DANGEROUS DISTRUST OF ELECTORAL PROCESS

Yes, I did call for President Trump to resign two weeks ago. However, it may surprise readers to know that if I could go back to 2016, I would vote for him again; 2020 too. Despite his behavior since losing reelection, I see his presidency as a net positive. Impeaching him now is farcical given that he’s leaving office anyway but the Dems want to prevent him from ever running again because they’re afraid of him.

Biden brags about getting Ukraine prosecutor fired

This latest impeachment for inciting violence may have grounds, unlike the 2020 effort which charged Trump with asking Ukrainians to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling. Pelosi ignored then-vice-president Biden on videotape threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine to stop a Ukrainian investigation into Hunter Biden. Mainstream media allies cooperated on both fronts.

Ever since Trump got the Republican nomination in the summer of 2016, mainstream media has amplified every Democrat effort to impugn him. First they magnified the Clinton campaign’s fabricated Steele Dossier and dubious Trump/Russian collusion story. They ignored Obama’s use of intelligence agencies to spy on Trump’s campaign before the 2016 election and then afterward on his transition team. They cheerleaded the dubious Mueller Investigations into General Flynn and President Trump, neither of which found anything to prosecute and only succeeded in bankrupting Flynn, destroying his reputation, and crippling Trump’s presidency.

Conservatives did a slow burn watching all this and 90% negative media coverage of Trump’s presidency despite its long string of successes: Trump isolated Iran and its terrorism. He killed Iran General Soleimani, ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and al-Qaeda leader Qasim al-Rimi, among others. He forged the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab leaders. He spurred economic growth that Obama claimed would be impossible. He reduced illegal immigration and built over 400 miles of new border wall. He hammered out favorable trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, the EU, and China. He appointed hundreds of pro-life judges and three originalist Supreme Court justices.

He eliminated the Obamacare individual mandate, reformed the VA, withdrew from the Paris Accord and the Iran nuclear agreement, got NATO Countries to pay their fair share, cut restrictions on oil drilling and coal exports, fast-tracked and funded a COVID vaccine, brought unemployment to record lows, raised median household income to record level, brought home troops from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, reformed the criminal justice system, and created the Space Force. Trump may be the most controversial president ever, but he’s also one of the most accomplished, especially considering he did all that in four years.

After losing on November 3rd, however, Trump claimed election fraud. Mainstream media said there was no evidence. Millions of Trump voters however, watched as Trump was winning that evening when swing states abruptly stopped counting votes, sent observers home, and resumed counting. By morning they were reporting that Trump was losing. Pennsylvania extended its deadline for counting votes without constitutional authority, after which the votes swung to Biden.

Is that evidence of election fraud or coincidence? Millions of Trump voters believe it was cheating. Mainstream media denied it all and called the election for Trump. Hundreds of observers made sworn depositions of voter fraud. That is evidence. Only two eyewitnesses, for example, are needed for a murder conviction and sometimes only one, but mainstream media continued claiming there was no evidence. There’s also video of ballot stuffing in Georgia. Law suits alleging fraud were dismissed on procedural grounds like lack of standing. There is plenty of evidence for election fraud largely perpetrated by Democrats, though probably not enough to overturn the result.

Our Founders gave us freedom of speech for many reasons, but one was for irate citizens to blow off steam by expressing their anger verbally and in writing. Here in 2021, people don’t use 18th century broadsheets; they use Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

Those outlets are owned and run by leftists who have been censoring news and posts with which they disagree, especially about election fraud. Because they’re private companies, they probably aren’t violating the 1st Amendment, but they’ve assumed enormous political power and they’re using it against conservatives, so far under the legal protection of Section 230.

We now have a huge percentage of our electorate that no longer trusts the electoral process. One could debate whether that mistrust is justified or not, but there’s little dispute that it exists. That is a huge threat to our republic that should give all of us the shivers.

Trump has been accused of narcissism even by supporters. What they at first saw as a character flaw was turning into an unraveling after his election loss, and it accelerated week-to-week. By January 6th it had completely blinded him to the political reality that Biden’s election would not be overturned. His unwillingness to accept that is embarrassing for all who voted for him. I will not vote for him in any 2024 primary and I hope he doesn't get the Republican nomination again. Right now I'm looking at Nikki Haley.

THE FEAR IS WORSE THAN THE VIRUS

It’s not the problem; it’s how you react to it. So goes the aphorism and 2020 exemplifies it. All the sum-ups of the year past proclaimed that Covid-19 made it the worst year of the century, and maybe it was. If so, it wasn’t because of the virus; it was government reaction to it — shutting down virtually everything. Many now believe those shutdowns have caused more suffering and death than the virus has.

By the end of last year, evidence to support that contention multiplied, but not enough for big government or its mainstream media spokespeople to acknowledge it. Instead, they’ve doubled down on fear hype. Recent widespread testing indicates that perhaps half the population has already been infected and has immunity. While more deadly than the seasonal flu, chances of dying from Covid are extremely low. In September, the CDC reported that the under-69 population of those infected had more than a 99.5% chance of surviving it. So why the continued shutdowns? 

And, why do teachers’s unions insist that schools remain closed when the CDC reports that children aged 0-19 survive Covid at a rate of 99.997%? Surely it’s not to protect them. Why do blue-state governors and superintendents acquiesce? Teachers’s unions are among the party’s biggest contributors. After Tuesday’s Georgia elections, Democrats could control the entire federal government, but is our country uniting behind them? A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll demonstrates that although most Americans accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, 39% think the election was rigged. That points to a seriously divided country.

Is this division a recent phenomenon? Many of us first became aware of roiling discontent within the electorate when the Tea Party emerged ten years ago. Most agree it was a grassroots conservative movement, but I can recall what happened when a large contingent of Tea Party activists first made their presence known at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Republicans were wary because it had no leaders and wasn’t part of the Republican power structure. CPAC’s 3-day conference program that year didn’t even mention the Tea Party.

I remember walking into the hotel lobby in Washington and the first thing I noticed was a man dressed as an original 1773 Massachusetts patriot complete with tricorne hat and waving a yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. However no one mentioned the Tea Party in any of the sessions I attended. It was as if it didn’t exist. And Democrats were not going to welcome them either, given the Tea Party first coalesced following the narrow passage of government-expanding Obamacare in 2009 with not a single Republican vote.

Here was an amorphous throng of citizens dead-set against big government — and shunned by both major parties. Mitt Romney ignored the Tea Party in his 2012 presidential run and lost. Looking back now, we should not have been surprised that an outsider with zero political experience and promising to “drain the swamp” won the presidency in 2016. If it weren’t for his narcissism he would likely have won a second term. Instead, he was toppled by an aged career politician who stayed in his basement throughout the campaign in fear of either Covid or making a gaffe, or both.

After the first two weeks in early 2020, many Americans opposed government’s massive response to Covid. Shutting down the economy and triggering a near depression, it then created trillions of dollars out of thin air and distributed them to citizens, businesses, as well as various institutions and organizations large and small. Federal debt, already out of control, went into the stratosphere. Governors, most of them in blue states, extended shutdowns again and again, and now into 2021. All but 13 states have ordered their citizens to wear masks everywhere.

When gubernatorial authority to shut down states is challenged in court, judges have so far ruled it unconstitutional — even though states do have authority to deal with infectious disease. Anthony Fauci objects to that though, claiming that federalism is undermining the U.S. response he coordinates. Evidence that shutdowns at any level are effective in controlling spread is thin.

 According to an article in Just The News, when states report Covid statistics, nearly all conflate patients hospitalized “with Covid” and “due to Covid.” As more people are tested and found to have antibodies, it’s inevitable that more hospitalized patients will too. Hospitals are not being overfilled with patients “due to Covid” as media and government repeatedly proclaim, but “with Covid.” That’s an extremely important distinction that few Americans recognize.

Covid is a problem, yes, but it’s much worse when government and media stoke Covid fear to justify seizure of power over the day-to-day lives of Americans — and further dividing our country. Two centuries ago, President Andrew Jackson advised Americans: “Never take counsel of your fears,” yet that’s exactly what we’re doing.

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?