A Senate of Benedict Arnolds...

Benedict Arnold was a well-respected and courageous officer in the American Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. He fought in half a dozen battles and was central to winning the critical Battle of Saratoga in 1777, where he suffered a leg injury that sidelined him for the next two years.

They say that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and that appears to apply to legs as well. Over the next two years, Arnold’s inherent victim complex blossomed. Others were, he suggested, getting credit for his actions or getting promoted when he deserved such.

In 1779, Arnold would take a step that would change his life: He married Peggy Shippen, a member of a powerful loyalist family in Philadelphia. Eventually, his jealousy would get the best of him, and he contracted to betray the Americans. By at least as early as July of that year, he was giving the British information on American troop strengths, movements, and munition locations.

George Washington knew none of this and trusted Arnold and put him in charge of West Point in August 1780. One of the most important posts in the country, it was the spot from which the Americans commanded the Hudson River. Less than two weeks after receiving his command, Arnold agreed to a plan, in exchange for $20,000 ($3,500,000 today), to surrender the post to the British in September.

The surrender never occurred, however, because Arnold’s British contact, Major John André, was captured along with the plans for the betrayal. André was hanged, and Arnold escaped to join the British. The British immediately commissioned him as a brigadier general in their army, but most soldiers considered him dishonorable, and many refused to follow him.

Following the war, Arnold would spend most of the rest of his life in London, where the king liked him, but many British citizens and military men despised him. In America, his name has become synonymous with treachery.

Although Arnold’s ultimate plan never came to fruition, had it done so, it could have changed the outcome of the war. Washington said of the plan that “Such an event must have given the American cause a dangerous, if not a fatal wound.”

And that is the crux of why betrayal is so dangerous. It’s one thing to understand that your enemy seeks your destruction. It’s another thing altogether when one of your own, one upon whom you’re counting on to man the ramparts, turns and lets the enemy in. It might not be fatal to your endeavor, but it could be and most certainly will endanger the mission.

Sylvester Stallone recently called Donald Trump the new George Washington. That’s not quite true, but like Washington, Trump is trying to carve out of an enemy-infested wilderness a great nation seeking freedom and prosperity. Also, like Washington, Trump is faced with numerous people who are theoretically on his side while, in reality, aligning with the enemy.

And who is this enemy? The Swamp. The Borg. Basically, the government that controls virtually every element of American life, from baby formula to school curriculum to college funding to healthcare to retirement, not to mention banking and justice and speech…if you object.

Ostensibly, Trump should have a mandate given that he won the popular vote and the Electoral College, gave the GOP a Senate majority, and kept the majority in the House. The first test of that mandate came recently and it didn’t go particularly well.

In the Senate, with Mitch McConnell leaving his leadership role, there were three competitors to replace him: Rick Scott of Florida, John Thune of South Dakota, and John Cornyn of Texas. Hardcore MAGA firebrand Mike Lee or bomb-thrower Rand Paul weren’t even considered. Of the three considered, two are virtual Democrats, with the Conservative Review giving Cornyn a Liberty Score of 54% and Thune an abysmal 51%, while Scott scored a respectable 86%.

Both Cornyn and Thune are, at their core anti-Trump, while Scott has been a staunch supporter of the president. Thune, who said after January 6, “What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable,” is seen as K Street’s favorite and endorsed Tim Scott in the GOP primary. In 2016, the immigration dove and gun control fan Cornyn ridiculed Trump’s border wall, was booed at the Texas GOP convention in 2022, and, in 2023 said Trump couldn’t win as his time had passed.

In a shameful last act, McConnell set a secret vote, and Thune came out on top. The fact that the Senate GOP dispatched an aggressively MAGA leader and instead elected someone who’s basically a Democrat tells you that Senate GOPers don’t care about what the American people are looking for.

What’s more, at the same time, in a closely split Senate, Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz withdrew after it became clear there would not be 50 Republicans to confirmed. 

The Swamp, of course, is not just the Senate. With Trump’s picks of Pete Hegseth for Defense, RFK Jr. for HHS, Tuli Gabbard for DNI, and Tom Homan as Border Czar, larger Washington is reacting with horror and fear. Employees at HHS are threatening to quit, Justice Department lawyers are lawyering up and “freaking out“ while DoD employees are “alarmed“ and governors are promising not to assist in deportations.

But those fears, which are exactly what are necessary to begin trimming the bloat from government, only exist because of Trump’s picks, and those picks (and Trump) will only succeed if the Senate approves his nominees. And that’s a problem.

During his first term, Trump’s picks were approved at a rate far slower than Obama’s or Bush’s. With a McConnell clone running the Senate, there’s concern of a repeat. While the Senate is by design supposed to be a check on the tyranny of the masses, it’s rare that a president must battle his own party to do his job.

Obama had a similar mandate in 2008, and Democrats gave him everything he wanted and more. But Democrats are a core part of the Swamp while Trump is seeking to battle it.

And there’s the rub…

Democrats are the Swamp, and so too is the bureaucracy. But sadly, much of the GOP is, as well.

Trump has his work cut out for him in this uphill battle he’s taken on. But if there’s anything to be gleaned from his picks so far, it’s that, unlike in 2016, this time he knows what he’s up against and is planning to take the fight to the Swamp with bare fists and brass knuckles if necessary, and it will be.

If Trump continues to assemble a team more interested in solving America’s problems than in being feted by the elites, he just might triumph over the Benedict Arnolds who populate the establishment GOP, those whose primary goal in life seems to be to go along to get along, accumulating ever more power and money along the way.

 

Prosperity is the Best Revenge...

Now that that’s settled… From an historical perspective there’s some virtue in killing all of your enemies.  Julius Caesar didn’t and was killed almost immediately after having himself declared dictator for life. 

In 49 BC dictator meant something different than it does today.  Dictator was an honorable, temporary position that was only implemented when the Republic faced some dire or existential threat that required a firm hand to fix. Although vested with almost absolute power, a dictator would often be appointed for a finite period of time, perhaps 6 months, to deal with the problem and then would go back to being whatever he was before, a senator, a general, a citizen, whatever.  Caesar’s problem was he had kept extending his dictatorship until he had himself declared dictator for life. A month later he was killed by senators, some of whom were his friends, including, famously, Brutus.

His reign stands in stark contrast to that of his adopted son, Caesar Augustus. Augustus reigned for 41 years (the longest of any emperor), ruled over a relatively peaceful period of consolidation and prosperity and set the stage for the Romans to remake the western world, saying: “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” While speaking literally about the city, he was also metaphorically speaking about the Empire, having prepared the way for its long life.

The difference between Caesar and Augustus?  Augustus killed all of his enemies when consolidating power. By the time he took absolute control over the Republic and transformed it into the Empire, he had no enemies left, or at least none who were willing to stick their necks out to challenge him. Unlike most Emperors, Augustus died of old age…

As appealing as killing all of his enemies might sound in an historical perspective, I would advise Donald Trump to avoid doing so today. Some reasons are obvious, like the fact that Augustus didn’t have to deal with a hostile media and the army of lemmings who follow it. A more substantial reason is that again, unlike Rome, might does not make right, we have laws and traditions and morals that prohibit doing so.  But more persuasively is the simple fact that it’s unnecessary.

Augustus isn’t known as Rome’s greatest emperor because he killed all his enemies… no, he’s known as Rome’s greatest emperor because he laid the foundations for a relative peace and prosperity throughout the Roman world for two centuries.  Donald Trump can do the same in America without killing his enemies.

Last week I gave a list of 10 somewhat high level things Trump should do immediately upon taking office.  These included sealing the border, deporting illegal aliens and cleaning house in the justice / military departments.  Here I’ll suggest two specific things Trump can do that will set America up to prosper, and do so without rivers of blood.

First Trump must target those people in government who have weaponized the state in an effort to delegitimize him and keep him from office.  That doesn’t mean people who disagree with him, even if they do so vociferously.  No, the people he needs to investigate are those people who used the police power of the state to persecute him and illegally jail his advisors and J6 defendants.

Of all of the things that distinguish a tyranny from a free nation, freedom of speech is paramount.  A close second is a police power that is exercised based on actual laws, not on the whims and lies of politicians.  If citizens cannot feel confident that they will be unmolested if they do not break laws, what is their motivation to obey any laws? 

I’m not suggesting people like Clinton, Pelosi, Schiff, Chaney etc. be jailed unconstitutionally.  On the contrary, I’m suggesting they be investigated, legally and transparently, and, if appropriate, charged.  And it’s not only the household names that must be investigated, so too should the leadership of every agency that played a role in putting the country through the last 8 years of unconstitutional hell and bringing her to the brink of becoming 3rd world tyranny.

Second, Trump should immediately rescind JFK’s most infamous legacy, from 1962:  “That year, JFK signed executive order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. This changed everything in the American political system. Kennedy's order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities.

This in turn led to the fantastic growth in membership of the public employee unions—The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the teachers' National Education Association.

They broke the public's bank. More than that, they entrenched a system of taking money from members' dues and spending it on political campaigns. Over time, this transformed the Democratic Party into a public-sector dependency.”

That Executive Order, more than perhaps any in the 20th century, changed American history for the worse. From that point forward, federal employees – and later state and local employees – could and did unionize against the American people.  Rather than carrying out the directives of the Executive Branch, their goal was to extract as much money and benefits as possible from the American people, and do so while accomplishing the least amount of actual work possible. 

Skeptical?  In 2021 the average American private sector employee earned a compensation (salary + benefits) of $88,152 while the average federal employee earned $143,643, fully 62% more. And federal employees quit at a rate that is 75% lower than private sector employees. Today there are 2.95 million federal employees, or one federal employee for every 118 Americans, whereas in 1962 it was one for every 226. This is the enforcement arm of the regulatory state that has a chokehold on America. 

And this is where Trump has the opportunity to change the trajectory of America’s future. The Heritage Foundation states that federal regulation costs America somewhere between $300 & $700 billion a year. If Trump can rein in the federal leviathan, that money would stay in American pockets, potentially adding 1% to our GDP annually. To put that in perspective, GDP has grown by 2.1% over the past 20 years.  A 1% addition result in a doubling GDP in 24 years vs. 36 years at that rate. (Rule of 72) If he were to cut the federal workforce back to 1962 levels, Trump would eliminate another $200 billion from federal spending which would add to productivity. 

There is no single bigger opportunity today than freeing up Americans and American industry to compete and create. Create better widgets, write smarter AI, make more efficient cars or develop the next Pet Rock or Christmas antlers. As Johan Norberg chronicles in The Capitalist Manifesto, it’s not capitalism per se. that creates prosperity, its free markets and choice.  History shows that there is no one better at finding and filling opportunities than American businesses, no one better at creating products and services consumers desire than American entrepreneurs.  If Donald Trump can unleash American creativity and productivity even back to the 1980s levels (3.1% GDP growth) nevermind 1950’s levels (4.2%) he will vanquish his enemies to the dustbin of history far more effectively than he would by turning them into martyrs…

Prediction: Trump By A Nose!

My prediction is that Donald Trump will win the election in two weeks.  I think he may actually win the popular vote as well. I’m referring to the actual votes of actual Americans, not the manipulated votes produced by computer tampering, illegals and mail in fraud.

That doesn’t mean that on the morning of the 6th we’ll have a conclusive answer as to who the next president will be. No, sadly, given the Democrat propensity to cheat and the Swamp’s desire to defeat Trump, we’re likely looking at an adjudication clusterfark that could take weeks or even months. 

So, despite polls currently telling us that the race is close or basically tied (Today the NYT has Harris up by 1, 538 has Harris up by 1.4% and RCP has Trump up by .4%) why do I believe Trump is going to clean the floor with Harris when it comes to real, actual votes?  A plethora of reasons.

Yard signs.  This is the most ambiguous measure, but it’s the one that resonates most viscerally because it reflects enthusiasm.  I just spent three weeks in New York on business. I landed at JFK, drove 400 miles to Buffalo, and a week later drove back.  Over that entire trip I didn’t see any random Harris signs on barns or sides of buildings or flags seemingly bigger than the houses they were flying in front of, all things I saw for Trump.  The ratio of Trump to Harris signs throughout was probably at least 10 to 1.  And this is New York! I did however encounter three towns where Harris signs dominated: East Aurora and Williamsville near Buffalo and Hastings on Hudson, just north of New York City.  All three are quaint, bucolic towns with coffee bars, art galleries and lots of college educated liberals.  At the end of the day, in a hardcore blue state like New York, where Harris is projected to win by double digits, the dearth of enthusiastic support suggests that her support is tepid and the margin of victory may not be what’s predicted. 

Right track, wrong track.  Forty four years ago Ronald Reagan looked into the camera at the last debate with Jimmy Carter and asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the store than it was four years ago?” Today, almost every single American understands that the answer to that question in 2024 is a resounding “No”, and regardless of what they think about Trump, they know that it was Biden, Harris and the Democrats who created this disaster.  Two weeks out from the election, fully 2/3 of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. People know they’re paying more for gasoline, housing, food, insurance and practically everything else in the economy.  However that 2/3 might define that wrong track, those are real, tangible pain points of daily life and most citizens recognize Democrats as the source.  Americans, including some Democrats, are not crazy, and when given a choice between more of the same – or worse – when things are going badly, will choose to make a change towards a better direction – or at least the promise of one.  In our basically two party system, that means that they will turn towards Trump and the GOP.

Facetime:  Not the iPhone kind of facetime, but the time candidate’s faces are showing up on various media.  Trump, of course, is all over the media, from his Pennsylvania rallies, to his interviews to, most recently, his McDonalds campaign stop / fry shift / photo op.  Harris, not so much, and when she is on, even when sitting for outlets that support her, like CBS, the story ends up being a controversy about her answers rather than the typical hagiography. At the same time Trump was generating enormous amounts of engaging press coverage serving fries out  McDonalds drive through window and posing for selflies, Harris was making news for taking only  pre-approved questions and telling Christians they’re at the wrong rally. 

Personal connection:  When Trump talks, he talks a lot.  Harris, not so much.  According to the New York Times, at three rallies Trump averaged speaking 98 minutes while Harris averaged a mere 24 minutes.  And while Trump talks about pretty much anything and everything, Harris seems to have a very limited catalog of ideas from which she can draw.  Indeed, the GOP made a full four minute video of her repeating “Unburdened by what has been.” Americans see that Donald Trump is a guy you could have a beer with, talk at length to and feel like you would walk away having made a friend or at least met someone who understands your problems. Kamala Harris on the other hand is a manikin or a robot that’s been programmed with minimal RAM where if you ask “What’s up?” rather than “How are you doing today?” the system will overload and smoke will start coming out of her ears. She’s not funny or smart or insightful and has no convictions beyond basic Communism.  Most Americans see that. 

Betting: Polls are notorious for being more propaganda than reflections of reality. That’s because they’re run by elite organizations with biases seeking to bolster support of one candidate or another. Betting markets on the other hand, AKA prediction markets, represent anything but that.  The leading platform, Polymarket, today sees a 64% chance Trump wins vs Harris’36%.  The over $2 billion this international crypto market has  bet on the American presidential election is largely made up of small bets, not elites seeking to influence the outcome. The proof of the market’s potential as a prediction tool can be seen in the fact that the Wall Street Journal ran a piece seeking to delegitimize it.    

Quality of life: Vermont is America’s socialist Nirvana. Today however, the state's largest city Burlington has become a dystopian nightmare.  By day, the city is the quintessential small town New England. At night however it transforms into a scene from the Walking Dead with drug addicts, homeless and violent criminals taking over.  And of course it’s not just Burlington. It’s New York, San Francisco, Seattle and of course Denver, where violent Venezuelan gangs have taken over whole apartment complexes while extorting and terrorizing residents and owners. From schools that don’t educate to influxes of illegals to increasing crime, leftists across the country are coming face to face with the reality of the failure of Democrat policies.  While all complain, some are objective enough to understand the source and vote accordingly.

All of this to say, while the majority of blacks and gays and Jews and crazy cat ladies, and antidepressant addled college educated white women and their beta male boyfriends or husbands will vote for Harris without ever giving a consideration for or knowledge of her policies, a certain percentage of them will be making decisions based on the reality of life that’s staring them in the face. Those people will be voting for Trump. Together with the rabid MAGA following Trump has inspired, he should win the actual vote handily.  But as we all know, Stalin’s aphorism applies: “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

Follow me on Twitter at ImperfectUSA

Donald Trump and Elon Musk: The New American Patriots

Donald Trump and Elon Musk, two men who have the world at their feet are risking everything for America.  They don't have to, but they do.  Not so different than some others about 250 years ago.

Rush Limbaugh used to talk about a story his father told about the signers of the Declaration of Independence:  “Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.”

The story had something of a resurrection in the early 2000s and was often shared in various iterations on social media. Not surprisingly, a minor industry emerged seeking to “fact check” them.  An example of such is this from Snopes, which first began fact checking them back in 2005: 

“Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died.

It is true that five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured by the British during the course of the Revolutionary War. However, none of them died while a prisoner, and four of them were taken into custody not because they were considered "traitors" due to their status as signatories to that document, but because they were captured as prisoners of war while actively engaged in military operations against the British.”

Snopes concludes that the piece they reviewed (not the Limbaugh piece) was “Mixed” in its accuracy. They’re right. Accuracy matters. Particularly in matters of importance. They then add something that backhandedly drives home the basic premise: “So great is our need for simplified, dramatic events and heroes that even the real-life biographies of the fifty-six men who risked their lives to publicly declare American independence are no longer compelling enough.” This is the theme that most of the gotcha fact checkers miss and indeed, largely ignored by those who seek to debunk the audacity of what those 56 did… They were committing treason.  They knew they were committing treason.  They knew the penalty for committing treason was hanging.  And, yet, they did so, risking everything they had. 

What’s more, they weren’t committing treason against just some random monarch with a few colonies to protect.  No, they were committing treason against the most powerful nation on the planet whose navy dominated the seas and whose reach stretched across continents and oceans. 

Whether they ended up dying of old age as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams did – on the same day, exactly 50 years from the date of the Declaration of Independence, July 4^th, 1826 – or died during the war itself, as nine of the signatories did, all 56 of them knew they were risking their fortunes, families and their lives if they signed that document. And they did it nonetheless.

Today there are millions of Americans ready to sign a new Declaration of Independence from the tyranny America has become. Tyranny you say? 

The American government in 2024 is far more tyrannical than the British government under King George III ever was.  And it’s not even close. With over 88,000 laws and rules passed by the federal government just between 1995 & 2016, today it’s almost impossible for the average American to get through a single day, nevermind a single year or life without breaking a law.  In his book Three Felonies A Day civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate suggests that American commit three federal felonies every day without even knowing it.  And that doesn’t include the countless state and local laws or authoritarian fictions tyrants create. 

From a different perspective, consider this:  In 1880 there were 30,000 prisoners jailed in the United States, out of a population of 50 million, for an incarceration rate of .06%. Today there are 1.6 million prisoners of a population of 350 million, for an incarceration rate of .45%, and if one counts the additional 3.4 million others in the system – i.e. probation and parole, which were essentially nonexistent in 1880, you get a justice system control rate of 1.45%.  Are Americans somehow 25 times more criminalized today than they were 140 years ago or are there simply more crimes for which they can be convicted? 

As any conscious person knows, it’s the latter.

Which makes what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing, simply extraordinary.  While there are millions of Americans who would be willing to sign a new Declaration of Independence if it came to it, those two are trying to avoid having that be a necessity.  And they are risking everything in order to make it so.

Trump, unlike most politicians (presidents and members of congress alike) has actually lost money since becoming president, to the tune of $1.6 billion!  From the moment he announced he was running for president and continuing until this very day, the swamp has used propaganda, lies and lawfare to hamper him winning the White House, stonewall him while he was serving in it and today trying to keep him from winning again. Beyond that treachery, he was shot in a bungled assassination attempt and had at least one more thwarted. 

Musk, while still the world’s richest man, has seen governments around the world target his businesses and threaten to put him in jail for his purchase of Twitter and his defense of free speech. Indeed, just last week California blocked one of his companies, SpaceX, from more launches from the state specifically because of his tweets. 

And why is that happening?  Because like the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, Trump and Musk recognize that the American government has become a tyranny.  They recognize the government has become bloated, inefficient and stultifying to American freedom and prosperity while at the same time its fellow travelers in the media, finance, pharma, academia, etc. – have become wealthy and above the law.

The duo not only recognize that tyranny, they’re telling American citizens they’re going to destroy it. Trump promises to eliminate the Department of Education while Musk wants to help slash government by 80%!  For the cabal of government apparatchiks and the sundry hyenas who feed alongside them on the body politic of America, this is a declaration of war.  It threatens their very existence. And it must be stopped, whatever it takes.

Which is exactly what makes what Trump and Musk are doing so brave. Neither man needs to become embroiled in politics to live a life of luxury or provide one to their progeny. Indeed, both have knowingly and willingly put their fortunes and their lives in the crosshairs of the most powerful tyranny in all of human history.  That is the kind of courage that animated the creation of the greatest republic in human history.  That’s the kind of courage that inspired men from 13 separate colonies to put their differences aside and to fight for freedom. Ideally the courage of these two modern day patriots will inspire citizens across America’s 50 states to utilize the ballot box to save the nation those 56 founders bequeathed to us. One Declaration of Independence should be enough.  Hopefully we won’t need another. 

Ronald Reagan Showed What Honest Elections Bring - Democrats Knew They Were In Trouble

I would argue that aside from 1860, 1984 was the most important election in American history thus far. Ronald Reagan was running against Jimmy Carter’s vice president Walter Mondale.  America, at the end of the Carter administration was beleaguered, both emotionally and economically. The Iranian Hostage countdown had Americans glued to their television sets and the combination of double digit inflation and interest rates would knock them for a loop through the first couple of Reagan’s years.

But then Reagan’s policies began to kick in. Lower taxes, less regulation and increased energy output put the country on a path that would generate GDP growth of 7.2% in 1984, a number not seen since 1951 and one we’ve not seen since. At the same time, Reagan’s rebuilding of the American military and his unwavering support of freedom in the face of Communism made Americans feel confident on the world stage for the first time in two decades.

All of this translated into something unprecedented in American history.

In 1788 and 1792 George Washington won both elections by unanimous Electoral College votes.  Following that, in 1820 James Monroe won every state and every Elector except for one.

From that point forward no president ever won every state or the Electoral College by a unanimous vote.  A couple came close, including FDR winning all states but two in 1936 and Nixon winning 49 states in 1972, losing one state, Massachusetts, and DC. 

In 1984 Reagan equaled Nixon’s feat and won every single state other than one, Minnesota, Mondale’s home state, and DC. So, since 1968 the GOP had triumphed in 4 out of 5 elections and in only 12 years had twice won with 49 of 50 states. For Democrats, that could not stand…

They knew that if they didn’t do something, they’d find themselves in a wilderness like they’d never seen before.  And do something they did.  The first thing they did was to dupe Ronald Reagan into signing the 1986 Immigration and Border Control Act into law.  In “exchange” for making 2.7 million illegals citizens, the Democrats (assisted by worthless Republicans led by the feckless Alan Simpson) promised to build a wall on the southern border. 

The Democrats got their 3 million new voters, but Reagan and America didn’t get their wall.  As a result of that, today we have upwards of 30 million illegals in the country and Democrats who want to let them vote and or  make them citizens! And it worked. In 1992 California, Illinois, Massachusetts and other immigrant heavy states turned blue for the first time since 1964 and have never turned back.  

But lying to Reagan wasn’t the only thing Democrats did. Always keeping their eyes on the long game, they recognized that having millions of new illegals doesn’t help them a lot if they can’t vote. (Although they skew Congressional apportionment, typically towards Democrats.)  So they set in place a plan that would eventually allow them to register to vote.  That plan was the 1993 Motor Voter Act, signed by Bill Clinton and ostensibly sold as a law make it easier to register “underrepresented” voters. 

At the time illegals weren’t allowed to get licenses in the United States, but again, Democrats were playing the long game and today 19 states and the District of Columbia do provide them.  And to no one’s surprise, almost every one of those states is blue.  Together these states represent 230 of the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the White House and eventually the law morphed into a vehicle facilitating immigrants and illegals registering to vote.   

But like any good insurgency, the Democrats had multiple areas of attack. Beyond flooding the country with new Democrats, they were doing other things as well.

One of those was extending the voting window. This one would seem like it’s bipartisan as it applies equally to everyone.  But not so much. There’s a reason most negotiators will tell you to let the other person make the first offer in a negotiation.  Aside from the power dynamic, it gives you insight into what cards your opponent is holding.  The same holds true here.  It’s much easier to understand how many votes you need to manufacture if you know in advance what the numbers against you are.  That’s exactly what we saw in 2020 when as the 3^rd of November closed out Donald Trump was ahead in a handful of states that flipped to Joe Biden by just enough votes to win. Georgia with 4.9 million votes was decided by 11,800 votes or less than .2% of the total votes.  Arizona, with 3.3 million votes was decided by 10,400, or .3% of the total.  Similarly Wisconsin, with 3.2 million votes cast was decided by 20,000 votes, or .6%.  Together those three states represent 37 Electoral College votes, which are exactly the number necessary to flip the election from Trump to Biden. (A 269 tie would have sent the election to the House, where states vote by delegation and where the GOP had a majority.) To understand how they pulled this off, read Mollie Hemingway’s Rigged.

Then of course there’s machine voting. Although the two parties have gone back and forth over this for years, the reality is, and always has been that they are simply computers which are easily hackable.  Despite years of Democrats claiming machine voting was unsafe, immediately after Trump “lost” we were told 2020 was the most secure election ever, this despite overwhelming proof that Dominion and other machines are not, in fact, even remotely secure.

The Holy Grail of Democrat cheating is mail in voting.  Like computer voting, mail in voting provides endless opportunities for cheating, such as retirement home and homeless vote harvesting, as well as eliminating signature verification. Indeed, in 2020 Democrats used the COVID hysteria to change voting laws and balloon mail in voting across the country so that by election day over 65 million people or 1/3 of the electorate had already voted via mail.

And even for those who actually turn up to vote in person, Democrats make it easy to cheat.  Democrats have fought voter ID laws for decades. If a picture is worth a thousand words a picture of a Voter ID map is worth countless elections. As one can see, almost every Democrat state has no Voter ID while almost every solidly GOP state requires photo ID. This, despite the fact that 80% of Americans support Voter ID laws. (In Europe, which Democrats aspire to emulate, 46 out of 47 countries require photo ID to vote.)

There’s more of course, from fighting efforts to clean up voter rolls to using lawfare to harm opponents, to using government agencies to quash free speech, but the bottom line is, Democrats cheat every opportunity they get, because they simply can’t win otherwise.

As America careens towards the most consequential election in our history, one that presents a stark choice between an imperfect but competent patriot and a Communist imbecile in Democrat clothing, Republicans need to understand what they are up against. A Democrat party that will sacrifice everything, from children to communities to the lives of citizens in their quest for power will eliminate the Constitution and the Republic without hesitation. They’ve told us as much.  We should believe them and act accordingly. Now is not the time for timidity.  As IKE said:  "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."

Trump’s Resilience And The Inevitable Endpoint of Democrat Politics

First published on July 19th...

Forty years ago, after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan I remember watching ABC anchor Frank Renyolds violently slam his fist on the desk when he was given some conflicting information about the president’s fate.  The ABC brass quickly marched Sam Donaldson out to co-host, hoping to keep Renyolds calm. The country was shocked and somber.  While the left disliked Reagan, there wasn’t a hint of joy (that I remember) expressed that he had been shot or that it was unfortunate that he survived.

Fast forward 43 years and we have another maverick Republican president (albeit not in office at the time) who’s wounded by a would be assassin’s bullet.  This time, while most of the country was shocked and appalled, there’s a significant element of the press and the left who argue that the president was responsible for the shooting, as others openly wish the shooter hadn’t missed. 

What’s interesting is that as every day goes by we find out more about the utter absurd, incompetence or worse that put Trump at risk.  We discover that the DEI clown running the Secret Service diverted Trump’s usual detail to protect her patron, Jill Biden and left Trump with the practice squad.  What’s worse, we discover that the building upon which the would be assassin set himself didn’t have a sniper on it because the roof was sloped – and a SS sniper might fall off – and that authorities knew the killer was there for more than 20 minutes before the first shot rang out. They were even in the building itself!  The most charitable assessment is that those in charge are utterly incompetent imbeciles.  A less charitable assessment would conclude that they were somehow complicit in the attack. 

But of course this is just the latest attempt to destroy Trump. The Democrats conspired to sabotage him from before he was president and never gave up.  There have been lies about Russia, kids in cages, “Good people on both sides,” suckers and losers, and of course Trump encouraging the drinking of bleach. He was impeached for talking with Ukraine, investigated for allegedly trying to coerce Georgia’s Secretary of State of Georgia to create votes after the 2020 election and impeached for incitement of the January 6^th “Insurrection” despite the fact that no such insurrection occurred.  And the countless manufactured court cases were just more of the same. 

All the while Democrats and their mouthpieces in the Propaganda Ministry have been telling Americans that Trump is a threat to the nation, calling him Hitler and suggesting that if he gets into office he’ll never leave. 

Donald Trump has been on the defensive for the last eight years.  What’s more, his supporters have been abused, harassed, thrown in jail and in the case of Ashli Babbitt on January 6^th and Corey Comperatore on Saturday, killed.

All of this presents a picture of America that is much different than the one that the Democrats and their fellow travelers in the swamp and the media want you to think exists, and last night Joe Biden inadvertently highlighted it.  He told the NAACP “And when you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder, Donald Trump called for the National Guard to go after you.” 

Democrats tell us it is the Republicans who are violent and dangerous.  That’s gaslighting.  Contra Biden’s assertion, I don’t remember the Floyd riots being particularly peaceful.  There were riots across the country, more than a dozen people died and that entire summer was full of violence.  Nor do I remember the protests after the death of Michael Brown or Freddie Gray being particularly peaceful. Thinking back even further, I don’t remember Seattle’s WTO protests in 1999 being peaceful nor the World Bank protests in Washington the next year. And the Democratic National Convention in 1968 wasn’t marked by peaceful protest either.  And more recently we’ve seen the Hamas supporting thug wing of the Democrat party unleash violence and chaos across the country. 

During that Floyd inspired “Summer of love” Democrats were calling for and supporting violence against the fiction of “systemic racism”. And now, while claiming they never encourage violence, they’ve been telling their sheeple for years that Trump is the new Hitler, a threat to freedom and a threat to “our democracy”.  They and their cronies have suggested that if he gets back into office he’ll likely never leave.

One wonders, given the left’s extraordinary propensity for violence, what might have happened if rather than Trump being shot, it was the sainted Barack Obama in the crosshairs when he was a candidate?  And what if the attempt had been successful?  I can only imagine that the resulting cataclysm would have made the “Summer of Love” look like a Boy Scout camp fire.

But it wasn’t Barack Obama and there weren’t any riots.  As a matter of fact, there weren’t any protest marches, there weren’t any threats of violence, there was… nothing.  And that’s the difference between Republicans and Democrats. One seeks to govern and advance its agenda through debate, legislation and the ballot box while the other seeks to use slander, intimidation and violence to achieve its means.

The last time Republicans were given a proverbial punch in the face – the stolen 2020 election – what did they do?  They protested in Washington, and almost all of the them doing so peacefully, as Trump had implored them to.  Unfortunately, Democrats conspired to leave the capital largely unguarded and decried the GOP when the predictable chaos ensued after police and agents incited a riot by firing stun grenades and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowd. This of course was labeled an “insurrection” but it was nothing of the sort. Whatever it was, it was not equivalent to the Democrat’s Summer of Love with burning cities, widespread violence and murders of innocent people.  That’s simply not the Republican way.

The bottom line is, Democrats think we live in a democracy while Republicans – for the most part – understand we live in a republic.  The former is the hallmark of tyranny of men while the latter defines a nation based on freedom and rights guaranteed by a constitution.   

So that is where we stand today.  We’re not at a hot war, but then we’re not far from it.  The Democrats and their comrades in the media along with their Antifa, BLM and pro Hamas stormtroopers have made it clear that a GOP victory in November will essentially put America where Germany was in the early 1930s.  That logic, taken to its logical conclusion, asks if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?  Many of us might say yes. Well Democrats are telling us that we’re facing the same threat now in the form of Donald Trump. Given the level of gullibility and mental illness that characterizes the left, how many of them will not choose to become martyrs for the cause, or at a minimum, foot soldiers?  Let’s hope this attempted assassination has a silver lining, that the rhetoric on the left is dialed down a few notches and a few Democrats start listening to sources outside their silo.  If Amber Rose can do it, maybe a few million others could too and there just might be hope that Trump’s coming victory won’t trigger a leftist cataclysm.