Category → Government Of the People…
In Pittsburgh, PA, Biden Threatens America with More Violence
Thank God I am no longer a member of the Democrat Party. What a shameful cess pit that organization has become. Presidential candidate Joe Biden is Exhibit A.
If Joe Biden’s loooong silence about months of Democrat looting, murder, arson, violence, and heavily armed anarchic vigilante chaos across America’s Democrat-run cities was unbelievable, his direct threat of further violence against America while speaking in Pittsburgh this week reaches a new low in the history of American politics. Not only because Biden is making such a threat, blackmail, really, but because it is his supporters who are doing all the violence.
But that is the point: Biden cannot threaten America with more violence (if he loses), unless he controls the people who would commit the violence (he does). Biden actually threatened to unleash more violence against America if he is not elected this November.
Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, was even more explicitly encouraging this street violence while on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: “They’re not going to stop. This is a movement. I’m telling you they’re not going to stop, and everyone beware because they are not going to stop. They’re not going to stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not going to stop after Election Day, and everyone should take note of that on both levels that they’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.”
Kamala Harris also supported a fund to bail out “on the ground” violent rioters arrested by the police, so they can immediately rotate out of jail and go right back out onto the streets to continue their destructive mayhem.
If today you want to revisit what it was like to be a black in the pre-civil rights segregationist South, because you want to see what real racism was like, and also because you want to test whether Biden is right or wrong about who is committing violence, then put on a Trump Make America Great Again hat, put an American flag over your shoulder, and try to take a stroll through a Democrat-run city downtown.
You won’t make it far down Main Street before you are accosted, assaulted, and maybe even murdered, like unarmed Aaron Danielson was in Portland, Oregon, the other night. Aaron’s big crime was being a Christian supporter of President Donald Trump in a Democrat-run city. That is how brazen the Democrat Party street militia members have become; their own leaders urge them on, and there is no legal accountability.
Which raises a question of Where The Hell is the U.S. Department of Justice? Why isn’t failed mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, in handcuffs and under indictment for conspiring to eliminate the civil liberties and rights of the American citizens living there, like Aaron Danielson?
The lack of push-back by the DOJ against the violent Democrat Militia and their leaders like Mayor Ted Wheeler has resulted in them becoming even more violent. To the point where this week in Pittsburgh Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden actually threatened America with more violence, if Americans don’t elect him.
As quoted in an Epoch Times article, International Union of Police Associations’ (IUPA) President Sam A. Cabral said during an endorsement of President Donald Trump: “During all of this upheaval and destruction, there has been silence from the Democrats. None have stepped forward to condemn the anarchy, riotous behavior, and arson. Joe Biden has even referred to the police as ‘the enemy’.”
Cabral added: “[Biden’s fake] condemnation [of Democrat violence] was not made due to a moral imperative or a vision of a better America, but rather because [recent] polling indicated it was a concern of the American voter. If anyone needs a poll to tell them that rioting, looting, arson, property destruction, and murder are wrong, then they are morally bankrupt and not fit to be the president of the local fraternal organization, let alone the leader of this great nation.”
I hope Democrats reading this will join me in voting for Donald Trump and against the 47-year professional corrupt politician Joe Biden. Yes, Biden has dementia, and at 77 years old, he is too old for president, but his use of violence and his threat of more violence AGAINST Americans simply disqualifies him straight off.
This is actually Joe Biden’s “speech” in Pittsburgh, PA: A handful of pro-Democrat reporters and no audience. He took no questions after.
Democrat Party violence and Armed Citizen response = Save the NRA
Democrat Party militia have been engaged in violent destruction, looting, and personal assaults across America for months now. In Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, and now Kenosha, as well as others.
Every one of these places is run by the Democrat Party, and in every one of these places the political leaders have stopped their own police forces from doing what police have always been hired to do: Bring general law and order to the public square. Liberals have unleashed their BLM, ANTIFA, and “peaceful protest” militias to bring chaos and disorder to public life, with the hope of scaring the public into giving them political power that they cannot otherwise persuade voters to convey to them at the ballot box.
I have never been a partisan person, never. I used to be a Democrat, a long time ago, until the Democrat Party abandoned almost everything I believed in, like a free America.
All my adult life I have voted for candidates and worked on political campaigns that seemed to me to offer the best choice for the citizenry. This includes Independents, Republicans, and Democrats. Living in Harrisburg, long ago abandoned by the GOP, I am often given a choice between batshit crazy leftist Democrats and normal, taxpaying, working Democrats who are liberal but also reasonable. Guess whose political campaigns I volunteer for? If you guessed the normal people who I merely disagree with on many policy issues, but who I do not feel physically threatened by, then you would be correct. Because the chickenshit GOP has abandoned Harrisburg, there are no GOP campaigns to volunteer for.
But this is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where things may be violent in certain neighborhoods, but overall we presently enjoy some general tranquility. In most other Democrat-run locales, the citizenry has been abandoned by the political leaders and their police; left to fend for themselves. Left to defend themselves with whatever weapons they can get.
But Kenosha and Portland could easily come to Harrisburg, because mayor Eric Papenfuse and governor Tom Wolf already sent the public message that they support violence when they marched in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA militias earlier this year.
And so what happens in the burning streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a symbol of things about to come to your neighborhood. And so when 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse lawfully defends himself in those burning Kenosha streets against violent, murderous assault by a convicted violent pedophile, a convicted felon not-to-have-firearms who is pointing a handgun in his face, and another guy beating on him with a deadly weapon, is a symbol of what you and I may well end up doing. If we care to save our own lives.
And so we ask, why is the New York State Attorney General, a partisan Democrat, using her public office to attempt to destroy the National Rifle Association, on the most obvious of political and ideological grounds?
Is she attacking the NRA because she wants to bring harmony to the world? Or is she trying to undermine the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens, while simultaneously not enforcing the law against criminal use of firearms?
If you believe the NY AG is using her lawsuit against the NRA to hurt law-abiding citizens, and to leave them at the mercy of the exact kind of murderous Democrat Party militia guys who just attacked innocent Kyle Rittenhouse, then you would be correct. And this is why protecting the NRA is so important.
Without the NRA’s constant defense of our Second Amendment rights, we would have no self-defense rights at all, and we will then all be subject to the murderous attacks of liberal street militias, who are protected by their political leaders. The same Democrat leaders who will use the law to attack anyone who stands up to their liberal street militias.
The takeaway is this: Vote to support the NRA, because your very life depends upon it.
Kenosha, Wisconsin, car dealership attacked by Democrat Militia, despite the pro-BLM sign
Kenosha, Wisconsin, streets on fire with Democrat Militia. Is this really how you want America to be?
Quiet hero Jim Broussard moves on to next stage of being
Jim Broussard was one of those old school quiet, soft-spoken Southern gentlemen who could easily get by at a liberal cocktail party just because he was the nicest, most affable guy on Planet Earth. Unless you pressed him hard on politics, he would smile easily, laugh easily, tell some easy jokes, and make some subtly incisive social or political comments, and ask a lot of questions. But inside he was more than just quick political wit and analyst. He was probably my favorite guy in Harrisburg politics, and for a very long time he “sat in” for Dr. Krug at Charlie Gerow’s monthly public policy meetings downtown. Two weeks ago Jim left human life as we know it on Planet Earth, and if there is an afterlife, I am confident Jim is enjoying the best it has to offer. The man lived life to its fullest, left a huge footprint, without crossing any double yellow lines or cursing.
Jim and I first crossed paths at Charlie Gerow’s office, probably around 2009. He impressed me, which is difficult to do (observers of Josh know this, for better and for worse). He immediately asked me out for coffee, and ever after for a buck he would give the best political advice available around here. He sent the best Christmas holiday cards, because he used collectible stamps from decades past, and every card included genuine well wishes about things specific to the recipient’s life. Jim Broussard was a big positive force on Planet Earth, and I will miss him very much.
Below is the email his wife sent out, which includes his obituary, and then some photos I took of Jim over the years while holding forth at Gerow’s place:
From 1968 to 1970, Dr. Broussard performed his active-duty military service in the Army Adjutant General’s Corps at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, reaching the rank of captain. Subsequently, he served as a reserve officer in the Office of the Chief of Military History. He taught American history at Clarkson College of Technology, Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State), served as the historian of the Indiana state legislature, and returned to teaching at Ball State University and the University of Delaware. In 1983, he was appointed chairman of the history and political science department at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA. His publications include The Southern Federalists, 1800-1816, and Ronald Reagan, Champion of Conservatism, as well as scholarly articles and book reviews.
In the late 1970’s, Dr. Broussard began working to start an historical society focused on the early national period of American history, which he thought a neglected field. He founded the Society for the History of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), which is now a thriving and respected part of the historical profession. In recent years, he came to view political history also as a neglected field, and at the time of his death was engaged in establishing the Center for Political History, based at Lebanon Valley College.
In 1989, Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey proposed a tax plan which required a constitutional amendment permitting different categories of people to be taxed at different rates. Dr. Broussard believed this would not only raise taxes but would do it in an unfair manner. He formed the group Citizens Against Higher Taxes (CAHT) and campaigned against the amendment across Pennsylvania. It was defeated by a margin of three to one, the biggest defeat of an amendment in the history of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Broussard listening to immediate past PA Governor Tom Corbett explain why he lost the 2014 election
Dr. Broussard was a member of the Lebanon Country Club, the Steitz Club, Phi Beta Kappa, and numerous historical societies. He is survived by his wife, Margaret; their son, David Broussard, and David’s wife, Sophie, and their children Elsa Rose and Samuel, of Atlanta; his brother, Thomas R. Broussard, of New York City; his sister, Nancy Leonard, of Kentucky; his sister, Dorothy Bell, of New Mexico; one niece and three nephews. Arrangements for services will be announced at a later date. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Center for Political History at Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA.”
Jim sitting next to PA House Speaker Mike Turzai, with his hands clasped. Political whiz Charlie Gerow has his back to the camera on the right.
Trump Great American Outdoors Act hits Conservation Home Run
Conservation is where I have spent my entire career, and it is where my heart resides day in and day out. So it is with great happiness that I see President Trump sign into law the Great American Outdoor Act, which will do the nuts and bolts environmental protection America needs, without the regulation that America does not need.
The fact that so many political appointees within the Trump Administration were cheerleaders for the GAOA says a lot about the political tenor there. So many people accuse the Trump Administration of being some kind of radical “right wing” blah blah, and the fact is that the entire administration is loaded with middle-of-the-road professionals, who hold a mix of political, philosophical, and ideological views. In past Republican administrations, there were plenty of appointees who would have blocked GAOA, or held it up. GAOA is a signature achievement for President Donald Trump, and it is a huge win for Americans.
GAOA fully funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund for the first time in a zillion years. It provides adequate funding for federal and state parks infrastructure updates, operations, and maintenance costs. These are the costs that are always deferred in every administration. It is a subject I wrote my master’s thesis on at Vanderbilt University, and it is a subject that has never gone away, until now: Federal recreational infrastructure has been woefully underfunded for decades. Many state parks across America are in even worse shape than that National Parks.
For example, in 2016 my teenage daughter and I hiked half of the Northville Placid Trail, which runs through the Adirondacks. At the end of our ninth day, as we waited out a looming thunderstorm in a rustic but comfortable lean-to deep inside designated wilderness, on a hike in which we had encountered only a few other people, my daughter sat looking at her dead iPhone. Like Gollum looking at The One Ring, only my daughter looked more disgusted and glum than happily mesmerized.
“I have to get out of here. I want to talk to my friends. I want to know what is happening in the world. We need to go,” she said, and picked up her backpack, jumped down onto the grass, then shouldered her backpack.
Oh, I tried to persuade her to spend the night and stay out of that coming downpour. But she would have nothing of it, and she set off by her own teenage self, going somewhere, maybe anywhere, and I was standing there watching her pick her way into the forest.
Hours later we emerged at Moose River Plains, what maps describe as a rustic New York State recreational area tucked away deep in the Adirondack wilderness. What we found was a boarded up main building, boarded up out buildings, no gate, and no official staff. Instead, a bunch of locals who regularly camp there had taken over the official duties of park rangers. Even the land line phone system was not working. It was a very kind local who drove us, each drenched to the bone and with sodden packs, to the closest village, where we could contact our driver and get back to our own vehicle parked at a Baptist church in Northville, so my daughter could get home and talk with a zillion friends simultaneously.
Turned out that Moose River Plains was victim to a New York State budget that prioritized funding illegal aliens, but not state parks.
The Moose River Plains experience was worse than our visit the year before to Saratoga National Battlefield, by far. But seeing Saratoga National Battlefield, where the brave fight for American freedom and independence was won, in such terrible disrepair and threadbare means, was frankly shocking. One expects the National Park Service to do so much better. And when we spoke with a park ranger there, she was clearly hurt, personally, as she explained the money constraints that park faced. NPS just could not get the job done.
All of this is to say that finally, money floweth in the right direction. The need out there for public infrastructure is almost beyond compute. It is about time that America invested in our national parks and forests, state parks and forests, local and county parks, and the myriad other adjunct little recreational areas, like Moose River Plains, so that Americans might enjoy our public outdoors.
And about that public outdoors thing: Public land is a public good. Public land is one of the very few things that government does pretty well. And even when government land managers fail, the outcome is almost always simple neglect; the land always remains, the wildlife habitat remains. Which means the opportunity for recreation, hunting, fishing, hiking, camping etc remains. It is not a real material loss when land managers screw up or there isn’t enough money to operate the park entrance gate house; just missed opportunities, and putting a frowny face on a public symbol.
Congratulations to President Trump for pushing hard for GAOA, for hiring the right kind of land management staff and public lands leaders, and for caring about our public lands at all levels – local, state, and federal. Trump understands Americans, and he knows how much we care about our public lands, our state parks. And he knows how important it is to constantly invest in those places, so that they don’t fall into disreputable disrepair, like Moose River Plains had fallen.
One of the parts of GAOA that is so very appealing to me is the public land acquisition funding. As development never sleeps, what were nice public spots to hunt or hike in suddenly find themselves cut off or surrounded or overrun by development. It is nice that states and local governments will finally be able to buy that ‘Mabel’s Farm’ the community always wanted, and could not afford.
There is going to be a lot of Mabel’s Farms bought with GAOA money in the next few years, a lot of Nature conserved, and a lot of communities and hunting places protected, as a result. Thank you, President Trump, conservationists everywhere appreciate your leadership on this important policy area.
With special people at Yosemite. Can we imagine America without Yosemite? It takes money to protect these special places.
My daughter at the unhappy lean-to. But still, it was a functional, dry lean-to next to clean water in the middle of ADKs wilderness
Our friends Mark and Amanda at Leonard Harrison State Park, overlooking the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon
My daughter at Cedar Lakes, a special moment that spurred her on to teach wilderness backpacking to kids. Now she can’t wait to reach the area of no cell reception
Response to PA Gov. Tom Ridge on Conservatives & the Environment
On April 22nd this year, Earth Day, The Atlantic published an opinion piece by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, about conservatives and the environment (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/environment-gop-out-touch/610333/). The Atlantic solicited responses to Ridge’s essay, and so I submitted one to them, but received back no indication they would publish it. They did not publish it, because liberals like those at The Atlantic accept and publish only liberals, and reject conservatives. So here it is, my response to Governor Ridge’s essay about conservatives and the environment.
I felt compelled to respond to Governor Ridge’s essay, in part because I worked in his administration, and in part because I have met few Republicans who can articulate a truly conservative view of environmental policy, which Governor Ridge failed to do. I was also afraid of being seen as attacking someone I hold in high esteem, and I need to say that while I may disagree with Governor Ridge’s essay and some of his recent public stances, like supporting PA governor Tom Wolf’s covid19 lockdown, I remain impressed by Governor Ridge’s high character. I am proud to have served in his distinctively excellent administration.
Governor Ridge’s essay slightly opens a doorway that I am both pleased and also reluctant to push all the way open. But it needs to be opened, all the way, because for far too long establishment Republicans have claimed to be conservatives, while acting like liberals.
Governor Ridge writes his essay “as a conservative,” and despite boldly leading by example in placing highly competent gays, women, and minorities in senior government positions literally decades ago, long before most Democrats followed suit, Governor Ridge was, in fact, a true conservative. His achievements in conservative policy are legion, including Pennsylvania becoming a shall-issue concealed firearm carry state and his administration’s brownfield land recycling program.
Nonetheless, the emphasis today is on he “was.”
Governor Ridge was a conservative, and by today’s standard, he is not. This is not because Governor Ridge has changed, but because what now defines a conservative has changed so dramatically since the time he was governor. The same holds true for liberals, by the way, in their own way (we see the Democrat Party now a totally, openly, violent, racist, anti-America Marxist organization).
And like so many, if not all other political elites, especially Republicans, and most especially establishment Republicans from the hide-bound, bunker-mentality Pennsylvania GOP, Governor Ridge has not changed with the times. Governor Ridge was a conservative, and today he often speaks like a liberal, and sides with liberals on policy disputes. He is not alone in this, but each Republican who does so still causes pain to us conservatives in the political trenches. It is frustrating as hell to experience a former Republican appointee or elected official try to speak with authority as some sort of representative of conservativism, when in fact, they are simply liberals. Or RINOs for short (Republican In Name Only – not conservative).
Probably the biggest indication that Governor Ridge is out of synch with today’s conservatives is how he encourages us to adopt a laundry list of liberal environmental policies in his The Atlantic essay. This means that his solution for conservatives to succeed is for us to adopt liberalism. Even though most of the “environmental” groups are simply employment offices for Democrat Party operatives pushing Marxist, partisan policies. Very few environmental groups today are even seeking solutions, because they are busy dreaming up new problems.
Most of the policies pushed by environmental groups today are by definition Big Coercive Government, Small Defenseless Citizen, anti-Constitution, disregard for private property rights, mountains out of mole hills, and so on. These groups are not about the environment, they simply use the subject of the environment as another avenue to push Marxism and the Big Government necessary to force it down our throats. Governor Ridge should know this, of all people.
What Governor Ridge failed to address is: How can we conservatives embrace the very same failed and inferior liberal policies that drove us to becoming conservatives in the first place? If we adopt liberalism, then we are abandoning conservativism, and failing as conservatives.
Every single environmental policy recommendation that Governor Ridge lists in his essay directly contradicts core conservative principles, like small government, less intrusive government, less spendy government, less activist government, less regulatory government, accountable government and accountable taxpayer-funded government employees. Literally every single policy he lists requires the government to intervene in a big, coercive way, often over trifling differences or demonstrably false premises.
Governor Ridge’s environmental ideas are not conservativism; they are quintessential big government liberalism.
Perhaps the centerpiece of his essay is that conservatives must concede at least a bit on “climate change.” Yet, for conservatives, this particular issue, more than any other, highlights the distinction between us and liberals. For conservatives to agree with the Marxist, disproven, and notoriously phony climate change religion would be to abandon basic, solid, conservative principles altogether….like Capitalism 101, solid math and science, and transparency. Again, we are unpersuaded the climate warming-cooling-change-whatever issue even exists, let alone that a government solution consistent with America’s Constitution could be found.
Governor Ridge writes “The Republican Party has largely abandoned environmental issues.” To which I and a host of other conservatives would respond, No, but many Republicans have abandoned the citizen voters and the forgotten taxpayers of America. Many careerist Republicans have embraced popular culture and its feel-good-now bubblegum policies. For Republicans to respect openly partisan “environmental” groups and embrace liberal nonsense like so-called ‘climate change’ and similar policies would only be one more betrayal in a long line of policy and political betrayals committed by the Republican establishment. Conservatives have perfectly sound environmental policies based on perfectly sound, all-American principles. If you but ask us, we will explain them. We conservatives didn’t abandon environmental issues, nor did we leave the Republican Party. The Republican establishment abandoned us.
Josh First is president of Appalachian Land & Conservation Services, LLC. He has worked at the US EPA in Washington, DC, The Conservation Fund, the Central Pennsylvania Conservancy, and was Director of Environmental Education and Information at the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation & Natural Resources in the Governor Tom Ridge administration.
PFSC op-ed in PA Outdoor News
This was printed in last week’s Pennsylvania Outdoor News:
“In a world filled with fake news, the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen and Conservationists hit the ball out of the park. PFSC announced the results of an “election” of new officers, but calling PFSC’s phony scam an election puts the anti-democracy Chinese, North Koreans, Cubans, and Venezuelans to shame. PFSC held a sham election that would be the envy of any of the countries listed above, plain and simple. It was an event designed to give the appearance of legitimacy to the most un-American, anti-democratic voting process I have ever witnessed. Throughout my career as a professional and as a board volunteer with many non-profit organizations, I have seen plenty of jockeying and vying for control of boards of directors, but I have never seen anything as shameful as what happened at PFSC.
First, the “election” was held on the first weekend of the covid19 lockdown, and people who wanted to participate could not, out of fear for their own health or for the health of their families. This automatically excluded many people from otherwise participating, but the organizers went ahead anyhow, showing no commitment to the opening the process to the members.
Second, the selection of candidates to vote for was run by a nominating committee that met in secret, whose members were not known, whose decisions had no minutes or transparency. It was run like the Adam Schiff impeachment hearings. The nominating committee arbitrarily picked some people to be voted on, and excluded other interested candidates, giving no choice in the matter. That is not an election, it is a selection.
Third, a grand total of 26 votes were cast for each position. For an organization that brags about representing 70,000 Pennsylvania sportsmen, this is a farce. No clubs voted, no individual members voted. Only a tiny handful of pre-selected people could even vote, and out of them only 26 voted. This is not representative democracy, this is a sham. Twenty-six total votes! For seventy thousand members! A sham!
Fourth, two of the people elected, Lowell Graybill (was president, then was treasurer, is now president again) and Chuck Lombaerde (was vice president, is now treasurer, had held other roles), have already served as officers for many years. During their tenure as PFSC executives, PFSC has gone from 1,500 clubs to 150 clubs today. Graybill and Lombaerde have been right there PFSC’s whole sad way down. Why would anyone reward them and knowingly vote for two people already strongly associated with the organization’s failure?
In January 2019, both Graybill and Lombaerde voted to remove the Second Amendment from PFSC’s mission statement. They failed because I raised hell, but what kind of proud sportsman would ever vote for someone like that to serve in a leadership role? Like hasn’t anyone noticed that the Second Amendment is under attack? Additionally, for years Graybill has pushed the PFSC board to support radical leftist environmental policies, like banning all gas drilling in the Delaware River watershed. Graybill’s views are contrary to those held by mainstream sportsmen.
The three new people serving as officers seem nice enough, but two have been associated with PFSC for maybe a year, and they were recruited by the PFSC executive director, Harold Daub. When an organization’s executive director packs his board of directors with chums and buddies, it is called feathering his nest. It leads to major organizational breakdowns because of a failure to provide proper board oversight and accountability. So even the new officers are contaminated, right off the bat.
A great deal of this scam election was organized by Brian Hill, the environmental officer at the Richard King Mellon Foundation. Brian Hill is a long time partisan Democrat Party activist, and his latest effort is focused on turning PFSC into a leftwing environmentalist group. They want the camo without the guns. In 2018, the RK Mellon Foundation, via Brian Hill, paid a consultant who worked with Graybill to try to gut PFSC and turn it into something else unrecognizable to sportsmen. Some of us successfully fought that effort, and I was subsequently told that Hill was warning PFSC members not to support me in any way, or RK Mellon Foundation would not provide any more funding. With “friends” like Brian Hill, does PFSC need enemies? Like it did before, RK Mellon Foundation’s future “support” for PFSC will come with long, destructive strings.
As we have recently seen, leftists are taking over institutions across America – media, academia, the Boy Scouts, NASCAR, etc. Now they can add one more to their list, PFSC. If the new officers had integrity, they would resign and demand a fair and honest election be held, giving all PFSC members and clubs a vote, and all candidates for all board positions given equal opportunity.
For 22 years I have volunteered with PFSC, served on its board, manned the booth at the Outdoor Show, mowed the HQ lawn, given speeches, attended meetings on behalf of the group, etc. As far as I am concerned PFSC has little meaning any more, and this shameful last “election” was just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as it sinks.
–Josh First, Harrisburg, PA
PFSC Life Member, NRA Life Member, PA Trappers Life Member, FOAC Life Member”
Happy Independence from Tyranny Day
America was conceived in liberty, unlike any nation before or since, and tomorrow we mark our declaration of independence from Britain’s tyranny in 1776. As a result, America is the greatest nation, with the greatest amount of opportunity, for the greatest number and variety of humans, ever.
This weekend I will be reflecting on what personal liberty means today, in 2020, and the new forms of tyranny we face.
In some ways it is the same as 1776, in that we still today enjoy a list of personal rights that our government may not infringe upon. But in other ways, we are back to 1775, fighting for recognition of our basic God-given human rights. Like the right to be free of government intervention and oversight and meddling in our personal lives. Like the right to walk down the street free of fear, whether it is fear of being attacked for our political or religious beliefs, or fear of rogue mayors and police forces that purposefully block us from living out our civil liberties, because they disagree with our pro-freedom political views. These are all forms of tyranny over us.
Just about every major American city is lawless, failed, corrupt, and violent (and run by the Democrat Party). Government failure is written into law – no police protection for law-abiding citizens, and no, citizens may not own the means of protecting themselves. People living and visiting these places might as well be taking a trip to a far off distant land torn by war and pestilence. Tyranny.
I will also be reflecting on the absolute horseshit that is “Black Lives Matter.” Nothing is racist about America, except for BLM. BLM is the Ku Klux Klan With a Tan. BLM alone is the sole force for racism and racial hatred in America. Tyranny.
If the Marxist BLM hoodlums are really angry about slavery, and they really want to travel back in time, then they should pay a visit to their native western Africa, from which their ancestors were taken by OTHER Africans. Yes, the African slaves who came to America were enslaved and sold by other Africans, the descendants of whom are even today still involved in slavery. Tyranny.
So to attack America over history, while ignoring the history of the history, is a double standard purposefully driven towards the heart, the actual existence of America. And so it is nonsense, made-up, fake, part of this false grievance factory that constantly produces new types of fake victims daily and buckets of false outrage to go with each one. Tyranny.
I will be reflecting upon the results of all this false hysteria – the false outrage, the false finger-pointing, the undeserved demands, confrontational behavior, the violent destruction and murder. The result is the ruination of sixty years of inter-racial work and progress. So many normal every-day tax-paying Americans are shocked by what they are seeing and hearing that they are retreating. These are the same “white” people who voted joyously for Marxist Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama, twice. Now they are having major second thoughts about what is going wrong with our great nation. And no, they do not blame themselves for the illegal behavior of others, because that would be accepting tyranny.
A few weeks ago one conservative rural “white” guy said to me about the violent BLM riots “they sure aren’t helping their cause with this behavior.” His kids are half-black, half “white.” Not a racist molecule in his body, and not a pro-BLM molecule, either.
I will also be reflecting on how our fake two-party system has brought us to this point, because voters must make a choice between two evils. No other democratic nation has only two political parties forever and ever. Well, for whatever reasons America has two gigantic bureaucratic political parties that are like two gangs fighting each other behind the scenes. Where that leaves We, The People is a big question, isn’t it? Tyranny, for sure!
And speaking of tyranny, how about these stupid Wuhan Flu lockdowns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, New York, New Jersey, etc? There is no good reason for them, or the fake, unnecessary face masks that go with them. Instead of standing on the plain meaning of our federal and state constitutions and standing up for We, The People, judges are standing up for their fellow liberal bureaucrats, and upholding the various lockdowns and government efforts to stamp out religious practice. Tyranny!
Folks, as we drink cold beer and grill our food and spend happy time with people we love this weekend, take time to reflect on what Independence Day means for you, and what you want it to mean for you. Because if we simply wait for someone else to serve it up, we will be sorely disappointed, and bereft of options to rectify the situation.
Do not accept any tyranny in your life, except that which is brought by your spouse or parents. That is one form of tyranny we signed up for.
US Supreme Court “conservatives” abandon the American People
If you are a politico, then you watched and were amazed by the four decisions issued by the US Supreme Court this morning. If you are not a political animal, who devours everything political 24/7, then you should know that the Court is run by liberals. It is official now, in case anyone was wondering. The liberals have the majority, and so-called conservatives like Roberts and Gorsuch are no-such. They are RINOs.
Perhaps the most vexing of the Court’s decisions today was its unwillingness to pick up any of the ten gun lawsuits that have worked their way through the courts all over the country. The Court simply did not have four justices who wanted to hear any of the gun cases. Nearly all of the gun cases involve state and local laws that contradict the plain meaning of the 2nd Amendment, or lower court decisions that contradict the Court’s Heller decision. It is this second group of lawsuits and decisions that is most alarming, because every liberal lower court judge is now an open activist, issuing judicial decisions that directly conflict with Heller, rendering Heller ineffective.
If the US Supreme Court will not intervene to set lower courts straight on Supreme Court precedent, then its own decisions mean absolutely nothing. A court’s holdings are only as good as people’s willingness to abide by them. And the conundrum that law-abiding citizens face here is that we follow the law; we follow the Court’s holdings. If we lose, we shrug our shoulders and keep marching forward; win some, lose some.
Liberals behave totally differently. They never lose!
If they don’t agree with it, they simply ignore the Court’s holdings at every level of government and at every level of court. Liberal judges have become such aggressive activists that they issue decisions they claim apply nationwide, when in fact their own jurisdiction only covers one state. Liberal judges and liberal bureaucrats keep pushing their own agenda, the law be damned, court decisions be damned.
What happens to a society where some of the people follow the law and the other people don’t follow the law, but instead use it to both simultaneously suppress and oppress their political opponents, and never apply it to themselves?
Is this situation sustainable? Can any nation that is constituted like America have a permanent imbalance wherein one side repeatedly gets away with political murder, and the other side can’t even make the smallest mistake without having their lives, careers, and families destroyed? Well, the easy and correct answer to this question is No, no nation can carry this operation for long. Not even America. We are not too big, nor too rich, nor too powerful to fail. What is happening now with the US Supreme Court’s decisions is a guaranteed hard-wire of FAILURE into the nation.
Oh, and in case you didn’t know it, the Court majority also engaged in tons of legislating from the bench, on gay and transgender issues that the larger society is wrestling with through the political process. The Court majority, including a bunch of “Republicans,” just threw America’s constitutional and legislative process out the window and issued their own updated policy versions of “Roe v. Wade.”
Which brings me to the end of this sorry tale. So many people wondered aloud why I ever ran for office. They could see that my heart was in it, but that I really did not feel like making it into a career. I ran for the policy issues, for the jolt I could help give to the public. I feel even more strongly now, after this morning’s Court decisions, that America is in serious trouble.
It is not enough for people to vote. Yes, you must vote in November. But you are also needed as a volunteer for President Trump’s campaign, as a campaign volunteer for good local and state candidates. You yourself should run for office. Run against an entrenched politician, especially the RINOs that plague us unto death, like justices Roberts and Gorsuch do on the Court.
From tonight until November, every day counts. Lend a hand to the Trump campaign. Put up signs, distribute literature door-to-door, make phone calls. Etc. Every thing you do helps bring America one step back from the edge it now teeters on. Do not expect “other people” to take care of these problems. Both political parties have abandoned the American people, and now so have the supposed conservatives on the US Supreme Court.
We, the People, are all that we have left. Just us, ourselves. Either we fix this problem ourselves, or America is destined for real problems. Unimaginable problems. Don’t let that happen.
No cop, no gun
For decades liberals have been working overtime to disarm the American people. Every conceivable argument, legal maneuver, public stunt, lie, deception, logic pretzel, you name it, anti gun activists have done everything possible to remove even the most rustic, rudimentary firearms from private hands.
Now we have a movement to outlaw the police. Yes, to defund your local police department. No more police. No more law enforcement. The Only Black Lives Matter imperialist racial group has taken liberals into true Anarchy Land with the idea that there just should be no police, no law enforcement.
So, what does a society get when we have no guns at home so we can protect ourselves from bad people, and there is no one to protect us from law breakers?
Why, we get victims, lots and lots of victims! Wahoo!
This defund-the-police thing sure sounds like a purposeful recipe for disaster, or at least for ending civilization as we know it. The people pushing it have to know this. Why, you could almost swear people were trying to turn America into a land of petty tribalism and constant violence, certainly not the same successful nation we have been for a really long time. Now why would that be? Is it some secret goal to make everyone equally unhappy, in the name of a bizarre notion of equality?
Just adding up the No Cops plus No Guns gives us a result of two Hell Nos. Factor in the reverse-racist drumbeat, the demand for widespread inequality, the aim for ending capitalism, and hey, whaddya know, you got yourself the makings of another Rwanda, massacres and all. Sure seems like a good return on all that recent effort expended burning stuff down.
So sure, nice working Democrat People, go and thoughtlessly vote again for that wonderful family ending, career-ending, business-ending, nation-ending liberal candidate you always supported before. Keep mindlessly voting Democrat and before you know it, you will have no one protecting you and no way to protect yourself, endless crime in the name of “it’s our culture,” and then you will know that the long-promised liberal Utopia has arrived.
Sounds like fun! See ya, have a nice trip to CHAZ!
But those of us who choose to keep our guns and to willingly pay local taxes to pay for law enforcement will continue to enjoy our stable, happy lives; we will not be on your boat to Hell. Don’t be jealous of us, you have Utopia.
Good cop, bad cop
Most of America’s large urban areas are and have been firmly dominated by one political party for at least fifty years, and yet these same urban areas remain a seething mass of angry people who feel preyed upon by their own police forces.
Isn’t it fascinating that fifty whole years of liberal domination of urban politics has not brought the “change” that urbanites are now saying they want by burning new landscapes into their skylines? In fact, after fifty years urban conditions are worse now in so many ways than they were back then.
And yet, urbanites continue to vote for just one political party that is dominated by white liberals, whose policies have obviously failed by every measure.
One area that is now being purposefully failed is urban policing.
In some cities the police are being neutered by their political bosses, told not to enforce the law, not to make arrests. The police are actually prevented from upholding the law, applying the law, and at the worst times. Like when violent thugs attack peaceful protesters, or when those violent thugs become violent arsonists and go on vandalism rampages. No police response. No protection of innocent bystanders, peaceful protesters, or private property.
But those same police were heavily mobilized by their mayors to confront and often arrest normal everyday people who simply went outside their homes during the fake Wuhan Flu sham-demic. They were also heavily mobilized to confront peaceful protestors whom the various mayors disagreed with politically in Seattle, Portand, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, and many other cities.
This selective use or non-use of the local policing power is patently illegal. It was used during the 1950s and 1960s by southern Democrats to attack and suppress peaceful protesters who wanted voting rights and de-segregated bathrooms, restaurants, buses, and schools. And when this selective use of the police was used to protect murderers of young black men and black church arsonists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation moved in.
Back then, the FBI aggressively arrested police and elected officials who had deprived American citizens of their civil rights. Those bad police and elected officials deprived people of the equal protection of the law for simply belonging to the “wrong” political party, or having the “wrong” skin color or religion. That deprivation often included severe violence, either by the police or by their aligned street thugs, and included murder and torture.
So, in addition to the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice aggressively brought lawsuits against municipalities, corrupt police, and their elected bosses. As a result, the South changed, because segregation laws were struck down, schools were de-segregated, black people’s voting rights were protected, and the bad people went to jail.
So how does today’s liberal version of good cop, bad cop stack up to what happened in the 1950s and 1960s?
Well, today’s Black Lives Matter violence and racial attacks sure look at least as bad or a lot worse than the Southern anti-black racist riots and arson attacks back then. The roles are completely reversed today, and the DOJ is MIA.
So why isn’t the U.S. Department of Justice acting swiftly to bring equal justice and equal protection of the law to the current spate of BLM insanity? You and I are not alone in asking this question. It is a huge, important question.
I will take a shot at it and simply re-state the oft mentioned point that Republicans and conservatives believe they are debating ideas with their opponents, while their opponents are arming up for seditious revolution and organizing voter fraud and street violence. So a guy like U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr is uncertain how to act now. He keeps expecting the Democrat Party folks to weigh in like pro-America adults and urge people to stop rioting and looting, and they won’t. Barr expects his political opponents to engage him in a gentlemanly duel, may the loser buy drinks afterwards. But as a career-long Washington, DC, guy, Bill Barr is not wired to resolve these kinds of conflicts the way they need to be resolved…the way the Democrat Party resolves them ….. with overwhelming policing and legal force. Instead, Barr is firmly resolved to having stern interviews with the mainstream media political activists.
It is way too early to say that America is lost or headed into severe civil war, but we are facing a major leadership crisis that is being exploited by violent people. The Republican establishment is not used to fighting, ever, unless it is against a conservative running for a Republican seat somewhere. Last week in the Pennsylvania State House a bunch of aggressive, violent rioters took over the House floor, and the entire Pennsylvania House GOP caucus just stood there and watched. That good ol’ Republican culture encouraged all the elected Republicans to …just…do…nothing…just as they are almost all (not all) doing nothing for America right now.
Right now across America, only one person in an official capacity, and a few people around him, is providing any leadership and guiding light. That is President Donald Trump. Hopefully some of the high officials in his administration get on board with this fight for equality and justice. We all deserve to be treated equally by the police, regardless of where we live and regardless of our political views.
No more liberal good cop, bad cop, while bad people burn and loot our cities, attack peaceful citizens, and get good people fired from their jobs or frightened from their homes. This must end, now.
This photo of bad cops in a bad judge’s court room may be from 1967 Mississippi, but it could just as easily be from today in any major liberal city, with ANTIFA members and the local Democrat mayor snickering in the background