Posts Tagged → government
Who is MAGA? What is MAGA?
Quite a bit of debate going on about the Make America Great Again movement started by candidate Donald Trump in 2015. Now that the movement to get Donald Trump elected succeeded a third time, and his policy goals are being implemented, the next question becomes “Whither MAGA?”
The question of why any American opposes the mere concept of Make America Great Again is beyond me. Why an entire political party has defined itself as opposing everything that a president does, including pledging to demolish the privately funded ballroom addition he is overseeing on the White House, is a question more for psychiatrists than political scientists. Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, it is measureable, it is quantifiable, and it is probably operationally definable, if some enterprising PhD student wants to contribute something useful to an otherwise useless, politicized, and anti-ideas moribund academia.
Americans suffering from TDS have a real problem, and I hope they get it treated professionally. On the flip side, conservative patriots like moi viscerally despised impostor Barack Hussein Obama, but not to the point of irrationally opposing even the occasional good things he did. You know, throwing out the baby with the bath water. Not that I can recall good things that Obama did, but probably there were some, like adding new acreage to a national park somewhere.
More to the moment are the questions of who is MAGA and who runs MAGA and what will become of this political movement when Preisdent Trump terms out of office. Who in the world of politics will pick up Trump’s mantle, his movement, and reassemble the successful team for future campaigns?
Right now a bunch of professional pundits have claimed the MAGA gatekeeper role for themselves. Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Roger Stone, maybe Alex Jones, and a few other public opinion figures who make their living from speaking into a microphone and to a camera continue to make strident statements about MAGA, as if they own it, define it, speak for it. Other political pundits, like Dinesh D’Souza, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, et al, certainly speak to and about MAGA principles, but they make no open claims to actually own or represent MAGA.
I reject all of these people, and anyone, frankly, from claiming this role. Even President Trump no longer really “owns” this movement that he created ten years ago.
This whole question, raging though it may be, reminds me of the whole predecessor Tea Party movement that began in 2008-2009 in Central Pennsylvania. No sooner had someone, and I won’t bother to research who it was who dubbed this grass roots voters backlash against the woeful Republican Party establishment and its hand-holding big brother Democrat Party, but immediately, anyone involved in conservative politics, conservative political activism, issue activism, or donating to conservative or GOP political campaigns, was awash in Tea Party related emails, appeals, mailers, brochures.
Quite a few so-named “Tea Party” 501(c)(4) groups were formed in 2008-2012. Even more related LLCs were formed. All were run by aggressive business people who sensed an opportunity to make money from politics yet again, and who appealed to voters and activists as being leaders who best captured and represented Tea Party ideals and principles. Many of these people claimed to be moral leaders, leaders of morality and ideological purity. Most of these people and their groups and organizations were shams, frauds, fakes, and did not stand the test of time. They are found few and far between today as part of the MAGA movement or cause, having been exposed as simple opportunists.
On the opposite end of this spectrum sits people like yours truly, my past political campaigns, and this blog, who have never made a net gain penny from politics, but who instead continue to hemorrhage personal money in the cause of political dialogue, policy debate, individual freedom, small government, accountable government, constitutional principles, our nation’s founding principles, etc.
I can also think of a few tireless, devoted political advocates here in Pennsylvania, who I will not name in full, who continue to donate their personal time and money to the cause of First Principles, without hope or expectation of remuneration. Dean, Ron, Jim, Jeff and others have all stood the test of time since our collective political arousal in 2008-2009. Yes, others have risen up to contribute their voice to the cause of freedom, and honest elections, but they also seek to make a living doing it. That is a business endeavor, not a selfless devotion.
Despite plenty of political activism in the 1980s, as a conservative Central PA Democrat, my own first personal try at elected office was in 2009-2010, when I ran as a Tea Party conservative Republican candidate for US Congress here in Central PA. I ran for state senate in 2012 and 2015, eventually removing myself from a great race for state senate in late 2015, due to a severely injured knee obtained while bear hunting. Back-to-back surgeries on what had been my “good” knee in January 2016 eliminated my ability to do what I enjoyed and did best, going door to door and meeting voters. It marked the end of my interest in elected office. But not the end of my interest in politics.
In 2015 I became full-blown MAGA, despite plenty of mockery from establishment Republicans serving on county GOP committees. Their 2016 “Dump Trump” slogan failed, as their shallow RINO candidates failed.
2016 marked the end of the Tea Party, as it morphed from a broad, ground-up, grass-roots-led freedom movement into the MAGA movement led by one Donald Trump. Trump used that movement of First Principle America lovers to get elected to office. Now that he succeeded, I do not think anyone can justifiably claim to lead it, or own it, or speak for it. Not even Trump.
I now look at people like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson the same way that I looked (sideways) at the people who came out of the shadows in 2008-2010 to claim un-earned leadership roles and money-making opportunities in the Tea Party. That populist movement may have finally found its footing under a new name, MAGA, and it may have elevated some people who spoke or occasionally speak our language, but it is wholly owned by you and me, citizen voters.
The strength of the Tea Party and its MAGA incarnation is that we Americans spoke to each other in town halls and municipal meeting rooms and at rallies. This was the most authentic voice and debate possible.
Each of us has an equal voice in this. People who make money and a living from this movement are automatically suspect in my eyes. They can’t possibly be in this for the right reason.
And like the big family we American citizens are, you and I can argue and bicker and sometimes disagree with one another about policy and candidates. But not one of us is a gate keeper for our collective movement, and no one we might want as a spokesman, would have the ridiculous arrogance to claim such a role.
Democrat Party shut down the US govt, aiming for America
American federal government has been shut down for weeks now, as a result of all Democrat Party US senators being unwilling to vote for the same continuing resolution bill they voted for four or five times already in the past several years. Because this funding bill requires a super-majority, not a simple majority, even the minority party (Democrat) can stop it.
Much has been said elsewhere about why the Democrat Party would not vote to keep their own precious government open and their own precious federal workers (Democrat) on the job and paid. Yes, it is true that they (Democrats) are demanding (forgotten) taxpayer subsidies for illegal alien healthcare that (forgotten) taxpaying Americans themselves do not qualify for, let that sink in.
And yes, these same recalcitrant senators have already voted a bunch of times for the same “clean” bill before, without the illegal alien healthcare subsidies they want put in it now.
But what seems to be missing in the public debate about why the Democrat Party has shut down the American federal government is the real why. The core purpose. Which seems to be their goal of shutting down America, all of it, all of us, forever.
After all, this is the same group of people (elected Democrats) who allowed an incredible illegal invasion of America to happen from 2021 to 2024. The roughly 15 Million illegal aliens who illegally crossed our borders imposed budget-breaking costs on hospitals, public schools, and public infrastructure, and sky-high crime rates that overwhelmed police departments and court systems.
You don’t allow America to be overwhelmed and severely damaged, if you love America.
This is the same group of people (elected Democrats) who have time after time, even this weekend, sided with violent illegal alien criminals over American citizens, sided with South American drug dealers and child sex slave traffickers over American citizens, sided with violent repeat American criminals over law abiding American citizens, etc.
The Democrat Party is openly not on the side of America being successful or peaceful or happy. Rather, they (Democrats) are public about their disdain for pretty much everything that makes America successful. Except your tax money, of which they want a lot more.
So this government funding dispute seems to be really about just shutting down America, totally, trying to create all of the chaos and unhappiness possible, and probably also about trying to stop the Trump Administration from operating.
For the umpteenth time over the past ten years at least, it sure appears that the Democrat Party wants to once again burn America to the ground.
So I have a question for registered Democrats: Can you explain this situation? Can you defend it? Can you help us bystanders understand it?
Can you tell us what the Democrat Party stands for that American citizens might support? Can you explain why you continue to vote for Democrat candidates?
I ask as a former Democrat myself. Because I did not leave the Democrat Party, they left me; just like they are leaving America behind right now. And I am confused about how anyone who loves America continues to support this bizarre and destructive organization.
Labor: To work for something of value
Today is Labor Day in the USA, and while it might have some bad Marxist roots with the early unions, the fact is that it has also evolved into the uglier side of capitalism, which is an orgy of shallow consumerism. Big retail sales of everything from underpants to mattresses to cars, America today is awash in carnival tents and men in top hats and coat tails, barking loudly at the masses to step right up and buy the latest greatest gadget or whatever.
Not too long ago, labor unions played such an important role in American politics (and in British politics, for that matter), that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet knew precisely what Labor Day was about. That most Americans, especially our youth, make little or no mental connection between Labor Day and the people who labor away with their hands and bodies to make things of value for us, for them, is the real take-away meaning of today’s national holiday.
But how could young people know, or older Americans recall, what Labor Day is about if nearly all of our labor has been curiously shipped overseas, and to our enemies, no less? A factory job was the family and church and community- sustaining source of income from the 1930s until about 2000, when the last of our American factories were carefully packaged up and sent to China. Now we have 25 years of no no labor and no factories, just Rust Belt husks of buildings, churches, and communities across the Eastern and Mid-Western USA. No wonder our kids are clueless about Labor Day.
However, our snickering elected officials know precisely what Labor Day is about, because it is still directly relevant to them. These self-anointed elites who seek to dominate all of us use our labor to enrich themselves, through the mis-appropriation and mis-spending of our tax monies. This self-destructive activity happens most and worst in liberal “blue” states run by the Democrat Party, where voters enable single-party rule without the checks and balances of multi-party competition. That this repetitive voting pattern is self-defeating seems not to matter to leftist messianic utopians, whose Big Government god requires nonstop sacrifice and endless cash invested in friendly “businesses”.
Where does this endless cash come from, which enables the extravagant “public servant” aristocracy? YOU.
You labor, pay high taxes on your income, and that tax money is taken for messianic utopian policies, like disproven climate change nonsense, that enriches other blue aristocrats who are invested in these schemes.
Ideally, you, the citizen, pay taxes to the government so the government can pay for services to you, the citizen: Firemen, policemen, public education in math, history, and spelling, public roads, trash pickup, etc. This is the social compact of democratic representative government; you get concrete services in return for relinquishing your own money to the Tax Man.
But when government becomes detached from the symbiotic relationship, and begins doing things for itself, and ignoring the citizen, you have tyranny. This is becoming brutally apparent in Britain, France, and liberal states in America. California is an especially scary place because of how far out of alignment the state government is with the citizenry. No services, but instead illegal migrants, homeless encamped in private front yards, general lawlessness, and the highest of high taxes to boot. Complete breakdown of the social compact between citizen and government, and don’t you dare step out of line.
This failure continues because most of the citizenry continues to vote for a single dominant political party that hates the citizenry. In liberal venues, hating yourself is the greatest of virtue signals, and is highly rewarded with public acclamation. I myself could not live in such an unsustainable and bizarre place. The people there are living off of the banked fumes of once-great capitalist endeavors there, now either departed or departing for Texas, Tennessee, or Florida.
Last week Britain’s highest court ruled that the illegal migrants overwhelming British society – built with citizen labor taxes – have higher value and more rights than the citizens themselves. Such brazen detachment from the long established democratic social compact means the British citizens are now mere money sources, slaves, really, infested by and under the boot heel of a parasitic government and its new stakeholders, the illegals, who contribute nothing and demand everything.
Even the British Union Jack flag is being outlawed on the streets of Britain, because it “offends” the illegal border invaders! Say the “wrong” thing about this, do the “wrong” thing about this, and you actually go to jail. True tyranny, not freedom, not democracy.
Britain is headed to civil war, as any nation would be where the government has turned against the people it is supposed to serve, and upon whose tax-paying largesse the government depends. The same thing is happening here in American blue states, where entrenched single party rule, based on a taxpaying slave-political elite slave owner relationship, is about to be confronted by a fed-up federal government trying to hold the Union together. Something of value worth laboring for, again, as it was in 1861.
This is the meaning of Labor Day today.
Traitor Tehran Tucker Carlson Gleefully Leaps Off Cliff
Tucker Carlson has been a fixture on the political middle and right for about six or seven years. For years he slowly built a real following while he was at FOX News, where he did journalism stuff. He earned his following because he asked good questions, he dug into people’s political backgrounds and background information on political and cultural issues of the day. He challenged all kinds of political blind spots and taboos and unhealthy “bipartisan” spaces where taxpayers and American citizens always seem to lose and corrupt political careerists always seem to make out incredibly well.
After Tucker Carlson left FOX, he seemed emboldened to break even more artificial constraints, to ask even tougher questions, and to promote more individual freedom in the face of an increasingly constitutionally questionable government apparatus. He was the quintessential “independent investigative journalist” that Americans want so badly.
Without question, the Biden Administration was his foil in his new independent role, and also probably his brightest time. With so much brazen Biden family corruption, protected and enforced by a brazenly weaponized federal bureaucracy, and so much more related stuff to chase down, Tucker Carlson found himself ever more squaring off against the entire estabalishment media enterprise. This “mainstream media” conglomerate made then and very openly today makes no bones about being completely aligned and in bed with just one political party.
So this was the boxing ring in which Tucker Carlson found himself. He then got a ton of money from Iranian businessman Omeed Malik, and if the Foreign Agent Registration Act documents dug up by ace investigative reporter Laura Loomer are true, Tucker also got substantial money from Qatar. And then he bought himself a classic hunting and fishing ranch in Montana, and started interviewing people in his flyfishing man cave.
Bit by bit, aspects of Tucker Carlson’s raging hatred began to seep through, then shine through, and then eventually poured out in these interviews. Probably due to open pressure to at least try to appear not to hate all Jews, Tucker hosted an interesting guy named Bret Weinstein. And throughout the entire interview, Tucker’s hostile face set barely changed an iota. Despite receiving fascinating new information from Weinstein that corroborated a great deal of conclusions that Tucker had come to on certain political issues, he never smiled or showed any warmth toward his guest.
Check out the photo below that I screenshotted from that otherwise excellent interview.
Contrast Tucker’s demeanor towards fellow Israel hater Rep. Thomas Massie, where they are all chummy, laughing, easy going during that interview. Which is also a fascinating interview, and were Massie not a hater of Israel and Jews, and not such a theoretician and purist, I could then see why his presence in Congress was so useful.
Anyhow, Tucker started racking up interviews with professional Jew haters, for whom publicly breaking this Western taboo is a source of professional income. People like US Lt. Col. Douglas Macgregor, and history-dabbler Darryl Cooper, neither of whom have anyting positive to say about Jews or Israel, and who make a living saying nonsense about them. Not even the Nobel prize winners, the leaders in economic, medical, or technological areas. Nothing good to say, period, which indicates they have a problem.
In his many hours interviewing them, and others like an Arab Christian in Israel, Tucker never challenges them. He does not ask them to more fully explain their questionable ideas. Rather, Tucker just lets them say whatever they want about Jews, the European Holocaust, and Israel, and then after encouraging them, agreeing with them, he moves on to the next thing.
And then Tucker himself became an open antagonist towards Jews and Israel. He recently sat interview-style across from US Senator Ted Cruz with cameras running, and instead of an interview, Tucker went on the attack, including the bizarre assertion that the Jews of today are unrelated to the Jews of the Bible and ancient Israel.
As an aside, if today’s Jews are not descended from the ancient Jews, then why does their DNA show them to be from the Near East, despite at least a thousand years living in white Europe? Why are they the only people on Earth who speak Hebrew, study Scripture in Hebrew and Aramaic, and practice Judaism? If not them, then who and where the heck are the Jews? Tucker does not bother to answer this simple question, as casting doubt on Jews is his only goal.
The final straw for a lot of former Tucker Carlson admirers like me just happened, days ago. If you thought the man had an atom of Christian belief, human decency, American loyalty, or even just some integrity inside of him, Tucker Carlson has aggressively, even wantonly, dispelled that notion. Tucker conducted a ridiculous, puffball questions, friendly “interview” with one of the most evil, violent, cruelly despotic autocrats on Earth today.
Yes, from his Montana man cave, Tucker Carlson interviewed the hand puppet “president” of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, who reports directly to Ayatollah Khameini, the “Supreme Leader” of Iran, on July 4th, American Independence Day. In his time with Pezeshkian, a true monster, Tucker has no interest in asking real questions, like can we go inside Evin Prison and interview some of the women your forces are raping and torturing right now. Nor did Tucker go to Iran and do a “man on the street” tour, where the journalist just asks random citizens their opinions on things. Of course, Iran is oppressive and is run like North Korea, where one small mis-step costs you your family, your home, your wife, your life, so even if Tucker would insist, he would encounter stone faces.
Instead, Tucker Carlson willingly, and occasionally with outbursts of that weird fake glee he has, served as an airbrushed mouthpiece for the mullahs who rule Iran with a brutal and unjust fist, and who threaten the world with their genocidal, homicidal death cult. Tucker makes excuses for them, he aided and abetted them, he gave aid and comfort to them, he put lipstock on their pig faces, he made common cause with them.
One utterly contemptible example: “Has Iran tried to assassinate President Trump?” To which Pezeshkian answers that this is an Israeli lie meant to rope America into forever wars. And Tucker Carlson simply nods in agreement and moves on! No second question, no aw c’mon ya can’t blame everything on Israel.
Apparently Tucker Carlson really meant it when he wrote in 2020 that he never liked Trump anyhow. Yeah, no kidding. You won’t even challenge this bold faced lie by your Iranian buddy.
They, the Iran of “Death to America!” since their 1979 revolution. They of at least a thousand Americans killed through Iranian terrorism in Lebanon, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, elsewhere. They of known attempted assassinations against President Trump and election hacking in 2020, documented by the FBI.
There is speculation that Tucker Carlson must have been paid a lot of Iranian money to do this, and that seems reasonable. Whether Tucker just sold out America for the symbolic thirty silver Shekels, or whether he was paid directly into a Swiss bank account, or whether he gets some syndication rights income from this, any way we cut this last horrendous act, “Tehran Tucker” Carlson is a traitor to America.
Interviewing Bret Weinstein on Covid policy vs Covid science
Bret Weinstein maintained his composure despite Carlson’s open hostility on a subject Carlson would normally be animated about
His face hardly changed from this unfriendly grimace the entire interview. Tucker just does not like Jews, not even Dr. Bret Weinstein, a conservative and risk-taking researcher willing to help Carlson
How much money was Carlson paid to be the airbrusher mouthpiece foreign agent for the evil Iranian empire that seeks to nuke America? What a traitor
April 15th Tax Day vs April 19th Freedom Day
Today is April 15th, AKA “Tax Day,” because income tax reports are due to be submitted to the IRS by close-of-business today. Or at least American taxpayers are required to submit a somewhat detailed extension request today, because America’s tax laws and regulations are incredibly arcane and complicated. Everyone deserves the same opportunity to file the most law-abiding self-benefiting income tax report they can do.
(This is why I use a certified public accountant. There is no possible way in a zillion years that I would ever be able to fully understand or properly apply the tax laws and regulations to the income I have earned over the year. Yes, I have a very understanding CPA, someone who works with me, who goes over line items. The cost is worth it to me, given the potential consequences for making even small mistakes.)
April 15th symbolizes the government’s Sheriff of Nottingham coming to take away our money and our things, by threat of force. Nothing says “You are a serf and a powerless peasant” like having to bow and scrape before the mighty tax collector. It is worth noting that Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has submitted legislation that will remove all armed law enforcement roles and duties that the IRS has somehow accreted over the years, and sell off the agency’s weapons and ammunition. Isn’t it strange that the IRS of all agencies has amassed a huge armory and stockpile of ammunition?
Contrast today, April 15th Oppressive Government Compliance Tax Day, with the upcoming April 19th, which I am hereby naming Freedom Day. It is strange that we rarely ever hear about April 19th as a holiday or even a day of note, even though our great American freedom started exactly 250 years ago on April 19th…
On April 19th, an armed dispute erupted between American colonists and the British Army, in the towns of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. What came to be known as “The shot heard ’round the world” was fired April 19th, 1775, on the Lexington town green. It is unknown who exactly fired this first shot, Minute Man or British regular, but what ensued was the beginning of the American experiment in democratic rule: Government of, by and for The People, and nor by king or powerful army.
What is most noteworthy about the April 19th fatal confrontation beween the colonists’ militia men and the British “regulars” is that the individual American citizens were almost as well armed as the Redcoats. Each militia member carried a long gun, an edged weapon like a long hunting knife or a short sword or a hatchet, and plenty of lead and black powder ammunition for a prolonged fight. British military personnel were armed with the latest and best of all weapons, but the quality of the Patriots’ armaments were often not too far behind.
This model of the 1775 Minute Man militia member has stood the test of time, as a great many Americans today are also well armed and well provisioned with ammunition. This model of an armed free citizen, capable of standing up to an oppressive and lawless government, was later enshrined in the 1787-1789 Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees that all Americans can own and openly carry firearms at all times.
To me, what a strange and wonderful juxtaposition this week represents: Oppressive Tax Day backed by government force, vs. Freedom Day, the day that individual Americans collectively stood up for all oppressed individuals around the world. I think the takeaway message of this week is this: Pay your taxes, but keep your family well armed and always prepared, and always coordinate with those who share your freedom-loving views.
Some evocative images of April 19th 1775 and the resulting Bunker Hill battle by artist Don Troiani:
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the Minute Man patriots at the Lexington Green, April 19th 1775
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the Patriot militia at the Concord Bridge on April 19th, 1775
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the American patriots at the Battle of Bunker Hill
Fair trade, not free trade
When I ran for Congress (at that time the PA 10th inhabited by Democrat Tim Holden, which included about all of Schuylkill County and parts or all of Berks, Lebanon, Dauphin and Perry counties) in 2009-2010, I remembered and repeated a phrase from my long ago 1980s political activism days in Centre County – Fair trade, not free trade.
Despite being fifteen years ago, this phrase caught on with our voter audiences. They really liked it, and many voters I met while campaigning had personal stories about their family’s various jobs in then-shuttered factories. And I was reminded of watching a high tech glass and industrial mirror factory close up shop in State College, PA, around 2000. It was the old Corning branch there on the Benner Pike. Literally sat there and watched the workers carefully, lovingly package up their machinery for its trip to the “new” factory in China. Some of the workers went over to train their Chinese counterparts, before returning to State College without a job.
Funny thing that President Trump’s tariff policy amounts to this exact summation of the more or less running bank account that every responsible nation keeps with all other trading partners. The fact that only most nations are tariffing American made goods at high rates, while enjoying very low tariffs on their products imported into America, is a sign of what ails us Americans: We think we can give give and give away everything we have, and we are too big to fail from it all. Which is nonsense.
Interestingly, we see the same argument about illegal immigration and endless government spending: No limits, America must take and absorb all of the costs that the world places on us…Everything is “free free free” except, of course, it isn’t free. These policies come with huge costs to Americans.
Free trade, as in giving away our trade imbalances for free, which enriches everyone else and impoverishes Americans, is a sign that our policy makers and indeed our own voters falsely believed that America is such a huge fountain of bounty and wealth that it can endlessly sustain this. What a silly and dangerous fantasy.
Sending our factory jobs, indeed our actual factories with all of their equipment and machinery, abroad to be re-born in China, Vietnam, India and elsewhere was nuts. It sent our means of production, our workers, our jobs, and our money out of America. All America got in return was maybe cheaper and junkier versions of what we had once made here, at a high quality. And yet this “free trade” thing picked up steam as big American corporations and their pet politicians began to take on a global view of trade. No longer were companies based in Delaware “American.” Rather, many of these companies’ senior leaders considered them to be global citizens that just happened to find a perch in America.
This off-shoring of everything America makes, grows, produces went on unchecked for a good thirty years, until everyone began to notice the downside, the cost. Just about every East Coast and Mid West state now has its own “rust belt” area. Areas filled with hulking, empty brick buildings and over-grown parking lots next to rivers and highways tell the sad tale of America’s economic downfall, and our nearing ruin.
Sure, we had a lot of government spending in the past twenty years to temporarily make up for the job losses, the depressed wages, the looming home foreclosures. But that spending is unsustainable. It is “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” It is simply printing Dollars for the sake of printing them. Less and less stands behind them. And yet someone standing way back there in the background was making a ton of money off of this screwy policy, while the rest of us Americans lost from it.
And so now we have a bold and very natural pro-America policy, the equalization of tariffs, making trade fair, not free, and the whole world is suddenly going upside down. My 401(k)! My dog’s retirement account! Oh my God, what will happen?
Folks, relax. Do a bong hit or have a glass of red wine. Our American world is not only not going to end, it is going to return to our glory days. Yes, it takes time, it will take time, so don’t be a bunch of prissy little Gen Z weenies demanding immediate gratification. America is worth fighting for, and these dueling tariffs are the opening salvo. Round One.
You know what is kind of oddly funny about that Fair trade, not free trade slogan? As apt as it is right now, I got that from some 1980s Centre County union workers, which trade or factory or coal mine they were in, I no longer recall. But they were right. And Trump is right. And we Americans are all aligned together on this to Make America’s Economy Great Again…
All together now, breeeaaathe…
Back to basics, America
We have a Republican Party crisis here in Pennsylvania, and in Dauphin County, and this blog will be addressing these problem children soon. However, the real friction happening between lawless, rogue judges and the Trump Administration is the most defining issue of the day.
As most politically interested and involved readers already know, a real contest of wills is developing betwen the Trump Administration on the one hand, and politically radical / rogue/ lawless politically activist judges on the other hand. This contest may seem alarming to some people, but it is a perfectly natural and healthy aspect of how our Constitutional republican form of government is designed to operate.
With three separate but co-equal branches of government forming an equilateral triangle, but made of living, breathing people, and usually the most aggressive, power hungry, conniving people at that, American government is designed to have friction. That friction results in constant contest, and a constant creative renewal, as all three branches naturally seek to exert as much dominance as they can get away with over the other two branches. Or as much outright control of the decision process as the other branches will concede.
So when grotesquely overreaching politically corrupt activist judges, like James Boasberg, “order” the executive branch to turn around planes carrying lawfully deported violent gang members to foreign destinations, and return said violent deportees to American soil for the judge’s evaluation, we can expect some friction to result. The executive branch, and its chief executive/ military commander in chief (the president), is well within its rights and within its sole discretionary function when it engages in illegal alien deportation, as defined by the US Constitution.
The Trump Administration is under no duty or obligation to do whatever some judge tells them to do. Judicial Tyranny might be a goal for some Americans, but it is not something anticipated or accepted by the Founders and writers of the Constitution.
Not every situation or question or policy is justiciable, meaning that not every question can be resolved in a court of law. Some things, like deportations and war and a host of other subjects and government functions, are the sole purview of the executive branch. Neither the legislative branch nor the judicial branch have anything to say about it. It is not their “lane.”
Or, the judicial and legislative branches can try to say something about a given policy, but the best way to force the executive branch to follow is to pass a law requiring it.
In this particular case, President Trump blasted Boasberg’s unconstitutional overreach, and called for his impeachment, which is built right into the Constitution. Then US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in turn criticized the President for his calls to impeach said America-hating radical, James Boasberg. While Roberts personally dislikes Trump, he is defending his judicial branch more than anything, and trying to take power away from the executive branch.
This is all normal stuff, even if America has not seen this kind of constitutional friction in a long time. To my mind, this activity just shows that the various parts of the government machine are working properly. It took a Donald J. Trump to actually test run the American machinery for the first time in about seventy years. What is scary is how aggressive the judicial branch has been about hogging power over the past fifty years, and how little pushback the executive branch did until now. Presidents and Congress alike keep conceding judicial review as though the judicial branch is some sort of hallowed gathering of super smart and pure minded arbiters of fairness. Ha! Judges are just politicians in black robes, as one of my Penn State professors used to say.
Don’t worry, America has been down this path before in recent times. The Obama Administration, especially, engaged in a ton of simply ignoring judicial holdings and decisions and demands and orders; Obama DOJ lawyers were repeatedly held in contempt by a number of judges over the tenure of that administration. Not one judge got up out of his or her chamber to go enforce their order in person…nor could they.
And that’s the rub here: Crazy judges and even crazier Justices who allow some members of the judiciary to run wild, without restraint, can expect constraint by the branches they impact. Especially the executive branch.
Judicial review is not sacrosanct, it is not wide-open, nor can judges simply demand obedience to whatever or wherever their egos or political interests take them (or in the case of corrupt Judge James Boasberg, where his family’s wallet takes him on policy questions). Judges’ credibility depends upon the dignity and caution with which they discharge their duties.
When judges like Boasberg run bloody roughshod over America’s Constitutional geometry, and when justices like John Roberts do nothing to rein Boasberg in, but rather defend the indefensible, then they pretty much deserve what they have coming: Impeachment by the US House of Representatives, and being simply ignored by the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief as he does what his job requires him to do.
As one US president said in a similar moment of great friction, “Let the judge come and enforce his order himself.”
And no, that judge did not attempt to personally force the executive branch machinery to bend to his will. He astutely stood down and granted to the Chief Executive that which was his, and which still remains his. If Justice John Roberts wants Americans to respect his office and his decisions, then he must act similarly. We have to get back to the basics of running American government.
The Real Avengers
You can count on your right hand the number of real-life big-time times that the Good Guys have come back from apparent defeat, and gone on to defeat the Bad Guys. Depending upon how you qualify what is big-time, maybe you can count them on two hands. But not too many more than that.
Let’s try: A couple of Biblical-era wins, like King David’s defeat of Saul at the foot of Mount Gilboa, which incidentally looks today the same as the farmland there looked three thousand years ago, and the Maccabees defeating the Seleucid Greeks and their liberal Jewish allies…add these to the signing of the Magna Carta, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War II, and now, I think, something of the same magnitude, which is yesterday’s completed appointment of The American Avengers, which is really the crowning achievement of President Donald Trump’s miraculous return to the White House.
We are talking about yesterday’s selection of Dan Bongino as deputy director of the FBI, which is now headed by Kash Patel, today being his first full day in that office. With US Attorney General Pam Bondi already working overtime for the American people, America now has a true American Avengers team that is set to re-set the anti-democracy situation that brought the American republic precariously close to termination in the past few years, and return power and decision making to We, The American People. Radical transparency in government activity is already underway, and what we are seeing is not pretty.
Yes, I recognize that leftists and liberals and partisan Democrats see things differently. To paraphrase our impressive VP, I don’t care, Margaret. The way that leftists and liberals and partisan Democrats see things makes absolutely no sense from any angle.
Every time Donald Trump got closer and closer to winning back the White House over the past year, the more and louder the left bleated that “We are losing our democracy,” while simultaneously censoring, auditing, canceling, de-banking, firing, and jailing their political opponents. Nothing comes close to losing democracy like cutting out your opponent’s tongue and putting him in jail on fake charges, which is what the Democrat Party was doing daily to Americans and to other oppressed peoples around the world, using taxpayer money via the rancid USAID, no less.
Anyhow, with these three proven heroes at the helm of American justice, we should expect to see Biblical-style results. Remember that Democrat Party mantra, No one is above the law. We are probably now going to see a hell of a lot of people who thought they were above the law, and whose evil sins were hidden by a politicized and corrupt mainstream media, finally get held accountable.
A couple times a week over the past month, people with open minds have been shocked but not surprised at the new recordings of federal workers bragging about how many tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars have been siphoned off, stolen, and deliberately mis-spent on purely partisan and zero-benefit policy activities over the past few years, even over the past few months and weeks. James O’Keefe at OMG and O’Keefe’s old Project Veritas both are catching federal employee criminals laughing about their rip-off exploits, on camera.
This morning I listened to a brief interview with a senior US Marshals Service employee, who ran into serious and un-earned Human Resources trouble there because of the deep, deep rot in that important branch of government. His story is just one guy in an agency with probably a hundred such guys, maybe more. Multiply his story across the federal government….Which is to say that whatever shocking financial crimes Elon Musk’s DOGE has daily revealed, there is a LOT LOT more criminal activity just flush throughout the entire federal government. Our government is rife and filled to the gills with criminal activity, and The American Avengers are going to have their hands full bringing all of these bad people to justice.
Be prepared, because I don’t see Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, or Dan Bongino giving up on holding bad people accountable. The next few years are going to be much more exciting than some fake Hollywood action movie, that’s for sure.
Remember how FBI employees put then- Congresswoman now Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on the Do-Not-Fly list because she stepped off the Democrat Party plantation?
Kash Patel is the new FBI director, on a mission from God
As soon as Kash Patel was confirmed by the US Senate as the next FBI director, suddenly Democrats were calling to end all of the investigations that had defined Washington DC for the past eight years. Wonder why…
DMZ Mexico here we come
Mexico has always had a lawless cowboy “Pancho Villa” kind of relationship with America. Historically, Mexican raiders would come across the border, whether that border was where it is now, or when Mexico owned what is now Texas and raided across into what is now Oklahoma, California, New Mexico, Arizona etc. Mexicans always preyed upon Americans, whether they were lone homesteaders or big cattle barons.
Anyone who has an interest in this rough border history can pretty well boil it down to the Alamo (a frontier fort that became a symbol of American resistance to Spain and Mexican imperialism, and then later a successful rallying cry in search of revenge for the Mexican massacre of wounded Americans there, “Remember the Alamo!“) and you can watch several good movies about that. Or you can read up on the Texas Rangers. No, not Chuck Norris type Texas Rangers, with nickel-plated Colt 45 1911s and fast cars, or the baseball team, but the very early and very real Texas Rangers. Guys like Frank Hamer. Guys tough as steel wearing true ten gallon hats, riding beautiful strong horses, with big Bowie knives strapped, lever action Winchester rifles across the pommel, and Colt Peacemaker revolvers on their hip, chasing Mexican cattle rustlers, banditos, and thieves back and forth the border in bloody mortal combat.
Books with amazing photos have been published, and I think some early silent movies were done on the Mexican-American border. It is a history that few Americans know about today, because our relationship with Mexico has been defined for a long time in terms of tourism, itself a very new human experience, and to lesser extent the importation of fresh fruits and vegetables long grown with human excrement in lieu of animal manure.
It is also a history now rife with all kinds of modern far-Left anti-America fabrications and nonsense, not the least of which is at history.com, as well as many other anti-America websites that blatantly lie and whine about the legitimate American defense of its borders.
America’s relationship with Mexico only began to become something positive when Americans became tourists there. Acapulco, later the Yucatan Peninsula, became destinations for the then-new 1960s cruise ships. Then industrial investment came, car factories, John Deere tractor parts factories, some hand tools, all positive, although readers should know that Mexican law still forbids foreigners from owning land there.
Over time Americans became literally fat and happy, our own material success killing us, robbing us of our competitive spirit and even of our own will to live. Americans became oblivious to the myriad problems afflicting us, including cross-border drug exports from Mexico. The beautiful movie Act of Valor captured the old American attitude towards border security, before the Biden Administration and its bipartisan supporters opened the border wide for everyone and everything – human sex trafficking, including small children, fentanyl, marijuana, assorted pills, cocaine, forty million foreign invaders from around the planet, just walking in to America.
Suddenly Americans began to really suffer from all the open border problems, and notice the cause. Thousands of illegal alien drunk drivers killing entire American families, repeat offender homicidal maniacs raping and murdering beautiful young American girls, beautiful and promising young American boys and men accidentally ingesting poisonous drugs and dying. The list of maladies afflicting Americans from the Mexico export of bad stuff became too big, too bad, too serious to ignore any longer.
And so Americans voted for President Donald Trump to close the open border, stop the one-way flow of death, violence, and destruction from Mexico, and fix the problem once and for all. And so within thirty days of being sworn in, President Trump correctly declared the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorists. This means their members who are here on American soil do not enjoy the protections of civil rights or basic criminal law. Rather, they are legally and correctly viewed as armed invaders who intend to do Americans harm, and so they can be shot like dogs, on sight. Beautiful.
Things are looking up, right? Well, not so fast.
In response to all this good course correction stuff, Mexico is right now in the speedy process of making it illegal to hold their citizens accountable for their illegal acts, in Mexico or in America. In other words, the Mexican government is working hard to protect the drug cartels and their human smuggling, drug smuggling, weapons smuggling, and violence smuggling. Presently a pile of drug cartel hit squads are actively murdering Americans and foreigners right here on American soil, usually over drug dealing and money laundering. The Mexican government wants this situation to continue.
Essentially America is going back to the ultra violent 1860s frontier relationship that we had with Mexico, except that it is now official Mexican government policy to unleash their marauders upon us. America is facing a Mexican guerilla war on our southern border, from Tijuana all the way to Florida’s coastline, enabled by the Mexican government.
I am not a military expert, or really a military anything. I could not command a platoon let alone a pineapple. However, I am a long and passionate consumer of human history, and I think history is instructive in instances such as what America now faces along our Mexican border. America must take decisive control of the most dire situation there right now, which is the lawless borderland that allows psychotic murderers easy access deep into our homeland.
Extending a hard American military presence across the Mexican border is hopefully not needed, but it is what is going to have to happen in some shape or form to give us the full control of our side that we need. It is fully 100% justified. It is time for a demilitarized zone on the Mexican side. Whether that DMZ is a half mile, a mile, or ten miles, it is what needs to happen to give America the protection we need from Mexico’s predatory behavior, both official and unofficial wink-wink nudge-nudge.
I want to say that I admire Mexicans. I think the legal Mexican immigrants to America are the new Americans. In my experience, they universally work very hard, value tight and strong families, they believe in God and His higher law. They are patriotic and proudly serve in America’s toughest combat units. Great people, great Americans. Welcome, please.
I spent time in Mexico as a kid, as a volunteer on a Green Cross ambulance among the pobrecitos in a very sad, very poor area. It is a story for another time, but I came to love regular Mexicans at that time, and I still feel very warmly towards those who want to become legal Americans and share in this incredible country with us. They are most welcome here.
It is the lawless banditos we are worried about here, with this borderland issue. And that includes the Mexican government.
Frank Hamer, Texas Ranger and righteous American patriot
Texas Rangers patrolling the Rio Grand River
Pancho Villa, Mexican bandito
Maybe too much of a good thing?
President Trump and his lawfully appointed government assistants at DOGE have hit the ground running fast, and they have hit the bloated, rogue federal government hard, without question. While Trump may have had an axe to grind with the brazenly insubordinate federal workforce in his first administration, and with all of the brazenly lawless government bureaucrats at DOJ, FBI, DHS etc et al who targeted him with made up nonsense criminal charges and official lawfare for eight years, I still don’t know how many people expected his felt impact to be quite this stunning, this soon.
Trump has been a ton of bricks coming down hard, and to his supporters this is just the beginning of the justice we have wanted for years. Because Trump was not alone in feeling the tyrannical wrath of out of control government. Many of us, his supporters, suffered with him, to one degree or another. Many of us were also maliciously targeted by the Biden Administration for the simple “crime” of having different political views than Biden et al., and so we are all cheering on Trump’s massively overdue housecleaning of the rogue bureaucracy.
Our joy has only been rocketfueled by the daily red meat descriptions of incredible Obama- and Biden-era fraud, waste, and abuse of federal taxpayer funds being discovered by DOGE. And certainly, Trump’s patriotic instincts for justice and hard-about correcting course are only more sharply honed by these really phenomenally outrageous reports. Official corruption now visibly real, and also apparently even bigger and worse than one could imagine. That reasonable Americans will want swift and harsh justice imposed upon the criminals who enabled and engaged in these destructive, nay, treasonous acts is also normal and expected.
All this said, there is sometimes too much of a good thing.
Amidst the required bloodletting we should also want to avoid the appearance of bloodlust. This distinction does not require so much of a let-up in quantity, but rather a more targeted reposte with the rapier. Because in the slash-and-burn comes collateral damage too much for even our beloved Saint Trump to bear. Recall none other than the much and long beloved United States Patent and Trademark Office. Founded by Thomas Jefferson, it is of long and great distinction, for many great reasons. And the USPTO is also of great importance to American business, and it is thus housed in the US Dept. of Commerce.
The highly respected USPTO may have just been caught with a DEI cheat in the executive office, but the office body itself bears no such resemblance. In fact, this work-from-home workplace was among the very first such experiments, begun nearly thirty years ago, with all out-of-DC USPTO attorneys working from expensive, carefully built home offices designed for use only with Dept. of Commerce software. No double incomes here, these attorneys are on the clock day in and day out. Step out of line, fall behind in your caseload, and yes, you, a government attorney, will find yourself standing in the unemployment line, lickety split. The production standards for USPTO attorneys are very high, and they enjoy real hard-earned respect in their field.
The USPTO is one of the very few federal government offices where such potentially harsh discipline still exists, and it exists for good reason: The likely cost of a single USPTO attorney lazing about is very high, borne directly by the AMERICAN businesses who rely upon the USPTO to help them fend off all of the nonstop Chinese fakery and thievery of intellectural property in the active international marketplace. So it also stands to reason that the cost of haphazardly uprooting these finely tuned instruments of American business will be quite damaging to the very companies and business sectors we say we want to protect. Among the ransacking, there are objects of great value worth protecting. The USPTO is one.
Yes, overall, the federal work-from-home thing looks as bad as it probably smells down there in DC. Yes, there are likely countless examples of how work-from-home has been abused across the federal workforce, especially since it became standard in 2020. I know from first hand experience, as I was one of the few at US EPA HQ who got to experiment with it back in the mid 1990s, simply to allow a little bit more room on local roads for DC-bound commuters. What I saw back then with a number of colleagues was what we see in the headlines now: Lots of posh gardening, home-based second businesses, etc., everything but getting The People’s business done. Getting workers back into the work environment is generally a good thing, especially holding federal workers accountable, who exist solely to serve We, The People.
In the critically needed march to bring sanity to our overall disastrously run federal government, let us not also toss the baby out with the bathwater, nor kill the lone golden goose. Let’s not have too much of the medicine America needs.