Posts Tagged → Trump
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
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 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 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.
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
All lives matter, the law matters, civilization matters, running water matters
Watching so-called “peaceful protesters” burn down a bunch of American cities and demand to eliminate city police departments, in the name of God-knows-what anarchy, is no laughing matter. Because all lives matter, regardless of skin color, religion, political views, sex, etc. Everyone is created in the image of God and each American has the same rights as anyone else.
The scenes of anarchy and assaults on every aspect of American civilization are pretty confounding. After all, we Americans have the best quality of life in the world (Starbucks on every corner, a smart phone in every hand etc.). One of the cornerstones of our amazing quality of life is the law, the idea that there are parameters on personal behavior. Destruction, looting, thievery, violence, are all no-nos in every civilization; it is just that in America we have refined the art of enforcing the law down to a very fine science. Having that ability to solve most crimes really creates a high quality society.
That refinement is what American civilization runs on. That attention to detail is what gives our civilization such unfailing public services as clean running public water.
Now all of this approach to life, every bit of it and so much more, is up for grabs, as the Democrat Party seeks to create as much chaos, destruction, and unhappiness as they possibly can before the November election. What happens if the big cities do, in fact, disband their police forces? What if Joe Biden becomes president and says “You are right, no more applying the law, no more criminal prosecutions. Go ahead and do whatever you want to whomever you want, and there will be no consequences.”
We know what will happen, because we are already seeing it happen in places like Detroit and New York City – where the public drinking water supplies are polluted by a lack of government diligence in Detroit, and the wanton destruction of the world’s greatest city economy through simple public fear of being attacked and robbed in public in NYC. People can’t work, can’t live. So there are consequences for failure, it is just that failure is not a problem for liberals, because they keep re-electing the same failed liberal politicians. That is because liberals are now getting what they have been after, what they have said they were after, for fifty years: Revolution, and all of the destruction that comes with it. It really does not bother them.
Last week I communicated with a dear friend living in New York City. We have cared for one another as close friends for 30-some years. She owns restaurants; her husband is a successful architect. They have made good money from the American entrepreneurial system, and enjoyed all of the culture and opportunity NYC can offer. After expressing to me her shock and horror at how her neighborhood had been destroyed by wanton looting, she then said she would continue to support the politicians who allow this to happen, so long as it means opposing Donald Trump.
So there you have it, the befuddled mindset of a highly educated, highly successful business person on the Left: Winning at any cost, even if it means literally burning down America, including their own neighborhood. Including drinking polluted water. Heck, the cities with the biggest police problems are all liberal – ultra-liberal Minneapolis is where George Floyd died, at the hands of a liberal police officer. There was nothing new there. Liberals keep voting for failure; even when liberalism destroys everything they care about, liberals still keep voting for it.
It takes an all-America person to say All Lives Matter in this situation, because it is such an obviously needed reminder of how our American civilization really works, and what is needed to run it successfully at all levels. America is always all-hands-on-deck. It always has been a community-based nation. Everyone has to participate, at every level, for America to run right. We have to get personally involved, and we can’t let someone else vote for us, or make decisions for us. It is the little things that have always made America run well. Like the way in which a local school has classes that monitor public water quality, or how some segments of American society are having such difficulty succeeding that local clothing and food banks are set up to help them.
All of that is being tossed out right now, in favor of God knows what. When we see that God-knows-what destructive insanity, we have to remind ourselves that All Lives Matter. We have to take care of each other. Every one of us is important.
So toss out the anarchy and destruction, the artificial divisiveness. Embrace your community, and the law, and your neighbors. You will, we all will, be happier for it. America will be better for it.
p.s. originally I was inclined to write an essay entitled “Democrat Party: Make America into Mogadishu,” and I still might. But the crazy un-American violence happening around our great nation made me feel sad, and I wanted to say something that might remind someone, somewhere, of all the good this nation has achieved, so that they might aim for that, instead of supporting the violence that separates us from one another.
Democrat Party: Burn Down America and See if Donald Trump is Still Standing
Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf just issued another edict: Nothing really opens in Pennsylvania until June 4th. Because he says so.
No science supports his action. All the Wuhan covid19 data now pouring in from around the country, and Pennsylvania, demonstrates the virus is an urban problem, a nursing home problem, an old age and bad existing health problem, an I-95 corridor problem that stretches from Richmond, Virginia, to Boston, Massachusetts.
Covid19 is most especially a New York and New Jersey problem, where the overwhelming proportion of deaths and hospitalizations have occurred. Thanks in great part to the decisions of Governor Cuomo and NYC Mayor de Blasio, both of whom encouraged sick people to move about freely, to ride the NYC subway, and for nursing homes to take in sick people known to be infected with covid19.
While Wuhan Flu is here because China wanted it to be here, if any one or two people in America are responsible for its spread and damage it is Cuomo and de Blasio.
Across America Democrat governors like Tom Wolf are throwing down the gauntlet, issuing fatwas, edicts, executive orders all extending the stay-the-f*k-at-home demand that has shut down businesses and bankrupted tens of millions of Americans. Putting people in jail merely for opening their barber shops and hair salons. None of these edicts are constitutional. None of these decisions emanate from the powers granted to elected officials. None of these are about health, they are about power. These are simply power grabs by elected officials looking to give themselves more power and to damage America.
This is economic warfare against the citizens of America. You and me.
Why would anyone want to damage America’s economy, you ask?
Because it is the only thing the Democrat Party has left to try to damage President Trump. They have tried everything else: False accusations, the Russia collusion hoax, the Ukraine hoax, fake impeachment hoax, hookergate, etc and at every turn, Trump has beaten them. Now all the Democrat Party has left is a scorched earth policy, burning down and blowing up America, and the Chinese covid19 virus is the last card in their hand for doing it.
Covid19 has given the Democrat Party their ability to try to blow up America and everything around President Trump, and then see if he is still standing. Never mind the collateral damage, like you, your job, your family, your business, your children. You and I are simply cannon fodder in the Democrat Party’s attempt to wrest control away from the one person who has the strength to stand up against them, against their media arm, and the GOPe (Republican establishment, AKA spineless jellyfish).
“But Josh, the Risks!”
Josh: Horsesh!t.
The epidemiological data shows us now exactly what the covid19 risks are and are not. Generally speaking, the risk from this virus is extremely low. America can function just fine going forward, and at-risk people will need to change their habits a bit, and there is no justification for this stay-the-f*k-at-home crap any longer.
But since November 10, 2016, the goal has been to get Donald Trump, no matter what.
And so now we are watching one aggressive political party blow up America in their pursuit of getting Donald Trump, while the opposing party is full of milquetoast, soft spoken, reasonable sounding, carefully coiffed, preened, gentlemen who would like nothing more than to have an early round of golf before going out to dinner and then to cocktail parties, where they can get their next insider information for their next big investment. That is why they got into politics in the first place.
Welcome to America 2020, where most of the politicians are utterly worthless. People, we ourselves are going to have to solve this ourselves, without the politicians. We cannot let them bankrupt us and destroy our families.
Stand up, stand tall, and tell Governor Tom Wolf to Stay The F*k At Home if he has a problem with you leading your life as you choose. Go get your hair cut.
UPDATE: After this was written, Dauphin and Lebanon counties joined Beaver and Greene counties in defying Governor Wolf. Thank God we have strong leaders here like commissioners Jeff Haste and Mike Pries.
Czechoslovakia, USA
Is the USA becoming Czechoslovakia?
Everything political happening right now in America is following the path of the 1948 Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. Literally every mis-use of government power here, from the smallest and most obscure political subdivisions to the highest offices in the federal government, either exactly or almost exactly mirrors actions the Czech Communists did to forcefully take over what had been one of Europe’s leading democracies.
So much information has spilled out in the past week, about the corruption, abuse of power, and pure evil anti-democratic behavior of so many senior Obama Administration officials. The warrantless domestic spying, the lying to get warrants, the lying to frame people and get false convictions by withholding exculpatory information from them. The use of massive coercive government force to achieve political goals….Things you cannot believe just happened in America.
And the other big story is about just how freakin’ long it has taken to wrest this information from the hands of government employees who are using their taxpayer-funded public offices for political purposes. Political activists have been quietly burrowing deeply into government roles for decades, and basically have formed sleeper cells throughout government. Now they turn American government against Americans.
The core of the problem comes down to this: One political party, its members and its followers have the mindset that they are going to get control of America “by any means necessary.” They intend to control all of us with an iron fist, just as their governors have tried to tyrannically rule their states over the past two months. They want mail-in voting so they can literally stuff the ballot boxes and cheat everyone out of a fair election. They are enabled by the feeblest of reasons, like the “stay at home” movement. (Hey, if you want to stay at home, then go ahead, but I am moving forward with my life, and what I do with my life is my business, not yours. And no, this virus isn’t going to kill a whole bunch more people, and if you oppose risk, then yes, just stay at home and suck your thumb.)
The other political party has only a few members who actually fight back against this anti-democracy movement. Yes, there is a slowly growing group of American citizens who are anticipating some sort of violent show down, for which they are preparing, but they have very little political voice. Only a few elected officials are strong enough to actually stand up and promote good government. I am fortunate to have Congressman Scott Perry represent me in the US House, where he is distinguishing himself as an ardent defender of the Constitution and individual rights triumphing over anti-democracy government. But I am not in good company, as Scott is one of a handful of strong willed elected officials. We are fortunate to have President Trump championing the America of freedom and equal opportunity…because no other Republican candidate for president had the guts to do what Trump has done.
And thus we have Czechoslovakia, 1948, happening all over again right here in America. Just as then and there, the literal communists (yes, Comey and Brennan are avowed communists by their own admission) here and now are determined to steal power through all illegal means, a swarm of attacks on American democracy from top to bottom, and then under color of law demand that everyone else obey them once they are in.
Yes, the Democrat Party will break every law to gain control of the law.
The Democrat Party will use the democratic process to achieve non-democratic results.
In 1950 one of Czechoslovakia’s great show trials was held, where political opponents were treated as criminals by the communists who controlled the courts and secret police. Almost exactly seventy years ago, totally innocent feminist democracy advocate and lawyer Milada Horakova was garroted as Communist officials gleefully looked on, her own prosecutor encouraging the hangman to slowly suffocate Horakova, instead of breaking her neck.
The day of her hanging, Horakova wrote to her two girls: “The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good … by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight.”
My dear fellow Americans who are registered Democrats, this is not the political party of your youth. It has become an evil corruption, and you honor yourself by leaving it now.
My dear fellow Americans who love freedom, the moment is upon us to fight the communist Democrat Party’s attempt to take control of America, to turn us into the Czechoslovakia of 1948, to steal our freedoms and set government above the people it is supposed to serve. Do not allow our free nation to succumb to tyranny and corruption.
Decide to fight.
Czech freedom and liberty advocate Milada Horakova defending herself and democracy while on trial in Prague, 1950, for merely opposing the communist Democrat Party of her time and place. She was hung slowly to death shortly after.
Five Spice Donkey Meat: Coronavirus Lessons Learned
As the lab-grown Chinese Wuhan Flu coronavirus tornado has whipped around the planet, destroying people, families, businesses, hopes, dreams, savings, homes, careers, there are a few initial takeaway lessons we have learned so far.
Lesson 1: We cannot trust the media. The mainstream media (CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, BBC, PBS, Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, AP, Reuters etc) is full of politicized nonsense, not actual factual reporting. After weeks of calling the Wuhan Flu the Wuhan Flu, the China Flu, and the Chinese Flu, because this virus comes from Wuhan China, mainstream reactivists (my own conjunction of reporter + activist) immediately began saying it was racist after President Trump called it the Wuhan Flu. So if the president says something, the mainstream media reactivsts immediately disagree with it and criticize it. After doing the same and saying the same thing themselves. This is obvious hypocrisy and reveals the media as a bunch of political activists, not news reporters. OK, so you knew this already, especially after the media has constantly parroted Communist China lies over the past few weeks. Well, now you know it even better.
Lesson 2: China is actively pursuing the domination of America. Through any means necessary, Communist China has demonstrated that they are like the German Nazi Party of eighty years ago and the Democrat Party of today. They are our avowed enemy. They will stop at nothing to dominate everyone around them, especially America, even if it means playing with strange fire like lab-grown viruses designed to wipe out entire enemy adult generations, so that only the inexperienced and defenseless young are left alive. Chinese efforts to undermine and dominate America are nothing new, but for thirty years Americans have been told by elected officials from BOTH political parties that it was in our own best interests to give all of our technology, jobs, money, and security to China. Well it turns out that this globalism impoverishes Americans while further enriching a small handful of oligarchs. And now we see that Chinese domination of our pharmaceutical industry is not a benefit to us, and is in fact a great risk to our survival.
Lesson 3: Everything China makes is contaminated and dangerous. China has no environmental regulations and very few food regulations. Their rush to industrialize at any cost has resulted in tremendous environmental damage and the contamination of their food, soil, and water. This week we were treated to a video of a sick Chinese worker deliberately coughing into a shipment of new face masks bound for America, in order to further infect Americans. Five years ago the “Five Spice Donkey Meat” scandal in China demonstrated just how badly Chinese foods are adulterated, infected, and contaminated with a God-knows-what mix of dangerous chemicals and pathogens. Even donkey and fox meat, which are actually (unbelievably) succulent delicacies in China, alongside snakes, bats, cats, rats, wombats, dogs, hogs, and monkeys, are infected; not just baby milk powder and apple sauce sold to America. Anything we import from China is full of nasty chemicals, viruses, and bacteria. Including food, medicine, and clothing. Don’t let it in here.
Lesson 4: Buy American – Putting America First means protecting American Health. Putting America first in all things means that we will now question whether or not certain practices are in fact actually good for Americans. Whether or not cheap labor and cheap products from China are desirable in the short term, we as a nation will now always ask “Is this good for America and her citizens, my family, my neighbors?” If the answer is either No or Probably Not, then we will re-patriate whatever goods were being made elsewhere and have them made here. Having things made here in America, subject to our own regulations, high expectations, and standards, will give us control over our destiny and health. Including physical and financial health.
Lesson 5: Secure American Borders equals Secure American Citizens, so Force the Issue. In early February, US senator Chuck Schumer (Democrat) and US Congressthing Nancy Pelosi (Democrat) accused President Trump of being a “racist” for implementing a travel ban from abroad. Literally four weeks later these same two fools accused President Trump of not having enacted a travel ban soon enough. All kinds of dangerous diseases, dangerous drugs, dangerous people, sex slave trafficking, child prostitution, child molesters, and violence have been pouring over and through America’s open borders into our towns and cities. This is happening only because the Democrat Party has been totally devoted to having our borders remain wide open, for their own short term political gain. A willingness to trade off the health and safety of American citizens for the benefits of law breakers and parasites should demonstrate to any open minded person that the Democrat Party and its criminal assistants like La Raza and the ACLU are guilty of treason and crimes against the American people. All of these groups should get big bills from the United States Treasury for the damage they have wrought on innocent Americans. China should get a big bill for the widespread destruction that their Chinese Wuhan China Virus has wrought, too. Close America’s borders and get control of who and what gets in here.
Flumageddon II: Medical Community Asleep at Wheel
Since 1918, when the first known flu pandemic (named “war fever” because it resulted from the trench warfare conditions of World War I) swept the planet and killed about twenty million souls, the Western medical profession has known all about the danger of flu viruses.
No mystery here. None. Everyone who is a doctor today is at least aware of the flu and has studied it to some degree. And since 1918, SARS, Swine Flu, and some other deadly flu viruses have swept through Asia and America, leaving tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people dead as a result. We have had plenty of warning about dangerous flu bugs. Plenty of time and opportunity to prepare.
Now in 2020 enter coronavirus19, which is the 19th known iteration/ strain of the corona virus, a well-known flu bug. But this time, the medical community has been caught absolutely flat-footed, unprepared, deer-in-the-headlights surprised. World-respected “DOCTOR” Anthony Fauci at NIH has openly stated that America is not as prepared as other countries to deal with this, and he openly wonders why this is….
Hello, Doctor Fauci, you have been a self-declared expert on flu viruses and other mass diseases for decades. And now you say that America is not prepared? Have you looked in the mirror lately to find the answer about WHY we are not prepared?!
Who else was supposed to prepare America for these dangerous diseases IF NOT YOU and your fellow doctors? Where the hell have you guys been all these years?
I mean, was there a prior massive call by doctors for flu testing kits and masks and all the other protocols and preparatory steps to defend against a flu pandemic, and the elected officials neglected to meet that call? If so, then we need to know about it. We need to know who dropped the ball and placed Americans at risk.
And no, oh no, no, you cannot blame the guy who just walked into the room. The one guy who knew nothing about this until weeks ago, like the rest of the public. The one guy who has not spent his career in government, or in medicine, or in critiquing government and medicine and public health, but who has spent just over three years total in government, Donald Trump, THIS is the guy who is supposed to take the blame? No, no way.
Please excuse my all-caps here, but I don’t know how else to convey in writing the feelings of amazement and disgust I feel for seeing the supposed best and brightest in Western Civilization literally pass the buck to the least culpable person on the planet.
Coronavirus19 has become a political football, only because a single political party and its communications arm, AKA “the media,” has politicized this flu bug, just like they have politicized literally every other thing that this president has said or done. Only because this one political party and its propaganda arm want to create hysteria and blame for political gain is this hysteria and medical failure now happening. Every other flu that has come and gone and left tens of thousands of people dead in its wake have been left up to the facts of life. Already this “flu season” about 20,000 Americans have died from “the flu.” And another ten thousand Americans are expected to die before the flu season ends this spring. No one was ever blamed before for any of this, least of all an American president.
So why now? Hmmmm?
What really irks me about lazy and incompetent doctors is that their hospitals are the most dangerous places to go. If you want to really get sick, or even die unexpectedly, then go stay in a hospital. Not only will you be unnecessarily exposed to lots of germs that can kill you, but you will also be exposed to massive doses of medical malpractice and incompetence. Hospitals and the doctors in them are extremely dangerous to public health. That is a cold numeric fact. And it is a fact that Americans accept, because we presume that the risks of not having those very same hospitals is higher than having them.
Doctors make the worst policy people. The very worst. Because unrealistic and impractical zero risk is usually what doctors demand; from everyone else. They usually want to spend huge amounts of money to reduce minor risks to almost zero percent chance of happening. And yet they themselves are often walking, talking killing machines, dispensing oopsies and my-bads right and left as they step over the twitching corpse of their latest malpractice victim and go on to the next one. Look at the stats on this!
These are the same doctors who tell Americans that all guns are bad, and that guns kill by themselves, and that we cannot possibly have guns in our homes. Yet, statistically speaking, if you have a doctor in your home, you are at much greater risk for a whole host of gruesome deaths than you are from a gunshot.
These are the same doctors and medical know-it-alls who have dropped the public health ball with coronavirus19 and are now pointing their fingers at the American president.
You must be kidding me. No, you are not going to fool me, not this time. Not again. If any mistake has happened with coronavirus19, it is squarely on the shoulders of the medical and public health communities. And it is made worse by the silly media hysteria causing people to fight over rolls of toilet paper and to hoard canned vegetables. It is quite literally an insane situation, brought to us by lazy doctors, lazy bureaucrats, and evil political activists who will burn down America in order to get control of America.
Flumageddon shines spotlight on failed US bureaucracy
The Wuhan Flu aka coronavirus has resulted in a Flumageddon hysteria that has damaged America’s economy and forced millions of students to stay at home, supposedly “study online,” and pester their working parents.
Flumageddon has shut down public meetings, schools, and work environments coast to coast. Almost everything that Americans take for granted has been stopped cold by it. Entire cities on both coasts are entering constitutionally questionable lockdown status, where the citizenry may have to “shelter in place” just like the ancient Hebrews did in Egypt, as God’s death plague worked its way through the first born of humans and animals alike.
Why are we here? What on earth happened to bring the freest, most technologically advanced nation to this point?
Was America really, truly unprepared for this moment?
Two things happened that got us here.
First, China has been doing everything it can, in literally every way possible, to undermine, hamper, damage, and take over America. China is a socialist tyranny, and so they have been able to direct hundreds of millions of Chinese to sit at keyboards all day every day with the goal of filing fake Trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office in DC, and to hack into credit card companies, and to hack into everyday websites, and to post antagonistic messages on websites, and to play around with ordering and then canceling American products and services, and so on. Not to mention the 500,000 Chinese fake “researchers” posted at American research institutions. They are spies, really, stealing our knowledge out from under us in the phony name of open-ness and tolerance and diversity and other meaningless nonsense.
The tentacles of China are long and many, its parasitic sapping of America’s strength a long-held accepted fact.
And nothing allowed China to wreak its havoc on Americans more than people in BOTH Democrat and Republican parties allowing it to do so openly and in plain view. Because a handful of ultra wealthy wanted to be even more ultra wealthy. And they share a bit of that wealth by giving it to re-election campaign funds of careerist politicians, who hold on to power and do China’s bidding in American policy and law. Thus were American jobs and factories outsourced to China, and basically everything good America has or had was literally handed to China. All for thirty pieces of silver, on top of the thirty pieces of silver that had already been handed out a million times before to just a handful of highly placed recipients. Traitors to America, really.
So China’s Wuhan Flu is a direct product of the artificial and unhealthy economic relationship between our two nations, maintained by a billion people in China and just a few thousand people in America. Wuhan Flu spread through the world, and into America, because of an unnaturally open one-way relationship, and a criminally porous American border.
Second, Flumageddon happened because American bureaucrats are an incompetent and lazy bunch, artificially protected by artificially way-way-way over-generous personnel rules.
Career bureaucrats at Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Drug Administration have been unprepared for this moment for decades, despite plenty of warning shots from SARS and Swine Flu before. Instead of developing flu testing kits and extensive steps for combating Wuhan Flu, career bureaucrats at CDC, NIH, FDA and a host of satellite agencies and state offices, all took long lunches on the forgotten taxpayer’s dime. They posed and preened and presented themselves as dispassionate arbiters of public health interests. And in fact, when the moment of truth arrives, we see that they are simply lazy and incompetent. In China, which so many of our federal bureaucrats love because of its ruthless efficiency and all-powerful government, they would all have been shot in the back of the head by now for their failure.
Instead, we are treated to a host of foolish talking heads from CDC and NIH who are, in fact, partisan political activists using their public positions to advance a political campaign to discredit the one person who has absolutely no blame for Flumageddon: President Donald Trump, who, unlike 95% of Congress and 100% of the federal bureaucracy, has NOT been in government his entire career.
Flumageddon is not even Obama’s fault, though he did experience at least one, arguably two, fatal flu public health events, and, therefore, Obama could have directed CDC and NIH and FDA to begin making testing kits and vaccines. In anticipation of future outbreaks. Nope, the fault really lies with our open borders mentality, which carries nation-ending risks, and with our lazy, incompetent, over-protected, entitled, unaccountable bureaucrats, who then cement the open borders risks into stone.
In order to pound down Americans even more, and make us more pliable, more amenable to their supposed solutions. Which are always more and bigger and more powerful government intervention into our lives.
Interesting how this works. The symmetry was so clean and easy. Until Trump came along and challenged it. Cue the hysteria…
on Mayor Steve Reed
Steve Reed was the long-time Democrat mayor of Harrisburg City, and he died last week. I knew Mayor Reed and I feel compelled to say some things about him.
My uber-Republican grandparents Ed and Jane introduced me to Steve back in the early 1990s, when he was first running for mayor of Harrisburg. When I queried how such ardent partisans as they could support a Democrat, the response they gave was a life-changing truism that is worth everyone remembering:
“Support the best candidate who will do the best for The People, regardless of political party.”
And besides, the Republican Party had long since abandoned Harrisburg City, as the GOPe has chicken-out abandoned all other urban areas across America. So there was no real Republican to challenge Reed.
The truth is that Steve Reed really did have the best interest of The People, the citizens of Harrisburg City, at heart. Like a lot of gay men his age, he felt that his opportunity for personal companionship was self-limited, and so he had nothing else to live for than his citizens, the people he viewed as being under his care. And he did dutifully care for all of us to his best ability.
When a bad vehicle accident would occur in the city in the very dead of night, or a homicide, Steve would show up in coat and tie, maybe fuzzy slippers on his feet, to find out exactly what happened so that he could try to fix the cause. Or at least communicate to the city’s citizens what had happened, so that there was the least mystery possible. He was always on the job. The guy cared about his job in a way that hardly anyone ever cares about public service jobs any more. Reed was truly a public servant in every good sense of the phrase.
Long ago I joked with Mayor Reed that when he died, I was going to embalm his body, dress him up in one of his dowdy suits, put a cigarette in his hand, and prop him up in the window in his old office, so that the citizens below could look up and see Steve, The Mayor, still on the job, still doing his best for us, and that knowing all was well, they would all be consoled of all concerns and go on with their lives, happier and more confident. A perpetually stable Harrisburg.
He always smiled at that joke.
His attempt to build the nation’s premier cowboy / Western museum was a great idea, like his successful idea to build an incredible civil war museum. But that Wild West Museum did not happen only because it lost momentum, despite having a veritable mountain of wonderful bona fide Western frontier artifacts to show. When the museum lost momentum, questions began to arise about how all those wonderful artifacts had been obtained with scarce public funds, and where were they kept, etc. And once those questions were asked, it was the beginning of the end of Steve’s reign. Such was the public’s trust in Mayor Reed that he could really do no wrong, and when he demonstrated that even great people have weaknesses, the public mostly abandoned him.
The last I saw Steve was at a home in Uptown Harrisburg, down the street from where we live. It was a gathering of a political who-is-who in the area that I rudely barged into uninvited, and the hostess, Peggy, cheerfully greeted me with hugs and a hot drink nonetheless. The three of us, Peggy, myself, and Mayor Reed, were all back in a corner chatting while eating fresh fruit. Steve looked happy, and Peggy was her usual 100 MPH self. Until Steve asked me “Josh, you don’t support Trump, right?”
“Of course I do, mayor, I absolutely do support President Trump. He is doing a great job for America, and I think you of all people should appreciate how hard that is to do,” I responded.
Peggy exploded, poor thing. She was standing elbow to elbow with me, and her unhappy response was broadcast in bits and pieces across the side of my sweater and cheek. She was nearly foaming at the mouth with anger, indignation, her eyes were crossed, and a garble of unintelligible words poured forth from her mouth that I did not have to actually understand in their particular to understand in their overall gist.
Peggy disliked (still does) President Trump, and was ummm…frustrated that I would support him.
“Ignore him, Peggy,” said Mayor Reed. “He is just saying that to get a rise out of you.”
Mayor Reed looked at me, smiled, popped a grape in his mouth and walked off into the bigger party. He was politic to the end.
In our hunting camp there hangs a large moose head above the living room. It is named “Stephen” after Mayor Steve Reed, because it was purchased from the eventual auction of the Harrisburg Wild West Museum contents. When I picked up the enormous wooden crate with the moose head inside, I couldn’t wait, and I opened it up right away in the bed of the pick up truck. Inside was all the original documentation going back to the original purchase of the moose by Steve Reed, years before. He had acquired it from an old frontier saloon in southwest Minnesota, and apparently many cowboys had hung their hats on it over the decades. It was a real, bona fide emblem of the wild west; at least as the Western frontier was known in Minnesota.
Steve the Moose now looms over all our comings and goings at camp, provoking small children to squeal with delight and with fright, and grown men to pose all manly-like. No question the moose head is a symbol of the Big Woods and all that is wild in America, a proper companion to other real cabin furnishings like beaver pelts and traps. But to me, Steve the Moose symbolizes Steve Reed the mayor, the all-knowing bull moose, watching over his sanctuary, his people, his charges.
It is comforting to me.
Bye, Steve, you are gone but not forgotten. Here, let me dust off your ears for you. And have a light.
Mayor Steve Reed looks at one of the Remington bronzes he purchased for his Wild West Museum. The bronze was among the gazillion other real wild west artifacts sold at auction. Denver Post photo credit
Ammin Perry cartoon symbolizing about $7 million city dollars up in smoke, and Mayor Reed did like to smoke
Steve Reed the moose still oversees all