Michael Smith · Deuteronomy Chapter 5, verse 21 says: "Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbor’s." That's one of the Ten Commandments. As hard as I try, I simply cannot get beyond two things I believe are driving the chaos and division of the past half century. They do not spring from race, not from income or wealth, not from sex or gender - but each of those are in the toolbox. The two I've settled on are envy and power, and the combination of these two - how envy is leveraged by the unscrupulous in the quest for power. Envy means that people are far less concerned with what they lack than by what others have - and that is what drives every attack on the American variant of Western civilization. If white person has something a black person does not, that's white privilege. If a fat woman (I'm sorry, a "body positive woman of size") wants to talk about yoga because skinny women can do poses better then they can, it is fat shaming and the "existence of white supremacy and cultural appropriation in American yoga." In 2012, long before President Trump drove George Will mad as a hatter, he noted the following" "Try a thought experiment suggested decades ago by University of Chicago law professors Walter Blum and Harry Kalven in their 1952 essay “The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation,” published in their university’s law review. Suppose society’s wealth trebled overnight without any change in the relative distribution among individuals. Would the unchanged inequality at higher levels of affluence decrease concern about inequality? Surely not: The issue of inequality has become more salient as affluence has increased. Which suggests two conclusions: People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have. And when government engages in redistribution in order to maximize the happiness of citizens who become more envious as they become more comfortable, government becomes increasingly frenzied and futile." There is something about Will’s conclusion that hits to the core of the issue for all of us in 2021, something that will impact both the envious and their targets, and it is this: "People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have." In our "modern" world, satisfaction is not about what you have but a constant and pervasive obsession with what others have that you do not. Because envy operates on a sliding scale, it is a relative concept rather than an absolute concept - and that is why, as the 1952 Blum/Kalven essay reveals, it will never go away. Intellectually speaking, it is difficult to logically process when I am called selfish for simply wanting to retain as much of the money I earn as possible. I also want to keep the property that I accumulate as a result of being moderately successful and when someone wants to take it from me to give to someone or some cause not of my choosing is not acceptable to me. And yet, my resistance apparently makes me selfish and immoral. Never mind that I freely choose to “redistribute” my earnings in tithes to my church and to several different charities. I don’t defend the 1% because they are rich, I defend them because to take wealth from someone solely because they have it is simply wrong. It is immoral and is just as much theft as if it was property taken during a home invasion. There is simply no moral support for taking property from someone else simply because you don’t think they deserve it…period. Of Democrats, I have asked the key question about taxes, as many others have: "You say certain people do not pay their 'fair share' - just how much is a 'fair share'? Since the top 1% already pay more than the bottom 95%, where does it stop?" Today, taxes aren’t really about funding government, they are about finding ways to redistribute to others - but this redistribution is rarely according to need. In reality, money flows to those politically connected, the favored constituencies (minorities, immigrants or retirees) or simply to those in the mainstream of the retail industry of politics (lobbyists) - the goals of these rivers of cash are to create dependence, purchase loyalty and institute control. Taxes are always coerced contributions to government, when taxes are levied not to efficiently fund government but to impose someone's notion of redistributive justice, government is always the first, and often the principal, beneficiary of that taxation. As previously noted, envy is relative, not absolute. That also explains why the door will always be kept ajar for Marxism to enter - because Marxism is rooted in the idea that "equity" can be created and class envy/warfare resolved by bringing the top down rather than bringing the bottom up. Envy will never go away, and a long as envy is a useful tool in the quest for the Holy Grail of ultimate power, that quest will continue. Thomas Jefferson, in his letter 1816 letter to Samuel Kercheval wrote: “A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.” Here we are.

Michael Smith · Sometimes it just feels good to get things off your chest by saying it out loud so others can hear. So, here comes a mini rant. You know, we all face challenges in our daily lives, some carry existential risks like terminal diseases or being deployed to a hot zone abroad (or Chicago on a holiday weekend), but most of our challenges are just part of our daily lives. Dealing with work, the people at work, our bosses, peers, and subordinates. We have to get things done thorough authority or indirect influence, and face the issues arising from each. Some days, everybody pulls on an oar, other days they seem to want to find ways to stick a wrench in the gears. We have issues at work, at home, with the kids, the neighbors, and the kids of neighbors. Some we deal with directly, some indirectly. Some days suck, some days you deal with human sphincters – and when you do, it seems they always come in waves. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon gone bad – a cascade of human spincterism. Some days turn into weeks and it feels as if we are strapped to the mast with Odysseus on an endless voyage or slogging along on the Trials of Hercules. None of this wins us any Pulitzers, Nobels, or Oscars. There are no prizes for navigating everyday life, even though our entire civilization depends upon our ability to successfully navigate those waters every day of every week of every month and year. Our prize, if we are lucky, is getting to come back tomorrow and go at it again. Maybe Albert Camus was right, maybe Sisyphus DID find meaning in pushing that boulder up the hill every day. But some days are gold. Some days the Minotaur you have to slay is just an ankle-biting Chihuahua. The voyage of Odysseus is in an air-conditioned car. Some days people do their jobs without being told and the kids do their homework without being asked. Some days, things click – it is home on the range time, where never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. Those are great…and most years, those far outnumber the bad days. But then there are those who assume their daily lives are worthy of prizes, they seem to revel in the bad days. You know of whom I speak. The Ibram Kendi’s, the AOC’s and their racist Squads, the Pelosi’s and Schumer’s, the cast of MSNBC and CNN – all the people who tell us how grateful we should be that we have a dementia riddled septuagenarian and his barely functioning imbecilic sidekick as president and VP – basically anyone who elevates everything to a crisis level – even if they must invent some sort of outrage. I am out of patience for people who seem to go in search of something to bitch about. America is not a racist country, and we are not in danger from a white supremacist movement that would be lucky to fill up an Appleby’s on a Saturday night - and I am fed up with politicians who claim we are. I just want to be left alone to be me and to take care of my family without being insulted by elitists who presume they are elite and that their insults matter to me. The fields where my f*cks grow are barren, I have none to give.

Jane I got your last two texts. Not anything earlier.

Depends on how you pronounce it Jack. :) Pee can... definitely not rayciss, but Pe cahn is definitely rayciss and fricking snooty as well. Ditto Ant v Aunt. :)

Joe Biden surprised some observers this week when, addressing U.S. military forces at the Royal Air Force base in Mildenhall, England, he said that the nation's top military leaders told him the "greatest threat" facing America is global warming. Biden described going to a meeting in 2009 in "The Tank," which is the super-secure Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting room in the Pentagon. "And this is not a joke," Biden said. "You know what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest threat facing America was? Global warming." Biden said that was because warming would cause "significant population movements," leading to "fights over land." Given the actual military threats the United States faces today from China, Russia, North Korea, and a host of other bad actors around the globe, Biden's statement seems crazy. Is the new administration really so woke that it in a military setting -- speaking to U.S. troops -- the president would say that global warming is the greatest threat facing the United States? The answer is yes. Biden's remarks sent the nation's top generals and defense officials scrambling to explain. As it happened, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testified a short time later at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Asked about Biden's remarks, Milley tried to argue that there was no inconsistency between what the president said and what the U.S. military's mission actually is. But Milley, when asked about the greatest threats the U.S. faces, clearly was not buying the global warming argument. "The president is looking at it from a much broader angle than I am," Milley testified. "I'm looking at it from a strictly military standpoint. And from a strictly military standpoint, I'm putting China and Russia up there." Austin was also questioned about the military's priorities. U.S. military strategy puts great value on "lethality," for obvious reasons. Indeed, Milley wrote a few years ago that the Army's modernization strategy "has one simple focus: make soldiers and units more lethal." So Republican Senator Dan Sullivan asked Austin, "Mr. Secretary, in your opening statement, you mentioned climate change 15 times and lethality twice, which I think is a bit of a mismatch." Austin tried to backtrack a bit, questioning whether he had really mentioned climate change 15 times (he had). ~Byron York, the Washington Examiner

The left are enjoying a unique coincidence of circumstances that is greatly magnifying their political impact, while the rest of America — especially its moderates — are too preoccupied to complain. The left’s message is everywhere, and their agenda is advancing at the local, state and national level. It follows that the left must be proportionally larger than at any point in America’s history, right? Wrong. The left’s seemingly ominous size is an illusion. What is larger is not the left but the left’s influence. Despite the left appearing to be America’s new majority, the left are a small minority. Exit polling from 2020’s presidential election found just 24 percent of voters self-identified as liberal. Even if all these voters were the radical left, which they are not, they would be just a quarter of America’s electorate. That every liberal voter is not a leftist supporter is indicated by the fact that 10 percent of liberals voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Subtracting these out lowers the possible leftist ceiling to just 21.6 percent of America’s voters. It is safe to assume that even within this roughly one-fifth of the electorate there is opposition to the radical left. It is therefore plausible that the radical left are outnumbered by over four to one in America. If the left’s illusion is due to such unique factors (CoVid-19), why does it still continue? The left are preoccupied with retaining their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; the rest of America are preoccupied with regaining their normal lives. There is a reason why virtually all protests are the left’s: The left live to protest, while the rest of America have lives to live. Wagging the dog is a cynical political expression. It describes a small minority ludicrously reversing the normal situation. In America, this can only happen if the dog allows itself to be wagged. ~J.T. Young, the Washington Times

Damn it! I'm going to lose my injun race card, aren't I??? And my right leg was just getting used to getting kicked by my left leg for its oppression. On the bright side, (see, I'm exhibiting racist positivity already :( )I should be able to get a decent nights sleep without all the leg kicking now...

Michael Smith 2h · Democrats have always used radical groups as victims, insurgents and ultimately, as human shields. I have noted in the past that the Democrat Party is not really a single political party, it is a coalition of interest an issue groups, often groups with wildly disparate and mutually exclusive interests. The miracle of the Democrats is how they alternately use these groups as victims while they placate others, making mutually exclusive promises that can never be satisfied in order to maintain control over the groups. If you wonder why they put up with the rabid anti-Semitism of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the openly racial hatred of Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush and the communist pronouncements of Sandy Cortez, this is why. What the Democrats do amounts to a mass case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Taking the outward manifestations of this syndrome and modifying them only to reflect the political realm instead of the medical, we get someone who: • Has political skills or experience. • Seems devoted to his or her country. • Looks for sympathy and attention. • Tries too hard to become close and friendly with the electorate. • Needs to feel powerful and in control. • Does not see his or her behavior as harmful. The way they treat their constituent groups bear a strong resemblance to the way purveyors of Munchausen treat their victim and for the same reasons. The University of Michigan Health Systems indicates that a doctor or nurse may suspect Munchausen when: • A child [a particular group in America] has a repeated or unusual illness, and no reason can be found. • The child [America or a particular group] does not get better, even with treatments that should help. Symptoms only occur when the caregiver [Democrats] is with or has recently been with the child. But symptoms get better or go away when the caregiver [Democrats] is not there or is being closely watched. • The other parent (usually the father) [the GOP] is not involved in the child's treatment, even though the child's condition may be serious. • A caregiver [Democrats] suddenly changes doctors and lies about prior testing and treatment. • Normal test results do not reassure the caregiver [Democrats]. And he or she [the Democrats] may be strangely calm or happy when the child's [a particular group in America] condition is getting worse. • The caregiver [Democrats] is seen (or videotaped or recorded) harming the child or causing symptoms. • Another child [a particular group in America] in the family has had unexplained illness or death. It is not too difficult to make the bracketed substitutions in the above and see the undeniable similarities. The apparent ethos of the Democrat Party seems not so much America hating, no matter how strong it appears to be. It seems to me to be more resentment than real hate, some sort of a mass inferiority complex, a self-loathing condition brought about by an overwhelming suspicion their ideology is simply unworkable and wrong for America. Strongly suspecting they are fraudulently insufficient; it is their overpowering desire to be seen as a sympathetic figure and somewhat curiously, it seems they have come to enjoy the satisfaction of deceiving people whom they perceive to be more powerful than themselves. I am in no way qualified to make a medical diagnosis, but it is not terribly difficult for the layman to see the manipulation, deceit, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others common to psychopathy and sociopathy embedded in the way at least the 75 million people who voted for President Trump are treated. It is not difficult to see the callousness and detachment of the Democrats when anything they propose is questioned or opposed. Former President Obama demonstrated all of those characteristics in his most recent interview, especially when speaking of Critical Race Theory. “That boy ain’t right in the head,” was something my granddaddy used to say about a local boy who did irrational and outrageous things. I can see him saying that about the contemporary Democrats – and he would not be wrong. They ain’t right.

I didn't get them, Jane.

Sharyl Attkisson: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) has sent a letter to the U.S. Capitol Police asking how and why a key door to the Capitol that was initially locked, became unlocked, allowing hundreds of unauthorized people to enter the Capitol on January 6. According to the letter, Johnson and his staff have reviewed security camera videotape showing the following timeline of events on the day of the pro-Trump rally and subsequent rioting at the Capitol building, despite Trump's calls for peace: At approximately 2:26 p.m.: an unauthorized man inside the Capitol tried to open one of the upper west terrace double doors to exit the building by pushing the door’s crash bar. The door did not open and the man turned around and walked back through the hallway and away from the doors. At 2:33 p.m., five unauthorized people walked down the same hallway, past a police officer who appeared to gesture toward the doors. This time, when one of the individuals pushed the door's crash bar, it opened. All five people exited the building, leaving the door ajar for a moment allowing people from outside to gain entry. At 2:34 p.m., the police officer near the door walked away from the door out of the view of the security camera. At 2:35 p.m., five police officers not wearing riot gear or protective equipment came to the doorway and blocked people from continuing to enter. Four unauthorized people pushed past the officers and a surge entered the building. The police officers did not appear to take action to stop or block people for several minutes. At 2:40 p.m., the five police officers came back to the door and stopped the surge of people from entering, and appeared to be talking with some of them. At 2:44 p.m., around the time Ashli Babbitt was shot inside by a Capitol Police officer, one of the five police at the exterior door looked over his shoulder toward the interior of the Capitol building, appeared to speak to a colleague, and then the group slowly retreated from the doorway allowing a surge of people to enter. At 2:47 p.m. law enforcement closed the doors. Johnson is posing a series of questions to Acting Police Chief Yogananda Pittman.

I logged into the Hooters site to see what new changes to the menu are there and it insists that I am located in St Thomas. I wish!!! New menu item... bacon wrapped wings. Naked, Fried then finished on the smoker with the Daytona Beach sauce. Umm Yum!

ça valait le coup!

Our male yorkie will get up on tippy toes and challenge anything bigger than he. He doesn't take to people other than family, but he has adopted Jane. He LOVES her.

The Hill · JUST IN: Sen. Mitt Romney, who is negotiating within a bipartisan group of 10 senators, says he and his colleagues have reached a tentative deal on the size of an infrastructure package and how to pay for it.

Michael Smith · So much of the ridiculousness in our society today can be laid at the feet of an ignorant, incurious, and biased press. If you think most of our “free press” are either highly paid preening peacocks of progressivism or nubile young “investigative reporters” with a journalism degree and a brain filled with mush who could not form a rational line of thought if you gave them a million dollars, you would not be far from wrong. That is why absurdist theorists, like Ibram X. Kendi (aka Ibram Henry Rogers) and Anthony Fauci, can go on TV and never get challenged for statements they make with confidence but that are clearly and demonstrably known to be wrong. Often the consumers of the news, the public at large, are assumed to be the problem, lacking the capacity of thinking critically – and while that may have some Creedence, humans have some degree of logic built into our DNA, sort of an epigenetic capacity the same as the way baby animals born in nature possess survival skills from the moment of birth. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked”, I believe the same goes for humans – most of humanity has a bullshit detector encoded at the genetic level – functioning at varying degrees, of course, but independent of formal education and always active. It is not so much that the bullshit detector of the people is not working, it often gets overridden. Many, especially if they watch local news or the Alphabet Networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS), never hear both sides of any story and therefore never have enough information to form alternate hypothesis for themselves. There are so few reporters and editors belonging to any “news” outlet that have the will or capacity to examine situations in a critical way, form probing consequential questions and challenge the “newsmaker” on their premises, positions, and pronouncements. When examining people or events fitting their perspectives and biases, they play softball, when grilling that and whom with which they disagree, their questions are equally as absurd, better fitting the “gotcha” category or taking the form of a statement rather than a question. Even comedians fit this description. There once was a time when comedians would skewer politicians and others in the public eye for their idiocy, using sarcasm and parody to get at the truth. No more. Now it is one-way, politically motivated smugness, snark, and anger, 99% of which is directed at the Republican side of any issue. Back when there were only three major news outlets (the over the air broadcast networks), the public was exposed to public intellectuals like William F. Buckley and comedians like Johnny Carson, both who could cut through the miasma of bullshit and distill the facts. Running from 1966 to 1999, Buckley’s Firing Line program was legendary for its probing debates – the current iteration, resurrected in 2018 and moderated by Margaret Hoover is an embarrassment, a PBS’s cookie cutter version of any talk show on CNN. Similarly, Carson’s “Tonight Show” brought forward the issues of the day through comedy and taught us how to bring down the high and mighty with mirth that cut to the heart of every matter. The late night “comedy” shows of today occupying the old “Tonight Show” time slot – Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon – are all in-kind contributions to the Democrat Party. PBS has always catered to the left leaning tote bag carrying, socks with Birkenstocks crowd but even they were once capable of producing fair, thought-provoking programs that promoted critical thought. In 1980, PBS produced what is perhaps one of the most important and consequential series in television history. “Free to Choose” starring 1976 Nobel Prize winning Milton Friedman and his wife Rose Friedman, and equally gifted economist, presented the case for the Austrian School style of free market economics, that ran directly counter to the prevailing Keynesian economic “wisdom” of the times. 41 years on, those programs are still available on YouTube and for purchase and are some of the most succinct and powerful cases for free market economics ever produced. It is unlikely we will ever see the likes of such programming from PBS or any broadcast network again and for that reason, those ten hours of programming should be required viewing for every high schooler in America. Add to the presentation of only one side of any position, an equal danger is how the mainstream media simply ignores any story not helpful to their allies or supportive of their narratives. Hunter Biden’s Laptop, the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, spying on the Trump campaign by Obama’s DOJ, exculpatory evidence in the Mueller “investigations”, the examples are legion – and since only right leaning outlets on cable and on the Internet even consider such things, the mainstream brands anything opposing their biases as “conspiracy theories”. But the media has long seen itself as the gatekeeper for what people should be allowed to hear. I recall the late, great Tony Blankley writing in 2004 about how the mainstream media simply ignored the John Kerry “Swift Boat” story: “According to Editor and Publisher, the respected voice of official big-time journalism: ‘Chicago Tribune managing editor James O’Shea tells Joe Strupp the Swift Boat controversy may be an instance of a growing problem for newspapers in the expanding media world — being forced to follow a questionable story because non-print outlets have made it an issue. “There are too many places for people to get information,” says O’Shea. “I don’t think newspapers can be gatekeepers anymore — to say this is wrong, and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why.” Now, there are two revealing statements there. First, it is odd to see Mr. O’Shea, an official, credentialed seeker of truth, complaining about “too many places for people to get information.” He sounds like a resentful old apparatchik glaring at a Xerox machine in the dying days of the Soviet Union. The second noteworthy statement is the hilarious complaint that they can no longer merely think a story is wrong and ignore it: “Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why.” It apparently escaped his thought process that if he hadn’t yet investigated the story, it might not be “wrong.” A seeker of truth in a competitive environment might have phrased the sentence: “Now we will have to report it to determine if it is right or wrong.” In the shadows of Obama and Hillary’s Benghazi scandal, Pat Cadell, long time pollster for the Democrats, was far harsher: “First of all, we’ve had 9 days of lies…If a president of either party…had had a terrorist incident and gotten on an airplane [after remarks] and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified…it should have been, should have been, the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s ‘flying over Katrina’ moment. But nothing was said at all. Nothing will be said. […] It is [unacceptable] to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know. [The MSM] has made themselves the enemy of the American people. It is a threat to the very future of the country; we’ve crossed a new and frightening line on the slippery slope, and it needs to be talked about.” The founders created the First Amendment guaranteeing a free press -and it was first for a reason, it was due to the recognition that the public needed an oversight role. The people should know the facts and be free to choose (no pun intended), it was known that a captive and biased press would do little more than run interference and provide cover for elected officials – and they were right. Pat Caddell hit the nail on the head when he said that the mainstream media has made themselves the enemy of the people.

Michael Smith · Every now and again, I think about ancient civilizations and how many seem to have just disappeared - vanished without a trace. Even those leaving a historical record reveal what a true fallacy it is to believe that everything around us now, everything we enjoy, is somehow fixed in permanence. There is evidence of technologically advanced civilizations, some with technologies of which we cannot explain today, so it appears that technology alone is not an effective hedge against destruction. Given the direction we seem to be headed, the serial destruction of the past is likely a precursor of our future – and that is likely a future of self-destruction. While it seems absurd and illogical that the greatest period of human well being, the most widespread prosperity and yielding the greatest decree of individual liberty is met with such all-consuming distaste, disgust and anger, here we are. People have had it easy for so long, they are so steeped in falsity that our contemporary ease is permanent, that they have no idea how thin the line between civilization and savagery truly is. Some believe society will simply decline, that we will be forced to accept a lower standard of living, but it is just as likely that society will simply collapse. We have had a little taste of what that looks like during the first months of the pandemic lockdowns - the grocery shelves became bare after about three days and within a week, there were items that weren't available at any price. We saw reports of panic and fistfights - items we would have considered inconsequential - if they were considered at all - suddenly acquired such importance as to be worthy of violence. Now imagine what that would be like if the power grid completely fails or the oil and gas industry crashes - there is food in inventory, it just is rolling in trucks on our highways, trucks that depend on fossil fuels. When electricity and fuel stop, the food stops rolling. Western civilization is clearly on a path to destroy itself and return to savagery to start it all over again. There are no end-times, we only reset every several thousand years so that humans can be reminded of what true reality looks like. But any decline is a choice – we have the power to stop it – even if history is apparently not on our side. History notes that civilizations in ascendance survive, those in retrograde do not. History is not necessarily predictive, we change our personal history every day for better or worse by our choices. The signs of regression are all around us – but the answer is in there – WE HAVE A CHOICE.

Michael Smith · The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, ratified 15 December 1791, states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The creators of the Bill of Rights clearly believed in the power of the negative - the word "no" and all its formulations indicating things the government may NOT do. There is an obvious reason that the Founders specifically indicated that Congress was to make NO law with respect to these negative rights. It is because true liberty can only be achieved through the absence of law, not the presence of it. This is the very reason that John Adams said that our Constitution could only govern a “moral and religious people” – the “laws” required to maintain our Republic are not those passed in the various legislative bodies, the required laws must reside in our own bodies, in our hearts and minds. There is an oft noted quote of James Madison referencing “voluminous laws” but citing only this small excerpt from Federalist #62 does a great disservice to the wisdom of Publius. What comes after is at least equally as important: “The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.” How true it is that laws are made for the few, not for the many, that it has become acceptable for laws to be selectively created to advantage this group or that, while trespassing on the rights of the majority to do so. I do not argue that there should be no laws, as that would imply anarchy – but I while I do understand that laws to protect basic rights and liberties are necessary (prohibiting murder for example), I also understand that laws that seek to govern all aspects of human interaction are like fractures on the surface of a frozen lake, radiating out from the initial point of stress in infinite and random directions. Their magnitude and reach are impossible to predict as is the degree of destruction and weakness they impart to the ice. You may be able to cross without falling though, you may not – and with every step you take, the fractures spread further and in even more unpredictable directions. Such is the nature of law. Publius (Madison) ended Federalist #62 thus: “No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.” The stability of which good Publius speaks is necessary for liberty. Contrary to our modern propensity to regulate all, Publius and the other Founders understood that since laws are made for the few, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of law and such stability. The downfall of the American Republic lies in too many laws, not too few. It lies in the substitution of government control for self-control. I think this is what Ben Franklin meant when in response to the question of what type of government we created, he said: “A Republic, if you can keep it.” More laws augur less stability and therefore, less liberty. An irrefutable truth is this: that which governs best is that which governs least.

“Villalobos’ election should surprise absolutely no one who followed how counties in the Rio Grande Valley swung heavily toward Trump in the last election,” says Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. As Mr. Gonzalez notes, the auguries were there for anyone who cared to look. In 2016 Hillary Clinton carried Hidalgo County by 41 points. But in 2020, Joe Biden won by only 17 points. Meanwhile Zapata County—what the Washington Post calls “the bluest of blue counties along the river”—flipped for Donald Trump in 2020, the first victory for a GOP presidential candidate there since Warren G. Harding a century ago. These developments have Democrats sounding the alarm. A May postelection analysis by a trio of left-leaning organizations noted that while Latino turnout in 2020 grew “dramatically” over 2016, Democrats saw a “significant dip in support in places with high concentrations of Latino and Hispanic voters.” Nor were Republicans simply sitting on the sidelines all the while. When asked by Texas Monthly what was attractive to Latinos about the Republican Party, Chuck Rocha, an adviser to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, answered this way: “At the Republican National Convention, the party had one Latino speaker after another telling their immigration story and how they lived the American dream. And if you just sit back and watch that or read the coverage, you might think, ‘Hey, these Republicans are all right. They like immigrants. They want to build entrepreneurship. They want us to all be rich like Donald Trump.’ ” A recent survey asked Latinos to choose between two statements. The first was unadulterated Milton Friedman : “Some people say free-market capitalism is the best form of government because it gives people the freedom to work and achieve.” The second was what we might call the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez option: “Other people say that socialism is the best form of government because it is more fair and equitable to working class people.” Almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents opted for the Friedman position, against only 17% for the AOC line. Hardly surprising, given that so many Latinos came to the U.S. in the first place to escape socialism. ~William McGurn, the Wall Street Journal

Willowed: Sorry, Jane. Posted and ran out to dinner. I think more people are fed up, but I'm not certain that they are channeling their anger at the right target. Too many still are under the spell of their prejudices from years ago where they were supported in their belief that the dems were the good guys. They still haven't quite wrapped their heads around how they have been bamboozled (who likes to admit they were a rube?), so they are flailing around looking for a target. Many, though, are realizing that the conservatives don't fit that bill. Orange man is still labeled as 'bad' as he, to their minds, isn't a 'real conservative.' +++++++ So we went to All Star Grill tonight for 75cent wings. The layout of the place is restaurant on the left, open air bar across the front of the building and down the right side is pool tables and darts and such. We start to walk past the restaurant to go into the open air bar (live music 6-10) and on the door to the restaurant is a sign for a meeting... Convention of States. Turns out they meet there once a month on the second Tuesday, and the attendance tonight was pretty good. The owner, Andy, (BIG Bears fan), is very active with the COS. Totally gobsmacked. In a good way. From our interactions with him going there several times, he's a great guy, but I'm not sure I would have pegged him as a conservative. Transplant from Chicago and all that... WE NEED TO GO TO THE NEXT MEETING!!!! Plus it is a hoot to watch all the 70+ yo's shaking a leg on the dance floor. No walkers involved that I could see, but I couldn't see all the dancers.

Sorry, Jane. Posted and ran out to dinner. I think more people are fed up, but I'm not certain that they are channeling their anger at the right target. Too many still are under the spell of their prejudices from years ago where they were supported in their belief that the dems were the good guys. They still haven't quite wrapped their heads around how they have been bamboozled (who likes to admit they were a rube?), so they are flailing around looking for a target. Many, though, are realizing that the conservatives don't fit that bill. Orange man is still labeled as 'bad' as he, to their minds, isn't a 'real conservative.' +++++++ So we went to All Star Grill tonight for 75cent wings. The layout of the place is restaurant on the left, open air bar across the front of the building and down the right side is pool tables and darts and such. We start to walk past the restaurant to go into the open air bar (live music 6-10) and on the door to the restaurant is a sign for a meeting... Convention of States. Turns out they meet there once a month on the second Tuesday, and the attendance tonight was pretty good. The owner, Andy, (BIG Bears fan), is very active with the COS. Totally gobsmacked. In a good way. From our interactions with him going there several times, he's a great guy, but I'm not sure I would have pegged him as a conservative. Transplant from Chicago and all that... WE NEED TO GO TO THE NEXT MEETING!!!! Plus it is a hoot to watch all the 70+ yo's shaking a leg on the dance floor. No walkers involved that I could see, but I couldn't see all the dancers.

From the SW FB page: Hi! I am interested in visiting Discovery Cove but concerned about covid since my kids are not yet vaccinated and could not be wearing masks in the water. Can anyone give me an idea of how crowded is usually since this is a different type of park? Some days it is an effort not to strangle everyone that is an idiot....

Michael Smith. · The Democrat narrative of "democracy" being destroyed by any action by anyone not them is simply the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard - but you have to give them credit, they say it with such conviction and forcefulness, it must be true, right? It is remarkable they have the energy to keep Orwell's "two minutes hate" going for 24 hours of every day, week, month and year. In 1984, the purpose of the "Two Minutes Hate" is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatreds towards politically expedient enemies and to re-direct the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's government of Oceania and onto the "enemies of the state". No difference here except, of course, for the grating, grinding, debilitating fatigue of listening to the constant white noise of their complaints. Jean Kirkpatrick prophetically (she said it in 1984) got it right when she called them the "blame America first crowd". As an example, AOC just tweeted, "...the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing." Well, Jean Kirkpatrick did say: "When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago." So at least the Democrats are consistent there... That is who the Democrats were then, that is who they are now - except they no longer feel compelled to hide it. If you are an outspoken conservative, there is a good chance you have been attacked on a personal level for some imagined infraction. If you support the 2A and have been accused of supporting murder, if you have ever opted for chivalry, you have been called sexist, if you are a Christian, you are an anti-Muslim bigot, and if you are male and exhibit any evidence of manliness, you are accused of “toxic masculinity”. And now that everything is racist, if you are white and point out fallacies in race rhetoric (like CRT) – there is no doubt in their minds the only reason you aren't wearing a KKK robe and hood is that you got ash on it at the last cross burning and it is at the cleaners. I have been blocked on social media by people I have known for decades, some I have known since elementary school, because they believe I am an "insurrectionist" - all because I am a libertarian-leaning conservative who believes in the constitution of our representative republic. It is all so tiresome and predictable - there is one incident from a few years ago, one that could have happened last week, that sticks out in my mind. A local friend (former friend, to be accurate - her choice, not mine) and I got into a wide-ranging discussion (more like rambling – structured thought is a rare commodity on the left) that ran the gamut from Jordan Peterson to the Arizona teacher’s strike (ongoing in 2018). She began to lecture me that my positions are “not what America is” and when I asked her to define what American values are to her, I got a bunch of Marxist claptrap that was nothing even close to what our founding principles support. Even then, I got the standard detritus of "equity, diversity and inclusion", a lecture on how I was a white nationalist and how Donald Trump was destroying the Constitution. To show you nothing is really new, in 2018, my former friend was blaming the US for illegal immigration, almost exactly as AOC just did. My former friend and her husband are both educated and successful professionals – he was an investment banker and retired at 55, she was a lawyer with a major firm in LA until relocating to Utah after her husband retired a few years ago. They don’t have kids to put through college and I wouldn’t say they are “rich” but they are certainly comfortable. Things went sideways when I asked how she could reconcile their financial success and security with her Marxist leanings – how she could be so against the very things that allowed her the luxury to live the way they do. I pointed out that to be a rich progressive is bit of a paradox because while she argues for collectivism, she is exactly the type of bourgeoisie the Marxists come for first. Instead of addressing the irreconcilable contradictions between her beliefs and the way she lives her life, she attacked me for even raising the issue. None of my business, she said. I tried to explain to her that while I disagree totally with her politics, I could still be her friend and care what happens to her as a person. She told me that she could not do the same for me. She could not separate me from my political positions. When I told her that she was making an emotional decision, she actually told me that America would be better if people like me didn’t exist. Sort of shocking but I found out that while I despise her politics, she despises ME. She hates me for being me and once you get them to admit that, there is no coming back from that point. It is not just her - from Dr. Aruna Khilanani, the Yale lecturer who "had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way" (another likely contradiction because I'll bet she is against private ownership of guns) to Mark Judson, the failed Democratic House candidate from North Carolina who fantasized about the utopia America could become “if every single Republican voter disappeared”, this is sadly now pretty much par for the course. For Democrats to win, they must destroy people like me (and you, too). For the left, there is no difference between the political and the personal. I am reminded of the revealing truth of Charles Krauthammer’s statement that conservatives think liberals are wrong but liberals think conservatives are evil. It is no surprise America is in trouble when half of its politically active population would rather accuse the other half of being evil incarnate before addressing and resolving their own internal contradictions.

Where is that column from stephanie? FB She writes for Victory Girls blog and others.

Woke culture is dying. “White” culture is thriving. June 5, 2021 Elizabeth Nickson It was inevitable that cool cities would collapse. Richard Florida’s creative class was always young, penniless and non-family-forming, so the piles and stacks of taxpayer money puffing and fluffing inevitably attracted the international criminal class and inevitably debouched the middle class. Leaving the desperate to loot and kill. Schools are losing pupils as fast as they adopt Marxism as a guiding principle. Home schooling is up 125% in many states. Colleges have lost as much as 20% of their students, as parents become aware of just what is being taught in the humanities and find themselves unwilling to pay for it. In literature, which has been annexed by pissed off people-of-colour, Marxist haters, and ever more narrow slivers of the sexual identity rainbow, little has universality, verisimilitude, or frankly interest to normies which are the target market. Last summer during the 275 Black Lives Matter riots, sales of black-written books soared 950%, but once the one billion dollars in damages are absorbed, the cities rebuilt, will anyone return for an encore? The great lizard Dowager of the rich and disgusting, Conde Nast has turned entirely woke and now loses $100 million year on year. In Canada, the full-on hate and payback at the CBC eats up half of the news media and loses $1.5 billion a year. Only 5% of Canadians watch it. TV adverts show endless scenes of happy black families but Canada is 3.5% black and the US only 12%. Result? Mockery of the product. Culture, high and low has taken centre stage since the 60’s and it could not be fading faster. Pop music has descended into porn, art is made for the globalist crime families, theatre is agit prop, prestige movies are flat-out propaganda, funded by the CCP. When the Met Ball becomes a venue for class and white hatred, will anyone watch the fucking thing? The middle class has taken its ball and gone home. Back to the counties and small towns they fought to get out of fifty years ago. Young family formation is exploding in the exurbs. Forty-seven percent of city dwellers 25-35 would move to the country if they could and 39% are planning to. Country house prices rose 35% in my region last year. In Britain, the counties growing faster are in the northern reaches of England, as far from The Big Smoke as possible. Bad weather, you see, repels slime. Try to buy tomato cages or anything remotely related to growing food and your wait is at least a month. Country people, and the culture that supports them are massively disinterested in elite concerns of race war, socialism and the body blows of politics. Prepping isn’t fringe anymore, given the absurdity in the culture, it is sensible. And inch by inch, people are returning to the Great Commission, the culture and beliefs of the early founders, the fixed principle that gifts profound self-respect if you sacrifice your energy and time to the well-being of your community. School boards are facing down well-educated early retirees who, aware of what’s being taught are contemplating pillories, tar and feathers. When they figure out the fiscal catastrophe looming for every county and town and region, they will want flamethrowers. And inch by inch, people are returning to the Great Commission, the culture and beliefs of the early founders, the fixed principle that gifts profound self-respect if you sacrifice your energy and time to the well-being of your community. School boards are facing down well-educated early retirees who, aware of what’s being taught are contemplating pillories, tar and feathers. When they figure out the fiscal catastrophe looming for every county and town and region, they will want flamethrowers. The American middle class is the world’s great wonder. It is also the world’s great target, the focus of every malignant foreign leader, multinational cabal or crime syndicate. International Communism rests on the assumption that only with the wealth of the United States, can it become dominant. Last year meant that the massive, secretive, genocidal syndicate, responsible for the slaughter of a hundred million, has lost Fortress America.

Senator Rand Paul 45m · Great news! Cleveland clinic study of 52,238 employees shows unvaccinated people who have had COVID 19 have no difference in re-infection rate than people who had COVID 19 and who took the vaccine. This information frees up millions of doses of vaccines for those not yet infected in places with vaccine shortages like India.