Disenfranchised American Heroes

I shouldn’t listen to Breitbart in the morning. Sometimes it gets me depressed as to the state of our America. This morning, Slater was discussing architecture and art as related to government buildings and statues, particularly observing how hideous it has become. Witness Obama’s blight on Chicago’s south side with a library that looks like its inspiration was an Eastern Bloc stairwell from The Bourne Identity. Put treads on it, and it could be rambling around Tatooine looking for scrap. Even the New York Times opined that democrats create hideous architecture. But most upsetting has been the fate of our historical statues that succumbed to the Charleston and the Black Lives Matter protests.  I understand that these monuments are a trigger for those on the left, who seem to be outraged at everything that doesn’t fit their worldview. But, like it or not, they are choosing not only to erase history but also to do it vindictively. The Robert E. Lee statue, for example, was melted down, its demise recorded, disseminated, and celebrated by the left. But far worse than being melted down is outright desecration. Statues are being used as “material”: altered, vandalized, spray-painted, and distorted. The Stonewall Jackson Memorial, a statue depicting the Confederate General on horseback, was donated to The Brick, formerly LAXART an art center in LA, who allowed the controversial painter/activist Kara Walker to disassemble the statue and piece it back together in a grotesque, distorted hideous work of “art” now displayed at the Museum of Art Los Angeles who claims the exhibit “topples white supremacy.”  The LA Times, in a glowing review, called it a “monstrous mutant” that “pushes back against white supremacy I would call it a tasteless, disrespectful disregard for our nation’s history. Recall General Jackson’s career began by heroically serving in the Mexican Wars after graduating from the US Military Academy at West Point. Born in what is now West Virginia, he naturally served with the Confederacy, distinguishing himself at Bull Run but ultimately losing an arm to friendly fire and succumbing to pneumonia. And now rewarded for his sacrifice and service to the United States before being on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon Line, he is brutalized in death by being hideously transformed into an object of ridicule by an activist who has made a career “highlighting the impact of slavery” and calling it art. I am embarrassed we let this happen.

Under The ICBM

The Atlantic was at it again, publishing an interview with the makers of the film, The House of Dynamite, where a nuclear missile targeting the US is launched from an unknown source, and our government officials have only 20 minutes to respond. The horrifying aspect of the film is the fact that the system of nuclear response and deterrence is set up for rapid retaliation, whereby a chain of military command that practices the scenario twice a day makes recommendations to the president, who receives only one nuclear briefing but who holds the nuclear “football” and is ultimately responsible for the decision on how to respond. There’s no time to form a committee. No time to ask Congress. With a missile incoming, the president and his immediate staff have 20 minutes to decide on a course of action. The strategy thus far has been one of mutually assured destruction. You launch at me, and I will launch at you. And with thousands of warheads aimed at major cities, we would essentially annihilate each other, thus keeping each other in check. That worked well when there existed two nuclear powers, the US and Russia. However, today, there are at least nine nuclear states, with varying degrees of hostility, some of which possess delivery systems that would make it very difficult to determine who is responsible for a launch, with submarines being the most challenging to detect. It’s an interesting film and a topic that has largely become less of a concern as the public has lapsed into a sort of nuclear complacency since the end of the Cold War. But the Atlantic being the Atlantic, where exactly did you think this interview was going to go? Two Hollywood filmmakers and an Atlantic reporter couldn’t resist taking a hard left turn into the land of Trump derangement syndrome. They praised Clinton, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and even Reagan for an era of nuclear detente and reductions in nuclear arsenals, achieved through SALT provisions. So now we have 1500 warheads each…..if you can believe the Russians….so we are only able to obliterate each other ten times over rather than a hundred. Well done. But they criticized Trump for his combative and retaliatory personality traits, suggesting that he couldn’t be trusted to make such decisions regarding potential nuclear armageddon. They even suggested that Trump was increasing our nuclear arsenal in the NATO states, potentially antagonizing our enemies. But hold on a second. The Atlantic is criticizing and questioning the competence of a president who has effectively stopped eight wars and is working on his ninth in less than a year in office. Further, he is a president who projected US air power into the Middle East to prevent Iran from becoming another nuclear state, and a highly unstable one at that. The world has changed significantly since the fall of the Berlin Wall. With nine nuclear powers jostling for position on the world stage we have one of the major players, Russia, not only on the move militarily seeking to expand its territory but also outright threatening to employ tactical nukes in Ukraine while antagonizing NATO countries in the west with aerial incursions, China is expanding its military presence and threatening Taiwan and its neighbors and seeking to control shipping lanes in the South Pacific, a rogue North Korea is continually advancing its ballistic missile program and provocatively lobbing missiles into the Sea of Japan while threatening to be able to reach the continental US, nuclear armed India and Pakistan are continually engaged in border skirmishes, hostile Arab states surround Israel, and the UK and France sit on the sidelines amidst social and political upheaval at home. It’s a more volatile world. But who would you rather have in possession of the nuclear football?  Never did they mention that in the previous four years, the world relied on Biden in rapid mental and physical decline to determine our fate in the event of a nuclear standoff. Perhaps the auto pen would step in and save us all. And does anyone have any confidence that the vacuous Kamala Harris has the mental acuity to deal with decisions at this existential level?  Please. The woman recently claimed that “some people” think she was the most qualified candidate ever to run for president. She’s absolutely delusional. And who else do we have to draw on from the left to make these decisions? Such Democratic luminaries as Newsome, Jeffries, Crockett, Schumer, Schiff, and AOC?  Please. None of these people are serious. Trump has proven himself to be an adept negotiator, establishing personal relationships with contentious foreign leaders, especially those in possession of nuclear hardware. In a dangerous world, he has proven himself to be a man of peace, but not one to appease our adversaries. I’m talking to you, Obama. So, the Atlantic remains true to form, choosing to remain a bastion of anti-Trump activism at the expense of non-partisan journalism, and in this case, sacrificing what could have been a review bringing attention to a thought-provoking movie, instead using it as a vehicle for another round of Trump bashing.

The People's House

I’ve about had enough of these liberal idiots screaming about Trump tearing down the useless East Wing of the White House to construct the big beautiful ballroom. Somehow, they are suddenly concerned about tearing down history when, in fact, the White House has been modified, added to, and gutted numerous times by previous presidents. Get a grip already. FACT: The East Wing has been a largely unused set of offices for the First Lady, correspondence staff, the social secretary, a calligraphy and graphics office, and a theater. It sits on top of a bunker that is to remain intact. FACT: The White House does not have a satisfactory function room to host large gatherings, which is why tents are often erected to provide the space for formal affairs. In case you hadn’t noticed, Washington is built on a swamp and tends to get hot and sticky in the summer months, making tents impractical and, frankly, not befitting formal gatherings for heads of state.  FACT: Trump is using his own money and donations for the project with no expenses passed on to the taxpayers. FACT: The argument that it is the “people’s house” is beyond preposterous. If it’s your house, try stopping by unannounced and see how that goes. The last time some folks entered another one of the people’s houses, that being the Capitol building, they were hunted down and jailed. Ashli Babbitt, a military veteran who was unarmed, was shot dead by Capitol police for climbing through a window. Apparently, they’re not your houses at all; you just pay for them. FACT: Nobody on the left seemed to care when historic monuments, including statues of Columbus, Jefferson Davis, Thomas Jefferson, assorted Confederate Generals, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Howitzer Memorial, to name a few, were torn down or defaced in the left’s last display of woke insanity during the “mostly peaceful” summer of love. Not a word. Suddenly, the East Wing of the White House is now a priceless historic artifact whose destruction to make way for something suitably functional causes outrage on the left. Al Green keeps telling us that it’s a disgusting example of the enslavement of human beings. I suppose when they have nothing else to rally around, we get this nonsense. I’m running out of recommendations. Grow up? Get a life? Suck it up? Get a grip. Go ahead, choose one. 

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.