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Archive → May, 2014

Love your mother, love America

It’s Mothers Day, and you should love your mother. America is our mother. Show her love, support her, fight for her. And if you don’t like her the way she has been taking care of the American family since 1776, then guess what, she’s not your mom and you should probably go find a different place to call home, a different country to call the Motherland. She doesn’t need to be transformed and you aren’t appreciating her.

Tom Wolf, you confuse me

Tom Wolf is a candidate for Pennsylvania governor.

He appears to be the front-runner in his party’s primary race.  For a number of reasons, he has the greatest amount of voter name recognition and support.

Why candidate Katie McGinty is not taking off, I don’t know.  Katie is charismatic, maintains a million-dollar smile, and knows how to effectively communicate with people.  She is both infuriatingly liberal and also, in my direct experience, surprisingly capable of being pragmatic and non-ideological.  McGinty’s A-rating from the anti-freedom group CeaseFirePA hurts her; Wolf got a C from them, which helps in freedom-friendly Pennsylvania. Why he didn’t get a D, and then really strut his individual liberty credentials, is confusing.

Wolf lacks charisma, but seems to make up for it with his honest-to-goodness aw-shucks folksy way.

Here’s what really confuses me about Wolf: He is a business man who advocates for policies that are bad for business, like an additional tax on over-taxed natural gas.

Tom Wolf, you will probably challenge Tom Corbett for governor.  I am a small business owner and I want to see more from you that is business friendly.  Otherwise, I remain confused by you.

US Supreme Court tells us what we already know, and ignores the obvious

If the rule of law requires both mutual consent and contention between America’s three branches of government, our modern inclination to simply look to an authority to tell us what to do, what we may do, is a sign that Americans have grown tired of the hard work of running a republic.

The US Supreme Court has little authority but what moral authority it can muster through reasoning based on our Constitution. Yet increasingly, the court is used as a policy center to impose laws that otherwise failed in Congress.

This week the court held – gasp – that prayer is allowed in government meetings. Never mind that America’s founding fathers prayed together before working on governance. Never mind that for at least 200 years, Congress convened in prayer before convening in policy. In chambers. Never mind that our federal and most state founding documents recognize God, not government, as the source of human rights. In other words, Americans have been invoking and praying to God as part of official duties since our founding. There’s nothing new here. There’s nothing to question.

If it was done then, then yes, it can (and should) be done now.

Today’s general legal wranglings involve questions that ought not even be asked. But because there’s a group of people at war with America’s culture, institutions, and Constitution, these questions get asked as if they’re serious, legitimate, worthy. They’re none of those. But they serve the Left’s purpose of advancing an anti American agenda.

The Court also declined to hear a contested New Jersey law prohibiting the carrying (“bearing”) of handguns in public without proof of necessity. The Second Amendment means what it says, the court has held twice that it means an individual right, and since our founding Americans have, like prayer in government, been carrying guns in public.

There’s nothing new here except the liberals in NJ, whose war against America goes unchecked.

Here’s the thing: Laws are only as good as the potential to force their adherence by threats of force, incarceration, fines etc. It’s one of the great ironies of the pacifist Left that they enjoy, nay, require, the full coercive force of government to achieve their policy goals.

But citizens can disobey. And citizens can challenge authority. Will the Left feel bad for jailed gun-bearing conservatives, or government leaders invoking God before sitting down to business, as the Left felt bad for civil rights protestors once  jailed by anti- black police and politicians?

Don’t count on it. Logic, consistency are not hallmarks of the Left. But we can overcome, nonetheless.

Accepting the obvious, medical cannabis

Marijuana has a stigma earned many times over. Counter- culture anarchists tuned out with it, and lovers of American culture took note.

But here’s the obvious elephant standing in the room: Marijuana has medicinal virtues separate from its use as a recreational drug. If America routinely uses dangerous and addicting opiates for pain relief, why on earth would we not embrace using something equally as effective, maybe more so, and yet so much safer?

Medical cannabis, or medical marijuana as it is being called, can be tailor-made to treat pain, but not stoner needs. That’s neat. And it is time to embrace this technical advance, or traditional step back, as it were. Thank you, Governor Corbett, for recognizing this need. Many medical patients await effective pain mitigation, and this is it, apparently.

Side note: Like all public policy subjects, this one is also filled with ancillary issues. For example, medical-only hemp (sorry, no buzz for the tokers, no matter how much you huff n’ puff) can be easily grown nearly anywhere in America, thereby displacing medical/ drug poppy cultivation in lovely places like, say, Afghanistan.  Displacing poppy growth is  a good thing. Not supporting Afghanistan is a good thing. Supporting American agriculture is a good thing.

Yes, drugs are bad. Yes, recreational marijuana is a drug. No, promoting medical cannabis is not the same thing. It is a fact whose time has come. Let’s help people.

Rutgers University: Berlin, 1937

At one time, the Left was “open minded,” “tolerant,” accepting and so on. That sense of righteousness infused the Left’s various movements. There was a grain of truth.  People respected the passion. Gave ground. Made room.

Into that room moved the camel’s nose, then the entire camel. No room was left for the normal people.

Now, fully living in the past and the misdeeds of long ago, the children of the Left are on a fascist rampage. Far too open-minded to tolerate differing perspectives, the angry mob attacks and attacks and attacks. Condoleeza Rice, chased from Rutgers University’s commencement, is but the latest twitching corpse left in the mob’s wake. The Brown Shirts are on the march.

Dr. Ben Carson, black like Condi, similarly chased from speaking at a university, is the nicest man on planet Earth. His hands are clean.  No quarter given.  The racists are on the march.

Folks, if there’s one reason grass roots activists are at war with the Republican Party establishment, it is because not only does the establishment not recognize that we are in a war for America’s soul, they do not recognize that we are in a war for western civilization. And when establishment members do understand it, they are quick to make deals, either for their pecuniary advantage or for delay of the inevitable. They do not stand and fight. Amnesty is a perfect example. Amnesty means the end of the two-party system, and the succession of the Brown Shirts.

It is Berlin 1937, and the question is: Will you stand and fight for liberty?

PA GOP squashes buzzing gnat candidate with atomic bomb

Governor Tom Corbett’s campaign had nothing to fear from primary opponent Bob Guzzardi, a political activist, commentator, business owner, gadfly, and apparently super annoying buzzing gnat, too.

Running on a minimalist platform of leaner and more transparent government, Guzzardi succinctly represents the “Tea Party” damn-the-torpedoes attitude in his $400.00 (yes, that was his campaign war chest) run up the middle against a hulking incumbent’s campaign.  Guzzardi had racked up just one Big Media interview that I know of.  He struggled for traction in political circles.  The likelihood of Guzzardi actually denting Corbett’s armor, much less beating him, was as high as your likelihood of winning the big jackpot lottery – zip.

But that did not stop the incumbent governor’s campaign from doing all it could to get Guzzardi removed from the primary ballot, using PA’s awful election laws.  The first attempt failed, as perhaps the only merciful judge on Commonwealth Court held weeks ago that Guzzardi’s purported bureaucratic red tape filing misdeed was de minimus, and that he would remain on the ballot.

Courts are statutorily directed to try to keep candidates on the ballot, because democracy is best served by voters having choices.  Disqualifying candidates should be a significant hurdle.  Well, as has been increasingly seen in Pennsylvania, knocking candidates from ballots is very easy, too easy.

Today the PA Supreme Court voted Guzzardi off the ballot in what sure looks like a politicized decision that relies on the de minimus crap the lower court did not take seriously.  For those who think Pennsylvania has truly independent courts, stop deluding yourself.

Critics of Guzzardi’s nomination papers mishap need to acquaint themselves personally with this deliberately arcane and completely politicized PA process.  PA’s election laws are a black hole spider web designed to keep people out of the political process.  Look no further than Harrisburg mayoral candidate Nevin Mindlin last year, whose entire candidacy was tossed on the most ridiculous, manufactured, and picayune of excuses.

Mindlin was an independent -minded Republican who had the audacity to buck bi-partisan parasitic politics, and thus was ensnared in faux Red Tape, as anyone in his role was bound to be under the current election laws.

I don’t know Guzzardi. But I do think he’s entitled to run if he wants, and many other states make it much easier to run for elected office, which is good for democracy.

Pennsylvania’s bipartisan establishment deliberately makes independents/ outcasts/ gadflies/ charismatics getting on the ballot either legally impossible or impossibly expensive (the high cost of successfully defending an otherwise legally sound filing).

What Pennsylvanians have now seen is that no matter what a “threatening” candidate does when filing – following the written rules or following the directives of the local elections staff – he is bound to be challenged by his party, and he will probably be DQ’d.  Worse, there’s no disincentive for this behavior (for example, challengers who lose, could be required to pay the candidate’s legal fees).

Ballot challenges delay fundraising, delay volunteers, delay interviews, and cast a shadow over a candidate, irrespective of how cheesy the challenge is. This is bad for the citizens, bad for democracy, and frankly, it is un-American. It is, however, good for insulated party establishments that have turned politics into a self-serving financial enterprise. This has to change.

If I am elected to the state senate in two years, better election law will be a priority. There – that just earned me a 2016 ballot challenge! :-D Bring it, boys! We will be ready and waiting for ya….

p.s. I do not know Bob Guzzardi, despite trying to meet him.  I do know people who know him, or who have met him. Some say he is a valuable muckraker who elevates key issues into the public square.  Others say he is a bored troublemaker who vents his personal dissatisfactions into the political arena.  Either way, I say politics should be “Bring All Comers, and may the best candidate win.”  Guzzardi should have stayed on the ballot; he was no threat to Gov. Tom Corbett.

The trouble with racial double standards

If you are troubled by racism, and if you are feeling fired up about the Don Sterling episode, do an Internet search on “black on white violence.”

The search result you will be treated to is a seemingly endless parade of cell phone videos of white people, many of them children, being beaten into unconsciousness or violently harassed with flagrantly racist language.

You will see lots of sickening violence associated with this racism.

What you will not see is anyone really standing up and calling it out.

Jay Z wears a huge anti-white medallion around his neck.  Spike Lee is a Bigot par Excellence. Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and Jesse Jackson have perverted what it means to be a “man of God.”  But there are no consequences for these men.  Nothing.  Zero.

The problem with double standards is that they have a way of quietly really pissing off a large majority of people, who quietly simmer until they have had enough.  That is now happening in America.  Many of the great civil rights triumphs of the 1940s – 1970s are being overshadowed by a slowly awakening American awareness that things did not work out the way most people envisioned.

In fact, despite the great civil rights triumphs, including the election of a black US president, perfectly good people are being called racist, old fools like Don Sterling are being used to falsely impugn entire groups of Americans, and black-on-white violence is being deliberately swept under the rug in order to protect a false narrative about America’s supposed faults.

Meanwhile, the really blatant racists like Spike Lee, Jay Z, Jackson, Sharpton, and Wright are feted, elevated, and paraded before an audience that increasingly sees them wearing no clothes.