Left & Right March 11, 2020

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair. 

First question from the producer asks: “Do you feel confident that the government is competently managing COVID 19 in the US?”

I think there are three phases of competent leadership: monitoring constantly-changing information, adjusting logistics appropriately, and projecting an aura of confident leadership. I think the feds are good on the first two, but somewhat lacking on the third compared to, say, FDR’s fireside chats during the Great Depression.

Mark says at first it was: “What’s the big deal? It’s a little worse than the flu, but then he worries about healthcare infrastructure being strained — ICU beds for one. He sees politicization of response or lack of it in this election year  as impeding effectiveness in dealing with it. He thinks it will be Trump’s undoing.

I raise the border conflict between Greece and Turkey where Turkish leader Erdogan is releasing a million more refugees bound for northern Europe. Greece is fortifying its border. It’s getting violent and Erdogan is looking for leverage with the EU to have it recognize its claims to parts of northern Syria. He also wants plaudits from the world’s Muslims because he wants to be the next Caliph of the Islamic world.

Mark blames Trump’s pullout of US troops from northern Syria as the cause. I disagree, saying our troops were too vulnerable to attack from several different factions there and there was confusion about who were our friends and who were our enemies. I see the primary dynamic as Muslim designs on Europe — taking over demographically in a generation or two.

Mark asks who is more likely to beat Trump: Bernie or Joe? I say Bernie because he’s an outsider and may ride an outsider wave, whereas Joe Biden, who never was very bright now shows signs of dementia.

Mark claims: “That’s what they said about Trump.” I contend that Trump’s issue is more a chronic personality disorder than dementia. I see no signs that’s changing, whereas there’s plenty of evidence that Biden is deteriorating and he makes a terrible candidate. Mark tells why he chose to endorse Bernie. Biden’s campaign wasn’t organized and didn’t come to the Sun’s editorial board, that only him and Warren failed to make it because their campaigns were disorganized.

Mark thinks Biden’s surge is a big surprise and his victories in the previous day’s primaries, especially Michigan, means Bernie should drop out. He thinks voters are looking for moderate leadership from someone like Biden and not someone who wants to burn the place down like Bernie or a flamethrower like Trump.

I read a quote from Bernie from an LA Times interview in the 1980: “[I believe in] traditional socialist goals — public ownership of oil companies, factories, utilities, banks, etc.” Does that make him a communist?

Biden says dumb things, like pretending to know about guns for example, when he clearly doesn’t know an automatic from a semi-automatic.

We discuss conflicting information being put out about the virus and speculate about what will our world be like a year hence. Should we bail out cruise ships? Airlines? Insurance companies required to cover virus-related claims with no deductible? 

Tulsi Gabbard — why is she still in it?

Left & Right December 19, 2018

We begin with a question from the producer about Trump's wall. I favor shutting down government if it's not funded. Gino doesn't.

I read a June 2016 tweet from former Obama campaign manager and advisor David Plouffe which said: "It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again."

I content that this tweet sums up all the shenanigans by the Obama Administration that transpired during the 2016 campaign and continuing to this day by the Deep State: The Democrat campaign to destroy Donald Trump. We then discuss the dodgy dossier compiled by the Hillary campaign and used by the FBI under Obama. It gets contentious. Gino talks over me almost constantly, especially when I'm making points painful to the left.

Gino points out how much turnover there has been in the Trump Administration vs Obama and Bush in their first two years and lists those who have resigned or been fired. He claims Trump isn't draining the swamp so much as he is the swamp.

I bring up unrest in Europe, especially France, but also the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands -- that it started because of French President Macron's measures purported to mitigate climate change according to the Paris Accords, but the spread to encompass other issues. I contend that the EU is threatened because of widespread immigration, legal and illegal, that is unpopular with ordinary Europeans but popular with elites. I point out similarities with issues in America in light of the border wall debate here.

Gino claims I want a more authoritarian country like Russia, like Turkey. I deny that because I'm pointing out the civil unrest in Europe over immigration, etc. that I favor dictatorship. He brings it up again. I deny it again.

We discuss the murder of Khashoggi in Turkey. I point out his association with the Muslim Brotherhood as a reason he was killed and we should continue our alliance with Saudi Arabia against Iran, the bigger threat. Gino defends Iran, while I point out its terrorist activities across the region in response to Gino's question.

Border Matters

Do borders matter? Over the weekend I crossed from Maine to New Hampshire and spent $250 on wine and beer. There’s no bottle law there and prices are better because of that state’s tax policies. Real estate agents advertise homes in Lovell, Maine where I live, and in other towns within the Fryeburg area, as “in the Fryeburg Academy school district.” That means high-school-aged children living within district borders can attend Fryeburg Academy, a private school, at taxpayer expense.

From Maine Sunday Telegram

In Portland, two thousand people demonstrated enthusiastically in support of illegal immigrants last Saturday. They chanted and held signs reading: “No Human Being Is Illegal,” and “We were just following orders – Holocaust prison guards 1943 – ICE Officers 2018.” ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency struggling to enforce laws governing who can cross our national borders and who cannot.

Other demonstrations were held in Brunswick, Augusta, and Farmington. On my way back to Lovell I saw people in Bridgton waving and carrying signs protesting President Trump’s border enforcement policies. A friend told me of another demonstration in Conway, NH in which a young woman carried a sign proclaiming: “Imagine a World Without Borders.” There were similar demonstrations in cities all across the United States that day.

Last week, another young woman named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won an upset victory in a New York Democrat congressional primary on a platform pledging to eliminate ICE. US Senator and presidential contender Kristin Gillebrand (D-NY) is also campaigning to abolish ICE. Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is also Vice Chairman of the Democrat Party, paraded last week with a T-shirt proclaiming: “Yo No Creo En Fronteras”— Spanish for “I don’t believe in borders.” In a commencement speech for Northeastern University two years ago, former Secretary of State and Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry told graduates to get ready for a “borderless world.”

On Sunday, Mexicans elected a new president who said: “We will defend migrants all over the American continent and the migrants of the world who, by necessity, must abandon their towns to find life in the United States; it’s a human right we will defend.” A headline in Monday’s San Diego Tribune declared: “Californians cross border to vote in Mexican election.” Are they Californians or are they Mexicans? Can they vote in both countries?

Britons voted two years ago to leave the EU — largely to control their borders. Italians just chose a new prime minister in an election the BBC called “dominated by [the] immigration debate.” Austria recently elected Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who wants to strengthen Austria’s border against illegal immigrants. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government is in danger of breaking apart over border issues in neighboring Germany. President Donald Trump was elected here in 2016 promising to build a wall on the Mexican border.

If border enforcement is not the biggest issue in the entire western world, I don’t know what is. Trying to imagine a world without borders as the Conway, New Hampshire young woman advises, seems problematic. Should a Fryeburg cop arrest people over the border in Conway? What about gun laws? They’re very strict in Massachusetts but not in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont. What about sales taxes and income taxes? New Hampshire doesn’t have any but Maine and Massachusetts do. Who is obligated to pay them and who isn’t? Who should determine that? Will states just abandon their sovereignty?

We purchased fourteen acres on which we built our home in Lovell. Do we have the right to say who can come onto it or who cannot? Can anyone camp out here? Can they cut firewood? How about our dooryard? Does a dog have the right to bark at intruders? New Hampshire poet Robert Frost wrote: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Family members have rights to come into our home, but do we have to take anybody? How about our home town? Our home state? Our home country? Are taxpaying citizens obligated to support whoever takes up residence? What is a citizen? Does that designation mean anything?

If people from other parts of the world come into our home town, home state, or home country, are we obligated to pay for their health care and their education? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got 57% of the vote by declaring medical care, housing, education, and a federal job as “rights,” but for whom? Everybody in the world? There’s serious disagreement about those questions in North American and in Europe. So far, those disagreements are being dealt with through the political process — peacefully, that is — so far.

Here’s hoping it stays that way, but I have little confidence that it will.

Is Paris Safe For Our High School Students?

Has radical Muslim terrorism made Paris too dangerous? That question was debated by the school board in Conway, New Hampshire a few weeks ago. The local Kennett High School French club went to Paris during an April terrorist attack. Two jihadis opened fire with assault rifles, killing a policeman and a tourist, and wounding another policeman.

“Kennett students were heading down the famed Champs-Elysee toward the Arc de Triomphe (pictured) when shots rang out,” reported the Conway Daily Sun. “Kennett High School senior Will Synnott planned on having an exciting April vacation during a student trip to France, but he didn't expect to be running for his life from a gun-toting terrorist.”

Mr. Synnott is a senior and, in spite of his exposure to terrorist murders, wants the student trips to continue. The Sun said he also wants “to discourage people from becoming bigoted against Muslims because of last Thursday's attack.” In that, he sounds like the European media or a European Union official. After every attack in every European country, they warn against “Islamophobia,” as if that were a bigger problem than jihadis raping and murdering Europeans nearly every day somewhere on the continent.

France has been in a national state of emergency for two-and-a-half years since January, 2015 when Muslim terrorists murdered twelve people for publishing pictures of Muhammed. Months later Muslim terrorists murdered 128 people in a series of Paris attacks with guns and bombs, and wounded many more. In Nice last summer, a Muslim terrorist drove a truck into a crowd killing eighty-six. There have been rapes, stabbings, and shootings too numerous to mention before the latest attack on the Champs-Elysee. There are “no-go zones” in Paris and across the country into which even the police don’t dare to go lest Muslim residents riot. In recent presidential debates, the liberal Macron said to the conservative Le Pen, “You are giving into their [Muslims’] trap of civil war.” As I write this on Tuesday, The UK Telegraph is reporting: “Paris' Gare du Nord train station was evacuated last night as armed police reportedly searched for three 'dangerous' terror suspects.”

Such is the new Europe under multiculturalism — the word to which liberals ascribe their notion that all cultures are equal. It became an official EU policy when that multinational body came into being. Conservative European leaders like Holland’s Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen who dare criticize passages in the Koran advocating the killing of Jews? They are prosecuted, but they continue to garner support nonetheless. In spite of European mainstream media’s constant drumbeat for multiculturalism, in spite of all the wonderful falafel restaurants that have opened across Europe, a growing percentage of ordinary Europeans are observing that millions of Muslim immigrants are not assimilating.

A critical mass of Muslim immigrants in Europe have no intention of becoming French, German, British, Dutch, or Swedish. What they want is to establish Sharia Law in their adopted countries. They want to make Europe Muslim. After centuries of trying by military invasion, they’ve changed tactics. Now they’re doing it through hijrah, or jihad by migration. In the late 20th and 21st centuries, this is coincident with a drastic decline in native European birthrates. The French, Germans, British, Swedish, Italians, Greeks, Spanish, etc. are simply not reproducing. Muslim immigrants are, however, and profusely. Demography is destiny and native Europe has essentially stopped reproducing, while Muslim immigrants multiply rapidly. Muslims are 7.5% of France’s population now. What will France and the rest of Europe be like in the next generation? The one after that?

Sexual assaults against European women skyrocket across Europe while governments forbid identification of perpetrators as Muslim immigrants. Media cooperates in the coverup. When for years young Muslims set hundreds of cars on fire in France during almost any given weekend, they’re called, simply, “youths,” not Muslims. Ordinary French are not fooled, but they fear being called racist or being prosecuted for speaking up. There’s no First Amendment in the EU Constitution. It is still in force in the USA though — except on college campuses.

Those pesky French "youths"at it again

Unlimited immigration was the biggest reason for the Brexit vote in the UK. British citizens wanted out of the EU and that sentiment is spreading across Europe. On Sunday, French voters elected a left-center president who promises to stimulate the moribund French economy. In spite of France’s never-ending state of emergency, he defeated the conservative candidate who promised to restrict Muslim immigration. Economics has trumped demographics for now. Meanwhile, France is being transformed.

If the purpose of sending American high school students to France is to provide them a taste of French culture as the “Religion of Peace” changes it, then yes, send them. But first, teach them to duck and cover.