Militias and Gun Control

Finally, after seeking to dissolve the NRA for “misappropriation of funds”, NY Attorney General Letitia James has successfully driven the NRA to file for bankruptcy protection.  The gun rights group, originally registered in NY, will flee to Texas where they will incorporate and restructure to exit from what it described as “a corrupt political and regulatory environment”.  President-elect Joe Biden has also signaled that he intends to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, that effectively shields gun manufacturers and dealers from being held responsible when their products are misused in a crime, or results in injury, much as any manufacturer of consumer products is protected.  This of course would open the door to frivolous class action lawsuits that will attempt to drive the firearms industry out of business. Simultaneously, and not without coincidence, we are seeing a coordinated attack develop on the Second Amendment where the FBI, having distinguished themselves as partisan manipulators of evidence under James Comey, is seeking to link the Capitol riot to white supremacists and neo-Nazis,who in turn are members of organized militias.  Thus by the transitive property of partisanship: if you were at the protest, then you are an insurrectionist, which makes you a white supremacist, which links you to militias…….who have guns. That makes you a threat to democracy, which means you have to be disarmed.  Kiss the Second Amendment good-bye.  Game over.  Isn’t this the first step in the tyrannical playbook: Disarm the people?  It was the first thing that both Hitler and Stalin did when they came to power, and look how well it worked for them.  Even Bill Maher, hardly a moderate, warned not to equate 5000 protesters with the 75 million people who voted for Donald Trump.  And in another astonishing example of being mathematically impaired, NPR ran a scathing piece declaring far right extremist groups such as The Three Percenters, The Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and the Texas Freedom Force had members in the crowd who were urging protesters to organize and were seen in videos “giving directions by voice” and flashing hand signals associated with white supremacy”.  One such organizer was seen “wearing a black short-sleeved t-shirt with yellow, consistent with the Proud Boys logo, the FBI said”.  Better purge your wardrobe of those black and yellow t-shirts.  And the truly frightening fact is the shear number of participants from these highly organized extremist groups: “at least eight”.  That’s right, eight. And this coming after untold hours of detective work, facial recognition scanning and Internet research by our highly trained government employees.   Of course, this nugget comes after the Washington Post declared last week that, after their exhaustive research efforts, they discovered a whole half-dozen white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in the crowd.  That would be six.  I’m not sure whether I should be more embarrassed by the laughable participation of these fearsome white supremacist militias, or the media’s apparent ignorance of the significance of single digits.

 

So absurd as it may be, I get the distinct impression that we are witnessing a coordinated effort, not by these white supremacist organizations spewing vitriol on the internet and posing for selfies in their camouflage coordinates, but by our own government, which is incrementally seeking to gut the Constitution and strip us of our rights.  Chuck Schumer has proposed putting the protesters on the “no fly” list”.  Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, has had his line of pillows and bedding yanked from the shelves of Bed, Bath & Beyond, Amazon and Wayfair for expressing support for Trump and questioning the election results.  Senator Hawley had his book deal canceled by Simon & Shusterafter he raised objections to Electoral College Results (something the Democrats have done every time, incidentally).  Tucker Carlson pointed out that Representative Steven Cohen from Tennessee questioned the integrity of the National Guard, tasked with protecting the Capitol, based on their racial makeup being overwhelmingly white and male, making them “more conservative”.  Nancy Pelosi has referred to the rioters as “domestic terrorists” a tag parroted by Joe Biden.  Elizabeth Neumann, a former member of the Department of Homeland Security in an interview with NPR stated: “We have to go after the people doing the incitement….with the same intensity that we did with Al Qaeda”.  The same article goes on to criticize the fact that “the threat of Islamic radicalism commands a far greater share of government resources” with Heidi Beirich of the leftist Southern Policy Law Center calling the disparity “a sign of the great hypocrisy”.  Hypocrisy.  Really.  After months of “peaceful protests” in the name of racial equality, largely ignored by our elected officials and praised by the media, protests that burned and looted our cities, resulted in police officers injured and property destroyed, we are choosing to label this protest an “insurrection” with comparisons in the media ranging from Pearl Harbor to the Holocaust and now Al Qaeda?  This is insanity.  Have we finally reached the tipping point?  With immigrant asylum seekers queued up at our border and more caravans on the way, with DC poised to become a state, with an attack on fossil fuel, amidst a raging pandemic, with Big Tech yielding greater power over public discourse, with our election integrity in disarray, and with 75 million Americans labeled domestic terrorists and under assault by our cancel culture, can we possibly save our Republic from crumbling, or has Obama’s wish finally come true: to fundamentally change America?

Riots

 Rule Number 8: “Keep the pressure on.  Never let up”

Rule Number 9:  “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself”

-Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

And the rhetoric keeps ratcheting up.  Where once we had inciting “a riot”, it has morphed into “a siege on the Capitol”, an “insurrection”, and “sedition”.  Democrat leaders of the House issued a statement: “We have grave concerns about ongoing and violent threats to our democracy. It is clear that more must be done to pre-empt, penetrate, and prevent deadly and seditious assaults by domestic violent extremists in the days ahead”.  Wow.  After nine months of riots where our cities were occupied and burned supposedly in the name of racial equality, all we got from them was the ceremonial taking a knee in the Capitol rotunda.  Seriously, if what happened on January 6 was an insurrection, it certainly was the most lame, disorganized, comic book version of one in history.  All Americans should be embarrassed. I saw video of old folks, children, and let’s not forget the idiot with the horned headdress and face paint, all milling about like they were on a museum tour, taking selfies and picking up souvenirs.  Sure, there were some bad actors that looked alarmingly familiar in their appearance and actions (reference Portland, Minneapolis, Kenosha, and NYC), but they appeared to be in the minority.   In particular it should be noted that I didn’t see anyone brandishing weapons, I saw nothing on fire, no spray painted slogans, nor is it clear if the “pipe bombs” were meant to harm or distract, seeing as they were planted some distance away.  The perpetrator of said explosive devices, incidentally, was found to be a 70-year old Alabama malcontent who was living in his pick-up truck amidst a collection that included 11 Molotov cocktails (translation: 11 beer bottles and some gasoline), a handgun, a rifle, a shotgun, a crossbow and “hundreds of rounds of ammunition”.  Sounds more like the contents of your average redneck coat closet than an arsenal.  Another description from law enforcement found a man to be in possession of a 9mm handgun and 500 rounds of ammunition.  In total, perhaps 5-7 firearms were reportedly recovered, but recall nobody was shot or even threatened with a firearm, at least not by a protester. With all due respect to those of you who are firearms-impaired, if this was indeed an insurrection, this miscellaneous collection of knick-knacks is like bringing a water pistol to a gunfight.  It is remarkable that the left, so inclined to sport uber-trendy Che Guevara T-Shirts, doesn’t know what revolution actually looks like.  This isn’t it. Even NPR opined that we should be aware that “these people have guns” and to take these militias seriously because they are not just playing dress-up.  What militias?   Militias are paramilitary organizations that tend to be…well, er…..organized and military.  Cue the fatigues and the assault weapons.  And now we have our state capitols preparing for an armed march by seditionists on inauguration day.  Really?  Based on the internet spewing of vitriol from some unknown assailant?  And which side of the aisle is this “terrorists de mots” from?  Is he indeed a threat or is he a worse kind of threat, a leftist fanning the flames of Democrat imagination gone wild?  Even the FBI’s Steven D’Antuono, according to the WSJ, in a moment of clarity issued a statement that was remarkably insightful: “We have to separate the aspirational from the intentional and determine which of the individuals saying despicable things on the internet are just practicing keyboard bravado, or if they actually have the intent to do harm”.  Exactly.  Recall the BLM occupations where armed groups extorted local businesses and residents.  Recall the tattooed snowboarder who executed a conservative counter-protester in the street.   When the left points a finger in accusation, they do so with no apparent long-term memory of what preceded this moment or worse, what precipitated it.

So to coin a phrase, it appears that most of this was “peaceful protest” with a small minority of testosterone-fueled miscreants.  Despite a blistering narrative of insurrection by the press, the ongoing persecution of the President, an investigation that has turned up little in the way of an organized siege, this still has all the trappings of a protest gone off the rails, pushed to trespass by a small minority of idiots.  Recall he of the horned headdress:  once anointed by the press as cleverly playing the fool while actually being a QAnon ringleader. We come to find out he has a history of mental illness, has no affiliation with QAnon and is currently on a hunger strike because his jailers won’t provide him with organic meals.  Another rocket scientist. The Washington Post, in promoting their racial agenda, trumpeted that facial recognition technology had identified White Supremacists and neo-Nazis in the crowd.  All “half-dozen” of them.  They may need to be reminded that a half-dozen means six.  

But the Democrats will do what they do best.  They will run with the narrative that this was a threat to our democracy, all instigated by the evil Orange Man in the White House and his army of racist seditionists. That armed militias will again lay siege to our capitol, with the intention of taking members of Congress hostage and “lynching” them.  They will promote a crackdown on free speech, in violation of the First Amendment.  They will then wage war on the protector of the First Amendment by eliminating the Second in the name of keeping guns out of the hands of those imaginary militias that are a threat to America. Keep the pressure on.  Never let up.  Make the threat more terrifying than the thing itself.  Keep repeating your narrative until it is accepted as truth.  Saul Alinsky would be proud.

The Second Dose Gamble by the Party of Science

So last weekend Joe Biden, our dementia-addled President-elect and de facto leader of the “party of science”, wants to release all the vaccine stores being held in reserve for the second booster dose for those who already received the first dose, in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s plan.  That way we can “get more shots into American’s arms now” said Biden’s spokesman, relying on the manufacturers to increase production so hopefully the second doses will be available when needed. Of course this is against the recommendations of the FDA and the drug manufacturers whose clinical research has indicated that roughly 28 days after the first dose, the recipient will only have approximately 50% immunity, thus requiring the second dose to reach its full potential of 95% effectiveness.  A delay in receiving the second dose would be detrimental to achieving full immunity potential and goes against the protocols established in the clinical trials. Bloomberg called it a “second dose gamble” and even NPR reported that the “second shot carries many of the logistical challenges as the first one, plus the added challenge of ensuring that the second dose is actually available”.  So under the Biden proposal, potentially more people will be vaccinated but with reduced effectiveness.  Genius.  Perhaps he is being advised on medical policy by Dr. Jill Biden.  
But hold on:  not more than 5 days later, after criticizing the Biden plan, the Trump administration abruptly reversed course and indicated that they will release the additional doses.  Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar now believes that the “manufacturing is predictable enough that we can ensure second doses are available to people from ongoing production”.  Federal officials, according to the WSJ, said “there is enough supply to ensure booster shots will be available and that they won’t extend the current recommended dosing schedules”.  Uh-huh.  So what changed in five days?  Is this a policy change based on science, on manufacturing or on politics? And where did the FDA disappear to in the midst of this debate?  And if there is indeed such a glut of vaccine due to ramped up production, why can’t we set aside the second dose now to ensure that it will be there in 28 days rather than assume the risk?  I don’t know about you, but after enduring the first dose, I want to be damn sure the second one is waiting for me rather than relying on some bureaucrat advising me that manufacturing is “predictable enough”.  Besides, the problem may not actually be in the production, but in the logistics, and those logistics are currently controlled by the government.  Witness New York’s botched roll out with vaccine discarded when no one showed up for their appointment leaving nurses scrambling to find local firefighters and police….. anyone who fit the state’s qualifications to receive the allocation before it expired.  In Florida, seniors lined up for shots until the pharmacies ran out, while some locations were offering it to anyone within earshot.  Doesn’t instill much confidence.  Remember the nine most frightening words in the English language:  “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. 

Sad State of Affairs

In light of the recent election results I’ve taken particular heed to some of the Democrats stated  ambitions, those of: Packing the SCOTUS, admitting PR and DC to the union, defunding the police, government control of health care, amnesty to all illegal immigrants, abolish the electoral-college, rescind the Second Amendment, reparation for African Americans, greater regulation of commerce and education, increasing taxes. What’s not to like,  huh?

And, soon there will be no Red States to oppose them, in having been over run by Blue State escapees-,  fleeing lawlessness, high taxes and social depravity-, but bringing their warped sense of a social preferences with them. A socialist curtain is descending upon us America-, one party governance is waiting in the wings! Farewell land of the free, home of the brave-, where once life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness abounded.

Our bloated government is determined to tax us back to our ancestral European socialist beginnings! Have you ever thought to ask yourself, why should we pay for things we don’t want, that the vast majority of us never receive; why should they take our money and property and give it to others to garner their favor, ensuring their position of power; enhance the governments revenue stream and their personal inordinate entitlements! We American’s had a government of the people, by the people and for the people that governed in compliance with our once revered and thought sacrosanct constitution. Today that is not the case! A cabal of bureaucratic anarchist have undermined our representative democracy skewing it toward a socialist inclined oligarchy. 

Protest Spin

The Wall Street Journal wasn’t particularly sympathetic to the cause in the wake of the recent D.C demonstrations .  All of a sudden, they had fallen in line with the detractors, adopting the same set of adjectives.  Where we once had “voting irregularities”, and hundreds of affidavits attesting to it, we now have “unproven” allegations, “false” accusations, and the old Trump standby: “lies”.  Instead of showing the public that these claims are being taken seriously, a matter that was addressed when it was Gore doping the accusing, the 80 Million Trump supporters are being told that there’s nothing here people, you lost, go home. After four years of relentless attacks on a duly elected president, our elected officials are telling us to shut up and just accept a loss, something the other side has never actually done. And the piling on continues. Many of you are not a fan of Tucker Carlson, but I think he got it right.  Trump was still full of his swaggering, incendiary bravado, but he certainly didn’t instruct the crowd to breach the Capitol.  Like all marches in DC, he called for the crowd to march to the Capitol to protest at the site where the flawed election was being ratified.  No more.  Did it get out of hand? It sure did. But no more out of hand than the riots in Portland, New York City and Kenosha.  I didn’t see the city burn and businesses looted.  The “people’s house was violated”, they screamed.  Yes it was.  By the people, we the people.  And video shows repeated examples of the Capitol Police opening barricades and stepping aside.  And by barricades, I mean bike racks.  And it’s not your house, Nancy, not the aristocracy’s house, not the house of the elite, despite the exclusive hair salon and private gyms. It belongs to the people that you brushed off and disenfranchised, chose to ignore and belittle. Even Anderson Cooper, an elitist of the Vanderbilt dynasty, mocked the protesters on CNN, suggesting that they will “go back to the Olive Garden and to the Holiday Inn they’re staying at, or the Garden Marriott…..”   The unfortunate aftermath will be more demagoguery, mostly directed at threats to Democrat power such as senators Hawley and Cruz.  It’s going to be an ugly four years, but this style of ugliness has not been brought on by Trump alone, rather by a power hungry Democrat cabal and their complicit media.

I'm Back!

Did you miss me? Well I’m back, and hereafter I’ll tell you why. But know, in the passage of time since my last post, my tolerance to suffer political pundits of any stripe and their antics, has decreased exponentially. As a consequence, you might find my rants more personal and biting then before. If I offend, mea culpa! 

So we begin, my opening 2021 Conservative Slants is a culmination of responses to recent affronts to my sensibilities by CCN, WSJ, PBS, DP and FOX news. A little long winded, but I wanted to set a tone in my return.

I’m Back.  Rejoining the ranks of the “deplorables”, “clinging to our guns and religion”.  We “insurrectionists”, Trump supporters who staged a “coup”, the “mob” that “stormed the Capitol”, mounting a “siege” against the “people’s house”.  How many times will we allow the left to paint us with a broad brush? When did conservatism become the enemy of the people?  How has the conservative label become a negative, whereas liberal and progressive have become something spun into a positive, a brand that has become a shiny commodity, something our youth want to acquire, to proclaim loudly, even violently, that they adhere to a set of values and principles that is antithetical to our Constitution, that will fundamentally change America?  

 

When exactly did the two parties decide to switch identities anyway?  The Democrats were once the party of the people, representing the blue-collar working class and the poor.  Now they represent Big Tech, the wealthy elite, white, college educated suburbanites and city dwellers, and they lay claim to all the supposedly disenfranchised minority groups that identify by color and sexual orientation.  They firmly believe in big government, cradle-to-grave entitlements, identity politics, and that identity should be a measure of your merit.  Republicans have come to represent the working class and the rural poor, small business and capitalism, America’s heartland where traditional values of family and religion still have value. They believe in a smaller less intrusive government, a strong military, and strong borders, and are guided by the Constitution.  They believe in meritocracy.

 

But words and symbols have been hijacked by the left and have been reserved as their own exclusive property or, worse yet, morphed into something else.  Identity politics has become the order of the day, where offending one of the protected categories carries with it the scarlet letter, a brand of one of a myriad of “-isms” and “phobes” the left have used effectively at the point of the spear to further isolate and divide.   Sexist, Misogynist, Homophobic, white supremacist, and of course the universally applicable and most damning of all: Racist.  A hangman’s noose and the word “lynching” for example, have been made the exclusive property of the black experience in this country where even a loop of rope hanging in a garage bay turned NASCAR upside down this past year in a wave of identity politics. Gender specific words such as him, her, he, she, mother, father, sister and brother have been recently banished from the floors of Congress in favor of gender-neutral terms such as parent, sibling, and the grammatically preposterous “they”.  Yes, the “party of science” believes, and more importantly wants you to believe, that there are more than two genders, and that those words are insensitive and not “inclusive”.  The Confederate flag, once thought to represent the pride of being from the south, has been branded a symbol of hate, a symbol of our racist past, and it too has been banned from state flags and personal display.  Professional sports team’s names and logos are being dropped for being racially insensitive and demeaning, leading us to impressive, awe-inspiring appelations such as The Washington Football Team. My personal favorite is when the left calls Trump and his followers Nazis, failing to recognize that Nazi is a shortened version of Nationalsozialistische , which translates to national socialist, when they themselves are proponents of a socialist state.  Hilarious. Even the very definition of “Patriot” has been linked with “nationalism” where the most common connotation used to be “devotion to the interests or culture of a particular nation-state” but has been cast aside in favor of the more negative definition, “a particular culture or ethnic group deserving of political self-determination”, which has been extrapolated into “white supremacy” and racism, now inexplicably but permanently linked to MAGA and Donald Trump’s presidency.   And let’s not forget the height of word-absurdity when Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), in delivering the opening prayer on the first day of the 117th Congress, a prayer filled with Christian themes and scriptural references, waded into politically correct, all-inclusive territory by closing with “we ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and god known by many faiths. Amen….and AWOMAN.” What an idiot.  Amen is not a gender specific term, rather it is derived from the Latin, meaning “so be it”.  But facts never seem to get in the way of the leftist agenda.  Florida Republican Matt Gaetz sarcastically quipped: Don’t they know that gender isn’t binary? What about the 42 other genders?” Tennessee Rep Tim Burchett remarked, “This is political correctness gone way off the rails.” Now that’s an understatement.

 

And with the Democrats seizing control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House, expect it to get worse………a lot worse.  Already, in a profound demonstration of how to be a sore winner, Pelosi and Schumer are calling for Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from the Presidency a mere 12 days before Biden’s inauguration.  If not, they intend to proceed with, and are already preparing articles of impeachment. Republican Senators Hawley and Cruz, who challenged the Electoral College certification process on the grounds of claims of voter fraud, are being attacked by their Democrat colleagues, led by the reprehensible Delaware Senator Coons, who is calling for their resignations. It would appear that in the typical “never let a crisis go to waste” tactic first outlined by Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel, and recently repeated while discussing the coronavirus pandemic, the Democrats will be employing a scorched-earth policy of eliminating all potential obstacles to their radical agenda.  Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have all banned Trump indefinitely from their platforms, effectively silencing the President of the United States.  Even the uber-liberal ACLU has taken up the case as a violation of First Amendment rights to free speech.  When exactly did Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, two reprehensible human beings if there ever was one, become the gatekeepers and arbiters of what the President of the United States of America can say?  This should disturb everyone, regardless of what your political affiliation may be.  And as an extension, the relatively new platform Parler, which is a Twitter-like app that has marketed itself as a non-biased, free speech social media platform focused on user’s rights, has been removed from Google’s app store, followed by Apple and Amazon in suspending the app from being active on their servers.  Why?  Because Trump is using it to communicate.  When such a blatant violation of Constitutional rights occurs amidst radical calls from the left to silence Trump supporters, suggestions to prevent Trump supporters from flying or staying in hotels, calls to place restrictions on conservative talk radio, you are witnessing a descent into tyranny.  

 

Recall Saul Alinsky, the American community activist and political theorist who penned the book: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer in 1971. He is largely credited with developing strategies for confrontation and community organizing to advance social justice.  Disturbingly, we see Rule #12 being implemented by the left today: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.  Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy.  Go after people and not institutions: people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective.  Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works).”  We are seeing this being played out to great effect against Donald Trump and conservatives in real time.  With a complicit media acting as a propaganda branch of the Democrat party, we are under attack, we are being silenced, ridiculed, isolated and in effect, cancelled.  We are indeed under siege, there is indeed an insurrection, and as our forefathers predicted, we are being overwhelmed by mob rule.  Yet is not a mob of conservative sympathizers that is a threat to the Republic.  It is the new Democrat party and their radical leftist, progressive agenda, emboldened by their success in taking back the Congress and the White House under dubious circumstances, emboldened by a complicit media and a compliant public that has swallowed their rhetoric and has forgotten the principles of the Constitution. That is why I’m back.  To shine a light on the hypocrisy that rules the current political landscape. To add my voice to the Patriots who choose to defend the Constitution from tyranny. While we still can.  

                                                             

Tom Swift

That's All Folks!

This time for real...I'm away! Appropriate don't you think? What with new year resolutions' and all, apropos? I used to tell my business colleagues back in the day, there comes a time when you should just move on, enough is enough-, your relevance, your impact in the grand scheme of things wanting and/or not wanted.This blog was essentially a by-product of requests for comments from a conservative perspective on current political events-, inquiries made of me by friends and associates deeply immersed in mother academia's liberal womb. In as much as they wanted real time unabridged spontaneous responses, so that they could spin them as they saw fit in their teaching and literary opposing posturing .... I was all too willing to lend a voice. But, now those very same friends and associates find themselves in a quandary. My prognostications ringing too true for their liking, striking to close to home, my arguments too substantive. In that said, the time seems auspicious for a lateral arabesque, a segue for me to move on. Further, I felt I had reached the point of overshariing my opinions on the political landscape.

I have a few new interests I'm anxious to pursue; some old obligations to fulfill. Aside, thinking about taking up fishing, albeit somewhat concerned about my patience quotient or lack there of, never big on Zen-like activities. Shooting maybe, there is a range near by, and the way things are going of late increasing my firearm proficiency may not be a bad idea. I've enjoyed our time together. It did me good to vent my spleen, better out than in my grandfather would say. Any way to dissipate the corrosive effect of impotence in the light of perceived threatening adversity; the frustration of witnessing our country's social, economic and cultural decay was therapeutic. An American once was entitled to nothing save for the inalienable right to be all he or she could be, unencumbered by oppressive governance at any level or station in life. Today that is not the case, more of us are recipients of entitlements unearned; a willingness for our fate to be largely determined by others, others in my opinion of nefarious governing motives and intent. But, so much for beating a dead horse! For your attention thank you.To those who found ways to lend encouragement and purpose to my political flaying about, both liberals and conservatives alike, I appreciated your candor and shared concerns. I was humbled by the audience we amassed over these past four years. As a patriot I will always be with you in spirit! If fortunate and history will have it...somehow, someway our country, we the people, will recover from our perverse fascination with political correct social reform and a wrong headed appreciation of how to preserve America the beautiful for posterity. To all, good luck with that!