Speech to Carroll County New Hampshire Republicans Monday, 3-15-21

Only seven at this point

Way back in the 20th century I was born into a family of Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrats, the fourth of eight children. We were taught that Protestants and Republicans were different from us and not to be trusted. My parents were politically active at the town level and some of my earliest memories are of our mother driving us kids around town to deliver fliers door-to-door encouraging people to vote for either my father running for local office, or a family friend. Politics of all kinds were discussed most nights around our supper table beginning at 5:45 pm. If I showed up late because I was fishing, playing baseball, or finishing my paper route, there would be consequences.

My mother and father

After supper I would sit in front of the television while my father watched the news. John F. Kennedy was our hero and my father proudly displayed a photo of him and Congressman JFK standing next to each other at a meeting to organize a public-employee union called NAGE — the National Association of Government Employees. That union later morphed into today’s SEIU, which functions as an army of Democrat poll workers and thugs. On weekends my father watched 30-minute episodes of “World at War” or “Victory at Sea” When a flotilla was crossing the English Channel on D-Day he would say, “I was there.” When the Battle of Okinawa was depicted with kamikazes crashing in to US ships he would say, “I was there.” 

Okinawa

But then most other fathers on our street were WWII veterans. That’s how it was in suburban Massachusetts in the 1950s and 60s. Every kid was proud of his father and that shaped our world view. In the late sixties and early seventies, however, things changed. Baby boomers grew up, went to college. Many challenged the values of the Greatest Generation. They used drugs. They ignored sexual norms, and opposed the Vietnam War. Heroes like JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King were assassinated. Cities burned in riots. Protests divided the country. President Johnson chose not to run again. Nixon resigned. My older brother started using drugs and left home. Those previously edifying conversations around our supper table became acrimonious.

Similar things were happening up and down my street and across the country. American culture was fraying. Respect for the Greatest Generation was replaced by: “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” 

That unraveling of American pride then paused during eight years of the Reagan Administration, but began anew under the Obama Administration. Last summer cities were again burning in the riots following the George Floyd’s death. America has started shaking again. Today, after only two months of the Biden Administration, political polarization in America is worse than at anytime since the Civil War.

And racism is back in the form of Critical Race Theory. Although banned by President Trump, it has become dominant in public school classrooms just since the November election. If you look at sample curricula virtually anywhere in our country now you’ll see students being taught to categorize themselves by the color of their skin, not the content of their character. White people are born “privileged.” They’re inherently racist against all other people. White people perpetuate “institutional racism” the theory claims, consciously or unconsciously. 

Such BS

Curricula like “The 1619 Project” which purports the United States was built on slavery — and not on notions of liberty and freedom spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The 1619 Project is being adopted in public schools across several states and a new acronym has emerged: “BIPOC.” If you haven’t seen it yet, you will. It stands for: Black, Indigenous, People of Color. Our country is divided in two now: whites and BIPOCs. This is not good and it’s gaining momentum. Ask your children and grandchildren if they’re hearing it.

And it’s not just in schools. Coca Cola and many other mainstream corporations today train their employees to first acknowledge, then renounce their alleged “White Privilege” and learn to “Be Less White.” The training is mandatory and they must admit being racists.

My teaching career began in the 1970s after I was influenced by the craziness of the 60s and 70s. The first US History textbook I used was one of the most widely-used at the time. Today, however, it would banned. In the chapters leading up the Civil War, it summarized debates between between members of Congress from northern and southern states on slavery. Here’s what it says on page 274 of American History:

Southerners justified slavery as a good thing because:

1. The African slave was an inferior human being. As an inferior, he was suited only to special kinds of work. This work was best done under a system of slavery.

2. Slavery was approved by the Bible. Many southerners pointed out that slavery had existed in Biblical times. The Bible did not condemn slavery. Therefore, they added, it could not be bad or sinful.

3. The slave was treated better than many white factory workers in the north … who worked 12 snd 14 hours a day often in poorly-lighted and unhealthy factories. The slave did most of his work in outdoor in an area that was much warmer and healthier than a northern city.

4. Slavery was important in helping the South develop its leaders… The use of slaves made it possible for southern leaders to devote themselves to law, politics, and government service.

There were commensurate northern arguments against slavery with which you would already be familiar. My students would study, then role-play as ante-bellum northern and southern senators and members of Congress and debate just as Congress did in those years leading up to the Civil War. If a teacher were to try that today he’d be suspended immediately. On end-of-the-year evaluations, though, my students cited that debate as the lesson they learned the most from.

They learned also that slavery was practiced in every other civilization throughout human history — including in black Africa from which American slaves either purchased or captured. Many of our students today, however, believe slavery was unique to America.

The Allegedly Reverend Al Sharpton

Those southern senators and congressmen my students role-played were all Democrats. After WWII they were called Dixiecrats. Today’s Democrats, however, like to put on historical blinders when viewing their party's racist history. They claim that racist southern Democrats all became Republicans when Richard Nixon implemented his “Southern Strategy.” It’s classic projection. Trouble is, there’s little evidence for it.

Nixon said nothing remotely racist over a very long career from 1940s to the 1970s, but Democrats claim he used “racist dog whistles” like “law and order” and “states rights.” Really? Like a secret code? Only one senator — Strom Thurmond — became Republican and only one congressman — Albert Watson of South Carolina. Nearly all Dixiecrats supported Alabama Governor George Wallace, a Democrat, not Nixon. Though John Tower, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott joined the Republicans too, they hadn’t been Dixiecrats. The South became Republican in the 1980s and 90s because of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, not because of Nixon.

Few people know that a greater percentage of Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights bill than Democrats and Nixon was one of them. He also supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Tom Wicker of the New York Times wrote: “There’s no doubt about it — the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years or probably since. There’s no doubt either that it was Richard Nixon personally who conceived and led the administration’s desegregation effort.”

Nixon is the president who actually got Affirmative Action going which discriminated against whites in favor of blacks and women. The south became Republican not because of any strategy of Richard Nixon’s. The south became Republican because the south became conservative. It had little to do with racism.

Republicans all

So here we are in 2021. The Democrats run the country again and they just enacted a $1.9 trillion “Covid Relief” bill which has very little to do with COVID. Rather, it has everything to do with Democrat agendas, like $350 billion for bailing out cities like Chicago and Los Angeles and states like Illinois, California, New York and others. Decades of Democrat mayors and governors have brought them to the brink of bankruptcy. They did this by negotiating overly-generous pension and benefit packages they knew they couldn’t afford for public employee unions like the above mentioned SEIU, AFS/CME, and others.

Democrat leaders knew these contracts were unsustainable. They also knew they’d be out of office when the bill came due. The so-called COVID Relief Bill also gives Democrat teachers’ unions tens of billions more to open the schools they’ve kept closed. Money isn’t the problem. They still have billions they haven’t spent from the last relief bill. Maybe some of you are old enough to remember Illinois Republican Senator Everett Dirksen’s remark from earlier times in that state: “A million here, a million there — pretty soon you’re talking real money.” If only it were still a million here and a million there. Now it’s a trillion here and a trillion there — and that’s still not enough for the Democrats!

Next will come still another multi-trillion-dollar piece of legislation — ostensibly for rebuilding infrastructure. Remember President Obama’s $800 billion in “shovel ready projects”? I challenge any of you to point to one of those shovel-ready projects we spent hundreds of billions on. I can’t point to any.

It was different with Republican public works projects over the years. We can point to the Hoover Dam in the twenties. Hoover was a Republican. We can point to Eisenhower’s interstate highways in the fifties. Eisenhower was a Republican. Where are Obama’s shovel ready projects from the 2000s? I give up.

We Republicans have our work cut out for us, don’t we? And so it goes…

Between Now and November

Democrats and their mainstream media allies hate Donald Trump, and that hate has been the central political dynamic of the past four years. By extension, they also hate Trump supporters which comprise more than 60 million Americans who they consider ignorant at best, or irredeemably racist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic at worst. As someone who held my nose when voting for Trump in 2016 I shall likely do so again in November, only this time with relish.

Democrat voters interviewed by Mainstream Media during the New Hampshire primary last week were asked who they liked, but their answers were more about who they didn’t like — Donald Trump. They weren’t sure what Democrat to vote for and would make up their minds in the voting booth, at which time they would choose the candidate most likely to beat him. Bernie supporters were rabid for their guy but supporters of the other candidates were unenthusiastic. Democrat and media pundits are afraid Bernie will get the nomination and then be easily beaten by President Trump.

The pundits, however, still don’t understand the 60+ million Americans who voted for Trump in 2016 and likely will again in November. Neither did they understand the Tea Party movement a decade ago. Back then they went looking for Tea Party leaders to interview but couldn’t find any. They couldn’t comprehend that this was a real, spontaneous, grassroots movement against what an Obama Administration which was growing government. Obamacare was taking over the healthcare industry and the president was spending nearly a trillion dollars on supposed “shovel ready jobs” to stimulate the economy.

At CPAC 2010 in the lobby

Attending CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington during 2010 and 2011, I sensed a discomfort in the Republican establishment running the conference with the upstart Tea Party thousands of whose members invaded CPAC. Republican leaders were not sure where this new, amorphous, small-government throng would fit in, if indeed it could fit in at all. There were no clear leaders with whom dealmakers could meet and talk about making sausage. Meanwhile, Democrats in President Obama’s IRS like Lois Lerner obstructed the Tea Party’s efforts to procure 501(c)4 status for their groups which would enable them to organize and raise funds.

Facing Republican condescension and Democrat obstruction, it soon became apparent to virgin activists in the Tea Party that neither side wanted them in their respective Washington cloisters. Thus spurned, these pockets of the Tea Party returned to their rural enclaves and either organized locally or returned to political dormancy — until Donald Trump started campaigning around their country. He woke them up.

Previewing what Hillary Clinton would later say about Trump supporters, Democrat spinmeisters  ten years ago said the Tea Party was racist and xenophobic. In a September, 2019 interview with the leftist publication Mother Jones, Harvard government professor Theda Skocpol reiterated those accusations against the emerging Tea Party of 2010 who were later to become Trump supporters. She said Trump’s promise to build the wall pleased them and: “The other thing they like about Trump very much is that he ‘kicks ass,’ that he makes people on the left angry and upset. They love that,” she said.

They certainly do. While many former Tea Party types were put off by Trump’s incessant braggadocio, they could overlook it because he so enflamed the left. When Democrats and their mainstream media allies called Trump racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and all the rest, they recalled the same baseless slurs being thrown at them years before. The “Never Trumpers” included Republican leaders as well as Democrats and were the same people who spurned the Tea Party. Trump had the same enemies they did, so the old aphorism: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” took hold and held fast.

As facts continue to emerge about Obama Administration efforts to prevent Trump’s election, and subsequent efforts by his surviving minions and Democrats in Congress to bring down his presidency, Trump’s support only hardens and increases. At this point in the primary process, it doesn’t appear that any of the Democrats running can possibly beat Trump. He continues to tweet and say stupid things but the economy is humming along. He’s making trade deals. He’s getting judicial appointments approved. With nine months until the election, he looks unbeatable.

But nine months is an eternity in politics. Anything can happen between now and November. Like what you may ask? The Corona virus, for one thing. Chinese efforts to contain it have been futile. So have their efforts to censor information about how serious it is. Their economy is slowing considerably and likely to tank. Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer Laurie Garrett has covered first-hand over thirty epidemics worldwide and she offers a very sobering account of what we may expect from the virus now being called COVID-19. “The economic and political repercussions are going to be enormous,” she says.

Understanding the OIG Report

Three years ago I agreed with the mainstream media I otherwise disdained, when they said it was a joke. Donald Trump had descended an escalator at his tower and announced his candidacy for president. He didn’t have a chance, I thought. His uncamouflaged narcissism would preclude a serious bid. No one who combed his hair like that could ever win, I thought. Then he won primary after primary and still I agreed with mainstream media: “His campaign is going to fall apart any day now. He’ll say something stupid; his poll numbers will plummet, and that’ll be it. He’ll drop out.”

And he did say stupid things, plenty of them — all joyfully trumpeted by media — but his numbers kept going up. Eventually Ted Cruz, his last serious opponent and my preferred candidate, dropped out. Trump won the Republican nomination. At that point I realized I was actually going to vote for him, but only because I could never vote for Hillary Clinton or the two minor candidates. I wasn’t comfortable with it, but I knew I would do it. As the campaign wore on, however, I found myself in agreement with virtually all his policy positions — and I really liked how he told Hillary to her face she would be in jail if he were president.

On election night I celebrated his victory. If he actually did half the things he said he would, I knew America would be much better off. At about 9:30 pm, I flipped around to NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC and enjoyed the extreme distress on the faces of their talking heads as they realized Trump would actually win. I savored schadenfreude for the rest of the evening and all through the next day.

I believed President Obama’s DOJ and FBI had helped Hillary to avoid indictment for gross negligence in her handling of classified documents on her private server. However, I didn’t realize at the time that, after exonerating her, the Obama Administration had then weaponized the FBI, DOJ, NSA, and CIA against first Donald Trump’s candidacy, and then against his presidency.

That process I’ve been closely following for more than a year and a half, and I eagerly anticipated last week’s report by the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). Its accumulated evidence of FBI and DOJ corruption was extremely damning, but the conclusion in its executive summary was perplexing to say the least. CBS reported it this way: “…the [OIG] report found that political bias [of Obama officials] did not affect the [Hillary email] investigation and it gave support to the decision not to prosecute Clinton.”

So how can the OIG report be both damning and exonerating? Former US Attorney George Parry, writing in The American Spectator, illustrates it best by using a hypothetical:

It seems like a day doesn’t go by without some female high school teacher getting arrested for having sexual relations with an underage student. The story line is always the same. Ms. Hotpants either gets caught in the act or because her student paramour shares with the world the naked selfies that for some weird reason she just had to send to his cell phone. Invariably the teacher is quickly and unceremoniously condemned, fired from her job and arrested.

To illustrate this point, let me apply the OIG’s reserved and non-judgmental standards to the hypothetical case of Teacher 1 and Student A who have been caught naked in a car parked behind the local Piggly Wiggly. Herewith is an excerpt from the hypothetical report by the Pleasant Valley School District’s Office of Inspector General:

We asked Teacher 1 why she and Student A had been in her car at Midnight. She replied that he had been doing poorly in her class, and she was tutoring him. We acknowledge that such additional instruction would be a valid and proper pedagogical undertaking. Nevertheless, we asked why they were not wearing clothes. She explained that they had become hot and sweaty, and she believed that it was important that teacher and student should eliminate physical discomforts to maximize the learning experience.

We asked why they had an open bottle of vodka and a box of condoms. She explained that these items had been left in the car by her husband. Since her spouse is not an employee of the school district, we were unable to question him regarding this matter.

While we found Teacher 1’s answers to be unpersuasive, she made no direct declaration as to why she had engaged in this drunken, naked and nocturnal meeting with Student A. Consequently, we have no definitive proof that she was motivated by a desire to engage in sexual relations. Therefore, we make no finding regarding her motive or intent.

As a trial attorney might say at this juncture: “I rest my case.”

My Working Hypothesis

Shenanigans in our federal government are so numerous and they’re being exposed so rapidly that’s it’s very hard to keep up, much less to make sense of it all. Several months ago I developed a working hypothesis — a theoretical framework — to put new information into a plausible context. Here it is: Officials in the Obama Administration, together with their allies in mainstream media, the Clinton campaign, and “never Trumpers” in the Republican establishment, have been working to sabotage first Donald Trump’s campaign, and now his presidency.

I realize that to some I sound like a conspiracy nut who should be fitted for a tinfoil hat, but I haven’t had to change my hypothesis as new information emerges. It all fits. Six months ago I would have considered the above paragraph ridiculous. I never believed it could get this bad, but now I’m thinking it could be even worse. Did leftist Democrats in charge of our federal government weaponize our intelligence community to use against an opposing party candidate for president? Evidence is mounting and the question becomes: Who was involved? Many names we already know. Eventually we’ll be resurrecting the refrain from the Watergate investigation: “What did the [now former] president know and when did he know it?”

The latest datum is a plausible claim that Obama’s FBI planted a spy in the Trump campaign sometime around July, 2016. It could even have been even before Trump won the Republican nomination but neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice (DOJ) will reveal either the spy’s identity or the timing of his implantation. Both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal reported on this last week but neither names him. Kim Strassel, who wrote the WSJ piece, said she believed she knew his identity but couldn’t completely verify it.

However, the anonymous source who calls himself “Sundance” at the Conservative Tree House web site does name him: Stefan Halper. So does The Daily Caller. A background article on Halper indicates he worked in three or four Republican Administrations from Nixon to Bush, including several campaigns but I had never heard of him. This is big, but you’d never know it if you get all your news from mainstream media (MSM). Except for the Washington Post, they’re giving it a good leaving alone.

When President Trump tweeted that President Obama was wiretapping Trump Tower, MSM outlets too numerous to list here ridiculed Trump and insisted it was an outrageous allegation for which there was no evidence. It was eventually proven true, however, when we learned about the “Trump Dossier” and its use to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign. We only know about that because of digging by Devin Nunes and his committee — and he only started investigating after Trumps wiretapping tweet March 4, 2017. He’s still at it.

Nunes has gathered lots of evidence but he’s still being stonewalled at FBI and DOJ. According to the Washington Post:

A subpoena that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) issued to the Justice Department last week made a broad request for all documents about an individual [the implanted spy] who people close to the matter say is a sensitive, longtime intelligence source for the CIA and FBI. The Justice Department has refused to provide the documents. Intelligence officials say the material could jeopardize the source, a U.S. citizen who has aided the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign.

President Trump, however, can force DOJ to declassify any DOJ documents or release them to Congress. So, why doesn’t he? Rush Limbaugh speculated on his program last Friday that Trump wants it all to play out on its own, that he wants his base to see him as the persecuted victim of a witch hunt by his opposition — the MSM and “The Swamp.” If Limbaugh is right, that wouldn’t necessarily negate my working hypothesis, but it’s troubling. Why not expose it all now? Is Trump playing “Rope-a-Dope” with his enemies? Is he timing the release for just before the mid-term elections? Is he waiting for a new John Dean character to emerge from the Deep State? For the “Why doesn’t he?” question, all I can do is speculate.

But for now, consider how MSM would react if there were evidence that George W. Bush’s FBI planted a spy in the Obama campaign, then used a bogus dossier for a warrant to wiretap his offices. What if the “national security” justification for all this turned out to be completely fabricated? That’s how this whole thing is shaping up, but you’d never know it if you got all your news from the New York Times and the alphabet networks.

Will continuing events prove it necessary to modify my hypothesis? We’ll see.

Left & Right May 9, 2018

Trump pulls out of Iran deal; Iran/Israel standoff; Gino defends the JCPOA. I trash it. Michael Avenati, attorney for Stormy Daniels raking up alleged evidence of Trump/Russia collusion. I claim the Deep State conspiring to bring down Trump. Obama, Clinton, et al involvement. Maine governor's race. Possible Trump impeachment if Dems take over the House.

Left and Right February 14, 2018

Ash Wednesday, Valentine's Day coincide, State of the Union, FBI guy Bill Priestap, Russia/Trump alleged collusion, voter ID, winners and losers, good news/bad news, Iran/Israeli sable-rattling, GDP nears 5%, national debt rising under Trump as a national security issue, House intelligence committee memo, Democrat memo, Susan Rice email to self. Lame duck President Obama withholding information from incoming President Trump? Russia/Trump "collusion" case disintegrating.

Pardon Edward Snowden

“Ambivalent.”

That was my response at a 2013 dinner party when an old friend challenged me to sum up in one word how I felt about Edward Snowden informing the world that the United States government has the ability to spy on anyone who uses a digital device to communicate — virtually all of us.

Like me, many Americans were of two minds: dismayed that Snowden shared vital US intelligence with our enemies, but also grateful to learn that government can monitor every phone call, email, text, Facebook post we make. It can turn on our computers’ cameras and watch what’s happening. It can turn on microphones in our cell phones and hear whatever it’s picking up. It can locate any of us using our cellphones’ GPS function.

I’m not ambivalent anymore. Now I would urge President Trump to pardon Edward Snowden and let him return to the United States from Moscow where he’s been holed up for the last five years to avoid prosecution for treason. Snowden is a hero. Why?

After last Friday’s release of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) memo, I watched Oliver Stone’s movie “Snowden” during the making of which Stone collaborated with Snowden himself for accuracy. One horrifying scene depicted Snowden looking over the shoulder of another CIA hacker as he surveilled a Pakistani banker whose name Snowden had just given him. Using the capabilities Snowden revealed to all of us in 2013, the hacker then gathered information not only on the banker, but on everyone with whom the banker had any contact — and anyone with whom each of them had contact — in an ever-widening network.

The hacker started by watching the banker’s sister get undressed in her bedroom through the camera on her laptop she had left open on her desk. Then he went into the daughter’s Facebook account and those of all her friends. Facebook messages revealed her sexual activities with a boyfriend whose own account revealed that he was having sex with two other girls as well — also that the cheating boyfriend and his mother were living illegally in Geneva, Switzerland.

The CIA leaked that information to get the boyfriend deported whereupon the daughter had a nervous breakdown. Agents used additional information from the ever-broadening surveillance to totally screw up the unfortunate banker’s life. Snowden was horrified, but he continued using his computer hacking skills to benefit the CIA for years before he finally resigned in 2013 and told the world what was happening.

We may assume the intelligence community’s spying capabilities are even more powerful five years hence but here’s the kicker: the extent of surveillance on that poor Pakistani banker Stone’s “Snowden” movie depicted was also applied to Carter Page, the low-level Trump campaign volunteer on whom the Obama FBI and DOJ obtained a FISA warrant.

NSA Headquarters

It wasn’t just any FISA warrant; it was a “Title I” FISA warrant. According to conservativetreehouse.org, the difference is: 

“‘Title I’ FISA surveillance of U.S. citizens is the most intrusive, exhaustive and far reaching type of search, seizure and surveillance authority, permitting the FBI to look at every scintilla of Mr. Page’s life.  All communication, travel and contact can be opened and reviewed. All aspects of any of Mr. Page’s engagements are subject to being secretly monitored. This is an entirely different level of surveillance authority, the highest possible, and has nothing to do with FISA-702 search queries (Title VII) of U.S. persons.”

conservativetreehouse.org goes on to explain the potentially explosive significance of Title I: 

Labeling [Carter Page] as a foreign agent allowed the FBI to look at every single person he came in contact with; and every single aspect of their lives and their activities in growing and concentric circles; without limits to current time or historic review. The “Title I” designation as a foreign agent applied retroactively to any action taken by Mr. Page, and auto-generates an exponential list of other people he came in contact with.  Each of those people, groups or organizations could now have their communication reviewed, unmasked and analyzed by the DOJ/FBI with the same surveillance authority granted upon the target, Mr. Page.” [emphasis added]

From Conservativetreehouse.org

In other words, everyone in Trump Tower after October 21, 2016 could be surveilled. This Title I FISA warrant was obtained by the same Obama DOJ and FBI officials who “investigated” and cleared Hillary Clinton in her private email scandal during the campaign. The HPSCI memo tells us they used opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the form of the unverified Trump dossier. It’s no stretch to assume the Obama FBI and DOJ knew everything going on in Trump Tower two weeks before the election and during the transition. Did they share that information with the Clinton campaign and President Obama?

President Trump: How about pardoning Edward Snowden and doing a joint press conference?