Let's Hear It For Luke Bryan

Country music star Luke Bryan was asked by Governor Ron DeSantis to play a benefit concert to raise money for those affected by Hurricane Ian after it cut a devastating swath through Florida. Mr. Bryan, to his credit, answered the call and invited DeSantis on stage to rousing applause. Cue the outrage. The democrat trolls on Twitter are now calling for his cancellation, vowing to never listen to Luke Bryan’s music again. Seriously? Bryan, who rarely responds to social media outbursts of insanity, simply stated that he has never been politically active and simply and respectfully responded to people in need in a state that has been good to him. But here’s the bigger picture: Mr. Bryan answered the call, but where is the rest of the entertainment industry?  Did democrat darlings Beyoncé, Johnny Legend, Madonna, or Bono step up and lend their talents to help Americans who lost everything to the storm?  Of course not. They are elitists who defend their progressive causes and will view Florida as a conservative stronghold and take a pass. In other words, suffering by Republicans is not nearly as important as pandering to their liberal urban fan base and their social activism: Bravo, Luke Bryan, and a rousing raspberry to those who put politics above compassion. It just never ceases to amaze me that the big liberal entertainers never, ever get called out for supporting preposterously leftist candidates and engaging in activism, but one conservative even suggests affiliation with the Republicans, and the outrage is seismic. 

Debate Fallout

After Lee Zeldin ate Kathy Hochul alive in the debate last night, some interesting information emerged. She has been a big champion for building the Buffalo Bills a new stadium. After all, Buffalo is her hometown. And guess who owns the rights to the concessions for the stadium?  That would be Delaware North, whose senior vice-President and general counsel is none other than Governor Hochul’s husband. She must be taking marriage advice from Nancy Pelosi. And she was widely criticized for wasting the taxpayer's money by giving the state Covid test contract to a company that charged taxpayers roughly twice the going rate. How could that be? It turns out the tests are provided by the company that is one of Hochul’s leading campaign donors.  $637 million in Covid tests in exchange for a $300000 donation. Pay-to-play is the Democratic way. Ask the Big Guy. The only person not raising an eyebrow over this is Kathy Hochul herself. With that much Botox, she probably can’t. 

Am I Blind, Hearing Impaired?

Last night’s debates should have been declared a disaster for the Democrat party. If we played word association, it would go something like this:  Whitmer: liar. Hochul: dull. And the most uncomfortable of all, Fetterman: impaired. And yet the Philadelphia Inquirer claimed Fetterman won the debate. Granted, that newspaper is most often used to wrap fish, but the New York Times claims Fetterman scored some “made for TV one-liners”.  Seriously? Maybe on Comedy Central but certainly not anything for prime time. What debates were they watching? Or are they so blinded by partisanship that they’re willing to overlook seriously flawed candidates?  

An Affront To Humanity

As the November mid-term elections draw near, it is interesting to note that the Democrat candidates appear to be offering no solutions to that which ails us. Polling indicates that Americans are mostly concerned about the economy, inflation, crime, energy and the security of our borders whereas the Democrat focus remains centered on the tired old tropes of social justice and above all else, abortion “rights”. And of course, the January 6 committee will also make an attempt to subpoena Trump just before the election in yet another sideshow to distract voters from the real issues.

In that, today I will restrict my comments to the topic of abortion, a longstanding pillar of the Democrat party platform, a topic so often distilled into the simplistic bumper sticker slogan “The Right to Choose”. Although that has become the rallying cry for abortion activists, it is almost insulting in its simplicity. As Andrew Doyle suggests in his book “The New Puritans”, it may be simplistic by design, another example of the left’s co-opting and redefining language that corners the opposition. Who can honestly object to supporting a woman’s right to choose, or the statement that Black Lives Matter, or social justice when in fact those statements mean something else altogether? All are simplistic morally positive statements, serving as a cloak for much more complicated issues and agendas. The media spin that somehow the Supreme Court has banned abortion rather than honestly report that the Justices had merely followed the Constitution in repealing the constitutionally flawed Rowe v Wade opinion and returning the decision to the states is a perfect example. And as science advances, it is interesting to note the mainstream media ignoring any science that suggests the fetus is viable, or at least reactive to its environment, long before the time at which abortion activists continue to support termination of the pregnancy. This coming, after all, from the party of science. Right. Only when science is a convenient fallback position. Are they purposely seeking to withhold information from the electorate to dumb down the issue? After all, if its just a “bundle of cells” and not actually a baby, abortion at any time prior to delivery will be much less morally repugnant. Why isn’t the issue ever discussed with the honest input from the scientific and medical community? Where are the 3-D ultrasounds, the fetal heart sounds and the pathology results? Why do we only hear from abortion “providers” with a monetary incentive to continue to provide these services? Why do our liberal colleagues rally around Planned Parenthood when the organization has a history of profiting from the procedure and the sale of organ tissue while preying on inner city minority communities, a topic all the more intriguing when you factor in founder Margaret Sanger’s belief in eugenics?

In this Slants entry, I'm going to deviate from my traditional short burst rants to the news cycle, and for the first time even veer away from my periodic essays, to venture into an interview format, so bear with me. My participant a long standing friend and medical professional who has inside knowledge of abortion procedures as both a research scientist and a healthcare practitioner and is therefore able to offer insight into the issue based on what he experienced during his training. I'll refer to him as DR:

TS: Good afternoon, doctor and welcome to Conservative Slants. To get started, why don’t you tell us about your background and your training in the health sciences without getting too specific.

DR: Sure. I grew up in the northeast where I attended both undergraduate college and professional school. I took a gap year after completing my undergraduate studies and worked in biochemistry research to pad my resume before applying to professional school. I currently practice in a surgical subspecialty.

TS: Tell me about your research experience and how abortion factored into that research.

DR: I worked as a laboratory technician in a research facility affiliated with a major university medical school. It was at the time, and I’m talking about the early 80s, cutting edge research in lipid metabolism, specifically the proteins that carry fat and cholesterol in the blood. We used animals in the studies, mice, rats, rabbits and monkeys and we harvested blood from human volunteers as well. But we also used fetal organ culture to produce the proteins for study.

TS: As I understand it, you would essentially grow fetal tissue in the lab, is that correct? And where did you obtain the fetal organ tissue?

DR: Yes, that is correct. The fetal organ tissue was grown in a medium in a petri dish under rigidly controlled conditions. The tissue was obtained from aborted fetuses.

TS: And how exactly is that obtained? How far along were the fetuses that were used?

DR: That was my first eye-opening experience. I was 21 years old at the time and like most kids that age, I was fairly oblivious as to the details of abortion. Abortion was presented as a procedure to terminate a pregnancy, the simple removal of cells, or at the most detailed, described as a D&C, dilation and curettage, whereby the uterine lining is essentially scraped and suctioned. The words fetus or embryo never really conjured up images of babies because of how the information was presented.

TS: Don’t you think that is done on purpose?

DR: Of course. I think a lot of young women are ignorant to the stages of fetal development in pregnancy. That is why when laws have been proposed to mandate that pregnant woman be made aware of the presence of a fetal heartbeat or, at the most graphic, are shown an ultrasound, those proposals have been met with vehement opposition from abortion activists. They know that statistically a woman is more apt to refuse an abortion procedure after seeing and hearing what’s actually going on inside the womb, in some cases rates as high as 80% have been reported. Those studies tend to remove the political from the “right to choose” narrative and interject a decidedly human factor.

TS: Sorry I interrupted your story. You were talking about how the fetus was obtained by the lab.

DR: Right. We were in a large medical complex with a separate hospital that cared for pregnant women, mostly poor and indigent, those unable to afford medical care. Being the young laboratory technician, I was the runner. I was given a beeper and told to go to the operating room at the hospital when summoned, deliver the specimen to pathology, and return to the laboratory with our tissue sample. That was it....no other explanation. So I got beeped, and showed up at the OR where I’m told to wait in an ancient tiled hallway with the double doors and frosted windows leading into the OR suite. Stuff right out of a movie set complete with the hospital green walls. The doors finally swung open and a middle-aged nurse in mask and gown, presumably right out of the OR, handed me what looked like a paper paint bucket with a green towel draped over the top. “There you go’ she said and turned and disappeared back through the double doors. So there I was alone in this desolate hospital hallway having just been given a mysterious paint bucket. I don’t know what I was expecting to receive but that certainly wasn’t it. So I did what any 21 year-old would do, and lifted the towel to see what was inside.

TS: And......

DR: Yeah, it was a baby. It was pink with opaque, thin translucent skin but it was unmistakably a tiny human all curled up and lifeless inside the bucket.

TS: And what happened after that?

DR: I prided myself on some degree of professionalism and that part of me took over. It was shocking, but having never seen a human fetus at that stage of development, I suppose you could say it was clinically interesting. I proceeded directly to pathology where I was met by the pathologist, a kindly bespectacled, bearded man probably in his late forties. He asked me if I wanted to see the autopsy, and considering I was striving for a career in medicine, I thought it would be educational. We proceeded into the lab where he gloved up, adjusted a dictation microphone, removed the fetus from the paint bucket and laid it on its back on a disposable blue paper absorbent towel on a lab bench. He proceeded to dictate the examination, recording the appearance of the fetus: male, 10 fingers, 10 toes, normocephalic, without deformity, etc. He noted that the appearance was consistent with the gestation of 24 weeks; I believe the legal limit at that time was, and still is 24 weeks in that state.

TS: 24 weeks? That’s six months. That’s the end of the second trimester.

DR: That’s right. In that moment, with a 24 week-old fetus on the table, it all clicked. Six months into pregnancy, two-thirds of the pregnancy, at this stage of development...... that was just shocking. The fetus is 7 to 8 inches long and weighs about a pound. And this particular fetus had nothing wrong with it. It was most likely an inconvenience, or as they casually refer to it, an unwanted pregnancy. .

TS: What happened next?

DR: This is where essentially the fetus is “parted out”. I felt badly for the pathologist who was obviously emotionally distressed by the procedure. He was breathing heavily and seemed upset. He made an incision through the soft skull and essentially shelled out the brain. He made an incision in the midline from the pubic bone vertically through the sternum and with a combination of scissors, pickups and scalpel, dissected out all the organs. Each organ was divided up and placed in specimen containers with my lab receiving a portion of the liver. It seemed like every department had requested a piece of an organ of interest to them.

TS: This sounds like the Planned Parenthood representative who was caught on tape selling body parts.

DR: It appeared to be the same sort of thing where scientists had placed dibs on body parts for research purposes. But at the time I was unaware if there were any financial arrangements to what I was witnessing.

TS: Where you appalled that this was going on?

DR: Actually no. My attitude at the time was if this sort of thing was going on, meaning abortion this late into pregnancy, then at least the fetus should be used for something beneficial, and at the time we were doing pioneering research. I did have a problem with how heartless the whole operation seemed to be, and I definitely do not agree with parting out fetuses for profit. Once you introduce a financial incentive into the equation, it seems morally corrupt to prey on young women in crisis and convince them to have an abortion so you may profit from marketing the baby parts.

TS: But what was your opinion at that time regarding the procedure being legal so late into the pregnancy?

 DR: At the time I was a small cog in the giant wheel of medical research with my goal to gain experience, publish some research papers and enhance my resume to apply to professional school. It never occurred to me to rock the boat and voice any opinion contrary to the powers that ruled the research lab or the hospital. This was in the 80s; I kept my head down and did my job. I wasn’t about to derail my career by questioning the ethics of the doctors that led the research team. No one ever questioned it and 24 weeks was the law of the land. In hindsight, I would have been interested to know their personal opinions, as they were all physicians and PhDs, well-educated people who were also upstanding members of the community and family men who I respected enormously. It was an education, that’s for sure. My personal opinion was altered in that what I previously had given no thought to at all, suddenly took on a whole different perspective. It didn’t make me a pro-life activist but it certainly made me question the wisdom of a 24-week allowance for the procedure to be performed. And I had no exposure to the procedure itself, so that compartmentalized the issue as well.

TS: But you did eventually have exposure to the procedural part of it? DR: Yes, that occurred much farther on when I was in my residency. TS: Were you actually performing the procedure?

DR: Thankfully no. My program required a period of training in anesthesia and, at the time, we were assigned to short duration procedures mostly in urology and OB/GYN. It was in an inner city hospital and every Tuesday was TOP day: Termination of Pregnancy. Dark humor is common in the OR and the nurses referred to the assignment as the “baby killing squad.” They weren’t particularly fond of the assignment.

TS: Understandably so. How many of these were performed?

DR: I don’t recall the specific number and as I said, they were short duration procedures and we turned them over pretty quickly. I remember on my first TOP day, looking down the hall towards the pre-operative suite and seeing gurneys lined up with young black women in their hospital johnnies and blue disposable hair covers all the way down the hall and around the corner, most looking scared to death.

TS: You mentioned that they were black women.....

DR: As I said, it was a city hospital. 100 percent of the abortion procedures that I witnessed were performed on black women.

TS: Was the hospital patient population majority black?

 DR: No. The patients in general were mixed race. The more expensive elective procedures that were not covered by insurance or required higher levels of insurance coverage were mostly white patients. The demographics were mostly based on economics, and the city was predominantly lower income African- Americans. The surrounding suburbs were majority middle class and white with some very wealthy communities. As you would expect, elective procedures such as plastic surgery would skew more white, reflective of socioeconomic class whereas trauma and TOPs were a higher percentage black, again reflective of the socioeconomic status of the city population. All the other procedures in the middle, general surgery, appendectomies and that sort of thing were more apt to follow percentages consistent with the racial make-up of the population at large.

TS: And what about the racial make-up of the hospital staff?

DR: At that time, and again I’m talking about the 1980s, the OR nursing staff was majority white, the floor nurses were mixed black and white, orderlies and maintenance staff were majority black.

TS: And the doctors?

DR: Again, at that time, the doctors were mostly white with a smattering of Indian and Asian. The doctor that performed the vast majority of the abortion procedures was a black female. I think that was mostly reflective of where her private practice was located, in the heart of the city’s black community.

TS: And what was the average abortion procedure like?

DR: It really was a production line. The patient was wheeled into the OR and transferred to the operating table. They were often young, 18 to 22 years of age, and very apprehensive. There were, however some “frequent flyers” that were less concerned with the unknown as they had done it so many times before. The majority of cases were simple D&Cs whereby the uterine wall including the attached embryo and placenta is aggressively curetted, or scraped, and the contents evacuated by suction. You will sometimes see the procedures divided into Suction-Aspiration which is less aggressive and usually occurs in the first twelve weeks, and Dilation and Curettage which is similar but deals with a fetus up to 24 weeks, so much further into development. You will also see Dilation and Evacuation which is also a procedure at later stages of pregnancy post 24 weeks where the fetus is essentially dismembered and the parts are removed by forceps and suction as well as Dilation and Extraction, sometimes referred to as partial birth abortion whereby the fetus is delivered breech, feet first, leaving the head inside the uterus where it is cut into and the contents suctioned out, allowing the head to then pass through the cervix.

TS: None of it is very pleasant but it appears that the later into pregnancy, the more barbaric it becomes.

 DR: My feelings exactly, but there seems to be a disconnect between the clinical names for the procedures and what is exactly being done. I think the general public is totally unaware of the distinctions.

TS: And what procedures were your hospital performing at that time?

DR: We were mostly Dilation and Curettage with the occasional Dilation and Extraction. I don’t recall any late term partial birth abortions. I do remember watching the nurses wince when a chunk of suctioned material would make a sickening thunk when it hit the bottom of the suction canister.

TS: Suction canister?

DR: Right. The curet, a scraper type of instrument, was attached to a suction tube that emptied its solid contents into a clear plastic container.

TS: You mentioned frequent flyers. What do you mean?

DR: I think I can best answer that by recalling a specific patient. This patient aside from being pregnant was morbidly obese wheeled into the OR, sitting bolt upright on the gurney and exclaming, “I want more babies, don’t tie my tubes” over and over again. The nurses were kind to her but just rolled their eyes. This woman was huge, weighed in at over three hundred pounds. The nurses filled me in: apparently this was her eleventh abortion procedure and although consenting to tubal ligation in each of the last five procedures, she had refused each time at the last minute. I perused her chart and sure enough this was abortion procedure number 11 with an additional six live births.

TS: With that many it had to be on the taxpayer’s dime?

DR: Of course. Back then we called it what it was: Welfare. As opposed to Benefits or Public Assistance.

TS: Married?

DR: No. I was amazed she could even get pregnant, the woman was absolutely immense.

TS: And how did the procedure go?

DR: She signed off on refusing the tubal ligation and we proceeded with the D&C. The only potential disaster was getting her situated on the table. We put her to sleep, draped her and for the procedure the patient is placed in Trendelenburg position to allow the doctor better access and visibility. That is essentially the table tipped in a head down, feet up position. But with the patient in stirrups, legs up and spread open, and head position down, it was a precarious position given the woman’s size. It was an older table and required me to bend down with my head at the same level of the table to access the controls. I was at the head of the table and the surgeon kept on saying a little more, a little more, and suddenly we reached the point where physics took over and her breasts, thighs and belly all shifted in my direction. I thought she was going to bury me as it all came tumbling in my direction like an avalanche of flesh, but thankfully it all stopped short and she stayed on the table.

TS: That is some visual.....

DR: I can close my eyes and still see it. But I lived to tell the tale and was able to get the woman through number eleven. So essentially this woman, and a lot of women like her, were using the generous state welfare program and abortion as their form of contraception. And there is no excuse for that kind of behavior. There is plenty of access to affordable contraception and Planned Parenthood should live up to their name by providing contraception counseling and outreach to prevent this sort of thing from happening. They receive government funding to provide services to the community and the fact that so many abortions are still being performed is representative of an abject failure on their part. And granted, it’s not entirely their fault. Young men and women have to take responsibility for their actions, and engage in prevention rather than pretend that abortion is a viable option for reproductive health. Between sex education in schools and punch bowls full of condoms in the student health centers on college campuses it seems like we are not doing a very effective job of educating our youth as to how pregnancy happens and how to prevent it. The often repeated but largely ignored statistic that more black babies are aborted than born in New York City is staggering.

TS: And your feelings participating in all of this?

DR: I was a surgical resident. It was a competitive, macho, mostly boy’s club back in those days and emotion was almost looked upon as a weakness. You had to maintain your composure in the OR, in the morgue or when faced with horrific trauma. You did your job and carried on with your training. Did I find it abhorrent? Of course, particularly those procedures performed later in the pregnancy, especially with me having had the experience of seeing what the fetus looked like at that stage of development. But again, it was the law of the land and who was I to question the law and deny a patient their legal rights? At least that’s how I looked at it then when I was pretty low in the hierarchy.

TS: And now?

DR: Well I am not involved with anesthesia or OB/GYN at all, having migrated into another unrelated surgical specialty. If it was a component of my specialty now, I would simply not elect to participate. And if asked my opinion, I would gladly give it without fear of retribution. But I am older, more financially stable and I now practice in a more conservative leaning part of the country.

TS: Are you anti-abortion then?

DR: Actually no. I am anti-stupidity and pro-responsibility. Mistakes happen and I don’t feel you should be unduly punished for them. But be responsible. Make your decision early. Technology has reached the point where we know how far along the fetal development is. We have 3-D ultrasounds, we can detect fetal heartbeat. Early intervention benefits the mother in lessening the surgical impact with a less aggressive procedure and simultaneously satisfies the moral issues by lessening the potential for potentially causing pain and suffering for the developing human inside her.

TS: About that. I hear conflicting reports from both sides of the issue on when a fetus is a baby.

DR: So do I. It is a topic that is influenced by politics, science, ethics, emotion, religion, and money. Some scientific papers within the OB/GYN community suggest that the fetus feels no pain before 24 weeks and some have suggested even later, 32 weeks. That seems to me unlikely. No pain, no sensation at all? But some science has shown that pain may be registered as early as 15 weeks. Take thumb sucking in the womb for example. That has been shown on ultrasound to occur as early as 10 to 17 weeks, yet many in the scientific community claim that it is reflexive and there is not enough brain activity to support it. Reflexive? Wouldn’t you suspect that the fetus does it for the sensation? And recently it has been shown that at 30 to 32 weeks the fetus reacts to food that the mother eats, showing facial expressions in response to kale versus carrots. Apparently nobody likes kale, not even fetuses.

TS: I agree. What about fetal heartbeat?

DR: That’s a more difficult issue in my mind. I think the pure physiologic condition of functioning heart cells is not necessarily an indicator of the developing fetus being human per se. Heart cells will beat regularly in a Petri dish in the lab. I think brain development is a more accurate predictor of a viable human in progress but is much more difficult to assess. A heartbeat can be detected by ultrasound as early as 6 to 8 weeks but it is generally accepted as beating at a regular rate at 6-7 weeks according to Mount Sinai. This has become quite a hot topic after Georgia Governor Kemp proposed banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat could be detected and the issue became more of a conflagration after Georgia’s candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams, suggested that the heart sounds were manufactured by doctors to convince women to decide against abortion, for men to control women’s bodies and to deny women full citizenship in the state.

 TS: Preposterous partisan bickering by someone who has no medical background. And apparently Planned Parenthood weighed in on the issue by stating that it was simply a cluster of cells.

DR: I saw that. I think Planned Parenthood and their doctors should be immediately disqualified from the conversation as they have a financial incentive to support abortion anytime, anywhere. Money corrupts.

TS: So even though you are not an expert in the field, you have inside medical exposure to the procedure. What in you estimation is the solution?

DR: I am not a legal scholar either, so I am going to stress that this is my educated opinion. I think the Supreme Court got it right. Rowe v Wade was flawed and they should have returned the decision to the states. Let the voters decide. I find it ironic that the most vitriolic right to choose protests seem to be occurring in states where abortion access will not only be unaffected, but perhaps may become even more accessible and lenient. We all recall then Virginia Governor Ralph Northum suggesting that we deliver the baby then “have a discussion” as to its fate. How preposterous is that, and from a medical professional?

TS: Perhaps those terrible twos are too much for you and you decide you made a mistake......

DR: Hopefully an over-the-top suggestion but it clearly makes the point: where do you draw the line? When is a baby a baby?

TS: And again, where do you draw the line?

DR: I think compromise is going to be a requirement. And neither side is going to be happy. A state-by-state decision by voters may be just that compromise. Like gun laws and for a time, the legalization of gay marriage, it may be up to the voters. We are a big country and what plays well in San Francisco may not be at all palatable to folks in Fargo. Based on 3-D ultrasound, the suggestion of early pain sensation, the activity of the fetus in the womb and the physical appearance of aborted fetuses, I would compromise to no later than 10 to 12 weeks. The access to care exists such that sexually active women should be more attuned to the potential for pregnancy, and show some responsibility for their actions by accessing that care. Mistakes happen, but own up to them. And I’m not giving men a pass on this issue either, you should be a part of the decision making process.

TS: Thank you for your honest take on the abortion issue. I think it’s helpful to hear from someone who has been exposed to the research, the science, and the medical side of the equation with no financial incentives, political gain or career advancement potential to affect your position.

DR: You’re welcome. After 35 years, happy to tell my story.

So there you have it, an insider’s views on abortion unfettered by monetary gain, political grandstanding or fear of retribution. Again I return to Mr. Doyle’s observations in “The New Puritans.” We can’t distill complex issues into simplistic slogans, especially Right to Choose, Open Borders, Black Lives Matter or Support Social Justice. It appears that these bumper sticker sized blurbs target the ill-informed by dumbing down the issue for the simple minded and boxing into a corner any that may have opposing views and may actually truly understand the complexities. And perhaps even more insidious, these slogans may be designed to purposely mislead, gaining adherents that may not truly understand the implication of the policies. For example, although everyone agrees that Black Lives Matter, few will also agree that the nuclear family should be abolished, or support the mainstreaming of the alphabet soup of redefining gender and sexual orientations, let alone the blatant Marxist leanings of the parent organization. Similarly the distillation of abortion into “The Right to Choose” is another oversimplification. Disagreement results in charges of sexism and misogyny, just as disagreement with BLM policies results in accusations of racism, views contrary with the Social Justice narrative result in charges of white supremacy and concern over Open Border Policies is labeled as white nationalism. Doyle quotes psychiatrist Jay Lefton regarding leftist slogans as “thought terminating clichés, those brief, highly reductive definitive-sounding phrases that become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.” We should take heed, and resist becoming intellectually lazy by being misled and coerced by the simplicity of the slogan, instead delving into the thought process behind this purposeful act of misdirection. Know the issues. And come November vote with your head and not your heart.

A Quandary

It’s quite a conundrum when you think about it: White people are in the unenviable position where they cannot criticize a person of color for incompetence or whatever for fear of being labeled racist, yet black activists may paint all white people as being inherently racist, a racist generalization itself, with impunity. Whitey just can’t win for losing in that mindset. Using the NFL and the NBA as an example of skewed racial participation. Yet, neither league has invested in base race equity. Their professed reasoning is that the better-skilled athlete wins out, the color of his skin not a determinate. That mindset, if so, should prevail across all societal boundaries.

Vanity Unfair

The media just keeps serving up hypocrisy. Vanity Fair, another example of bird cage liner posing as a news source, ran the headline: “Surprise: Trump, a pathological liar, reportedly asked his lawyer to lie to the government.” Need you insert “a pathological liar” into the title? Doesn’t that immediately disqualify the reporting as a biased opinion piece? And if we are going to bandy about the whole liar narrative, shouldn’t we look no further than our Puerto Rican raised, Jewish, truck driver, chain wielding vanquisher of Corn-Pop, professor Joe Biden whose son died in Iran. C’mon man. And let’s not forget his weed smoking sidekick and perpetual embarrassment Kamala, KaMAla, Karmella……whatever. You know our border czar. She’s “been to the border.” Obviously they can make this stuff up.

Kamala, Kamala

Did you hear Vice-President Spaceshot’s  assertion that prisons are chock full of folks serving time for just “smoking weed?” Hilarious. Especially when Harris herself bragged about doing just that in SanFrancisco. But it turns out those serving time for “possession” have most often pled down the original charge of trafficking to the lesser charge of possession even though the average amount possessed was 48 pounds. That’s one helluva joint, Kamala. 

The Unaccoutables

Isn’t it interesting that a jury awarded the Sandy Hook families  $965 million in damages from Alex Jones for his lies and conspiracy theories that “prompted unrelenting harassment against them” and “mangled the lives” of the plaintiffs. Hmmm. Brings to mind another hoax that for over two years harassed and crippled a president’s administration and subjected his family’s lives to relentless “mangling.”  In no way am I defending the despicable Mr. Jones who clearly is unhinged, but he is no more reprehensible and abhorrent than James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, the FBI cast of miscreants, and their facilitator Hillary Clinton who hobbled the Trump administration, subjected the Trump family to unfounded accusations, wasted government resources and misled the nation over partisan  Russia collusion conspiracy theories. They, on the other hand, are all enjoying government pensions, book tours and a fawning media for their misdeeds. Hypocrisy anyone?

No Humorous Political Satire There

Resent news about the demise of late-night TV show ratings is no surprise to me. All of the liberal Democrat talking heads are tanking in the ratings, so much so that the rotund little Brit Corden is finished, as is Trevor Noah, a South African who just was a trendy mouthpiece to read democrat talking points and was never funny despite the media hype. Yet admittedly, Colbert continues his unparalleled level of arrogance and remains tone deaf in the face of his ratings in free fall has shown himself to be dismissive of conservative viewers. He has been relentless in his criticism of Trump, resorting to attempts at humor that are, at best, references to debunked Russia collusion theories and, at their worst, crude and vulgar. Again, not particularly funny and indulging in political commentary with no particular expertise aside from vehement partisanship. And the most tragic demise, in my estimation, maybe Saturday Night Live, suffering from a dearth of talent yet riding the coattails of Alec Baldwin’s tired Trump impersonations while openly mourning Hillary Clinton’s election loss. All the while ignoring the made-for-comedy buffoonery occurring daily in the Biden Administration. As  quoted by former SNL member Joe Piscopo: “the comedy writes itself.”