywhere, or else America will turn into an authoritarian state with Big Brother telling us what to think, what we may do, where we may go, what we may read or write. This authoritarian establishment narrative has become quite clear during the China flu covid shamdemic, as unconstitutional authoritarian lockdowns and police actions against free citizens have become commonplace.

Some take-aways from yesterday and the ensuing hours:

  • the Republican Party establishment stands for absolutely nothing, because its members believe in nothing, except their own power. They have no fealty to the US Constitution, nor to any of us citizens. They believe in process over substance. The Democrat Party knew this before the election, and were emboldened in their theft of the presidency by the GOPe’s weakness. No one better exemplifies this than outgoing Republican senator Kelly Loeffler, who only two days ago announced that she finally stood with The People against the farcical Electoral College count, and who yesterday denounced President Donald Trump and withdrew her objection to the farcical Electoral College count. This GOPe woman represents everything wrong with the Republican Party – no backbone, no spine, no guts, no commitment to the rule of law, and so easily manipulated by the Big Media/ Big Tech industry narrative.
  • the Democrat Party is enabled by the Big Tech industry and the mainstream media industry, which either suppress different perspectives from being aired, or which suppress actual facts from being exposed, if they run contrary to The Narrative. This makes Big Media and Big Tech certified mouthpieces for authoritarian oppression, and, therefore, certified enemies of We, The People. However people choose to resist Big Tech and Big Media, only the members of Big Media and Big Tech have themselves to blame.
  • Probably 99% of the political pundits on both the left and the right issued definitive statements about yesterday’s protest without themselves actually having been there. They watched selectively edited and commented videos shown out of context, and drew understandably inaccurate conclusions. But these same pundits have shown zero interest or curiosity about actual events, choosing instead to show their true yellow color by standing shoulder to shoulder with the oppressive authoritarians.
  • Yesterday’s protest was nothing more than an Occupy Congress, which is The People’s House. It belongs to US, not to the political elites. If the various Occupy movements were legitimate, then yesterday’s Occupy action was the most legitimate of all.
  • Finally, this whole situation is boiling down to a showdown between the entitled elites who have stolen our entire country’s government apparatus on the one hand, and the citizens who populate the country and fund that apparatus on the other hand. When I witnessed several hundred thousand unarmed protestors yesterday staging a forceful protest against tyranny, I saw the beginning of a citizen army doing its dry run, its practice run, for a takeover of the nation’s capital. As brute force has always been the ultimate arbiter of natural selection, only one side can prevail here. This is totally an Us vs. Them situation, not of the making of We, The People, but forced on us by authoritarians who crave control over us.

Much of this will probably start to play out in the coming weeks. God save our great Republic.

More to come here in the next couple of days.

UPDATE: Today every effort is being made by the political elites to destroy President Donald Trump and as many peaceful protestors as they can get their hands on. Mind you, absolutely none of this was done to any politicians or their supporters over an entire year of wild, violent BLM and ANTIFA riots across the country, including in Washington, DC. This is an indication of what is coming to America in just a couple weeks: Everyone who stands for the Constitution and our traditional American values and freedoms will be officially targeted for forceful removal and silencing. This is why patriots must organize, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

 

 

PA wildlife: damned if we do, damned if we don’t

Like every other state in the Union, Pennsylvania protects, conserves, and manages its wildlife through a combination of user-pays fees like hunting and fishing licenses on the one hand, and a helping of federal funding collected from user-self-imposed federal taxes on hunting and fishing equipment like boats, guns, ammunition, fishing rods etc on the other hand (the same people who buy the hunting and fishing licenses).

Yes, 100% of the nation’s citizenry benefits from the self-imposed taxes and fees paid by just 1% of the population: the hunters, trappers, and fishermen.  Yes, you read that right: just 1% of the population is carrying 100% of the public burden.

And yes, as you are correctly about to say out loud, you and I will not see this bizarre and totally unsustainable arrangement in any other area of public policy. Not in roads, not in schools, not in airports, not in museums, not in anything else official and run for public benefit. And so, yes, it is a fact that wildlife agencies across America are perennially underfunded, and have been for so long that it’s now accepted as the way America does its wildlife business. Here in Pennsylvania, despite endless rising costs and endlessly more expensive public pensions, both houses of the PA legislature have long blocked the PA Game Commission from getting a hunting license increase in decades. So the PGC is even more behind the financial Eight Ball than most other state wildlife agencies. Hunters and wildlife managers in other states look at Pennsylvania and shake their heads. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is.

Despite the obvious imbalance and weakness inherent in such a unique and faulty funding arrangement, for fifty years this approach worked pretty well, nationally and in Pennsylvania, with some states occasionally putting new money into holes that opened up in the regular wildlife funding support. Those states with significantly increasing human populations tend to be forced into dealing with inevitable wildlife-human conflicts more than other states, and when Mr. and Mrs. America are increasingly hitting deer with their cars, you can bet that they will demand their home state do something about it. So more money is found.

So along comes the Pennsylvania Auditor General, to investigate the management and expenditure of money at the PGC. And why not, right? The PGC is a public agency, and hunting license revenue is a public trust. So sure, go ahead, look into it, audit the agency. And so it was done, and some interesting things emerged just a bit over a week ago.

In the “Atta boy” column is the fact that there appears to be no corruption, graft, or misuse of scarce sportsmen’s dollars at the PGC. By all accounts, PGC is transparent and well run. Given how much the sportsmen are always scrutinizing the agency, we all figured as much. But it is nice to have our beliefs and trust confirmed like this. We love the PGC even more today than before the audit.

In the “Aww shucks” column is the revelation that PGC staff do not immediately deposit oil and gas royalty checks when they are received, nor does the PGC ascertain for itself if those royalty payments are accurate in the first place, instead trusting the oil and gas companies to do what is right on their own. Hmmmm….This is a potential problem area, and we are all glad the auditors found it.  Anyone who knows the PGC can bet money on the fact that PGC staff are right now doing all of this payment followup with a vengeance. Look out, oil and gas companies!

But then there is the big weird issue, the biggest issue of all, where the auditors “discover” that the PGC is sitting on $72 million in the bank. And accordingly, the auditors immediately and erroneously ascribe this to bad money management. After all, they say, public money is meant to be spent. “If you got ’em, smoke ’em,” goes the ancient and totally irresponsible government approach to managing public dollars. After all, under normal budgeting culture, agencies that do not spend the money budgeted to them risk losing those dollars in the next budget cycle. Failure to spend money is correlated with a failure to implement an agency’s mission, and for senior agency managers, there is the usual ego factor; the bigger the budget, the bigger the…you know. This is the old approach to managing government funds, and it is wrong, and it certainly does not fit the PGC’s reality or targeted way of doing business.

Let’s ask you a question: If you knew your family was going to be receiving less and less money going forward, and yet your family costs would be held steady, wouldn’t you begin to bank any extra money you had, in preparation for lean times ahead? If your family is responsible, then yes, this is what you do, it is what we all do. And it is what the PGC has done, thankfully.

But as a result of the audit, this single fact is being used to beat on the agency, to coerce the PGC to adopt unsustainable policies and irresponsible money management, despite the agency sailing through ever less sustainable funding waters every day. Seems like now every elected official and every Monday morning quarterback sportsman has some variation on the foolish theme that PGC has more money than it knows what to do with. Wrong!

So the real outcome of the audit is that Pennsylvania wildlife are damned either way, because the PGC is the useful straw man whipping boy for every aspiring demagogue in Pennsylvania politics. No matter what the PGC does, our wildlife resources are going to suffer. If PGC carefully, frugally husbands its limited resources, preparing for rainy days and needy wildlife, then the agency’s critics say the agency is miserly and hoarding, and they seek to punish the agency. And on the other hand, if the PGC immediately spends every dime it has, and has no money left over to deal with yet more unfunded mandates like Chronic Wasting Disease, then critics say the agency is wasteful and ineffective, and they seek to punish the agency.

And either way, the net result is the PGC’s critics damn and condemn our wildlife. Because that is the true result of all this second-guessing and monkeying about with the PGC budget and funding streams. Plenty of elected officials use their criticism of the PGC to artificially burnish their “good government” credentials, when in fact they are demanding the worst sort of government, and a total disservice to the sportsmen and wildlife everyone enjoys.

Many years ago, sportsmen were organized enough to react strongly to political demagogues who threatened our wildlife resource (and PA’s $1.6 billion annual hunting economy) with their petty politics. This latest iteration of the politics of wildlife management indicates that we need to get back to the old days, where sportsmen were unified and forceful, even vengeful, in their expectation that their elected officials would not politicize or hurt our commonly held wildlife resource.

Time to regulate the social media utilities

Social media companies like FakeBook, Twitter, Google, InstaGram, etc. have become the modern day information equivalents of the first power and public service utilities.

Instead of water molecules, gas, sewer, or electrons (electricity) entering and exiting your home to keep your life running, today’s digital social media companies transmit photons and ones and zeros to your laptop and handheld device. The net result for the end user is that all these things are all one and the same utility service, and they serve the same function.

Just like the power company, say PPL, and the gas company, and the water company cannot discriminate against users of their services, so the same applies to the digital information companies above.

For example, you do not come home at night, flick the light switch on your wall, and remain in darkness because you got a call earlier in the day from PPL saying “Sorry, Jane, we have turned off your electricity, because we have determined that your political views are contrary to our arbitrary and vague terms of service and our company’s values.”

PPL and other utilities must provide their services and products equally to all who pay for them.

It is time to hold digital utility service providers to the same exact standard. No discrimination against users.

Presently, Google so obviously fakes its search results to favor political candidates and campaigns the owners of Google favor. Google’s politicization of search results on every subject and person is egregious.

Like Google, FakeBook also obviously discriminates against conservatives, engaging in shadowbanning and hiding messages its liberal owners do not want the public to see. Worse, Fakebook has made a lucrative business charging its users for advertising, but the person who pays for that service never knows just how far their investment went, because FakeBook deliberately withholds information about its actual efforts.  It is a blind item, exactly the opposite of what it should be: Open and transparent.

Twitter’s legendary war against non-liberals is the most public form of censorship. As illiberal as this censorship is, liberals still cheer.

These companies and the many other liberal book-burners in the digital media business have declared war on ideas and people they simply disagree with. It is time to end this assault on the First Amendment rights of American citizens who have entrusted these companies to abide by universal free speech standards.

It is time to regulate these companies like the public utilities they have become, to prevent them from illegally discriminating against people who merely disagree with their owners.

Treat us all the same legally.

Israel’s Independence Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, So Where are We Today?

Israel Independence Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day are here.

Obviously these two milestones are related in the sense that out of the ashes of the European genocide against Europe’s Jewish minority (not to be confused with the similar and nearly simultaneous Muslim Arab ethnic cleansing of the Jewish minority once living in the Middle East, now presently applied to Christians there) arose the modern state of Israel on the soil of the ancient state of Israel.

Here in America most Jewish communities spend a full 24-hour period on Holocaust Remembrance Day reading the names of Nazi victims. By reading their names, they are in some small but meaningful way not forgotten. And by remembering them as people, larger society is supposed to remember what happened so that people, and government, do the necessary things so genocide does not happen again.

This is all sound logic to me, although it is questionable whether it works, or not.

Why am I sounding a bit skeptical here? Because the evidence isn’t supportive that this approach works, in the sense that it does not inspire humans around the globe to treat one another better, much less treat Jews any better. The evidence in front of us demonstrates that Holocaust Remembrance Day, with all its universalist activities, primarily appeals to Jews, their friends, and liberal-minded news reporters. Meanwhile, plenty of genocide is going on ever since, namely in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kurdistan, and now once again in the Middle East, where Muslim Arabs are sadistically rampaging among the religious and ethnic minorities among them.

And Israel has been under sustained and increasing attempted genocide from the day it was founded in 1948. Every libel, slander, lie and contrivance has been drummed up to delegitimize Israel and to justify the ceaseless murders of unarmed Jews within and outside Israel. Boycotts, divestment from Israeli companies, and sanctions against Israeli academic institutions and the government of Israel are proof that Israel, and Jews, receive an incredibly harsh and unjustified treatment from a world that really ought to know better.

Making things even worse, and totally odd to me and to most people I know, is the overwhelmingly liberal mindset American Jews maintain. Their liberal political views, on a policy-by-policy basis, are completely contrary to the Torah (the Bible) to which their ancestors swore loyalty and which created Western Civilization.

Abortion-on-demand and as a form of birth control, faith in big government, rejection of religion’s role in good government, gun control, you name it, every single one of the politically correct issues that liberal Jews believe in are at odds with their own founding document, the Bible.

One would logically conclude that a group of people who had recently undergone such incredibly painful and devastating attacks, round-ups, shot on sight, murder in the street, painful medical experiments, gassing, bodies burnt to hide the atrocity, and so on, you would think that the survivors and heirs would adopt a more self-preserving view. That is the conclusion that their friends have arrived at and said is needed many times, and asked why Jews don’t, for many years.

You know, why do most Jews vote for people and policies that are against their own interests? Like for Obama, or against gun rights?

That American Jews are overwhelmingly supportive of intense gun regulation is without question. Public surveys show it. Even more to the point are the lists of leaders on gun regulation; nearly all of them are Jews – Past and present US Senators Feinstein, Schumer, Metzenbaum, Lautenberg, Boxer – joined by an endless list of Jewish members of Congress, and not to mention the actual leaders of gun regulation, Josh Sugarmann, Shira Goodman, to name but a few, and not to mention the Jewish donors to anti-gun rights groups, like Bloomberg and Hechinger, to name but a few.

More locally, two years ago I sat in on a meeting between my then-newly elected state senator Democrat Rob Teplitz and a group of citizens gathered at a local Harrisburg synagogue. As the morning Boy Scout function there was the drawing attraction, and not everyone there was Jewish, there was one group of men who had just completed their prayers and who had then gathered to join in the following meeting with Senator Teplitz. Either the first or second question of the event came from a man in that group, who asked Senator Teplitz when he was going to become an ardent and active advocate for serious gun regulation. Heads nodded in agreement around the table, and Teplitz responded that he would be neither “too pro gun nor too anti gun.”

Further confusing many Americans is how vociferously anti-Israel so many American Jews have become. Whether by strongly supporting an obviously anti-Israel Obama or by actively participating in anti-Israel actions and activities, lots of American Jews clearly are at war with the one nation designed to protect them should the very things they are remembering now begin to happen once again.

Why would a tiny group of people, who have experienced such awful tragedies and injustices over and over again, seek to both disarm themselves and their fellow citizens in favor of big government, which has never anywhere been a friend to Jews or liberty, and also disarm and undermine the one country capable of protecting Jews should the you-know-what hit the fan?

Folks, I know you are moved by recalling victims and inured to maintaining victimhood. It is practically the Jewish identity to the point where “Holocaust worship” has been decried by the more religiously observant Jews; you know, the Bible believers.

If you really want to remember the European Holocaust and say “Never Again!” in a way that means something, then be able to defend yourself. Get a 12-gauge pump shotgun, learn to use it with buckshot and store it safely, and support a strong Israel capable of easily defending itself against all attackers. That’s it.

Otherwise, you just make people ask “Do Jews today really remember what happened, and do they really understand how important Israel is to them?”

In other words, people just must ask “are Jews really so smart?”

A Severance Tax, now?

Talk about an addiction to spending other people’s money.

Yesterday in southeast PA, far away from the communities where this issue is most important and the citizens might not be so welcoming, Governor Tom Wolf staked out his position on creating a new 5% “severance tax” on natural gas from the Marcellus shale feature.

Right now, natural gas is selling at historic low prices, especially here in Pennsylvania.  The financial incentive to drill more or spend more money to get more gas is very low, and drill rigs have been disappearing from across the region for a year.

The Saudis began dumping oil months ago, in an effort to punish competing oil producers Iran and Russia, with the secondary effect of dropping gasoline prices so low that the natural gas industry got hit from that side, too.

So now is not only a bad time for the gas industry, it is also a time of greatly diminished returns on investment and on royalties received.  Scalping 5% off the top of that is punishing to everyone, including gas consumers, who will see their rates increase proportionally.

Here’s the biggest problem with a severance tax: Pennsylvania already has a 3% impact fee on Marcellus gas, and a Corporate Net Income Tax of 9.99% (let’s call it ten percent, OK?).  Most of the other gas and oil producing states have no such additional taxes; their severance taxes are the one and only tax their oil and gas producers pay, not the multiple high taxes and fees drillers in PA pay.

Pennsylvania government is therefore already reaping much higher revenue from the gas industry than other gas producing states.  That means that the companies doing business here are already burdened much more than elsewhere.

So adding a severance tax now, at this economically bad time, without commensurately lowering other taxes, or the existing Impact Fee, makes no sense.  Unless the people promoting this have an infantile view of how America and business work.

And that right there is the problem.  Way too many advocates for tax-and-spend policies like an additional severance tax have a Marxist view of business; essentially, to them, business exists to pour money into liberal schemes.

And speaking of spending, who believes that spending more and more and more taxpayer dollars on public schools, public teachers unions, and public teachers’ pensions, actually equates with better education?

So many studies disprove that (see the Mercatus Center), but it is a liberal mantra that taxpayers must spend ever more of their money to support public unions that support political liberals.  And both parents of students and taxpayers alike now correctly see that system for what it is – simple, legalized political graft to fund one political party.

Public schools are mostly a disaster, yet teacher’s unions and their political buddies continue to pound on the table for more and more money.  Homeowners are essentially now renting their houses from the teacher’s unions, and proposed laws like Act 76 seek to fix that unfair situation by removing the vampire fangs from homeowners and letting the larger society pay for its expenditure.

Going door-to-door for political races year after year, property tax has been the number one issue I have encountered among elderly homeowners.  So many of them can no longer afford to pay the taxes on their houses, that they must sell them and move, despite a lifetime of investing in them.  This is patently un-American and unfair.

So Tom Wolf is moving in exactly the opposite direction we need on this subject, and instead of trying to fix the tax situation, he seeks to make it worse.  To be fair, Wolf campaigned on raising taxes.  He just needs to remember that he did not get elected by voters who want higher taxes, they wanted to fire former governor Tom Corbett.

 

Tom Wolf….you’ve got to tell us your plans

Tom Wolf may be a heckuva nice guy, and an ethical boss. By all accounts these are true.

But he has cruised to a lead for Pennsylvania governor on these two assets alone, and they’re insufficient.

On nearly every other political issue he is evasive, or committed to regressive actions that will harm Pennsylvania. Taxes is one of his evasive issues, and I’m not alone saying we are all taxed enough.

I’d like to hear Wolf make concrete commitments to lower business taxes equally if he seeks to raise a five percent gas drilling tax. Otherwise, he’s trying to kill the golden goose instead of patiently waiting for her to lay one golden egg at a time. Gas drilling has saved our economy, hands down.

My suspicion is that Wolf will remain evasive until the very end, and voters will move toward Corbett as a result. The election is likely to be a three point spread: Corbett by 1% or Wolf by 2%. The “Dewey beats Truman” mindset has already taken hold among Wolf’s supporters, and a huge upset is likely in the making if that continues.

Obama & Bill Clinton officially embrace imperialism, then poormouth liberty, independence, and freedom

As anyone paying any attention to politics already knew, neither Barack Hussein Obama nor Bill Clinton are committed to liberty, freedom, or independence, and like the good power-hungry statists they are, they openly embrace imperialism and military occupation.  When it serves their interests.

Today the mainstream media prominently ran two statements, one by each man.

Each statement began with a dissembling lie about how neither Obama nor Clinton really have anything to say about Scotland’s wish for independence from the mis-named “United Kingdom.”

You know, kind of a disarming warmup for the dagger-in-the-chest that is coming right behind it.

You know, they support the “united Kingdom” that was only united through Britain’s imperialism, deceptive diplomacy, military conquests, occupation, land theft, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and religious totalitarianism.

After the blase disclaimer, each man then goes on to say that Scotland should not become independent from its longtime foe, occupier, and vampire-like neighbor, England aka Britain, home of the Britons (not the Scots).

Both Clinton and Obama provide generic and vague sentimentalist goo as their supporting argument.  Both rely on some version of “We know you don’t like it, but it really is best for you, the little people.”

See, Scotland owns a lot of oil and gas fields that will instantly give it financial independence from Britain, which in turn may become the weak sister, not the domineering exporter of bad TV and cute Cockney accents it is now.

I vote for freedom for Scotland.  I vote for independence from Britain, like we Americans have. I vote for liberty from Britain’s insane laws that have turned justice upside down.

If anyone from Scotland reads this, please know that we Americans love our independence from the damned British, and we hope you do, too.

“Full service,” re-defined

If you get gasoline in New Jersey, you can’t speed up the process and put the gas in your car at your own speed.

By statute, only station employees can dispense gas.

Its called “Full Service.”

In ages bygone, that meant full service, as in oil check, tire pressure check, window wash. You’d tip the guy fifty cents. It meant something.

Try asking for those services today. You’ll get a laugh from the young Sudanese guy working the pumps. He moves at his own pace. Fast but not quick.

And so here you are, a hostage in your car, ready to pay, ready to leave, but by law stuck waiting on the guy at the service end of the spectrum.

It’s just a bit assymetrical. It’s not what you’re paying for. It’s not what you need, or want, or used to get.

But, by God, it’s what the government is giving you, and you’ll take it. Or else. Check out the reports of irate drivers serving their own cars gas. They actually get arrested. Big crime!

New Jersey is one of the most liberal states in America. Expect more models of the Garden State’s “full service” to creep into your life in nearly every aspect of your life.

This is freedom, redefined.