Democracy Teetering

Last night on FOX and this morning on Beck, they both reported on the prevalence of seemingly rational, well-spoken, and presumably educated, middle-class or above, white people participating in the “No Kings” rallies calmly and rationally wishing for, and in some cases, outright calling for the death of our president. Reviewing the demographics of these rallies, it is interesting to note that the vast majority of protests occurred in liberal strongholds, where there is no threat of a conservative candidate ever being elected to local government, and often the democrats run unopposed. Boston, LA, NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco are all liberal bastions of lawlessness and progressive policy, apparently content with the status quo and infuriated that they lost the presidential election. Recall how rural America rioted after Obama was elected. Oh, yeah…..they didn’t. Tell me again who the threat to democracy is. Mocking Charlie Kirk’s death, repeatedly calling the opposition Nazis, and suggesting that the current president is either a king or Hitler, whilst you are allowed to protest and the minority party has shut down the government, are not opinions reflective of your own self-assertion that you are the non-violent, well-educated supporters of democracy. You auditioned for that during the George Floyd protests, where you proved yourselves to be easily influenced partisan lemmings unable to produce a presidential candidate of substance. Kicking the can down the road and supporting socialism while tolerating an unsustainable national debt, an expanding welfare state, increasing taxes, spiraling crime, open borders, dependence on foreign energy, a degraded military footprint globally, while sending our manufacturing sector, particularly pharmaceuticals and microchips, overseas, is hardly a set of policies brought to you by a group of intellectuals. TDS is the most likely diagnosis; otherwise, one has to consider an insidious attempt to destroy America, or just face the fact that the tipping point has been reached, with more dependent on government handouts than those contributing to the GDP. The leftist infatuation with illegal immigration is a perfect example. A recent Dutch study, as reported by Breitbart, showed the disturbing fact that sub-Saharan immigrants into that country cost the taxpayers an average of $1.1 million per immigrant. And roughly a third of them committed crimes. Other Muslim immigrant groups were not much better. Shouldn’t we be more selective about who we allow into the country? Of course not, let’s just virtue signal some more and leave the border unattended. Sure, that’ll work. And whatever happened to the “no oligarchs” tour by avowed socialists AOC and her geriatric sidekick, the hypocrite at large, Bernie Sanders?  The recent “No Kings” rallies were funded by none other than George Soros, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and Bill Gates, a collection of oligarchs if there ever was one. I will never buy a vehicle with a blue oval again. So as the president who has stopped eight wars works on stopping another, and toils for the betterment of America, accomplishing more in 8 months than Biden did in four years, receives nothing but hate and hypocrisy from the left, conservatives remain perplexed that the democrats and their complicit media continue to demonstrate that they are not only violent, but they are the actual threat to democracy.

Off With Their Heads

A farmer friend from upstate NY lamented to me in so many words, "Here we go again with the no kings” protests." " How absurd can they be?" he espoused. Yes, another simple slogan from the left to appeal to their simple-minded base. If you can’t fit it on a bumper sticker, it won’t appeal to the ADHD crowd on the left. He said, It started last evening in his small town with a bunch of disgruntled old white people holding signs on the street corner that had no basis in reality and addressed left-wing media talking points that do not affect their daily lives. I surmise it was just a chance to dress up and pretend you’re a hippy in time for Halloween.  We love our immigrants unconditionally, the Progressives are advising us. I guess that includes the ones who arrived here illegally, are supported by our tax dollars, and are committing heinous crimes against Americans? Sure, that makes sense. I wonder if it ever crossed their little minds that if Donald Trump were really a king, he wouldn’t allow these protests and would throw these dissidents into a dungeon. He would also open the government, at least the 11 percent of it that is actually closed, and order the fat cats in Congress to stop running their mouths and do their jobs. Or, maybe off with their heads. Now there’s an idea. Maybe having a king wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. 

Noonan Disappoints

I see this past weekend that Peggy Noonan had focused her ire on Pete Hegseth. She still managed to take a few shots, mind you, at Trump as well, but the Secretary of War was lambasted as a “drama queen”, and in a real underhanded shot, not “sober.” Face it, old haggard Peggy longs for the days of cigar-smoking fat cats cutting deals in back rooms and presenting to the American public a steely-eyed face of power with no transparency. Think Dick Cheney. It’s laughable that the media craves transparency. Still, when they get it from our conservative elected officials, they parse every comment, criticize everything from the presentation to the message, and then wonder why the government becomes less transparent. Trump doesn’t care and lets them have it with both barrels, setting records for administrative exposure and press conferences.

Peggy surmised that Hegseth makes America look “what our foes say we are, a place of make-believe freedom in which even the press is controlled by the government.” Really Peggy?  Compared to what? This may come as a shock to you, but half the government does control the press. The democrat half, not to mention all their deep state progressive warriors in unelected positions inside the beltway and in courtrooms across the nation. I assume you’ve heard of NPR. And they were funded by the government. Sure, Hegseth may be marginally out of his depth. Still, his cheerleading approach is having a positive effect, with military recruitment skyrocketing after it languished in the woke years of the Biden and Obama administrations. He is restoring pride in the military branches, which may not resonate with the civilian overseers, but it sure does with the rank and file. Also interesting to note that on the page opposite Nonnan’s diatribe appeared two letters to the editor from retired military brass bemoaning the culture of woke permeating the military and praising our goal to return to a condition of readiness based on merit. 

Political Theater

I can’t believe the WSJ is buying into this “government shutdown” charade. What a crock. 87% of the government considers itself “essential” and therefore NEVER shuts down. Mark Levin detailed this nonsense yesterday. The only parts of government that shut down are those visible parts that will inconvenience the public for the purpose of political theater. National Parks, the Smithsonian, passport processing….and it’s not like the government workers become destitute and can’t pay their mortgages. The furloughed employees receive back pay, so they typically receive a paid vacation. Virtually every recent administration, except the spineless GW, has suffered through a “shutdown” when the opposing party attempted to muscle through Congress their own agenda. Trump holds the most recent record of 35 days in his previous administration, but the apocalyptic shutdown usually lasts only a few days. And has the sky fallen? Has the country ceased to function? Of course not. All this theater for what? So the democrats can spend more taxpayer dollars on a progressive wishlist that includes healthcare for illegal aliens, Obamacare subsidies, an extension of Covid relief funding, and free Medicaid for able-bodied men in their 20s to remain unemployed so they can smoke weed and play video games on the couch. Shumer will rant and rave to support the measures after the far left of his party threatened to primary him with their socialist darling AOC, but the Dems have chosen a revealing hill to die on.

Tylenol Debacle

Oh Mr. President.I don’t like it when the President becomes the frontman for disseminating medical information. The Dr. Trump schtick didn’t play well during the COVID pandemic and is certainly not well received with the latest Tylenol-autism controversy. Cue the hysteria from the left. One would have thought he had learned his lesson the first time when he chose to be the authority on a medical issue. Not a good look for the administration. And remember how that worked out last time: people double-masked and wearing oven mitts when driving in cars. Alone. And the response has been predictable in this age of TDS, where anything Trump says is met with vehement opposition. Liberal pregnant persons, as a nod to their chosen vernacular, may now choose to gobble down Acetaminophen tablets like M&Ms just out of spite.  But there has to be a committee with expertise that engaged in some degree of medical research and a review of the literature that came to these conclusions associating the use of acetaminophen with autism when taken during pregnancy. Assign one of those medical nerds to take the heat and present the data logically, concisely, and coherently. And please, not Bobby. He is far too controversial.  And listening to him speak makes my throat sore.  It should have gone something like this:  “After an extensive review of the literature, our panel of experts concluded that acetaminophen should be used with caution during pregnancy, and at the minimal effective dose, due to a possible association with the development of autism in children exposed in utero. Research is ongoing.” Period. But no. In typical Trump grandiose fashion, we received the message that Tylenol is bad. It’s bad. Don’t take it! But a review of the most common literature citations reveals studies that show an association between higher concentrations of acetaminophen in umbilical cord samples and the development of autism. Some studies conclude that there is no association between Acetominohen and autism. However, as in all retrospective studies, there are too many variables. For example, do you recall how much Acetaminophen you took during pregnancy?  And how much did you take?  And what else were you taking? And why were you taking it?  Do you have any additional pre-existing conditions? Did you drink alcohol during your pregnancy? How much? Did you take any other drugs? Smoke? Smoke weed?  Were you exposed to environmental or chemical contaminants?  Are you obese? Did you have complications during pregnancy? How long were you in labor? Was there fetal distress? Was the delivery by C-section? We could go on, but we’d be here all day. But the point is that the issue is complex with an infinite number of variables. Even the defense of acetaminophen from the medical community has been weak, suggesting that fever and illness best treated with acetaminophen may actually be the causative factor in developing autism, not the medication. But that fails to explain the increasing occurrence of autism in first-world nations with easy access to acetaminophen, when it appears that it occurs to a lesser extent in cultures with lower exposure. Historically, one would suspect that those same illnesses and fevers would have occurred with similar frequency, if not in greater numbers, hundreds of years ago, before the advent of acetaminophen as a therapeutic treatment. And yet autism was not as prevalent. However, perhaps the diagnostic criteria have changed such that the spectrum has widened, capturing a greater number of mild cases in the net, thus giving the appearance of increasing prevalence. Again, it is a complex topic that warrants further research. But for the time being, you and your physician have to weigh the risk versus benefit ratio of using acetaminophen during pregnancy. At the very least, add it to the list of things you should try to avoid unless absolutely necessary. Why take the chance, regardless of which political party issues the warning

 

Again

The left’s hypocrisy is truly astonishing. A piece appeared in the New York magazine claiming that Trump and his cast of MAGA warriors have destroyed comedy by attacking free speech. It of course supplies an additional laundry list of all of the left’s grievances against this administration, charging Trump with “destabilizing the world economy,” deporting citizens, “suppression of LGBTQ and women’s rights,” the “rise of authoritarianism” and the “collapse of the federal government,” all leading to comedians being able to resurrect using the R-word to criticize their peers who voted for him. Yes, that word is “retard.” Wow. A whole article inspired by an HBO special based on a comment about the fictional suppression of free speech so that comedians can apply a slur to Trump voters. Pickings must be slim for clickbait. None of these journalistic geniuses recalls the demise of comedy in the woke era that preceded Trump’s re-election. Comedians lamented that mining for material that poked fun at race, homosexuality, trans-genderism, ethnicity, or even overweight people resulted in accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and body shaming. 

Stereotyping has long been the mainstay of comedy. Not anymore. How many comedians have had to roll back comments deemed offensive to some minority group lest they be cancelled? Remember when a diminutive black comedian was criticized for hosting a children’s birthday party with a Cowboys and Indians theme?  Alas, the only group remaining that can be bashed with impunity seems to be white heterosexual males. And if it weren’t for Donald Trump, most late-night talk show hosts wouldn’t have any material. Does anyone remember Frank Sinatra, widely credited with supporting equal accommodations for his Black musicians when on tour, mercilessly making what would now be considered racist jokes at Sammy Davis Junior’s expense onstage?  And Sammy giving it right back to the man who helped make his career. And does anyone recall Don Rickles? He would never have survived in this hypersensitive age of partisan division. In the words of Andrew Breitbart: “The left thrives on division and victimhood.” And the New York magazine is just offering us more of the same. 

Defaming Charlie

Breitbart had a caller this morning who launched into a rant that Charlie Kirk was a bigot, a racist, and despite being asked multiple times to explain what Charlie had ever said to make him come to that conclusion, he refused and just continued to parrot the Democrat talking points. Slater, the host, finally had enough and hung up on him, declaring there was no better poster child for the left: someone not willing to engage in thoughtful discussion but wanting only his views to be heard without justification for them. Slater’s guest said he’s tired of it and refuses to engage with the left. He said that we have to adopt their tactics of cancellation, boycott, and doxing. No more trying to appease a group of people who have shown time and again that they promote violence against us, that fund organizations that burn our cities and destroy property and take what isn’t theirs. He has a point.