Liberty not preserved by weakness          

In days of United States infancy, upstart patriots strove courageously to topple British King George III's tyrannical dominance of the emergent New Land. We owe a tremendous debt to those champions of precious liberty.

Not least, because voices now counsel timidity.

Iowa's Des Moines Register recently carried an article  originally featured by fellow Gannett newspaper USA Today. The Register's version was titled "Is the 2024 election giving you major anxiety? You're not alone. Here's how to cope."

The opening paragraph classes 'election anxiety' with legitimate concerns over wars and natural disasters. A mental health counselor laments apprehensions among progressives' routinely bannered "marginalized communities."

Once, elections were rightly viewed as vehicles for popular voices to enter national conversation, and as advantageous opportunities for minorities seeking visibility.

No more. Now they are portrayed as nerve-shattering menaces. And surviving the horrors of citizens debating topical matters and casting ballots per beliefs supposedly requires medical intervention.

Such imbecility is of recent vintage. Campus crying rooms were step one. Far-left worry-warts soon labelled unpopular racial opinions as "health hazards." They asserted untrammeled citizen speech posed perils from which government boot-stomps offered deliverance.

A 2018 Hill essay co-authored by Kristin Clarke, "It's time for an online Civil Rights Act," preposterously equated distasteful online expression with physical violence. The piece argued that governmental regulation be imposed on privately owned platforms, that sites be made "safer" for "disenfranchised and marginalized communities."

(Did Clarke suffer career setbacks for advocating Big Brother stifling of citizen speech? Hardly. The Washington Post reported that in 2021, Biden nominated her to head the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.)

The right (even duty) of free people to stand independently and chart our nation's course - a right paid for by patriots' blood - remains as vital as when rebels dumped English tea in the Boston Harbor.

No matter that today's milquetoastian progressives sob otherwise.

Exposing a Fake News monger

Despite an unsympathetic Chicago Economic Club interviewer, Donald Trump excelled in the Tuesday afternoon event. He made strong cases for his positions on trade and other economic matters. And, by holding forth with characteristic bluntness and jocular swagger, he inspired attendees to loud bursts of cheering and applause.

Those wondering about interviewer/Bloomberg News Editor-In-Chief  John Micklethwait's knee-jerk contrary posture will find this background information of interest: 

A November 24, 2019 CNBC report (still up on CNBC's site) disclosed that EIC Micklethwait  had sent Bloomberg News  employees a memo advising them to give delicate treatment to then-Democrat nomination candidate Michael Bloomberg, as well as to all other Democrat-nomination aspirants.

"We will continue our tradition of not investigating Mike (and his family and foundation)," insisted Micklethwait. "And we will extend the same policies to his rivals in the Democratic primaries. We cannot treat Mike's Democratic competitors differently from him."

One is reminded of Trump's admonition that Fake News is the enemy of the American people.

This essay of mine ran in the October 13 edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette [IA].

Under Trump, patriotic fervor swelled as he put 'America First'                 

Last July, a Butler, Pennsylvania aspiring assassin's rifle-bullet thankfully failed to kill President Trump. Bloodied but standing tall, the inspirational candidate thrust a defiant fist into the air. It was a stirring moment. The iconic photograph is one for the history books.

And now, having survived a second murderous attempt, Trump still holds high liberty's lamp; his redoubled determination bespeaks courage to which all good Iowans aspire.

Should he prevail this November, we can expect national return to greatness. Consider how good we had it during the previous Trump Years:

'America First' guided every policy. That's common sense. Every nation's citizens should demand their leaders pursue native interests over others' at each turn. 

Our economy was robust. Wallets smiled. Store-shelves were crammed with food and other products people wanted. (Unfortunately, inflation and shortages arrived later, under the Biden-Harris administration.)

Americans could depend on Trump to protect jobs. He understood working people's concerns and crafted sympathetic policies. Manufacturing jobs were safe. Factories were incentivized to remain in (or return to) our land.

Gas prices were low. We didn't need other countries' oil since we were energy dominant. Labor in the domestic gas-and-oil industry thrived, allowing countless hardworking men and women to feed families, pay for childrens' education, and maintain comfortable living standards.

Trump imposed right and just tariffs on products foreign nations imported. That ensured fair trade, benefiting American businesses and consumers. And his tearing to shreds the odious NAFTA and replacing it with USMCA further strengthened our employment and trade positions. 

Sinister globalization was championed by voices who did not wish us well. But Trump slew that menace, ensuring future Americans will work and live in the sunshine of national health.

An adage holds that "A country without a secure border is no country at all." Trump was and remains aware of that. Owing to the strict border-law enforcement and wall-construction undertaken during his first term, numbers of unvetted illegals invading our nation plummeted. 

Trump embroiled our nation in zero new wars, a fact for which peace-lovers should commend him. One wishes more elected officials would emulate Trump. Calm, reason, and justice were the order of the day.

Some warn WWIII looms on the horizon. Trump's record inspires confidence that he would avoid such devastation.

Through muscular sanctions, Trump reduced to pauperism the government of Iran, the world's largest terrorism sponsor. He crushed ISIS. And he mounted and maintained vigorous anti-terrorism postures, crippling vicious adversaries' capacity for depravity.

Because maleficent tyrants the world over understood Trump to be a rock-ribbed defender of American interests abroad, they dared not cross him. America loomed strong and was respected. 

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Palestinian terrorists' animalistic slaughter of Israel's Jewish men, women, and children -- even babies -- did not occur when Trump received his mail at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Only when the craven, substandard Biden-Harris team put up feet there.

Police uphold laws we the people pass through representatives that we elect. Given that, attacks on law enforcement can be rightly viewed as attacks on us. On civilization. While Trump stood in the Bully Pulpit, law and order were respected. Citizen admiration for the valorous men and women who stand between us and devastating anarchy became the norm. 

In the common-sense Trump Era, citizens were unabashed in their public celebration of all-important religious faith. And patriotic fervor swelled Americans' hearts. Waving Old Glory was again popular, as was singing the National Anthem and standing for the Pledge Of Allegiance.

All that can again be ours. All we must do is pull the correct vote lever.

Waterloo writer DC Larson is the author of That a Man Can Again Stand Up and Ideas Afoot. He counts among freelance credits Daily Caller, The Iowa Standard, and American Thinker. 

Last week, this essay was published in the Marshalltown, Iowa Times-Republican newspaper.

The Trump Tank       

by DC Larson

In 1984's Tank, James Garner played a principled military retiree who challenged corrupt, small-town potentates. After he sought to meet with the governor and discuss his own son's judicial railroading, Garner's character became a national folk hero -- the proverbial little guy against callous City Hall.

Toward the movie's end, Garner's veteran strived to deliver to court a witness who had damning testimony about local officials. He slowly maneuvered a tank through a block-long, sustained hail of gunfire from snipers tactically arranged on building tops. They'd been deployed by guilty authorities to obstruct justice. 

Since Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, Democrat snipers have riddled his effort. They have maintained without pause attacks on him remarkable for viciousness worthy of MS-13.

There have been impeachment maneuvers, mendacious allegations of Russian collusion, attempts to erase him from states' ballots, lawfare skullduggery choreographed nationwide, and congressional kneecapping swipes. (Mitch McConnell, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger were just three RINOs who muscled in with ugly relish.)

Two assassins' thankfully unsuccessful bids to murder peoples' champion Trump remain under investigation. 

But while President Trump may be the ostensible target, it is the American people who are truly under assault. Our crime? Daring to think we can determine our own nation's course and choose a president who reflects traditional American values.

Every hour, they imperil us -- common Americans who throng to Trump's rallies, who believe government should represent citizens and fight for our interests every day and in every way.

Our country. The way it was in the classroom history books we grew up reading, when hardscrabble men and women from all walks of workaday life forged a new land, created a glorious experiment in liberty, built great industries, raised an economic powerhouse, and defeated terrible tyrannies like Nazism and Communism.

When we boosted Trump on our shoulders and buoyed him to the Oval Office in 2017, we were standing up for ourselves and for the ideals Real America represents: Fairness, equality, and a patriotic faith that is rightly proud.

The war against Trump and regular Americans is waged not only by career-politicians, but also by more psychologically tilted Hollywood deviants than you can shake a Weinstein at.

Evident from their words and actions is that the sneering poobahs of the ruling, propaganda, and entitled classes hate anything that imperils their death-clutch on power.

Of course, their neverending witch hunt against Trump is often within the rules. They designed those rules for their own, opportunistic employ. To safeguard their authority and crush popular dissent. T's are duly crossed, and i's are dotted.

And when their selfish crusade dictates they pursue obscenities beyond on-paper propriety, they simply rely on their beholden judiciary to grant them indulgence. And proceed merrily on their grotesque way.

There is a manner in which upper crust-bombardments can be turned to average people's advantage. Let enemies' bullets make more resolute your determination that we the people will stand strong in defending the candidate we chose over the disapproving sniffs of the powdered and pompous.

By giving President Trump the support he deserves, we can help the tank break through.

reaction

For Democrats, media, there won't be a "morning after"          

Inarguably, the Democrat Party and establishment news media are as one. They share both values and ideological aspect. George Stephanopolous, Jen Psaki, James Carville, and Joe Scarborough are only some who've lurched through the revolving door. 

Charitable souls might venture leftists' histrionics will subside once election day passes, especially if the dreaded Trump suffers vanquishment. They won't. Ugly bellowings from that miserable quarter will swell to even greater proportion.

Only situationally principled, leftists lard anti-Trump commentary with vicious hyperventilations.

Kamala Harris warned numerous listeners that "Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms."

"It's time to put Trump in the bullseye," Joe Biden told donors during a call reported by CNN. Last June, Biden exclaimed: "Trump is a genuine threat to this nation...He's literally a threat to everything America stands for."

Appearing on MSNBC in 2023, Rep. Dan Goldman told Jen Psaki that Trump "is destructive to our democracy" and "has to be eliminated."

Trump "needs to be shot," said Rep. Stacy Plaskett, in 2023.

Lincoln Project co-founder and board member Rick Wilson told MSNBC: "They're still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump."

An exhaustive list of other scheming partisans who've slurred Trump, including portraying him as a new Hitler, would be too lengthy for inclusion, here.

White House-choreographed lawfare waged against the Republican candidate has accomplished nothing. Efforts to throw him off states' ballots also proved fruitless. Tucker Carlson correctly predicted murderous strategies would next be drawn up.

Tens of millions of patriotic Americans rallied to Trump's side, their faith strong that citizens, not pampered elites, should chart our nation's course. And overlords just will not have it.

Having transmogrified into aggressive ghoulishness, leftists surely see no reason to return to even elementary decency. They care not that Trump's now survived two assassination attempts. All that matters is winning.

Examples of post-shooting public slurs spring forth:

"We must stop [Trump/MAGA]," wrote  Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, in a September X post.

Also on X, Colorado Democrat state representative Steven Woodrow asserted: "The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil, but here we are."

"Trump is a threat to democracy, and saying so is not incitement," declared New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait.

In response to both the second assassination attempt and what has plainly been full-lunged malevolence with one foot in death-wish evil, the Trump effort issued a rebuttal: "Thankfully, the would-be assassin was stopped by the heroic action of law enforcement. But make no mistake, this psycho was egged on by the rhetoric and lies that have flowed from Kamala Harris, Democrats, and their Fake News allies for years."

Trump himself wrote on X that smears hurled his way had "taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust. Because of the Communist Left rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!"

Those who cranked the dial to extreme don't give a damn who sees their moral and ethical grubbiness.

There loom ahead two possible scenarios. Sadly, each promises continued raucousness. Trump's podium-pounding hitmen will certainly feel their unabashed vitriol is coldly efficacious, should they succeed in ending the Republican candidate. 

But if, contrarily, the nationwide MAGA movement (in which I march) buoys Trump down Pennsylvania Avenue a second time, the response from the Dark Side will be ear-rending, unspeakably foul, and sickeningly stuffed with underdog self-righteousness. 

Power-craving politicians, big-corporation journalists, and America-hating activists desire a terrible night without end.

And they wouldn't take a morning after even if it came with two pairs of pants.

Media should investigate Springfield pet-eating story

Sickening charges that Haitian migrants in Ohio have been eating pets recently arose. But instead of subjecting accounts to the scrutiny they merit, journalists great and small waved them away as racist lies. 

It's ridiculous to expect compassion for supposedly tortured animals from bloodless ideologues who champion murdering millions of unborn human babies each year. As they've already accepted that greater atrocity, they cannot be expected to now protest the lesser one - horrific, though it be.

(And one wonders where PETA is.)

The allegations are plausible. Peoples from foreign shores sometimes have preferences revolting to more refined Western sensibilities. That's indisputable. I've heard of an American missionary whose smiling African-village hosts offered him a plate of squirming bugs.Youtube hosts videos of Chinese street vendors hawking roasted rats on sticks.

In some nations, dog-meat is favored. Barack Obama admitted to eating it when a child in Indonesia. Gateway Pundit has posted an excerpt from his "Dreams From My Father" autobiography:

"With [stepfather] Lolo, I learned to eat small green chili peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)...One day soon, [Lolo] promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share."

National press operatives like ABC's David Muir and CNN's Dana Bash scoffed at the pet-eating claims. NBC denounced the story as a hateful "conspiracy theory," and slurred Trump's conveying of charges as "derogatory." PBS sneered of "false claims." MSNBC also cast them to the ground.

But establishment journalists are not automatically trustworthy. Consider these oft-regurgitated media lies:

There was Trump-Russia collusion/Hands Up, Don't Shoot/Hunter's laptop was "Russian disinformation"/Jussie Smollett was a "hate crime" victim/Kyle Rittenhouse took an AK47 across state lines, intending racial violence/video clips of Biden wandering were "cheap fakes."

Rushing to accept naysaying exclaimed by Ohio authorities, as media sorts have generally done, is irresponsible. Didn't liberals boast of distrusting authority and "speaking truth to power" not long ago?

Apparently, when officials mouth rhetoric to their fancy, reporters become uncritical 'stenographers to power.' 

Safeguarding localities' images from negative publicity is among city  leaders' ambitions. Economic interests are at risk. Businesses won't remain in or relocate to areas if word spreads that there's turmoil underway, and tax-paying residents who are able to flee will do so. Potential new ones will stay away. 

(Aurora, Colorado residents presently face migration-related criminal horrors, themselves.)

It is certainly true that average citizens can create hoaxes. And residents' claims should be regarded suspiciously. Plausibility is not actuality.

Still, Springfield residents have posted supporting videos online. They can be found here, here, and here. There are others.

And investigative reporter Christopher Rufo has put on X/Twitter footage purportedly depicting skinned felines on an Ohio grill. (I won't be viewing that.)

Lack of caring when foreigners violate American laws and customs is a product of the imbecilic notion that all cultures are morally equal, and that expecting newcomers to assimilate is "racist." (There's that word, again.)

Unfortunately, there are crude world regions in which foul practices are routine, Wife-beating and rapes are accepted in some cultures. There are immigrants now in America who perpetrate "Honor killings" and female genital mutilations.

Before discounting claims, reporters should actually talk to aggrieved residents, rather than simply amplifying local officials' denials.

Press-types turning away pet-eating charges without getting up from cushioned chairs and truly investigating them does dirt to the public interest they theoretically serve.

And it doesn't do domestic animals a damn bit of good, either.

It begins with "warning labels"

I carry no brief for Big Tech overlords. A sound case can be made that internet behemoths like Google and Facebook agitate to interfere with our electoral process, on behalf of Democrats.

Today, though, another matter demands attention:

42 states' Attorneys General are calling for governmental social- media clampdown. They caution of a legitimate problem: Young internet users' emotional well-being is endangered. But the cure they prescribe is a dangerous one.

The impetus for their present aggression was a June New York Times op-ed penned by US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

He advocated warning labels be forced onto social-media sites, much as cigarette manufacturers are legally required to put ones on their products.

But words aren't carcinogens. They don't compromise physical health.

"One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don't have the luxury to wait for perfect information," Murthy wrote. "You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly."

His comparison is nonsensical. The impact of ideas merely held cannot be physically gauged like proveable health risks associated with tobacco use, food products, or medicines. 

In those instances, regulation is in keeping with the Constitution's mandate that democratically elected government safeguard public welfare.

Ideas themselves don't invariably lead to physical harm. One listener may accept a thought, but another reject it.

Murthy's advocacy of rash action undertaken on what he concedes to be imperfect data is unwise, at best. 

In their Sept. 9, 2024 letter -- sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- the signatories implored officials to accept Murthy's warning labels proposal.

The states' attorneys general wrote that warning labels posted on social-media pages would not, alone, be "sufficient to address the full scope of the problem" and would be only "one consequential step toward mitigating the risk of harm to youth."

They continued: "A warning would not only highlight the inherent risks that social-media platforms presently pose for young people, but also complement other efforts to spur attention, research, and investment into the oversight of social-media platforms."

"Other efforts?"

Those words suggest further governmental action imperiling citizen speech. Perhaps warning labels on social-media sites represent only a beginning. 

Should government legally codify the notion that words are health matters properly open to regulation, Americans' speech liberty would be only a memory.

The World Health Organizaton and National Institutes of Health have declared odious racist beliefs to be as dangerous to physical health as toxic chemicals. 

Of course racist beliefs are illogical and immoral. But there is only one First Amendment. And it protects speech equally. If bad ideas are stifled, good ones are necessarily at risk.

Today, some have perverted the meaning of "racism" to encompass legitimate values like maintaining cultural integrity and even the concept of legal citizenship.

Pressure to outlaw such expression has already resulted in related codes and statutes.

Should warning labels be strong-armed onto sites, speakers would eventually refrain from articulating controversial notions at all, fearing potential punitive actions.

Free conversation in the public square would then be a casualty.

A house undivided

In 2017, neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell told an interviewer that he wished for a president who, unlike Donald Trump, "would not give his daughter to a Jew." He then sneered: "I don't think you can feel about race like I do and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl. Okay?"

I shared those detestable words with a purpose: To convey what genuine bigotry sounds like. Calls to maintain national borders and assertions of American exceptionalism are not of a piece with Cantwell's repulsive notions.

In fact, they are not within philosophical miles of them.

Unity is Americans' greatest national strength. Not diversity, as some insist. Stressing differences rather than commonality encourages fracture. (Which is certain demagogues' ambition.)

In his 2017 inaugural address, Trump noted that Americans of different skin tones are united by patriotism: "No matter our color, we still bleed the same red, white, and blue!"

One faith of the multi-racial MAGA movement, possibly the largest political crusade America has witnessed, is that our country can best advance to strength and prosperity when we all stand together.

(Historical accounts remind it was Democrats who founded the Ku Klux Klan and enacted Jim Crow laws. Too, more Repulicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.)

Trump's aversion to racial prejudice is emblamatic of moral rectitude. American stability and progress depend on such leadership.

But leveraging racial bigotry for electoral fortune, as Democrats still  do, divides Americans and allows animation to true hatred of the ugly type enunciated by the cretinous Cantwell.

Time to rise

In 2024, Americans are living through a very old story. I'll explain. 

My wife and I recently watched a vintage film. Set in ancient Persia, it depicted a people subjected by the evil Caliph Ali. During his oppressive reign, the good citizens had been taxed so greatly they were unable to feed themselves or their families. Starvation stalked the sands. 

Parents had lost sons in wars instigated at Ali's whim. Those peasants who dared speak out were brutalized by the Caliph's turbaned thugs.

Eventually, led by a courageous and inspirational champion, the good people toppled Ali. Happiness returned to their land. Citizens again enjoyed justice and prosperity.

Kamala Harris hopes to burden Americans with still greater taxes than the exorbitant ones already charged under spend-crazy Democrat schemes. Hardworking men and women down at grassroots level must choose whether to pay all housing, energy, and medicine bills, or put food on the table.

Add to that impossible burden rocketing gas prices they must pay to get to work.

How many American sons and daughters who bravely donned our nation's military uniforms died in Democrat-championed wars? 

Unarmed citizens (including praying grandparents) who journeyed to Washington and protested tyranny on January 6, 2021, were brutalized and imprisoned on orders from ruling Democrats. 

Many of those good people still languish behind governmental iron bars. (Admirably, though, they maintain patriotic spirit even in bondage: An audio-tape of many singing the Star-Spangled Banner from behind stone walls went viral.)

The tens of millions-strong MAGA movement backing Donald Trump refuses to accept the continued tyranny to which Kamala Harris would subject citizens. 

As if the peaceful and prosperous lives regular Americans enjoyed during Trump's first term weren't sufficient proof, his recently-pledged intention to end taxation of overtime hours presently charged working citizens demonstrates populist sympathy. 

That suffering peoples can throw off poison-hearted oppressors and assert independence is a truth revealed not only in the vintage film my wife and I saw, but also in literature and, of course, real-world history. 

American voters should in November follow such noble examples.

ABC Trump/Harris event exemplified larger media rot             

Disney-owned ABC's Tuesday night show featuring Donald Trump and Kamala Harris illustrated as much about the hosts and the network as the candidates.

(I characterize it as a show, because it's inaccurate to describe as a "debate" an event in which participants are barred from addressing one another.)

Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis threw off any ethical rule they might once have honored. The pixilated manikens paraded meagerness of character, uncaring that millions viewed their malfeasance.

Fox noted "The pair fact-checked Trump five times during the heated 90-minute event and failed to correct Harris a single time."

It was the newest portrait of a much greater wrong.

Overviews of current legacy media presidential-election coverage that do not at least implicitly acknowledge that body's bias against Trump should be avoided by readers desiring accuracy.

Many reporters dropped their note pads and grabbed up torches, years ago.

This is warfare in which slurs, misinformation, and scantily-veiled Democrat talking points are hurled from the cover of computer-stuffed offices and milling pool-swarms. Where innocent events can be resculpted into misrepresentative silhouettes with the flick of a tape editor's wrist.

Some even openly advocate reportorial bias:

"Now you have Joe Kahn, the new editor or publisher, whatever he is at The New York Times, saying 'We're just going to cover this down the middle. We're going to cover what is,'" former Democrat strategist James Carville said on his podcast, last June. "I don't think that's the role of the news media when the entire Constitution's in peril. I don't have anything against slanted coverage. I really don't...F--k your objectivity!"

He added: "So, I think we need slanted coverage. More slanted coverage..."

Carville's comfort with skewed reporting recalls MSNBC-host Joe Scarborough's 2016 question: "How fair do you have to be when one side is just irrational?"

In August the same year, New York Times media critic Jim Rutenberg portrayed reporters' bias as legitimate. He observed that those who believed then-candidate Trump to be dangerous would throw away American journalism's "textbook" and assume actively oppositional postures. 

Remember, too, that during Trump's presidency over 300 newspapers across the country coordinated same-day publication of op-eds attacking him and his "Fake News" condemnations. Someone's ears were burning.

(Ethics were also trash-canned by liberals elsewhere: Democrat elites more recently contrived lawfare schemes against 2024 candidate Trump and strove to deny him ballot status in numerous states, while in the same moment proclaiming their party to be democracy's defender.)

The mainstream media's anti-Trump parading high-steps outside op-ed pages, where prejudices are legitimately articulated, and across theoretically straight news sections.

It is common for supposedly objective accounts to be larded with subjective verbiage like "extremist" and "threat to democracy."

(Meanwhile, the attempted assassination of the former president was promptly chucked into the news-hole.)

An unbiased press is crucial to maintaining democracy. Readers must trust that it will investigate all without favor and fully inform the public.

Only when voters have easy access to all relevant information are they able to chart their civil government's course responsibly.

That ideal is strangled when reporters and editors act as partisans, inserting their fancies between story and reader. By the doing, they cast down their proper role as uncommitted observers and take up the banner of event participants.

When TV news celebrities and inky proselytizers model fanatics' fashions, they fail journalism's noble mission and do not merit respect as advocates for the public interest.

But Disney's ABC would gladly add them to the payroll.

Tammy Bruce open letter to Kerry Kennedy

Led by Kerry Kennedy, members of the Kennedy family publicly attacked RFK Jr for supporting Trump. Commentator Tammy Bruce posted to X the open letter she'd written in response.

"An open letter to Kerry Kennedy:

"You people are awful. Despite your family's checkered past and horrible behavior of so many of the men, Americans have stood with you out of loyalty, sentimentality, and too often, grief.

"Despite the questionable establishment of your family's wealth, the treatment of Marilyn Monroe, the general womanizing, the abandonment of Mary Jo Kopechne to her death, allegations of rape, one could go on and on, but the point is your family has stayed loyal and protective of family members who have done the most appalling of things.

"But the moment one of your own acts on his conscience for this country you attempt to throw him to the wolves and publicly condemn him. Never a word for the trail of abused or abandoned women left behind by a Kennedy, but because one of your men supports Trump in an effort to make the lives of Americans better, that alone is beyond the pale.

"In your ugly treatment of your brother you reveal the rot that has broken the hearts of the American people so many times over the years.

"Beyond that, the economic destruction of American families is something your family would never truly understand. You are not touched by the worry about having enough gas to get to work, or whether or not you can afford eggs this week, if you'll be safe walking your own neighborhood, or if your child will be safe in their urban public school or even if they will know how to read and write while collecting their diploma.

"You keep doing civil rights work and public service virtue signaling. But in the meantime, make a pledge to not keep doing damage as Americans are simply looking for a way to reclaim their own futures, the safety of their families, and knowing that maybe, just maybe, they can leave their children a little better off w a future they can rely on.

"The condition of this country should shock everyone, even if their name is Kennedy. We know it at least shocks one of you who, like us, has had enough of the fear and hopelessness assigned to us for generations.

"Americans are happy to see Bobby on our side as we refuse to comply and will not go gentle into the catastrophes to which we are expected to succumb. Instead, with Trump and all who join us, we will fight, fight, fight!"

The fabrication called Kamala

Joe Biden received some 14 million 2024 primary votes, but that mattered not to Democrat elites. They shoved the warhorse party loyalist into oncoming traffic and installed identity box-checker Kamala Harris. 

If party bosses reasoned grassroots donkeys would acquiesce, they were proven correct. 'Vote blue, no matter who' sorts immediately hefted Harris and her radical running-mate "Tampon Tim" atop shoulders.

As the adage holds: If you want loyalty, buy a dog.

Kamala Harris is the most laboratory concocted presidential aspirant that has ever clambered onto a stump. A maniken, albeit an ever-giggling one.

Not that she doesn't have beliefs and ideals. She does. Those include abolishing private heath-insurance in favor of government-run care, defunding police, abolishing ICE, granting citizenship to millions of illegal aliens (whose votes would dilute those of legitimate citizens), letting males invade females' sports-teams and privacy, limiting Americans' red-meat consumption, legislating chemical and surgical "gender-affirming care" for children, and mandating that every American driver must operate an electric vehicle.

Should Harris ascend to White House occupancy, the real subversive would leap into the spotlight. But for now, those orchestrating her effort hide her extremist ideology, calculating that a false image is more viable. 

1 - As noted above, she was not chosen in a democratic primary where participants had the opportunity to consider her against competitors and their ideas. Harris was installed by Washington powerbrokers who underscore irrelevant characteristics. 

2 - Her campaign coordinators had her scripted and staged phone-calls to the Obamas and Walz filmed for public release. Of course Harris giggled throughout. Some people do laugh at their own jokes.

3 - The cynical game-players manipulating Harris apparently insist that the candidate avoid press conferences, only read contrived remarks (written by others) from teleprompters, and allow her name to be put on calculated, staff-drafted statements.

4 - She has flip-flopped on numerous issues, claiming more palatable positions than she is on record as having previously enunciated. (But to her handlers' certain dismay, damning video evidence abounds online.) As of this writing, she has stolen two Trump proposals: No tax on tips and a child tax credit. Additional thefts and flip-flops by her will surely follow, should those choreographing her effort deem them situationally advantageous

5 - Just days ago, the Harris/Walz campaign mounted an event at Primanti Bros sandwich shop in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. Prior to filming, actual patrons were reportedly  booted from the premises and replaced with actors who pretended to be sandwich shop customers and who hailed artificial Harris.

(One recalls that the vice-president once sat for filming while telling several 'schoolchildren' about space. The kids were subsequently revealed to be actors hired for the stunt.)

6 - To date, zero policy proposals appear on Harris's website. No issues are even mentioned. That amorphousness allows her to evade definition. Sympathetic media voices urge her to avoid specifics that might prove damaging.

She is a woke action-figure that can be postured however best advances the interests of the left-wing machine that puts her forward and that would calculate policies, should she prevail.

Some contrary commentators opine that small Harris campaign-event crowds mean equally few will vote for her in November. But while liberal voters may find her uninspirational and so stay away, their irrational hatred of Trump will likely engender large election turnout. Remember, Biden's 2020 events also drew smatterings, but his eventual poll endorsements were far greater in amount. 

In November, people will vote for Harris despite being unimpressed with her. They despise Trump and MAGA Americans with so strong and irrational a passion that they would sooner endorse America's continued ruination than see our country improved by Trump.

And if that means devoting precious ballots to a fabrication, so be it.

Whistling past the graveyard

As Breitbart reported, radio host Charlamagne Tha God donned rose-colored lenses during a Sunday interview on ABC's This Week.

"It's definitely a lot of main character-energy on the Democratic ticket. We know who Kamala Harris is. She has super main character energy."

He later added: "People keep calling this the 'honeymoon phase.' I don't think it's a honeymoon phase."

That bubbly appraisal reminded strongly of a similarly cartoonish notion offered on MSNBC not long ago.

In the March 6th broadcast of Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough glared into the camera.

"Start your tape now, because I'm about to tell you the truth. And f you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever...If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it."

Of course, the millions who subsequently cringed at Biden's shambolic debate spectacle realized the actual truth. 

Scarorough may have regretted his stilted positivity. There's a lesson in this for Charlamagne.