"Lay Lady, Lay" (opens in separate window)

americans have too much freedom

friday, october 20th, 2023

An old adage is that “the truth will set you free.” Well, many of today’s demented Dems are not particularly fond of the truth or freedom. Indeed, a recent poll released by RealClearPolitics shows that over one-third of Dems believe Americans have “too much freedom.”

[FULL TITLE: "Democrats: Americans Have Too Much Freedom".]

The Left is coming for our Rights.

Maybe criminals have too much, but not law-abiding citizens.

Dems "defund police policies" and criminal coddling are producing consequences reminiscent of the movie The Purge. Criminal activity therefore becomes legal, producing a dystopian society where Hobbesian motifs prevail: life outside society is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Not too different from some dysfunctional Dem-run cities, in other words.

Actually, it is in an unfettered state of nature where there’s potentially too much freedom. Big brutes may impose their will on weaklings where one has the “freedom” to swing one’s fist with reckless, uncivil abandon.

In civil society, emerging from a limited government deriving powers from a social contract, one still has some freedom to swing. However, it ends right in front of someone else’s proboscis. Or anywhere that might cause injury, for that matter.

While upstanding citizens can have too much freedom in the Dem’s convoluted world, apparently criminals cannot have enough. No wonder they espouse truthiness over truth -- they want to limit freedom for the rest of us while aggrandizing government, except the components that “protect and serve.” The inmates are running the asylum, which is ironic since Dems wallow in victimhood so much.

We don’t need Leviathan to avoid Hobbes' state of anarchy, but limited government is necessary for freedom to flourish, perhaps even enabling the better angels of our nature. Its main purpose is to thwart “might makes right” lawlessness.

Too much freedom? That’s implausible. It is freedom that induces a higher state of consciousness and leads to enlightenment. It is freedom that facilitates ingenuity, innovation, and industry. In short, it is freedom that leads to human progress. In that sense, conservatives who promote individual liberty over government aggrandizement are more “progressive” than leftists.

But one can see why so many Dems were reluctant to “back the blue,” and want to restrain freedom for everyone except anarchists and other thugs. After all, many are compliant automatons mindlessly trudging along on autopilot for fear of being cancelled.

For example, the hideous Hillary Clinton wants to deprogram what she bizarrely describes as the Trump cult members. She needs to look left, where a collective of cults are riddled with mind-numbing compliance. They include: the DEI cult, the central planning cult, cultish climate activism, the transgenderism cult, the cult of death, the cult of censorship, the MSM cult, the PC cult, and the cancellation cult.

Benjamin Franklin once said that, “Those who give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Based on their chaotic policies, today’s leftists deserve neither until they promote a vibrant marketplace of ideas vibrating in civil society underpinned by “consent of the governed.”

Too much freedom? Patrick Henry’s clarion call still reverberates after hundreds of years: “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

A Day In The Life.

Up at 5a on Friday, I went thru my finger stick to check my BSL (Blood Sugar Level) and recorded it on my Diabetes 2 chart, made coffee and had a light breakfast, took two 50mg Tramadol and a 300mg Gabapentin for various pains, fired-up the trusty ol' 2009 Win-7 Pro x64 Pentium HP desktop, to let 32 million lines of code load, had a couple smokes in the semi-cool garage and checked the leftover errands list. Whew.

October 13, 2020-23: One year of poofters, perfume, and pronouns for America.

It was a cloudy, cool 49°. Showers and t-storms were forecast for the weekend, with temps dropping into the upper-30s. At least it's not snow, yet. I made coffee, fired-up the furnace to take the chill off, and scanned the news and weather sites. I enjoyed a mug of coffee in the open garage, and on the back patio, with fresh air and squirrels running all over the yards, gathering and burying acorns. No peanuts from me. I tuned into the "Chris Stigall Show" from 6-9, and left for Mt Rose Cemetery, to help finish-up the large sidewalk and landscape project. I'll catch the Chris Plante Show podcast, later today.

With all the bullshit about some muslim(SPIT!) asshole's "Day of Jihad", there is an Alert Warning for the US. Huh? Screw that crap, as long as you're prepared, with extra mags. I always am. I CCW daily. The subhuman leftist filth want massacres and death to happen to us here; is that clear? Leftists need to be ***summarily killed***, IMO.

Ask your doctor if a drug, with 32 pages of side-effects, is bad for you.

Looks like we're in for a worse-than-average Winter coming, for us in the Mid-Atlantic Region. We're way overdue for a Nor'Easter Blizzard. I'm more than ready; bring it on, Mother Nature!

Looks like we're a day behind schedule at Mt Rose, so we'll finish-up on Monday. Dave and Chris were working on the project sidewalk, and weren't ready for the solar lighting and minimal landscaping (no water available on site), Alan was at another funeral, so I pulled-off the job. stopped at the New Eastern Farmer's Market, and came home at 11:30. After some lunch, I resumed paperwork, had a snooze and waited for Sherry to come by. She did at 2p, and we got so involved in talking, we clean forgot to drive down to the Twp Park for a walk. Heh. Sherry left just after 5p, with a couple of stops to make, and I had some dinner.

After the evening news, I watched Discovery's "Gold Rush", season 14's new episode and "Mine Rescue w/ Freddy & Juan", a spin-off of the show, until 11:30. Long day; time for some shut-eye. I'm sleeping-in tomorrow, no more 5a crap.

I can't believe I forgot to go to the gym today. That's seven years in a row, now.

I slept-in until 7:30a on Saturday, a rainy, seemingly cold 49° start to the rainy weekend ahead. I upped the heat, made coffee and had a couple smokes in the open, cold garage. I scanned the news and weather sites and we're in for a gloomy, wet weekend; no complaints. I also left the lamp post's exposed Romex wire out in the rain, for a 48hr test, to see if the 3 splice boxes hold and don't trip the basement fuse box. So far, so good, at 4p today. My driveway, with about the 10% grade to the street, is covered with thousands of acorns. Unreal. I use a Toro PowerJet F700 Leaf Blower, to blow them down to the street gutter and into the street, where squirrels gather them OR passing cars crush them into the macadam. Next comes the millions of leaves, for months, into the Winter.

Here's a little "history lesson" -- found it somewhere while reading on FR -- about the so-called "Palestine" area, inside Israel, in case some leftist-libtard asshole criticizes Israel for protecting themselves:

• Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the British Mandate existed the Ottoman Empire, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Mamlyuk Islamic State of Egypt, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Islamic State of Mamlyuk of Egypt, the Empire of Ayubid existed, not a Palestinian state.

Goffrey IV of Bulonsky, known as Godfrey de Bouillon, conquered Jerusalem in 1099, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Empire of Ayubid, there existed the French and Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, again not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the empires of Omeyad and Fatimid existed, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the empires of the Omeyad and Fatimid, there was the Byzantine Empire, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Byzantine Empire, there was the Roman Empire, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Roman Empire, there was the Hasmonees State, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Hasmoneysk state, it was the Selevkid state, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Selevkid Empire, there existed the Empire of Alexander of Macedonia, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Empire of Alexander of Macedonia, there was the Persian Empire, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Persian Empire, there was the Babylon Empire, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Babylon Empire, there existed the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea, the Kingdom of Israel existed, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the Kingdom of Israel, there was a theocracy of the twelve knees of Israel, not a Palestinian state.

• Before the twelve generations of Israel’s theocracy, there was an agglomeration of independent Canaan cities-empires, not a Palestinian state.

In fact, this piece of earth was everything EXCEPT THE PALESTINE STATE.

~~"Palestinians"~~ Arab muslims(SPIT!) in Gaza and the West Bank are SQUATTERS and WELFARE PARASITES. No wonder no one wants them. I say push them into Sinai and let Egypt take 2.5 million of them like Turkey who took 3 million Syrians. Jordan and Israel don't have 100 million+ population like Egypt, Syria, and Iran do.

After a large lunch of Pot Roast & Gravy, Mashed Potatoes and Filling, I finally finished-up the office paperwork, did some computer back-ups and maintenance, picture classification of the Mt Rose Project, and relaxed in my big, comfy office chair. After a light dinner, History's "Ancient Aliens Declassified" was on until 11p. Lights out, and I'll be sleeping-in tomorrow.

Up at 7:45a on Sunday, it was nice to sleep-in on a very cool 45°, "Excellent Air Quality", breezy sunny morning, as the weekend's storms have moved east and given us cleat skies. Looks like 1½" of rain yesterday and last night. We'll take it. I fired-up the furnace, made coffee, and scanned the news and weather on the office desktop. After a couple of smokes in the open garage -- the fresh air was good -- I played, via iHeart website, some new "Chris Stigall Show" podcasts until 10:30, grabbed a morning shower and began a load of laundry. The rain gauge measured 2.1" from Friday thru this morning. Looks like the "threat index" has climbed since Saturday, and we're about top get some terrorist activity. Especially watch out for "lone actors". Better arm-up if you haven't done so, already. I'm always armed, 24x7x365.

Better to have a firearm, and not need it, than to need one and not have it.

Predictably, just a week after the subhuman Hamas filth slaughtered 1,200+ Jews and took 150+ innocents hostage, the Radical American Left and Racist Arab Scum are attacking Israel, relentlessly. No, I have zero sympathy for any of the civilians in that Gaza shithole, since the elected and supported the Hamas filth for decades; they knew what they were doing. So suffer now, assholes! Embrace the suck, Palis!

After a large lunch, I had some condo chores to do -- errands can wait until tomorrow -- and took a couple hours snooze on the LR couch. I called Sherry to set-up some 'together time' for the coming week, and did some computer work until dark. I watched the evening news, and some previously-unknown, crappy car-related shows on Motor Trend TV, and unplugged at 11:30. Lights out.

What we've witnessed over the past several decades is a United States that has been transformed into a place to dump unwanted citizens of every other nation on earth. It does not respect itself and so allows it to be used, it’s citizens to be taxed and fund stripped from them to serve other nations, to pay the salaries and benefits of nations and denying them to the people of America. But it is the fact that we have not stopped it that causes the greatest concern, where is that American strength? We are here, because we allowed the weakest and most fearful of us to rise to power in the shadows of those who bought them off, but to believe that, without believing in the weakness and fearfulness of the people is to avoid the truth. If we want fearless leadership, we must demand so from an attitude of fearlessness.

Up at 5a on Monday, a cold 42° at 0-Dark-Thirty, I upped the heat to 74°, made coffee and fired-up the desktop, to scan the news and weather sites. Tuning-in the "CS Show", from 6-9, I had breakfast and got ready for the day. We need to finish-up the Mt Rose Project and I need to drive south to Dallastown for 2 errands. By 7, it was getting light, and heavily overcast, with showers forecast for the afternoon. The lamp pot's repaired Romex® wire needs to be buried, but I can;t do it until it dries out. I'll catch the Chris Plante Show podcast, later today.

Dave from River Rock LSCP called at 8:30a, to let me know that they'd be stopping for mulch etc, and that ETA would be around 9:30a, so I adjusted my schedule to meet them, then. I have the 10 solar lights in the Jeep, and they have 11 "Little Bunny" grasses and mulch, so the lights and grasses get "dry-fitted" first, then dug-in, and finally, the mulch is spread. I left at 9:15.

Dave, Chris and I installed the 10 solar lights, I placed the 10 ornamental grasses for them to dig-in, and to mulch the sidewalk side beds, and I left for Dallastown, Red Lion and back to East York errands, loaded with stuff, around 1p. Dave and Chris stopped by to do a little work at the condo, and left.

I dialed-up some podcasts on iHeart.com, and my 14 year old super-fast HP Compaq 6000 Pro Microtower (Win-7 Pro x64) Desktop Computer crashed, with a system data dump. Oh shit; I didn't need that mess. I've never had one before, but have been thru several with other people, so I knew what to start with.

The screen went black, then I got the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) with a message: "Collecting data for system data dump". Holy shit! I had no idea what that meant. I tried to run it in the "Safe Mode" to repair the Registry and preserve files; that worked. I opened the MS-Windows Recovery program, and ran it with this morning's Back-Up/Recover/Restore program copy I'd had set on automatic (in Control Panel), every Monday at 9a. After 15-20mins, I got the message that "No files were damaged or lost, and system was restored". I rebooted and everything appeared fine. But ***WHY*** did it happen? Research, research, research. I'll be doing that now for quite a while.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

With rain starting around 9p, I spent the rest of the afternoon and some of the evening reading about the dreaded BSOD, had dinner, watched Motor Trend's "Iron Resurrection" until 11:30p, and called it a day. My cleaning lady's in at 8:30a, so I have to get up early.

Up at 5:30a on Tuesday, it was a nippy 47°, had stopped raining; I made coffee, fired-up the oscillating garage heater tower, had a smoke, and checked the computer start-up process to watch for any problems, aka "glitches". So far, so good. I have Riley coming from Spartan Computer -- soon to be closed to retail, as they're moving to corporate client service -- to have a look on Friday, and scanned the news and weather. Yesterday and this morning are rated as *Excellent Air Quality*, with 99% of all other days rated as Poor or Fair. I upped the condo heat to 74° and that felt good. Light at 7:15 now, it's getting dark at 6:15p, as we head toward the Winter Solstice, on December 21st. Soon, we'll lose an hour of time.

I ran Norton Utilities to defragment/optimize all 4 HDs (Hard Discs) and clean-up the start-up procedure. That sped-up the computer again. I have a tech coming by on Friday morning at 9a, to troubleshoot the system problems from last evening. Hopefully, he'll be able to diagnose it and make some recommendations, other than to get rid of my favorite OS, Win-7 Pro. Heh.

I had a huge lunch, caught a 2hr nap on the LR couch, and did paperwork all afternoon. After a light dinner, I watched the evening news, some Motor Trend's "Bitchin' Rides" and reverted to Discovery's "Mine Rescue w/ Freddy & Juan" until 12:30a; then unplugged.

Up at 7a on Wednesday, to a cold, 45°, cloudy morning. No more morning patio or open garage door, until later in the day. I upped the heat, made coffee, took the 3 pain pills, and tuned into the "CS Show" until 9. Sherry's coming over at 1p, so I needed to get some quick food shopping done, and left at 11:30a. I got thru in 15mins, and was back by 11:55, missing that last segment of the "CP Show". Next up was Bonehead Bongino, the screaming 12 year old moron. I changed to yesterday's "CP Show" podcast. Bongino sucks.

Joe Biden flew to the Middle East on Wednesday to meet with leaders as the Hamas-Israeli War escalated overnight. Before he landed the leaders of Jordan and the West Bank announced they would not meet with the American president. Imagine that! During his press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Old Joe was forced to read softly from his note cards. He was too weak to think and speak for himself. More… Old Joe lost his place too. It did not go unnoticed. How embarrassing was that? Joe Biden arrives in Israel, reads from a script, loses his thread and then calls brutal terrorists of Hamas ‘the other team’. How embarrassing was that? Joey Lunch Bucket Bidet&Co are pathetic, as the world well knows.

This crap is hilarious! Headline: "AI imagines what Americans in all 50 states look like using stereotypical European views". Look-up your state, and see "yourself", as imagined by AI and European stereotypes. Hilarious!

Sherry stopped by around 1, and we did a quick walk in the nearby Twp Park, and left for Flinchbaugh's Orchard & Farm Market in nearby Hallam,, to get some goodies. We had a good time together, as usual, and she left early to get some shopping done. After 3 Apple Fritters for dinner, I did paperwork and watched TV until 11:30p. I'm sleeping later tomorrow, but have to get labs/blood work done in nearby Wellspan Stony Brook Labs.

Awake at 4:30a, back to sleep and awake again at 5:30, due to left thigh/leg pain, and finally getting up, right knee pain, I took an 80mg Ecotrin® Aspirin and then downstairs to get 2 50mg Tramadol and one 300mg Gabapentin. This is the 3rd morning in a row for it; damn. It was 0-Dark-Thirty, a clear and cold 38°. I made coffee, fired-up the garage oscillating heater tower and had some smokes in there; too cold to open the big door. I tuned into the "CS Show", 6-9, and scanned the news and weather on my desktop. After about an hour, both pains began to fade -- no, it's not arthritis, it's muscular -- as it started Monday 18th, and wakes me from a deep sleep, in the middle of the night. Damn.

After some wonderful coffee and the pain pills, my pains abated. I had to leave at 9a for the Stony Brook Wellspan Medical Lab, to get blood drawn for next Tuesday's Cardiology app't. Afterward, I did a couple small errands, came back and listened to the final 2 hours of the "CP Show", had a large lunch and a 1½ hour snooze. I started to winterize the condo, by putting away garden hoses, drip irrigation water faucet connectors (brass), drain outdoor faucets/spigots, and get some early evening news. Lovely, shit-for-brains pResident Joey Bidet's going to give the country a pile of bullshit about Israel and Ukraine, and $100 MILLION-PLUS of our hard-earned Taxpayer dollars, at 8p. I'll be sure to miss that drech.

After a light dinner, I watched the F1-TV Channel's replay of some early 2023 season races, that I'd only seen parts of, and stayed with it for 3hrs, while taking frequent smoke breaks in the garage (I pause the race). By 11, I was getting tired, took the nightly Ambien® and headed upstairs. I have a computer tech friend coming at 9a tomorrow, to give my HP Desktop an enema, and brain scan, to see if there are any lurking problems I missed fixing, last Monday, when it crashed. Back up early, again. Lights out.

Our Post-Hamas Wreckage.

It has been 22 years since we saw crowds throughout the Middle East celebrating the murder of 3,000 civilians—and since newspapers had daily “idiot watch” notices of American intellectuals defending radical Islamist mass murderers. And now the madness is back again, and we are witnessing the recrudescence of normalizing radical Islamic terrorists abroad.

I suppose the theory is that no one in America cares much about radical Islamists foaming at the mouth, whether abroad or here. And the result is that they are empowered and their defense of murder is growing—yet its hubris will earn an almost-certain response, an anger slowly but insidiously growing at radical Islam.

As Hamas goes, so with it go many of the following related Western pretensions.

A Middle East Policy in Ruins

The current Biden appeasement of Iran and gift of billions of dollars in aggregate to the West Bank and Gaza are now, by bipartisan consensus, unsustainable. The only supporters of that lethal madness left are the embarrassments of BLM, the Squad, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the campus crowd.

Their collective hatred of Jews and Israelis was manifested in their delight over the post mortem mutilations of murdered women and children. And why—even before Israel had responded with air attacks—were leftists and Islamists suddenly celebrating the news of the executions of more than 1,200 Jews? It was instinctual, a Pavlovian response.

Even some leftist Democrats were shocked by their own constituents, whom they had created. Biden still might cling to his past destructive Middle East policies (and I expect him to restrict the Israelis within days after they begin to go in full force into Gaza), but the idea of continuing aid to the West Bank and Gaza or of “normalizing” relations with theocratic Iran will now be rightly seen as a suicidal delusion.

Ukraine and Gaza

Most Americans support arms for Ukraine to repel Russian aggressors.

But something is becoming strange about these two respective wars.

Why did the State Department more or less put no restrictions on Ukrainian retaliation, including operations against the Russian Black Sea Fleet—but the Secretary of State almost immediately called for a “ceasefire” to prevent Israeli retaliation, a mortal sin if he had dared say that about Ukraine's similar response to aggression? Would an American diplomat lecture Ukraine about ending the “cycle of violence?”

Why does the U.S. discount any possibility of a strategic response from Russia—which reportedly has some 6,000-7,000 nuclear weapons—to attacks on its homeland, but seems almost terrified about calling Iran to account for its central role in arming and funding terrorists to start a war with Israel by slaughtering 1,200 civilians?

Is the U.S., as professed, really able to fund a $120 billion—and counting—war in Ukraine, and to replenish Israeli stocks (300,000 artillery shells shipped from U.S. depots in Israel to Ukraine, a reportedly mere one-month supply for Kyiv), and to restore depleted existing U.S. munitions (note the billions of dollars of equipment abandoned in Kabul), and to ramp up our forces to deter China (while allowing 8 million illegal aliens to flow across an open border and $33 trillion in national debt) without going on a massive war footing?

There are likely somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 total wounded and dead in Ukraine, in the most lethal conflict in Europe since 1945. Why is the U.S. so eager to call for a ceasefire after a fraction of those casualties in Gaza, but it is near-taboo to mention a breather amid the historical carnage, with no end in sight, in Ukraine?

The administration always says we can do everything simultaneously, but then we never do. Rhetoric is not the same thing as trebling our arms supply chain, and cutting the budget elsewhere to pay for it, and closing our border.

The Biden Open Border

Given the common denominator of Russian and Gazan invading forces crossing poorly fortified borders, why would we not secure our own—far longer and less secure than either?

The Biden border nihilism is now a losing proposition even for the leftists who helped promote it. Biden is eroding the very base of the Democratic Party, by alienating inner-city and border-district minorities. They are irate at the hordes of people stampeding into the country with the assumption that breaking our laws is their birthright.

Even the daily mendacity of Alejandro Mayorkas and Karine Jean-Pierre cannot hide the brazen contempt for the law. Every day that the border remains open and thousands more pour in unaudited, illegally, without skills, in non-diverse fashion, and with cartel Fentanyl -- to the cheers of the corrupt socialist President Obrador of Mexico—the more Joe Biden is destroying his own party.

The ruin in Gaza only reminds Americans that under present policies we will soon see thousands of America-hating, anti-Semitic Gazans seeking to pour into the United States illegally, eager to join the mass demonstrations cheering on Hamas death squads. It seems to take about a month for a radical Middle Eastern refugee, having arrived with gratitude toward his new American hosts, to take to the street on a “Day of Jihad” calling for the end of Israel (and often damning America).

Allies as Enemies

Abroad, we are finally accepting the long-suppressed reality that many of our “allies” are not neutrals but enemies. The U.S. bases in Qatar and Turkey, and our indifference to the pro-Hamas sentiments, if not outright aid, of both, have empowered terrorism.

Ever so slowly, the two anti-American nations are reminding Americans that we need to draw down our forces from these hostile landscapes, which in any global crisis would likely be hostile territory for our own troops.

Everyone knows Erdogan’s Turkey has no business in NATO—and everyone has no idea how to get them out. And so everyone puts an asterisk over Turkey as a NATO member. For now, the alliance’s only Islamist, non-democratic, and anti-Western nation is best simply avoided, since expelling Turkey appears to be more trouble than tolerating its toxic presence.

The Palestinian State Solution

The Left’s shrill demand for a “two-state” solution, and tolerance of Palestinian tired and serial threats to drive Israel into the sea, are for now over. The glee with which Gazans and West Bankers met the news of mass murder, mutilation, hostage-taking, rape, and the desecration of bodies is proof enough that these dictatorial governments probably do represent the majority of their citizens.

Most Gazans were giddy on hearing of the macabre methods of Hamas, and only wished that there had been more opportunity to spit on hostages, poke captive women, kick corpses, and torment the child and female trophies brought back from Israel. The Gazan delight in the grotesque was reminiscent of some medieval pogrom, or the Roman triumphs of old with their files of enslaved captives. And perhaps the desire to take captives and pass them back through the killing fields to Gaza reminds of the Aztec practice of seeking to capture rather than just kill their enemies, in order to have plenty of bodies for the human sacrifices on Templo Major.

The old idea of Gaza—self-governed since 2005-2006 by “one man, one vote, once” Hamas—as a possible “Singapore” with Hyatt and Four Seasons beaches, flush with hundreds of billions of dollars from the Gulf, Europe, the U.S. and the UN, is finally revealed as the farce it always was. That fantasy was simply antithetical to the Hamas nihilist charter, the logical manifestation of which was the slaughter inside Israel of hundreds of civilians.

BLM

BLM was always a corrupt, disingenuous operation—the craftier successor to the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton 1980s corporate shake-downs. But it is has finally jumped the shark with its sick support for Hamas murderers (note its recent posters glorifying Hamas’s hang-gliding butchery).

Its pro-death advocacy of Hamas is the pièce de résistance to the corruption and abdication of its leadership, the Kendi-con, and the lethal crime wave it helped spawn in major cities. Its racist agendas may linger for a while. But BLM is going the way of the 1960s Black Panthers—that is, one leading to general disgust, then to irrelevance, and finally to nothingness.

The still-remaining BLM murals in our major downtowns are already embarrassments and eroding reminders of the insanity that swept the country from 2020 to the present.

Campuses

Universities have now crossed the Rubicon in de facto condoning their crazed students cheering on mass death. They made the argument after George Floyd that the country must listen to their pseudo-moral lectures, and now they unashamedly broadcast what they have become—traitors to the idea of an enlightened free society, and kindred spirits to the anti-Semitism, intolerance, and fascism of 1930s German universities.

Degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford will soon become, not resume badges, but either embarrassments or certifications of a mediocre education. Or both.

Universities all rushed to embrace “decolonization”, starting with empty and ahistorical virtue signals and ending up paralyzed, as thousands of their own students showed the world how ecstatic they were over news that babies were murdered and women raped.

In response, their invertebrate administrators and faculty sat frozen for days, calculating how best to issue “on the one hand…on the other hand” mush. The first serious politician who calls for the taxing of the huge incomes of their endowments, for yanking the government out of the student loan business and returning the moral hazard to the universities who impoverish their own students, will win overwhelming support.

The Gaza of Hamas is going down, but so are a lot of corrupt institutions and ideas that threw in with its lot.

I would recommend against the Nazi reference: the Nazis didn’t deny knowledge of atrocities until *after the war*, making them a bad contrast to current Palestinians.

The Late, Great Hamas Finally Got Its Wish.

Ever since Hamas was “elected” to run Gaza and then followed the usual “one election/one time” Middle East formula, it has bragged nonstop that its agenda is to erase Israel off the face of the earth (cf. the wall map in the office of our Rep. Rashida Tlaib).

Its unabashed nihilist boasts resonated throughout the Palestinian “movement”. Its fiery threats delighted the Arab street.

Indeed, Hamas was soon celebrated as the most “authentic” of the radical Palestinian terrorist movements.

Which cadre of thugs could top its end-of-days rhetoric, its assured and steady supply of money and weapons from Iran, its satanic eagerness to mutilate and dismember, and the sanctuary and financial wherewithal offered to it by our “ally” Qatar?

None.

Since Hamas was viewed as the most “volatile” and creepy of the Palestinian factions, and the most useful to Iran, the Obama and Biden administrations appeased the murderers. Was it not part of their hare-brained grand strategy of empowering theocratic Iran and its Syrian, Hezbollah and Hamas hirelings?

Their campaign (remember the “they literally know nothing” media and the Obama “echo chamber” created by a boastful Ben Rhodes?) was to forge these disparate Islamists into a crescent of resistance to Israel and any “moderate” Arab regime (recall the Obama-Biden transitory hatred of the Gulf sheikdoms).

The result would be “creative tension”—as well as payback for the Israeli election of Netanyahu.

Through this formula, Obama believed he could always pressure Israel to grant concessions to radical Palestinians thanks to the looming threat of an ever-menacing (and soon-to-be nuclear) Iran with help from Obama’s other friends—the then-Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and Obama’s pal the neo-Ottomanist and antisemite Erdogan of Turkey, Obama’s self-described personal liaison to the Islamic world.

Yes, this was sheer madness -- if perhaps characteristic of Obama’s well-known orneriness.

Perhaps someday soon, a few disinterested historians might even record that the current nightmare in Israel is the logical end result of what Barack Obama, John Kerry (remember his Trump-era Paris reconnaissance with the Iranians?), Ben Rhodes, Valerie Jarrett, Robert Malley, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and a host of other incompetent but otherwise haughty and dangerous people once conjured up.

A defiant and empowered murderous Hamas was one of the many dividends of their appeasement and grand Middle East schemes—given the eagerness of the Obama and Biden administrations to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza despite warnings from their own experts that such cash would enhance terrorism and abet the evil work of Hamas with an American financial stamp of legitimacy.

Hence, a soon-to-be nuclear Iran, freed from sanctions, had enough money (remember the nocturnal cash pallets on the Tehran tarmac?) to fund its surrogate global death squads.

Hamas has killed Jewish civilians for nearly two decades, always escaping the full wrath of Israel’s retaliation by appealing to the amoral consciousness of left-wing European and American governments. It counted on ample help from both Iran and Arab regimes, along with Turkey, which always screams “instability” at the first sign of Israeli retaliation.

The blustering Hamas has now murdered over 1,000 Jews in their homes, preferring especially to gun down children, reportedly behead babies, torture the doomed, rape the helpless, execute the elderly and brutalize women—topping the killing off in good SS fashion by gleeful dismemberment and desecration of Jewish corpses.

So, they finally got their wish for their own version of the Holocaust, for what they had always bragged would be the “final” Israel-ending war—as their cowardly elders announced last Saturday from their protected enclaves.

Yes, Hamas promised their mass killing of innocents would ignite the Muslim world, and incite simultaneous attacks on Israel from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and perhaps Egypt—all as their planned anniversary replay of the 1973 Yom Kippur War’s first 48 hours.

And it may—or may not.

The ebullient people of Gaza seemed initially enthralled at videos of mutilated Jews and showed their zeal by spitting on hostages carried back home for supposed Roman-like triumphs before their public sacrifices. Videos of the gruesome killings of Jews were hot downloads on Gaza mobile phones.

Now mutilating dead Israelis, now boasting how brave their sons were in slaying unarmed Jews inside Israel, Gazans assumed a shocked Israel would capitulate.

Would not its megaphones in the West characteristically protect them and restrain Israel?

Could not they themselves always ensure a few thousand of their own civilians be sacrificed as expendable human shields of their missile pads, and thus become necessary fuel for their boilerplate accusations of “war crimes” that usually curtail Israeli retribution?

But now the Israeli retaliation seems oblivious to all that.

It may not be like the past incursions into Gaza that were manipulated by a cowardly Hamas to gain media sympathy for “collateral damage” that they themselves engineered.

Predictably, as Israel ramps up the air attacks and prepares for the ground assault, the global media is showing a concern for civilian collateral damage in a way it never quite did for murdered Jewish innocents and beheaded infants.

Western governments are terrified of Middle Eastern killers who may return to their previous attacks on European citizens. After all, Western left-wing suicidal immigration policies have ensured large unassimilated Muslim populations. Millions have fled the self-created violence and tyranny of the Middle East only to cheer it on from a safe distance in their adopted Western homelands, whose welcoming of these “refugees” is now so often reciprocated with sheer contempt for the apologetic hosts.

Nonetheless, the Gaza crowds of 48 hours ago who were boasting of their sons murdering with impunity and spat on bound defenseless women, are now aggrieved. But they might as well be barking at the moon about the supposed “unfairness” of the Israeli air counterattack.

Among the rubble of Hamas high-rises, they are weeping for media cameras, calling on a corrupt and antisemitic United Nations for accustomed relief, threatening on spec the West with who knows what (is it now infant beheading or body dismemberment?) and in general suddenly quite unhappy about their “final” war they just recently boasted was all but won.

Will the heroic legions of Hamas who beheaded and raped now pour out in the streets to fight the IDF and push them into the sea as promised?

Perhaps not?

Some final thoughts: Why has Iran gone from bragging three days ago about its training and tutelage of the Hamas killers to suddenly pleading that while it is certainly delighted about the beheadings, rapes, executions and mutilations, it technically had no actionable role in ensuring them?

The truth is that Hamas right now is alternately threatening and begging Western governments, beseeching its suddenly mum Iranian suppliers, whining that Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority have not yet sufficiently shared in the bloodletting of this war and generally railing for more jihad from a few of its increasingly so-so, nonplussed Middle Eastern sponsors.

Hamas fears it may have boxed itself in, with two American aircraft carriers between it and Iran, with private satisfaction from many Arab states that their nuisance Hamas might at last have committed suicide through its mass homicide, with even fanatic supporters hard-pressed to make their “moral” case for the beheading of babies and with a half-million IDF soldiers on their way to deliver divine justice upon them, perhaps in the Lincolnesque Second Inaugural sense of “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

Translated, that means for the first time in its existence an unholy Hamas may not get out of its self-created rendezvous with what it has so duly earned, given there is now no assurance of third-party relief and thus no restraint on Israel.

Even a shaken and shamed Biden administration -- guilty of an open border and its de facto support for Hamas and Iran, but suddenly scared of a furious election cycle -- American public may for a while not call off Israel.

The arrogant but half-educated Harvard crowd, the European Islamists, the woke and pampered antisemites on Western campuses, the AOC socialists, the pro-Hamas Squad, the BLM chorus who cheered on the Hamas glider death attack, of course, CAIR, and all the usual suspects, for now, are as furious as they are impotent—petulant that, for once, just this once, and for a while longer at least, no one is listening to their oh-so-tired amoral defense of the indefensible.

A Broken Congress.

When Democrats are in the majority, they get their way. And when Republicans are in the majority, the Democrats also get their way. Most recently, after the stopgap spending bill was passed, Rep Jamie Raskin took to MSNBC to boast that the Democrats “got the vast majority of what we wanted” from it. And for some Republicans that was the last straw.

Eight House Republicans allied with Democrats on a vote to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy. And for the first time in over a century, a House Speaker was successfully booted from office.

House Republicans have forgotten their mission.

A civil war among Republicans came down to threats from both sides of collaborating with Democrats in a House of Representatives with a narrow majority. And collaborating with Democrats seems to be the only thing that House Republicans know how to do anymore.

What are the legislative achievements of a House GOP majority, today, yesterday and the day before? They invariably involve collaborating with Democrats for personal political gain.

It’s been over a generation since a House Republican majority delivered for conservatives. Congressional Republicans are too terrified to fight Democrats and instead go after safe targets like each other. It’s not even worth counting how many times a Democrat White House made a House Republican majority cower in fear over the threat of being blamed for a government shutdown. Or how often that same majority compensated for surrendering to Democrats with meaningless virtue signaling votes that everyone knew were never going to pass the Senate.

Why are Democrats able to effectively wield their House majority while Republicans couldn’t? The Democrats are not afraid of what Republicans think of them. They develop a plan, implement it and dismiss Republican efforts to stop them. Republicans however care a great deal about what Democrats, in the House, in the media and the culture, think of them.

When Republicans threaten to blame Democrats for something, they laugh it off. Democrats backed the mobs that burned cities to the ground and opened the border to an unprecedented mass invasion without worrying what the Republicans would say. But Republicans live in fear of being blamed for a government shutdown. Rather than risk being blamed for shutting down the country, they shut down their own agenda, and then formed circular firing squads.

House Republican majorities do very little because they want to avoid taking responsibility for anything. When there is a Republican Senate majority or a Republican White House, they defer to them. And when there isn’t, they defer to the Democrats. The pattern is that the House Republican leadership wants someone else to take on their responsibilities.

Congress increasingly doesn’t legislate, it rubber stamps, and the House GOP leadership has been among the worst offenders. But the situation isn’t likely to improve under any speaker. The GOP leadership has concentrated legislative power in the hands of small men like Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Paul Ryan who haven’t the faintest idea of what to do with it except to prevent things from being done that might upset the status quo too much. Weak speakers are fall guys whose only job is to last long enough to deliver some stability for special interests.

The 118th Congress has been marked by weak and abusive leadership, and by mistrust and backstabbing among House Republicans. Short on ideological vision, it has no shortage of flamboyant members looking for ways to get ahead by becoming celebrities and undermining each other. None of this has accomplished anything for the country, only for themselves.

The Democrats have personal and ideological agendas, while the Republicans have only personal agendas. While the Democrats make money, become famous and get results, Republicans just make money and get famous before crashing and burning a few years in.

That is why Democrats keep getting the upper hand in negotiations whether they’re in the majority or in the minority. As awful as they may be, they’re not just out for themselves.

Republicans keep explaining that they have to work with Democrats since they have a narrow majority in a two-party system. But the problem isn’t that they negotiate with Democrats, it’s that they’re so bad at it. Every time Republicans work with Democrats, it’s the latter who have the leverage. And now, even when it comes to the House speakership under a GOP majority, the Dems ended up with an unprecedented degree of leverage over any Republican speaker.

The House GOP’s legacy of letting Democrats have the leverage now means total leverage.

Under Democrats, the speakership was a powerful position, while under Republicans it’s become a thankless job offering power without purpose in a deeply divided party.

And that is the real crisis.

What is the purpose of a GOP House majority? What is it there to accomplish? When all the hysterical fundraising emails, texts and carrier pigeons have been sent, what does it do?

Republicans campaign like insurgents, but they govern like placeholders. All the insurgent energy is completely lacking once the business of cutting 30 second ads gives way to the dry tasks of scheduling the votes that the leadership wants on the money that it wants to give away.

GOP leaders talk about the business of government as if its institutions exist purely for their own sake. That is not how Democrats, especially the growing leftist insurgency, sees matters. And it is not how Democrats govern. Rep. Nancy Pelosi did not treat the legislative majority that she had spent so much time and effort fundraising for as a mere non-ideological institution, and yet apart from the ritualistic virtue signaling, that is how House GOP majorities do things.

And it’s mostly how they have done things.

The Gingrich revolution briefly shook things up by giving the House GOP majority an agenda and an identity. And while the results were a long way from perfect, the branding gave the body some sense of purpose. Since then, House GOP majorities have no such mission. The leadership has tightened the screws leading to more resentment and no meaningful results.

The GOP has spent a long time treating its voters as if they were idiots, but they’re far from it. The average small dollar donor may not spend a lot of time delving into the ins and outs of legislative procedure, but understands perfectly well that he keeps investing time, energy and money with little to show for it except more fundraising letters, excuses and drama.

Conservatives are angry. And rightly so. They’ve been funding a revolution and getting a continuing resolution. The mismatch between rhetoric and results can only go on for so long. But the only thing a civil war does is hand more power and leverage to the Democrats.

The House Republican mission is not the business of government, but the business of revolution. The Democrats see that as their mission and it’s time that Republicans did too. That will take a wartime party, not peacetime managers. A true wartime party does not collaborate with the enemy. It builds a united front and sets out to win without fearing the other side.

A party like that requires strong leaders who know what is at stake: not hollow men and grifters.

The House GOP doesn’t have a speaker because it doesn’t have a mission. And without a mission, it’s only a matter of time until every session falls apart into self-serving drama. Either the House GOP will find its mission or it will continue to waste time that America doesn’t have.

Either Republicans will find their mission or they will lose.

A Time for Good People to Fight Back.

It took Iran-appeaser (and embarrassingly undeserving Nobel Peace Prize awardee) Barack Obama three days to condemn Hamas’s butchering of Israeli women and children. Pompous student groups at elite universities across the U.S. continue to ignore the barbarity of Islamic supremacists and instead blame Jews for their own murders. John Kirby, a former rear admiral in the Navy and a longtime national security spokesman for both Obama and Biden, assessed the carnage in the Middle East and concluded that “climate change” remains humanity’s most dire threat.

Moral truth is an elixir that can revive the soul and strengthen the body.

A former American president is not capable of moral leadership. Students at some of the best schools in the world are not intellectually prepared to comprehend anything of history or geopolitics beyond trite political slogans written on cardboard signs. And a military man fears the weather more than the prospect of regional tinderboxes in Israel, Ukraine, and the South China Sea igniting widespread nuclear conflagration — an event that would, indeed, affect the world’s “climate” dearly. Taken together, these weak and grotesque reactions to the bloodiest attacks on Israel in half a century show how a vacuum in American leadership has left the next generations dangerously unmoored from reality and unprepared to survive the threats from our increasingly volatile world.

Kidnapping and raping young women is evil. Bludgeoning and knifing grandmothers and sending pictures of their remains to their grandchildren is evil. Swiping babies from their mothers’ arms is evil. These vile acts are so depraved that they cannot even be camouflaged behind the sinister platitudes of moral relativism’s oozy sludge. No justification could ever excuse beheading babies or gunning down sleeping families, yet there are members of Congress today defending Hamas terrorists as “victims” of Israeli “oppression.” It is sickening to see U.S. lawmakers take sides with rapists, sadists, and baby-slaughterers. Those who do so do not ignore evil; they embrace it.

That any American could refrain from condemning Hamas — or worse, find ways to condone its wickedness — is another glaring warning sign that America has lost her way. For decades now, the people who have risen to the top in government, the arts, and academia have shared a common disdain for moral virtue, a haughty devotion to self-indulgence, and a malignant delight in elevating sin. The “ruling class,” such as it is, has worked to replace Americans’ obedience to God with an unholy dedication to “politically correct” pablum, idolatry, and worthless “wokeism.” In effect, American “elites” have demanded that the American people reject God and worship the atheists instead. The end result has been predictable: not only have Americans suffered through a drought of character, but also they have lost the ability to distinguish between good and evil. It should be no surprise, then, that evil has taken full advantage of this opportunity and now flourishes.

For those who have managed to keep their wits about them, it is clear that too many Americans are ill prepared for the struggles ahead. Governments — including our own — openly embrace totalitarianism. Rights and liberties are being remolded into removable “privileges.” Central bank lies and thievery have reduced the financial system to hollowed out papier-mâché — too brittle to survive the next crisis. The worst and most corrupt people have risen to power — united in iniquitous purpose to enrich themselves while distracting the American people with needless division and never-ending emergencies. The future promises to be hard and dangerous, and too many Americans have been made weak and dangers to themselves.

The Marxist proclivity to cause social friction by distorting language has given us a generation of adolescents incapable of determining whether they are girls or boys. Religious-like adoration of “diversity for diversity’s sake” has splintered cultural bonds and forfeited hard fought triumphs of Western civilization. Moral incisiveness — forged through a stubborn determination to do what is right — has worn down like a blunt blade, causing more harm than good. Strength of character — evidenced by those who refuse to blindly follow the crowd — has withered away.

American leaders have taught young generations to pursue physical pleasure without constraint, to blame others for what they do not have, and to take what is not theirs. They have taught the young generations to reject the virtuous as too judgmental and to embrace the sinful as worthy of emulation. They have taught the young generations to abandon hard work but to expect success as theirs by right. American leaders, in other words, have broken our country’s moral compass and left the youngest among us lost in a thicket of despair, devoid of real purpose, and with no direction to go.

This is by design. An immoral and lost America deprives the world of the last, best hope for freedom on the planet. Because morality and liberty are intertwined, the adulteration of the former guarantees the destruction of the latter. Government tyranny thrives in societies dedicated to sin. Moral ambivalence invites authoritarianism.

Now, in the midst of all these dispiriting observations, allow me to suggest something counterintuitive: this moral confusion and weakness in America is precisely the time when good people must stand up. Americans have been poisoned with postmodern gobbledygook for so long that they are desperate for moral guidance. They are like travelers wandering the desert searching for a cup of water, and those of good character are equipped to offer them what they need for salvation. This is not the moment in history when all is lost; this is the moment in history when the lost are brought back into the fold.

Leaders — true leaders, not the ones who pick our pockets today — rise not in times of certainty, but in times of anguish. They stand with purpose — even while being pummeled with rocks from their enemies. Without regard for their own safety, they seek out those suffering in the darkness and say boldly, “Come with me. I have a light. I can show you the way.” If you are asking yourself what you can do to save your country, the answer is simple: stand and be recognized. Be bold, act boldly, and by doing so, embolden others. Courage, like light, burns brightest in darkness.

What is more, it is clear that our nation is filled with lost souls desperate for moral guidance. They have been fed so many lies for so many years that they are battered human beings just struggling to survive. Moral truth is an elixir that can revive the soul and strengthen the body. It is a cup of water that can be passed from one person to the next without ever needing refilling. Truth and virtue grow hope and purpose in once barren fields.

How does one begin planting those seeds? By being blunt with others.

Evil is real. It must be acknowledged and confronted without hesitation. Negotiation will not lead to evil’s surrender. Compromise will not confine evil to where it now exists. Wherever it is allowed to fester, evil grows until those beyond its reach today are under its thumb tomorrow. It is unrelenting, and so, too, then, must be those who choose to fight it.

You fight evil with a faith in God that yields to no government. You fight evil with moral conviction that cannot be bent to appease the offended. You fight evil by standing when others sit and by speaking when others fall quiet — because sometimes it is the outsider who inspires a righteous rebellion or the soft voice that can only be heard when others are silent.

You do this, and people will come. They will awaken from their moral slumber. They will remember that there are things worth defending with their lives. They will remember that a healthy soul and personal freedom go hand in hand. They will find strength in your example.

This is a time for good people to fight back.

Mass Appeal.

One frequently portrayed astronomical phenomenon is the black hole—a region in spacetime where gravity is so intense that nothing, including light, can escape. Spitzer played a pivotal role in visually capturing information about black holes. For instance, it has identified some of the oldest and most distant black holes; additional Spitzer observations later that year (2004) would help astronomers determine the nature of these unusual objects. Further, Spitzer's data revealed black holes in various settings, such as the one in Messier 104, known as the Sombrero Galaxy, illustrating its vital role in advancing our understanding of these enigmatic cosmic entities.