Lies that divide

I belonged to an online group for people with a rare medical condition. The admin shut the group down after years of running it. Her reason was that just surviving was going to be a full-time job for disabled people because "Trump ran on getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits." They claimed he's going to sign an Executive Order to get rid of the Americans With Disabilities Act. If people in the group sincerely asked for clarification or became worried and scared too, they were met with silence. This makes me both sad and angry.

The stars of Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, are the kinds of media personalities responsible for a lot of the post-election fear Democrat voters are experiencing. They had Trump on their show so many times in 2016 that it likely helped him get elected. He was a personal friend. Then they spent eight years calling him Putin's Nazi white supremesist dictatorial dementia patient. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and these two "journalists" just came back from a visit to Trump's Florida residence, Mar-a-lago. So now that he's going to be the president again, he's not all of the things they were calling him just days ago? I know that I wouldn't get on a plane to break bread with a Nazi white supremesist dictator. Would you?

So what's happening here? Mika and Joe clearly never believed a word they were saying on air. It was all about ratings or doing what the bosses wanted or something. And there's a lot of it going around. It's becoming obvious to many (though it was clear to others already) that many of these "journalists" and TV personalities were LYING TO YOU. I'm so sorry for the people, some whom I know personally, who believed them because the talking heads on TV didn't even believe themselves. 

There are a lot of really frightened, angry Americans because of these liars. Are you going to let them lie to you and then steal people who love you from you by telling you to get kick them out of your lives? I truly hope not. 

Some on TV seem to believe what they say on air, like the cast of The View. We can respect people who have different views than we do if they're at least honest about their beliefs. But I can't respect people who only seek to divide. On MSNBC, a psychiatry resident affiliated with Yale advised people to skip the holidays with Trump-voting family members. “To say, ‘I have a problem with the way that you voted because it went against my very livelihood, and I’m not going to be around you this holiday, I need to take some space for me,’” she said. 

"Take some space for me" when in reality it's not all about you.

It's about all of us, and we really need to start acting like it.

So to all the people who are terrified that your Medicare/Medicaid benefits are going to be slashed because Democrat legislators said it just to scare you, or are worried that your favorite on-air personality is going to get locked in some Trump-sanctioned concentration camp because your favorite on-air personality said so, I hope you're going to be okay. You'll never see this, because you clearly don't stray from your bubble, or you wouldn't be going online acting completely delusional and stopping years of hard work that helped people because you were spoonfed lies that divide.

What life is like under Harris-Walz

How could we know? Those of us who live in Minnesota know. We've lived under the federal policies of Biden-Harris for almost four years. We've lived under the control of Governor Tim Walz for six years. Combine the effects of those two sets of elected leaders, and we have life under Harris-Walz. I don't think this is what joy feels like. Please learn from us and work to make sure this destructive duo doesn't bring their brand of joy to your lives too.

Minnesota has made national headlines in recent years for all the wrong reasons. We used to be known as the birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, and Prince. Now, we're known as the birthplace of the Defund the Police movement, changing lives across the U.S. for the worse, and as the place that elected the off-puttingly strange Walz as its governor not once, but twice. 

Life for many of us has become increasingly hard for many reasons because of the failed leadership of these two. First I, then my mother, were widowed 364 days apart under Harris-Walz. Their policies made our lives much more difficult than they'd have been under better leadership.

Unfortunately, an accurate picture of life under Harris-Walz requires some math. 

"Bidenomics" was repeatedly touted by Vice President Kamala Harris as "working,"  We two Minnesota widows have had to deal with Walz' penchant for raising taxes coupled with Biden-Harris' inflationary policies that have made life very expensive, not just for us, but for everyone. Minnesota boasts the 8th largest income tax rate and the highest corporate tax rate in the nation. People are fleeing in droves.

My mom has spent the two winters since dad died rationing her heating oil, which went up by a staggering 99.6 percent between Biden-Harris taking office in January 2021 and my father's death in 2022. She keeps her thermostat in the 50s during cold winter nights. My property taxes are skyrocketing, so my house payment rises. Cost of upkeep rises. The same thing is happening to my mom.

The week after my father died, my 81-year-old mother was back at the job from which she had retired to ask for it back. Now age 83 and a recent cancer survivor, she holds three jobs. She said, "Because of inflation and taxes, it's almost like I didn't go back to [the aformentioned job]. It's a wash financially." Thus the other two jobs.

"But inflation is going down!" people say, while they mean, "prices are going down." They're not. They're up 20 percent because inflation should be added up year over year.* If inflation is down to 3.2 percent from its high of 8.0 in 2022, it doesn't mean prices are going down, it just means they're going up at a lower rate. (We really need to do something about our education system because this shouldn't have to be Dick-and-Janed to anyone.)

Walz has passsed an ungodly amount of tax hikes. He's repeatedly raised taxes (despite a growing surplus) on the middle class while enacting an insanely expensive green agenda. The MN Department of Health and Human Services has been embroiled in an unbelieveable amount of scandal during Walz' tenure, the most recent of which involves $250 million in stolen COVID funds meant to go toward feeding hungry children. No hungry children were fed. Walz has been issued subpoenas by three federal agencies regarding the scandal.

Speaking of scandals, under Tim Walz, our beautiful city, Minneapolis, is so crime-ridden and in many places, desolate, that many people who don't live in it don't want to go there, or do so only if they absoutely have to. Many who live there have lost their businesses or livelihoods forever. 

"Crime is down. The numbers prove it!" people will say. But when Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) numbers are calculated correctly, crime is up. Since 2020, the Minnesota BCA numbers show violent crime has gone up by 23.3 percent statewide.** And nobody can claim "crime's going down now," because it dropped by a lesser percentage in 2023 (6.9) than 2022 (8.6), so it's going UP. Tim Walz has overseen all of it.

Walz took three days to call in the National Guard during the Floyd riots. When asked to do it, he disparaged the Guard by saying they were not highly-trained soldiers but were just "19-year-olds who are cooks." Nice words for a man who "proudly served" 24 years in the Army National Guard. 

He ordered Minneapolis' 3rd Precinct police to "stand down," to flee, to let it burn. As we watched the fleeing and flames, I said to my husband, "this is going to set a precident for the nation." I'm not psychic, just awake. Walz helped launch the Defund the Police movement, a local cancer that metastasized nationally post Floyd and helped increase crime and deflate morale among police everywhere. 

If you live in a city outside of Minnesota that was burned, looted, destroyed and/or not rebuilt in 2020, you have Tim Walz to blame. 

This is just a small sample of the joys of living under Harris-Walz. Walz gave us COVID snitch lines meant to pit neighbor against neighbor; he seized and held onto COVID emergency powers with an iron grip, only relinquishing them after the MN Senate wrestled them away after 17 months; he signed more than 100 executive orders during that reign of power; his mandate to send COVID-positive patients to nursing/care homes caused preventable deaths of the elderly and disabled giving MN the highest percentage of COVID deaths at nursing facilities in the nation; millions of missing COVID relief dollars; rampant scandals; making MN a "Trans Refuge State," thereby sanctioning child kidnapping by the state and stripping away parental rights; our unofficial sanctuary state status via generous welfare benefits for illegal immigrants, making us a magnet for them after we already took in huge numbers of refugees, straining all of our resources from medical care to schools.

Harris gave us tie-breaking votes in congress that caused high inflation; Bidenomics, which didn't delicately place the American dream into the dustbin of history but threw it into a trash compactor; the fastest growing segment of job seekers are retirees; food shelves struggling to keep up with demand; families becoming homeless due to exploding rent and mortgage rates; stratospheric cost increases across all energy sectors; wars breaking out around the world; 350 million missing children; a border open not only to those yearning to breathe free, but to those seeking to destroy us, even if it's one woman or child at a time. 

Our lives under Harris-Walz could be yours if we don't vote to stop it.

The good news is that America has been in bad shape before and recovered. Minneapolis was dubbed "Murderapolis" in the 90s, but crime had come down significantly by the end of Republican Tim Pawlenty's two terms as governor. The gas lines and rising interest rates of the Carter years led to the Reagan recovery because people were sick of their plummeting standard of living and voted their way out of it.

We too can vote our way out of this. We need to do it. My mom can't work forever, and I will lose the home my husband and I worked so hard for if our economic policies don't change. Our children, grandchilden and great-grandchildren deserve a future that's much better than life is now. 

I hear there are about three persuadable people in the country right now. But since my family has lost three Republican men since the last presidential election, I'm hoping to persuade at least three people to vote Republican if they haven't yet, or if they were planning to sit it out--please don't. Hungry children and exhausted widows are depending on you. We could use some joy.

*Using Consumer Price Index numbers, when Trump left office, inflation was at 1.2%. For the years 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 respectively, the equation is: +4.7+8.0+4.1+3.2=20%. 

**Violent crime in MN year over year for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 respectively: +17.2+21.6-8.6-6.9=+23.3. When crime shoots up by 38.8% over two years, a collective 15.5% decrease over the next two years isn't a net drop but a significant gain. 

Supreme Court decision allows Biden-Harris et al. to alter 2024 election

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s pending court case is America's only hope to reverse it for future elections

In the movie, "A Few Good Men," Jack Nicholson's character famously screams, "You can't handle the truth!"

Can you handle the truth? Can you handle a lie? Or do you, an adult who can vote, take up arms, enter into contracts, etc., need government to decide for you what you can and cannot hear, see, or know, and where information is allowed to come from?

Do you need to be protected so you don’t have to do the work of deciding what’s true? Or worse, do you need to be fed an unbalanced diet of heaping helpings of propaganda? Your government thinks you do.

You may not have heard of Murthy vs Missouri. It was a case decided by the Supreme Court in June and reported with barely a whisper, though it affects every American just as much, if not more, than the cases the media shouted about. 

It's a startling example of government's fight to censor speech, and the Supreme Court's ruling allows the Biden-Harris administration and its agents to continue to ask or threaten social media companies to censor information it doesn't want its citizens to know. 

Because of that decision, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has brought a new case that may be our last best hope to keep government out of the censorship business. Since he's one of what the U.S. Governement calls "The Disinformation Dozen," a group frequently targeted for censorship by the Biden-Harris administration, he may have a better chance of prevailing. (The fact that our government has such a name for any group of Americans based upon their excercise of their First Amendment rights should scare all of us.)

In a nutshell, the Biden-Harris administration (using plaintiff Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's name) was fighting to continue to censor online "misinformation, disinformation" in matters ranging from COVID 19, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Ukraine funding, to elections. Attorneys General from Missouri, Louisiana, and five citizens who claimed they'd been censored were fighting to stop them.

Though the Court decided against the plaintiffs, they didn't dispute the facts cited in the lower court case that the Biden Administration and its agents engaged in censorship via threats to and coersion of social media companies. This is real, it happened, and thanks to the Court's ruling, it continues.

The case began its life as Missouri v Biden. The Fifth Circuit court ruled against Biden et al. The ruling reads like a distopian movie script in which the FBI and other agencies dangled threats that included inacting Section 230 restrictions to get companies like Facebook to play along. Section 230 protects online media companies from being held liable for what people post on their platforms. Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg said revoking it would be an "extential threat" to his platforms. 

In Missouri v Biden, the judge wrote, "...the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history." Joe Biden, DHS, CDC, FBI, DOJ, and CISA were just a few of the many defendants. The resulting injunction required many defendants to immediately cease their censorship activities as regards social media platforms. 

Then the Supreme Court took the case. When doing so, they stayed the lower court's injunction until they could hear the case, therefore allowing Biden et al. to continue "coercing" social media companies to censor whatever or whomever they choose.

I've read the ruling, which was a 6-3 decision penned by Justice Coney Barrett, and the dissenting opinion, penned by Justice Alito, as well. It's a lot. 

To be clear, the Court doesn't reject the facts that the government and its agents engaged in "coersion and significant encouragement" to censor. They merely found that it was a poorly-constructed case and therefore lacked "standing" to bring it. Some reasons they lost the case were:

• Because online media were busy little censorship bees prior to government threats (even if the threats broadened and extended censorship), they didn't prove that government was the first and only censorship entity. If the plaintiffs had sued the social media platforms as well, the Court may have been able to rule differently.
• The Court said the plaintiffs had built their case not just on past harm due to government-required censorship, but that their case required a threat of "substantial future harm." They couldn't prove that the government would do it again. It's hard to prove a future action, so the case shouldn't have been built on this speculative requirement. It helped them lose. 
• They sued too many people. The list of defendants is so sweeping (41 individuals and 13 agencies/departments) that the Court found it hard to rule that they all had equal responsibility or outcomes. The Court didn't like that the case treated such a large group of defendants "as a monolith" and suggested the case was flawed by this grouping and justice would be better served had plaintiffs sued fewer entities and individuals or brought suit against each of them separately. 

The ruling in Murthy v Missouri has left a road map for for others who can prove government censorship has harmed them, leading to RFK Jr's pending case, Kennedy v Biden. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has already ruled that Kennedy has standing. We can only hope that RFK Jr. has excellent representation and a case built on solid arguments. This case includes a large number of defendants as well (23 individuals in 7 agencies/departments).

In the meantime, the Biden-Harris administration, its elected and unelected officials named in the opinion--FBI, DOJ, DHS, State Dept., CISA, U.S. Election Assistance Committee (EAC), etc.--can continue to, as the dissenting opinion states, "browbeat" and "threaten" media to censor whomever they wish. 

Page 142 of the Missouri v Biden ruling cites testimony showing that government censorship of speech about elections continues: 

When asked if government cyber censorship of election speech established in 2020 is ongoing, FBI Agent Elvis Chan testified, "we've never stopped."

After election day 2024, there may be court cases or charges of fraud. Because government is allowed to censor, will people be able to speak freely about it? Not likely.

Allowed to continue unfettered, the Biden-Harris Administration and its agents will continue to do this, conveniently, right through the 2024 election. So think about this when you vote: which candidate fought, did battle, and threatened media to secure her ability to censor you? 

Sometimes the truth hurts. It can be shocking. I think we can handle it. It should be a call to action to vote against censorship and for our right to speak freely. All of our other rights depend on it.

New law gives power over free speech to U.S. president--is ban of X planned?

Be careful what you wish for," as the old saying goes. And as I often say, "When they want you to look over here  (and talk about the subject they choose), watch what they're doing over there."

While American news outlets were busy chattering about the South Carolina primary, impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, etc., legislators were crafting this:

The bipartisan “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Application Act” was signed into law in April 2024. It was, of course, shoved into a giant appropriations bill. (If you're slogging through the law, it's in Division H.) It not only requires a ban or forced sale of TikTok but gives unilateral power to the president of the United States to shut down online platforms.

This gives sweeping censorship powers not only to a person, but to an office, because power can always change hands. We're living in one of the most illustrative times in American history of that ever-present fact. As I write this, the president is...Joe Biden?

The TikTok ban doesn't doesn't take effect until 270 days after the law was enacted and gives the president power to extend it for 90 days. Why? I'm not a mind reader, but I believe the law was written with a seemingly-arbitrary 270-day grace period to give TikTok a chance to save itself (the left REALLY wants this), while making it look like they're banning TikTok (the right REALLY wants this), thereby punting a political football until after the 2024 election. Conveniently, 270 days from the law's enactment is January 19, 2025, otherwise known as Inauguration Eve.

Then it could be open season on X (formerly Twitter) or any other media platform the president sets his or her sights on. I question whether TikTok, the only platform named in the law, was its true target.

Watch how the law defines people it seeks to squelch with language so broad that it might be harder to find social media platform owners who don't meet the bar required for a platform's extinction: 

• The law ultimately allows the president to shut down any online platform whose owners or parent companies are controlled by a "foreign person or combination of persons" deemed adversaries. 
  
  
• An "adversary" is the above-mentioned person(s) who "is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in" an adversarial country. 
  
  
• These persons must have at least 20 percent ownership "directly or indirectly" in the entity that owns the platform.
  
  
• Most importantly, this law applies to "a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity." 
  
  
• The list of foreign adversaries can change at any time at the discretion of the Secretary of State. 
  
  

This is an expansive, fluid law filled with definitions meant to apply to as many individuals and entities as possible. It gives power to one person and could apply to most online communications platforms. 

If you’re comfortable with this power being given to our current president, would you be comfortable with it being given to the last one? Or the next?

Whatever you think of TikTok (I'm not a fan), contrary to what people who love it and use it believe, it allows U.S. government censorship. Whether or not X is censoring speech is more subjective. The left claims increased censorship of mostly pro-Palestinian content, and censorship claims by the right have largely disappeared with the platform's 2022 acquisition by X Corporation, owned chiefly by Elon Musk, a foreign-born billionaire. 

The list of X Corp's investors changes, but most are not American. As the new law is written, the president wouldn't need to just look at Musk's financial ties in foreign adversarial countries, but at the totality of X Corp's investors.

An example of how this new law could be applied to X is that Musk's financial relationship with China is considered by some to be "cozy," and Tesla, which he also owns, is now an official car of the Chinese government. China is number one on the list of U.S. government adversaries. Few, if any, people who do business in China are not "subject to" their government's control.

Do you think there are any billionaire social media owners or large corporations, for that matter, who don't have business ties in China, the adversarial country cited in the TikTok ban? Whether it's good or not is up for debate. Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it's pretty easy to become financially engangled with them. 

Proponents of the law would say, "Why would Americans want foreign adversaries involved in their social media platforms? Isn't preventing that a good thing?" On its face it seems so; however, most efforts to chip away at rights or privacy are presented under the guise of "who wouldn't think this is good, this is for our protection," e.g. the Patriot Act.

Only the People should have the right to control speech through free market forces. We should speak about subjects important to us often and persuasively. One step removed from our own speech is our giving consent to congress to make laws on our behalf. This isn't a perfect system. Our representative government failed to protect free speech as Congress used our fear of China to hand over unilateral power to the president to limit free speech via this new law. Elections matter.

This new law, sweeping anti-free speech laws just passed across western nations, and recent Supreme Court rulings on First Amendment cases (the subject of my next post), show that our fight for free speech is constant and requires diligent attention to its protection. In other words, don't let yourself be distracted lest your freedoms be taken away while you aren't looking. 

God damn those people: Perspective needed on Afghanistan exit

Sparsely-attended Congressional hearing on Kabul Airport bombing 

I wrote this piece the day of the bombing at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan, which took the lives of 13 American soldiers and injured countless more. I ran across it recently, and thought I'd share it today, on its third anniversary. 

AUGUST 26, 2021:  I tuned in to FOX today for news about the bombing at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan. I took a trip around the dial, as I often do, to see what other networks were reporting. CBS was covering it. NBC had Hoda and Jenna doing a tribute to kindness. I like kindness, but I think NBC could use some perspective on what's important to air during what seems like a historic moment.

ABC aired a rerun of the July 27 episode of The View, which opened with an extended clip of testimony by some capitol police officers from the most recent January 6 hearing. I'm not at all surprised.

The irony wasn't lost of me as I listened to a capitol police officer testify, "...I feel like I went to hell and back protecting [his kids] and the people in this room," he said of the events of that day almost eight months ago. "But too many are now telling me that hell doesn't exist, or that hell actually wasn't that bad...Truly nothing has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day, and in doing so betray their oath [sic] of office," he said in his rerun testimony, as hell played out in real time in Afghanistan. 

President Biden announced in an April 14 speech that the U.S. would withdraw from Afghanistan between May 1 and September 11. On July 8, Foreign Policy Magazine published an exclusive interview with Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. In it, he said that after foreign forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban's goal is to create an “Islamic government,” and “we will be compelled to continue our war to achieve our goal.” Despite Biden's promise of an "orderly" exit, it was clear that this could get very messy.

They knew they'd be in the middle of this potentially messy withdrawal when they'd televise eight very public and publicized January 6 hearings, which lends credence to the theory of governmental/media misdirection. When they tell you to look over here, always ask, "What's happening over there that they don't want me to see?" They're still trying to misdirect as I write, with Hoda and Jenna prattling on.

I wonder when, or more importantly, if, we'll see a Congressional hearing on our withdrawal from Afghanistan. I wonder what the soldiers who are in the middle of this awful bloodbath would say.* 

Turning back to The View, the "ladies" begin to give their reactions to the harrowing January 6 testimony. Still no word about Afghanistan. I turn it off in an effort to hold onto my breakfast. To run this episode today shows that ABC wouldn't know perspective if it crawled in bed and snuggled with them. 

There's a startling lack of perspective on display everywhere you look. Some people are just in the wrong profession, and the list includes ABC executives (The View is in their news division), NBC executives, people producing and viewing January 6 hearings as infotainment, anyone in our government making decisions about Afghanistan, etc., etc. I don't accept any excuse for their lack of it.

I'm capable of perspective even though I just watched my husband go from robust health to taking his last breath in eight short weeks, during which we experienced hellish levels of incompetence and devastation. His little brother was found dead four days before my husband died, and I had keep it from him, for God's sake. 

The nightmare hasn't stopped in the three weeks since his death. Everything that can go wrong has. Appliances breaking, mice invading, and a legion of devestating heartbreaks too personal to detail here. Planning his memorial service has been horrific. I insist it be held outdoors because Covid's Delta variant is here, so I'm afraid the governor [Tim Walz] will suddenly decide to make the event illegal if I have it indoors, and I can't get people to return my calls because hospitality has died along with my husband in the industry that bears its name.  I'm left alone to deal with things that are too big for one person. I've never been so exhausted, so broken.

The cherry on top of all of the heartache and pain came two days ago. The head honcho at the cremation place called to say they FORGOT to take my husband's fingerprints, which I'd authorized to have made into jewelry for us to remember him by. Another loss in a hurricane of loss. 

Even after all of that, just weeks after watching my life partner of 40 years die and all of the resulting stress and pain I'm living through, I say to myself when watching scenes of Afghanistan: people hanging from the wings of planes, mothers handing their infants to American soldiers, young women screaming for their suddenly dead husbands, "Those people have it so much worse than I do. God bless those people, and God damn those who made the decisions that led to this disaster." 

Perspective. We need more of it.

*UPDATE: (If you Google hearings about the Afghanistan withdrawal, you get a lot of links to the hearing, held in March 2024, during which the Generals, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, etc., had their say. I had to dig to find a hearing with testimony from service people who were actually there.) The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a shameful, sparsely-attended hearing entitled, "During and After the Fall of Kabul: Examining the Administration’s Emergency Evacuation from Afghanistan” on March 8, 2023, notably just three months after Republicans regained the House. It's available on YouTube and was not cinematically produced by ABC. Witnesses included two soldiers who were there that day and several representatives of private agencies working to evacuate Americans and their Afghan partners, e.g., interpreters. One of the soldiers who testified--severely wounded that day--has a disclaimer under his name on the official Congressional Committee website that his testimony "...does not represent the views or opinions of the Department of Defense or U.S. Marine Corps." There is no similar disclaimer for any other witness or, notably, for any witness in the January 6 hearings. 

Elitism driving continued school closings

Science from around the globe overwhelmingly shows that children are at extremely low risk of serious complications from COVID 19 and are rarely the cause of outbreaks. Many say this proves schools should reopen. Most teachers, administrators and union representatives have been arguing for them to stay closed. One argument I've been hearing in favor of reopening schools is that if people (adults who might be at higher risk), can go shopping at big box stores, then children should be able to go back to school. Favoring keeping schools closed, I've heard teachers, etc., answer that argument with the notion that nobody goes shopping at a big box store for seven hours a day, five days per week. They also add that we have to think about teachers and staff who might be at risk and "have families." I'd bet on the fact that few people would shop at a big box store for that many hours. However, the workers at those big box stores probably spend 7 hours, 5 days per week (or more) at their jobs. Because they are essential workers. Because it's their job. They're also mostly adults (some at high risk), and, I believe, might actually have families. So tell me which is true: 1) Teachers and school staff are non-essential, therefore expendable, or,

2) They're just better than people who work at grocery stores.

Minnesota should pay its own bills - Even if it hurts

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what  they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."  - H.L. Mencken

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has asked the federal government for "major disaster" aid to repair damage and other costs due to recent riots across the state. With damage estimated at more than a half  billion dollars, this is, the governor wrote in his letter to President Trump, "the second most destructive incident of civil unrest in United States history after the 1992 Los Angeles riots."

Walz didn't mention in his letter that the major disaster was because he and other leaders sat back and allowed the Twin Cities to burn.

Why on earth should dollars from every taxpayer in the United States pay for the action or inaction of our feckless state and local leaders? Minnesota's ruins are not their fault. U.S. citizens had no hand in electing these fearful people who wouldn't know leadership if it threw a Molotov cocktail at them. 

There's an old-fashioned notion called "principle." If you stand on it, it means you're on firm footing, solid ground. The principle here is that the cost of repairing the damage done to Minnesota cities should be borne only by those responsible. And yes, that is we, the citizens of Minnesota.

Like it or not, we are responsible for this mess. Responsible, principled adults pay their own way. You might be thinking, "I didn't vote for those impotent leaders, I voted against them." I understand how you feel, because I'm in the same boat. 

We didn't vote for the likes of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who ran for office on his disgust for police shootings and inequality, and helped usher in a slew of policies to "fix" the problem only after Floyd. We didn't vote for any of those "in charge" who stood twiddling their thumbs and looking scared while their cities were destroyed around them, inspiring scathing articles to be written about their weakness in publications from New York to L.A.  We didn't sanction those who ordered the police in the 3rd Precinct to run, sparking copycat attempts across the nation. 

We didn't vote for Walz, who took an upside-down approach to Covid 19 and locked down all of Minnesota--even counties with no cases--during a pandemic that ravaged some states but remained fairly low here. (Care facilities were the exception, accounting for a staggering 80 percent of Minnesota's deaths, leaving another stain on our state.) The result was mass unemployment, economic and food insecurity, under-educated children, and confusion from the utter lack of logic of reopening the state as Covid cases rose. And stress. So much stress.

If you listened closely, you would have heard it. ...tick...tick...tick... The BANG that followed was as predictable as Covid outbreaks after the mask-free masses burst shoulder to shoulder into the streets with the blessings of officials, including Mayor Frey, who just days before had instituted mask mandates with $1,000 fines and threats against business licenses. 

Yet we're still responsible, and we're going to have to pay the bill. We didn't vote hard enough. We didn't care deeply enough. We keep letting these people run the place, even though they're running it into the ground. 

We sit at the table alone holding that bill because we can't hand it to those truly responsible: the state leaders who crafted the narrative that George Floyd was murdered; the race baiters who lit the fuse; the useful idiots who did the bidding of the Marxist, racist leaders who control them even if they don't know it; the DNC and their compatriots in the media who egged it all on. It's not possible to make them pay in the dollars it will take to rebuild these communities (unless Joe Biden's campaign wants to pony up some money, like it did with bail for rioters and looters who destroyed our city).

We can make them pay, however, with loss of power. Vote harder in November. Care more deeply. Do more. For God's sake, don't give your children's minds over to those who seek to indoctrinate them. Get loud. Make change happen. We have time, because a lot of these elected officials have years left on their terms. While we wait (and work), get ready for your taxes to go up, because they will. 

We've paid in so many ways: fear, insecurity, loss of livelihoods, living in the national embarrassment that Minnesota has become. Even those across the state of Minnesota who don't have anything to do with what happens in "The Cities" still pay, and we're still responsible. We have no right to go to the federal government--our fellow Americans--with our hands out.

It's time to open our wallets. Maybe not just to pay for rebuilding what was torn down, but to help elect leaders who won't let it ever happen again. 

How Dare You?

It's time for me to preach to the choir one last time. This is my last Friendly Neighborhood Republican political piece. I realize I'm never going to change the mind of one person who says, "C'mon media, lie to me some more." I can't help anyone for whom liberalism has become a religion, someone who never digs, reads or watches something from another perspective and who thinks left-wing media bias is just a vast right-wing fantasy.

This is for Republicans with whom I'm pretty damned angry; those who, given any other election, would have voted a straight Republican ticket, but this time... I've divided these voters into a few categories. My friends, I'm talking to you, and it's not that "friendly:"

1. I think this election's a joke:  If you're thinking of doing a write-in vote for Mickey Mouse or your best friend instead of voting for someone who actually has a chance to win this thing, you have my disdain. Brave Americans have fought, died, lived with PTSD, been arrested and marched in the streets for your right to stand at that poll and throw your vote away because you think it's funny. It's not. People thought it was funny to vote for Jesse Ventura, and an entire generation of Minnesotans struggle with math as a result. Your jokes have consequences.
2. I'm a Rolls Royce Republican: You're the flip side of a Limousine Liberal. You're either so wealthy or self important that you believe no matter who wins it won't change your life. You think Trump is beneath you. Hell, you think this whole race is beneath you. And yes, when Hillary mandates single-payer healthcare, you may be able to buy into some Cadillac co-op, but what about your fellow Americans? The Clinton Machine has proven classism is thriving in America, so you know there are a different set of rules for you. You'll be able to keep your guns and get away with it, etc., etc. But if you have one moral bone in your body, which I believe you do, you'll understand that though you may be able to keep your lifestyle and even buy freedom (for a while), your fellow Americans cannot. Show your patriotism by voting on their behalf.
3. I'm intentionally uninformed: You think it's bad to read the Wikileaks information because it came by ill-gotten gains. You believe Democrats when they say the Wikileaks e-mails aren't real. Do you remember this is politics, people? Do you really believe CNN fired Donna Brazile for no reason? Do you think the DNC fired chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (immediately hired by upstanding moralist HRC) for giggles? These entities are proving the legitimacy of the Wikileaks e-mails from both the DNC and Hillary's campaign manager, John Podesta, by their resulting actions. Remember some of the e-mails are from the FBI as well. Read them, believe them, and realize this is how America will be treated if you allow Hillary to become our next president by your inaction.
4. Trump will get us into WWIII:  You believe because of his brash style he'll pop off and say something to some dictator that'll get us into a war. That's speculation. A person's prior acts predict future acts. Hillary's much more hawkish than Trump, which her tenure as Secretary of State during which she destabilized Syria, Libya, Iraq (there are too many horrible actions to list) shows. There are U.S. troops, as I write, risking their lives to win Mosul back from Isis. Our troops already fought and died to win Mosul. Hillary/Obama's decision to pull out of Iraq has sent our men and women to death's red carpet to fight for a city they already won. Obama is actually willing and ready to get into a cyber war with Russia over the Wikileaks e-mails! Let that sink in. They're willing to commit an act of war against a nuclear power over e-mails about Hillary's campaign, not even United States secrets. Do you want that on your conscience?
5. I'm punishing somebody:  You're a Trump supporter who's mad at a Republican member of congress because he won't endorse Trump. You're punishing him by not voting for him. The uber-liberal Democrat running against him will probably win, but you don't care. You think there's no difference between the two. Do you understand how this works? It's all about seats. If Republicans lose too many seats, Paul Ryan will no longer be Speaker of the House. You say, "He's a RHINO anyway." Sigh. It's imperative no matter who is president that Republicans maintain congressional power to balance power if Hillary wins and to help Republicans get their agenda made into law if Trump wins. Not to mention, the Speaker of the House is third in line to the presidency. If you don't vote Republican on the down ticket out of spite, we might get this. I hope it haunts your dreams.
   
                                              
6. My vote isn't important: This person also believes there is no voter fraud. No matter how many times you're told "every vote counts," it doesn't sink in. I live in Minnesota, a place where it feels like my many votes for Republican presidential candidates may as well have been burned. Whether the Republican won the national election or not, he never won my state. Don't be the kind of person who gives up. Participate in the process anyway because, just maybe, your vote could change the tide (not like Obama promised his presidency would do in 2008; Hubris is Obama's best friend).
7. I can't choose--they're both horrible:  Do you think every other voter in America is dancing through a field of daisies because of what a fabulous choice they have? You think politicians are all corrupt. You're forgetting Trump isn't a politician. The very reason so many in the establishment are against him is because they're afraid for their often wasteful jobs. Yes, Trump has done and said bad things. But did he sell 20 percent of America's uranium to Russia? Or did he use his position as Secretary of State to take food out of the mouths of starving children in Haiti to fill his pockets? Think of it this way: which candidate do you think loves America and Americans and won't intentionally do harm? Which candidate will sell America to the highest bidder? Voting is partially about being an adult. Be a grown up and choose. Unless it's her. Then stay home. 

A note to to Bernie supporters: I cannot for the life of me understand how you could go into that voting booth and choose the woman who stole your constitutional right to vote for the candidate of your choice. I'm not asking you to vote for Trump; but please, don't reward a person who screwed you against your will and then told you to just throw a little ice on that fat lip.

If you think you can just not vote, or leave the presidential vote blank, you may rationalize it by thinking, "I've washed my hands of this." But that doesn't leave you clean. Your inaction causes action, and your hands are still dirty.

Please vote.

Hillary makes blatant public call for voter suppression! (CAUTION: Satire Alert!)

On August 10, Hillary Clinton spoke to a rally of supporters in Des Moines, Iowa. Referring to Donald Trump's recent comments on the Second Amendment, she said: “Yesterday we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments by Donald Trump that crossed the line.” She went on to say, “As a young man in Florida said to me the other day, friends don’t let friends vote for Trump.”

Who has crossed the line now?

She's continued to say this phrase at rallies in the following days. "Friends don't let friends vote for Trump." I can't believe I'm hearing this from a presidential candidate. She's suggesting that her supporters commit voter suppression by stopping friends from voting if they intend to vote for Trump!

Voter suppression is, by definition, a strategy to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing people from exercising the right to vote. Isn't that exactly what Hillary is asking her supporters to do?

Adding to the offensive nature of this comment is the fact that it's a direct ripoff of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) slogan, "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." In 1983, MADD introduced this slogan urging people to look out for the lives of friends and others on the road by stopping them from drunk driving. One popular TV commercial said, "...do whatever it takes to stop him." According to the AdCouncil, since MADD launched the campaign, 68 percent of Americans report they have tried to prevent someone from driving after drinking. It's clearly very effective. 

How dare Hillary twist this laudable slogan to incite people to commit federal crimes!

By appropriating MADD's slogan, is Hillary suggesting her supporters "do anything to stop them?" The ways to stop someone from getting to the polls could be easily carried out on a massive scale, as she instructs them to do it at each rally she holds. All of her rallies are available online, thus expanding the numbers of devotees who'll hear her calls to action.

Hillary has repeatedly urged supporters to stop friends from exercising their right to vote because they'd vote for Trump. By using the plural "friends," she's asking her followers to commit multiple criminal acts of voter suppression. She leaves it to her followers to decide how to carry out this form of voter fraud.  

Voter suppression laws vary by state, but federal laws supersede any state provisions in federal elections. There are specific federal laws against, and penalties for, bribing or in any way preventing a person from exercising his or her right to vote.

What kind of temperament must a presidential candidate have to openly tell people to commit voter suppression? Doesn't this repeated command alone suggest Hillary Clinton is unfit for the office of President of the United States?

This kind of dangerous rhetoric cannot go unexamined and ignored, but the mainstream media will likely do both. It's up us to point out this egregious authoritarian order for the mass commission of federal criminal voter suppression being made by a presidential candidate. Our election integrity is at risk.

Speaking about Trump's controversial Second Amendment remark, retired Gen. Michael Hayden told CNN, "You’re not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear." 

When Hillary says, "Friends don't let friends vote for Trump," some may hear the silly appropriation of a famous slogan meant to induce laughter. However, others may hear a command to commit voter suppression. How many will heed her call?

The real question is, why is Trump the only candidate to be held responsible for "what people hear?"

Twitter Nation: The fatal blow to civil discourse?

Twitter is an odd place. I don't think anything of importance should be discussed in 140-character quips. (I've always held disdain for Quippers.) I think it's a wasted place for truth seekers and people who like to argue specifics. Somewhere along the way we became a sound-bite nation. Twitter Nation is much worse.

Nothing makes me wince more than hearing, "the president tweeted..." Seriously? What could sound more undignified than that? I long for the days of, "the White House has released a statement..." I guess I'm just old fashioned, or I like to wade more than ankle deep. 

I've responded to tweets about which the authors clearly knew nothing. I just want to discuss the issues. I've had many responses, but not about the subject, only barbs "informing" me that I'm stupid, uneducated, etc. One personal attack after another, some so specific I wondered why they'd bother because the odds they'd be correct were slim to none because THEY DON'T KNOW ME. 

Typical, but not exclusive to Twitter. I've had painful personal experiences when having face-to-face political discussions with people who disagree with everything I stand for. You know those people. They exhaust the talking points they've been fed, and then it's guerrilla warfare on everything about your person. 

There have been wild assumptions about my intellectual capacity, my physical health, my abilities (or lack thereof), even my sex life. This seems to happen only because, if we were politicians, there would be an (R) after my name and a (D) after theirs. It goes no deeper than that. 

I once had a response to what was a very heartfelt essay I wrote about my father-in-law's funeral, with full military honors, at Arlington National Cemetery. I wrote it to both honor him and to give the reader an eye-witness account of a uniquely American experience most will never see. Not one political statement was in it. Yet some social media geniuses responded: "Nice piece, but it would have been more meaningful if you weren't a Republican." 

Deep breath.

I've lost friends, or those I considered so, because of that (R). I've lost the common courtesy of neighbors because of the signs in my yard. Who does that?

I don't deny that conservatives sometimes originate getting-us-nowhere exchanges. (Donald Trump, are you listening?) But it seems to be a liberal gift, hewn and polished after years of indoctrination by media and education systems that deliberately discourage discourse and encourage skim-the-surface liberalism. Twitter, I believe, was inevitably conceived from this way of thinking. Its products of conception are too shallow to quench anyone's thirst, unless you thirst to belittle others. Things are seldom learned there. Ideas remain unchanged. Users tweet to the choir and bully those in the band. 

I have a few lovely liberal friends who don't hate me for what I stand for, and I feel the same about them. We love each other because of shared experiences and so much more and, frankly, an explicit agreement to never let our politics get in the way of our relationships. We discuss this openly, and we mean it when we say it.

I don't think we have to be the exception. I've seen a marriage of more than 70 years last between a liberal and a conservative. They'd joke that when they went to the polls, they cancelled out each other's votes. This isn't the only such marriage I've seen.

So some of us are capable of much more than just peaceful coexistence. Most want to beat others over the head, and organisms like Twitter would die without them. I would not mourn. 

As the great Joan Rivers used to say, "Can we talk?" I think the answer is:  maybe. We're becoming a nation of bullies and bullshitters cloaked in the the anonymity Twitter provides. That's not talking. We may be a Twitter Nation, but it's not a Twitter Universe--yet. Discourse doesn't have to die, but only if we wish to resuscitate it. I'm hearing whispers of those who wish to truly discuss the hard stuff, but it's not really happening.

I don't want to declare the Death of Discourse. Yes, I'm enough of a hard-ass to truly believe the "low-information voter" will ruin the world. Yet, I'm an inherently nice person, and I like other people, even if they voted for Obama. Maybe I'm just some naïve "Minnesota Nicer" who wants to believe people can learn from one another, and that black and white aren't the only colors.

Twitter isn't the place for me. I'll visit occasionally, but I won't live there. I'll leave that to those who love to listen to the endless echoes of their own tweets.