Category Archives: Trump

AMERICANS FIRST

Illicit drugs you will enjoy….

The accumulation of derogatory information about the origin of COVID-19 and the supposed “vaccines” rushed into production and forced upon billions of people across the world, argues for some Prudent discussion.  We’ve been repeatedly told about how “COVID” caused the deaths of “a million” Americans.  It’s more complicated than just that terrible number.

For some weird reason, the United States has yet to hold China responsible for the pandemic.  We keep doing billions of dollars of business with China, we treat China with kid-glove diplomacy, and we drop key internal defenses against Chinese influence within our universities, elections and social media.  No rational country would act this way, so why are we acting irrationally?  Money?  Is that it?  Did you know that China actually established its own POLICE STATIONS (supposedly to monitor Chinese nationals) in New York and elsewhere?

Do you ever hear a statistic of how many people have died or been debilitated by the mRNA vaccines?  No?  It is Prudent to wonder why that is so.  Are the deaths of young, not infirm, but healthy young children and young adults, any less tragic than deaths from COVID?  There are thousands, after all.  Debilitation includes permanent heart damage that has stopped sports activity in its tracks and lifelong heart weakness.  Is this other epidemic simply the price that a society must pay for the greater good?  What good is that?  Wealth transfer?

Those who take the “side” of the so-called mRNA vaccines are convinced that they miraculously saved the lives of millions of people.  That is a statistic that can’t really be quantified: we can’t prove what didn’t happen.  Oddly, though, when COVID was its most virulent, in 2020, there was no “vaccine” available, yet in 2021, when people were lining up by the millions to get the injections, twice as many people died “from COVID.”

Needless to say, money skewed those deaths and statistics, too.  Hospitals were compensated for treating COVID patients, more for providing Remdesivir (which also killed some victims) and more for use of ventilators on patients… then still more for every COVID death in hospital.  Unlike virtually every other epidemic/pandemic, NO OTHER TREATMENT OPTIONS WERE PERMITTED!  Despite widespread evidence of lives saved and mitigating effectiveness of Ivermectin in various combinations with analgesics and supplements, one of the safest drugs ever discovered, doctors who prescribed it were chastised and restricted to the point of losing hospital privileges and even licensure.  AS IF COORDINATED, there erupted a monolithic defense of mRNA vaccines as the only “treatment” approved, and a virulent disapproval of all alternatives.  Is that how influential big Pharma’s money is throughout our medical establishment?

To make matters ever so much worse, governments imposed vaccines on various groups, professions, industries else workers would lose their jobs – jobs deemed heroic prior to vaccine availability.  Civil rights were tossed out the window in favor of vaccine mandates, while adverse effects of the vaccines themselves were suppressed.  Gone was the right to “informed consent” by the coerced, since the vaccine makers had made claims of effectiveness based on poor test samples and, in crucial cases, NO TEST SAMPLES… just claims.  There was no real information about the “vaccines” that could provide the “informed” part.

Throughout 2022, as “vaccinated” came to mean the first two shots and some number of booster shots, the niggling reports of adverse reactions to mRNA injections became a flood, including an abrupt spike in sudden adult deaths among the 25 to 59 year old demographic – the healthiest segment.  Morticians and pathologists were reporting numerous instances of long, rubbery blood clots among deceased, vaccinated victims.  Young men, even into their teens, were dropping dead during sporting events or while in training – reports from our and several other countries.  Other reports involved pilots, who are monitored constantly for fitness, and even military personnel, also in the healthiest years of their lives, all vaccinated by mandate.

One doctor Prudence interacted with, upon hearing how the injections were being called “clot shots,” immediately proclaimed that COVID itself caused clots “orders of magnitude” more frequently than the miraculous mRNA injections, which, sadly, is simply not true.  She, like many others “in” the medical industry, believes that the mRNA shots are a miracle that has saved millions of lives.  That is what they are supposed to believe.

There are numerous instances of patients’ families going to court to force hospitals to treat their loved-ones with something besides ventilation and Remdesivir.  In many cases the hospital would force them to physically take the patient somewhere else to avoid being treated in ways that institution had declared to be the “protocol,” for COVID, often in lockstep with “CDC” recommendations and “FDA” rules against Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.  Doctors who knew of the effectiveness of alternate treatments were forced out of those hospitals and even lost their licenses.  Today, the CDC and FDA are trying to claim that they offered only “suggestions” and that neither ever forced anyone to choose certain treatments or deny them.  What a load of crap.  These are still the “authorities” in medicine.  We haven’t even mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Tony Fauci is a case study in “deep statism” all by himself.  He worked for the National Institutes of Health for more than 53 years, and as head of the national Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the last 38 of those years.  Over that span his federal salary rose to well over $400,000 – more than the President or anyone else in federal employ is paid.  He may have been worth every penny.  However, in addition to salary, many of the staff within NIH agencies, including Mr. Fauci, presumably, are allowed to collect “royalties” from pharmaceuticals and treatment protocols developed directly from research and laboratory testing financed by the NIH budgets.  Fauci has strongly denied any “investment” in, for example, the mRNA injections, but his declaimer about royalties paid to personnel is rather indistinct, although he tosses in that none of its royalties were “paid to (him).”  That doesn’t apply to numerous other products his NIAID helped to develop.

Perhaps Fauci’s greatest impact is achieved through research grants, in the many millions, ultimately billions, of dollars.  We can see this impact in the microcosm by following the money the NIAID granted to a subcontractor, “Eco-Health Alliance,” for whom there existed no compunction about financing work in the Wuhan, China, Institute of Virology.  Despite the highly revered – and paid – Dr. Fauci’s denial before Congress, Eco-Health Alliance was funding so-called gain-of-function research on the SARS-2-CoV virus.  There must have been some good reason to encourage and fund that work.  Money, perhaps.

It turns out that the University of North Carolina obtained a patent on the SARS-2-CoV virus protein.  This is not possible, according to patent law referring to biological “inventions,” unless… unless the molecule or protein or cell has been engineered.  That is, one cannot obtain a patent on a naturally occurring life-form.  Even more interestingly, our own “CDC,” a federal agency (the Center for Disease Control) had already obtained a patent (which they petitioned to keep confidential) on the SARS-2 virus!  That virus had to be engineered, also, in order to be patented, and not merely isolated.  Wait a minute!

Dr. Fauci and others had determined that the SARS virus had certain useful qualities, perhaps as a biological vehicle for delivering certain biological materials into humans?  Certainly there was something about that virus that made it worth engineering.  And engineer they did, except the “they” got laundered through a favored sub-contractor who did business with the Wuhan Institute.

When the virus broke out of the lab – which reason and evidence make clear – it was the engineered version, made more infective in humans through “gain-of-function” engineering.  “They” call it research.  Who doesn’t like scientific research?  Trust the science, right?  The Chinese Communists, never known for telling the truth, tried to deflect on the source of COVID-19, as they distributed it across the planet, by claiming that it came from the U. S. military.  There was, very unfortunately, more truth to that claim than Americans want to admit.  Our own National Institutes of Health and its NIAID under the careful guidance of the renowned Anthony Fauci, began the chain of processes that resulted in the pandemic/plandemic we blame for millions of deaths and trillions of dollars of economic destruction.  What a string of crimes.

But the disease enabled a huge lurch toward one-world socialist government, and our own president-regular-guy, Joe, is following along with his own trans-national delusions.  He is happy to sign over American sovereignty in matters of health, American citizenship, gun-control, freedom of movement and financial manipulation.  His outlook is shared by the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, particularly the W.H.O., who have lied about COVID-19 fairly steadily to protect China.  No wonder today’s Democrats hate Trump and “America First” so much.  The patriotic, America-loving observer would, Prudently, expect that “America First” would encompass “Americans First,” as part of the philosophy.  It would seem that the HEALTH and well-being of Americans ought to be way high up in the purposes and priorities of the politicians we elect and overpay with that reasonable expectation.  These so-called “vaccines” and related mandates appear to be the exact opposite of “Americans First.”

Recently the less-than-honest CDC expanded its “recommendations” for the “emergency use” injections of poorly tested mRNA gene therapies, to children as young as 2 years.  No mother has been able to make an informed decision – able to provide “informed consent” – for the administration of these odd chemicals to their innocent offspring.  That is because no mother has the information about what the “vaccine” does to her child’s body, heart, brain, ovaries immediately or over time.  Neither Pfizer nor Moderna nor Astra-Zeneca has publicized what each does know about adverse reactions to the shots.  There are, literally, well over 200,000 such events, including thousands of deaths.  ANY other “vaccine” would have been pulled from the market after several hundred serious adverse effects. 

ANY other epidemic/pandemic disease would have had every feasible treatment thrown at it, as well.  None has ever been restricted as COVID-19 was, as to what drugs might be administered to counter the infection.  Did you or someone you know lose a friend or family member to “Covid?”  Was he or she “treated” with ventilation and/or Remdesivir?  Estimates of how many Americans died of Covid, in fact, run to one million; estimates of how many might have been saved with banned treatments, primarily Ivermectin and key nutrients, run to HALF!  500,000 deaths that deserved more than one attempt to prevent them.

And, there is far more useful advice for prevention of harm from Covid-19, than taking more doses of mRNA shots, that for many people are a far greater risk of injury or death than Covid, itself.  Put that in your 5-year-old… and hope for the best.

Dereliction – Derelection

NY Times photo

It has been two years since the infamous “2020 elections,” and almost two years since the notorious “January 6th” ahh… riots, assault on democracy, insurrection, deadly attack.  Everything about November 3rd, 2020 and January 6th, 2021 must be parsed for truth, opinion and outright lying.

NOVEMBER 3RD, 2020

Books have been and will be written about the 2020 Presidential elections… plural.  There is no “popular vote” that matters in the selection of a president; there are 50 simultaneous state elections for slates of “electors” who are pledged to one “presidential ticket” or another – usually a choice between two such tickets, although third parties sometimes attempt to perfect our corrupt elections.  There are 50 “popular votes” that do matter.

Heading into election day, President Trump appeared to have extraordinary popular support despite 5 years of attacks from Democrats, including two spurious impeachments, the equally baseless “Meuller investigation/report” and a series of media-fed, illegal FBI activities and virtually daily calumny related to Covid-19 and the incipient vaccines.  None of it was sticking.  On the other hand, candidate Joe Biden spent his time safe in his home in Delaware, barely campaigning at all, making few speeches, usually drawing only a handful of people to his live appearances.  Trump, throughout the year, made numerous “rallies” drawing overflow crowds of thousands.  People in the campaign industry can state that the amount of popular support needed from which thousands will change their habits to attend a political event, is extraordinary, and reflects very broad support.

Biden, meanwhile, and Democrats in general remained absolutely confident, claiming deep support for good ol’ lunch-bucket Joe.  We know that Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg had committed over $400 Million to “aiding” election departments in certain states with close balance between Republicans and Democrats.  Almost all of the money was spent increasing Democrat turnout in cities, but never described as campaign contributions.  At the same time, Google, whose management had sworn to not allow “2016” to happen again, was shifting information leftward, maximizing positive results of searches favoring Democrats and Biden, while eliminating or making difficult, results to searches that might favor Republicans.  Estimates reach into the hundreds of thousands in terms of how many votes could be shifted just by Google.

Even with major cooperative media sources helping, Democrats still had a huge populist force to overcome.  Two key strategies were needed: 1) Unconstitutional changes to voting laws and procedures; and, 2) Ways to shift, create, and generate votes regardless of how many legitimate votes were cast.  Both seemed to have the desired effects.  Before the reader clicks away from Prudence’ report, here, read a bit more and consider what is known with an open mind.

Democrat operatives and lawyers brought suit in numerous states to allow for mail-in ballots and early voting, based on supposed fears of Covid-19.  Rather than passing laws through the respective legislatures, as required under the Constitution, these teams brought suit, instead.  Time, apparently, was of the essence.  Behind the efforts to keep voters “safe” from Covid, and in the background, is the fact that every state does not maintain its voter lists according to federal law.  In fact, the Judicial Watch organization has been suing states successfully to require cleaning of voter rolls.  The County of Los Angeles, alone, had to remove about one and a half million names of deceased and moved-away citizens (one hopes).  But, in the run-up to November there remained SEVERAL MILLION invalid names on states’ voter lists, not least of which were the states targeted by these “Covid” lawsuits for mail-in ballots.  Georgia, alone, had 138,000 invalid names still on its rolls.  With the entire difference in the electoral college dependent on fewer than 45,000 votes across half a dozen states, that becomes a huge number.

“So what?” you may ask.  Well it doesn’t take that large an organization, with knowledge of the invalid names on the rolls, to mail in a few thousands of ballots based on those names, to skew an election.  To inadvertently facilitate this fraud, some states actually mailed out ballots to every name on the voter rolls, valid and invalid!  Thus, ballots returned from every one of those names were valid.  Of course, signatures on those ballot envelopes had to be “compared” to signatures on file but this step was frequently not done at all, or was done through scanning systems that were set to a level of “fuzziness” (in terms of match quality) that there was essentially no checking.  Lawsuits had further required that ballots mailed right up to voting day would be accepted and counted up to TWO WEEKS later. 

Republicans had seriously fallen down on their end to challenge these ridiculous lawsuits and force, at least, certain provisions to keep the tallies as honest as possible.  Throw in some heavy-duty ballot harvesting (illegal, also) and questionable counting procedures, connection of voting machines to the internet and a host of other weak links, and a close election could be easily swayed to the desired side.  Trump lost Georgia by fewer than 13,000 votes.

Well, that’s just Georgia, you may be thinking.  What you may not realize is that there were patterns of voting IN EVERY STATE that were related to the 2010 census.  That is, every county in all the states tested, had similar patterns of voting, a pattern that is so statistically unlikely as to be impossible.  Well, you may be thinking, that doesn’t prooove that it didn’t happen.  Technically that is true, but when you consider the earthquakes in voting procedures blamed on Covid, there ought to be wide variations in voting patterns as compared to the 2010 census.  That is, not compared to 2010 VOTING PATTERNS, but to the census, a set of statistics that has very little to do with even the prediction of voting patterns.  Although each state compared to its 2010 census by slightly different percent-rates, every county in each state followed the same rate of difference with the 2010 census!  Apparently the census was used as a reasonably reliable set of numbers ON WHICH PRE-DETERMINED VOTE TOTALS COULD BE BASED!

Stealing elections is not new, and typically it’s a matter of benefitting Democrats, particularly in cities… indeed, it has been a matter of humor for 150 years.  Urban Democrats have joked about who is going to get the votes in this or that cemetery, and to watch out for the time lost figuring out the ballot questions.  The crude efforts of the last century are so much more sophisticated, now.

Did you know that there were more than a million temporarily deceased voters still on the rolls among the many states?  Trump lost the electoral college by fewer than 45,000 votes in 5 states, TOTAL.

Did you realize that more than 300 counties in the United States show more voters on the rolls than there are people of voting age resident?  Just 500 extra votes from each of those counties (mostly urban) would be 150,000 votes; did we mention that Trump was “defeated” by fewer than 45,000 votes in 5 key states?

Maybe you’ll be a little more nervous about 2020 when you learn that there were dozens of internet connections traced from foreign countries into voting machines during and after election day, 2020, voting machines that the law says must not be connected to the internet.  Aside from the anomalies already described, 4 key states stopped their vote counting/reporting between 2 and 4 AM on November 4th, following which huge “dumps” of as many as 100,000 votes per state appeared – another most unusual event.

Some precincts in the urban areas of the 5 most crucial states voted as much as 90% and even more, for Joe Biden, having been thrilled by his rousing campaign speeches.  Any voting district that approaches 80% one way catches attention, normally.  Every percentage above that raises eyebrows.  This anomaly happened in multiple places, a statistical improbability.  Trump-haters can easily dismiss these oddities because they aren’t “proof” that anything illicit happened.  A case based on the preponderance of evidence, however, could be made.  There were a number of instances where votes recorded for Trump at one point in the evening of November 3rd, were magically shifted to Biden some time later.  “Oh, those were simple errors,” we’re told.  Maybe, but no candidate should be expected to accept that non-explanation, even Donald Trump.

As the last tens of thousands of unverified, unmatched mail-in ballots were added to the total over the following days, more anomalies appeared.  Somehow, Joe Biden, (“If you don’t know if you’re voting for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”) a racially insensitive, if not actively racist politician who was not only disliked by Barack Obama, but distrusted by him, apparently received MORE “black” votes than Obama received, himself, the first “black” president in our history!  People who really, really hated Trump are willing to believe that, as well.  Seems highly unlikely.

For his part, Trump obtained 6 Million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, to a total of 75 Million.  He is the first President who added to his first term totals significantly who went on to lose re-election.  Somehow, due to his colorful and incisive campaign, Joe Biden received not only more black votes but more votes overall than Obama did, and, it says here, more votes than any presidential candidate in history(!): 81 Million to Trump’s huge 75 Million.  Any honest observer of elections over any length of time has to suspend disbelief to swallow that.

Imagine the likelihood of a different outcome had the Hunter Biden laptop story not been so carefully suppressed by collusion between the FBI and others, the DNC, Biden campaign, etc., and Twitter, Facebook and Google.  Polling indicates that millions of people would have voted against Biden had the crimes revealed in that laptop been publicized.

Mathematicians and statisticians who have taken the time to analyze 2020 have estimated that as many as EIGHT MILLION VOTES were fabricated in 2020.  None of this has been adjudicated and the reasons are simple: politics… not honest, good ol’ American politics, but politics.

More than 30 lawsuits were brought among several states.  Judges refused to hear them on several bases, mainly lacks of “standing.”  That is, the plaintiffs were judged, rather subjectively, as most “standing” rulings are, because they couldn’t prove a satisfactory “interest” in or “damages” resulting from, the allegations they were making.  Virtually any of the judges so approached could have declared sufficient public or other interest in the adjudication of those allegations, but they chose not to.  This neatly prevented discovery, deposition or other testimony, and sidestepped the need to bring public officials into court.

There is a lot of political pressure on courts in such matters.  Attorneys are adept at answering such rejections, but it requires time for appeals to other courts or tribunals who have multiple reasons for avoiding such cases.  There is very little time available prior to the step of state “certification” of the vote counts.  Again, Republicans were caught flat-footed.  Their time should have been spent challenging all the stupid changes to voting laws that were not Constitutional.  Sadly, and to their shame, the Roberts Court refused to consider constitutional challenges to the election on the basis of direct wording in the Constitution: Article I, Section 4 – “The Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such regulations, except as to the Places of chusing (sic) Senators.”  With every state using the same regulations to choose Electors (for the Electoral College) as they do for electing representatives and senators, changes to how they do so must, in fact, be made only by the legislatures thereof.  This was not done in many states, but, rather, by court rulings, which are prima facie unconstitutional.  With the challenges based on precise Constitutional language, the Supreme Court has primary jurisdiction over such cases and should not wait for lower courts to rule and appeal over many months.

The Court could have and should have taken up the cases made on this particular basis, but failed in its duty to do so.

After 5 years of unceasing malevolence, law-breaking and baseless accusations from many sides, it is no wonder that President Trump was rather irked following November 3rd, 2020.  His quite rational complaints about our shoddy election mess in 2020, simply became the latest reason Trump haters should hate him even more, like everything else he’s done… except for when he contributed money to democrats.

JANUARY 6th, 2021

After failing, as noted, to engage any state or federal court in ascertaining the legitimacy of the vote count, despite real questions of law and practice, President Trump could see only one opportunity to set the 2020 result right, and that was to halt the counting of electoral votes as certified by the several states, particularly those states with the most egregious anomalies in their vote patterns and practices.  It was, however, on very thin grounds that he encouraged Vice-President Pence to refuse the certified electors from those certain questionable states amongst which Trump lost their collective electoral votes by less than 1% of the totals claimed – and certified – to have been legally voted.

The Constitution doesn’t assign more than the counting of the electoral votes to the duties of the “President of the Senate” – the Vice-President – in the matters of the electoral college.  Some attorneys read into some precedent cases the possibility that the V.P. had the authority to challenge certain states’ certified results, indeed, the Twentieth Amendment uses the term, “qualified” and “…has qualified” for cases where the election of or the ability to serve of a president is in question, or if he has died before taking office.  But neither Article II of the constitution, nor Amendment XII or Amendment XX actually grants much in the way of decisive power to the vice-President when the votes are counted.  Trump was clinging to straws.

To be fair, and all of us should be fair in the judgement of such odd circumstances of the Trump presidential experience, the President perceived the 2020 elections as one of the most grotesque electoral crimes in history, and the subsequent installation of Joe Biden as having been duly elected President as a tragedy and part of the theft of his, Trump’s, rightful election.  There were, and are, so many, many questions – none adjudicated.

When John F. Kennedy was elected thanks to extensive vote fraud in Chicago in 1960, Nixon lost, on average, by about 1 vote per precinct nationwide.  He was strongly urged to demand a recount in Illinois and perhaps Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania.  But fairly quickly he chose to avoid the damage to the nation by so demanding and Kennedy was the “winner.”  This is the precedent that Democrats have hung their hats on: always accept the vote count no matter how crooked.  Otherwise, you’re an “election denier.”

There isn’t space to analyze the events of January 6th at the Capitol.  A lot of it was stupid, most of it quite innocent.  Let’s hope the truth is exposed, since it certainly hasn’t been so far.  Most of what the “January 6th committee” has reported is only partially true; even more of what the Democrat press reports is less so.  Those arrested, some on quite thin, even spurious grounds, have been maltreated worse than murderers, rapists and arsonists.  One hopes for justice in all their cases, and for justice for those guards and administrators who have been needlessly brutal and cruel towards them.

Why would Americans act this way?  Hatred.  Those arrested for any reason related to January 6th, are all perceived in two ways: 1) supporters of Donald Trump, whom we are all taught to hate; and, 2) they are hated as threats to the government – the administrative, hyper-politicized state – for whom all the arresting and jailing powers work.  The challenge to the corrupt congress is perceived as a personal threat by government workers.  Those who threaten or even murder common citizens, are of far less concern to federal employees, apparently.  For shame.

Trump grasped at straws and couldn’t have succeeded, but it’s hard to lay blame after all other avenues of legitimate questioning of the elections were closed to him.  He knew the election was rigged against him by people who have years of experience doing exactly that.  He was supposed to bow down to the leftists and he didn’t.  He was supposed to react like Nixon and he didn’t… nor should he have, although the January 6th rally was not smart.

In Prudence’ view, there are $31 Trillion reasons to storm the Capitol; two dozen Congresses and 11 administrations, at least, have lied to the American people rather steadily and saddled us with virtually permanent debt.  The 2020 “derelection” is just the last straw. There is only one “T” in Democratcy.

WHY IN HELL?

Buds.

Prudence, in her most Prudent way, is always trying to keep up with events, trends, purposes and consequences.  And, never one to stir up trouble, Prudence must admit to being fully puzzled as to why in Hell Russia invaded Ukraine?  Perhaps you are wondering the same thing.

History has shown almost every way and purpose humans can imagine for attacking, invading, occupying, destroying, annexing, blockading, burning, looting, bombing or decimating both neighboring and far-off nations or tribes or even continents.  Ghengis Khan and Alexander the Great had what seemed to them and their followers, valuable reasons for dominating as many states, cities and regions as they could.  Hitler had his own “good” reasons for doing the same, and most Germans and like-minded – or like-confused – neighbors went along with him.  The Romans could justify what they did, so did Japan so did Lenin and Stalin in Soviet days.

One expects that Vladimir Putin has a sufficient reason to attack Ukraine, but it certainly isn’t very clear or explicable.  What is going on? 

Given that Mr. Putin hasn’t conferred with Prudence and is not expected to anytime soon, most evidence to which we might allude will be circumstantial at best and inferential, otherwise.  Many wise people have tried to evaluate what he is trying to accomplish, including experienced military leaders.  But they are making military judgements of tactics and short-term strategies and, no matter how accurate, such musings won’t explain the overall purpose of employing war to “solve” some nebulous threat from Ukraine.

Perhaps the non-existent threat from Ukraine was never the impetus for invasion.

Putin is not someone most people would want to chum around with, but he’s not stupid, nor does it seem Prudent to assume that he is mentally addled.  He has managed and manipulated Russia for more than 20 years, gained power and influence geopolitically in that time, and become one of the wealthiest men in the world by cleverly holding and exercising power over the oligarchs that own or control most of Russia’s large industries and banks.  A significant “vig” is paid to Putin for every significant domestic and international trade deal: he is a billionaire.

However, Mr. Putin is also messianic in terms of restoring what he perceives as the once-great Russian empire.  As a loyal KGB agent, once assigned to East Germany, arguably the empire’s furthest outpost, Putin was probably less concerned about Communism than he was about the territorial and political extent of the Soviet Union.  The end of the Soviet system was a severe setback in his view, and something he wishes to set aright.  He had what appeared, at first, to be two audiences to satisfy as to his intent and purpose: Ukraine… and Russia.  It doesn’t appear that he gave a damn about what other countries thought of his threat to return Ukraine to the Russian fold.  It was strictly a local matter for Ukraine to resolve by folding in the face of his threats.

Like it or not, however, Putin’s Russia is a big puzzle piece in geopolitics.  As local as he may have wished to keep his piecemeal dissection of Ukraine, Putin needed to shore up his flanks while going to war on his western border.  Russia’s overall military significance is tied to its huge nuclear stockpile, at least half of which is modern enough to be reliable, which is to say, 2,000 or more warheads and hundreds of missile systems that can deliver them.  Its economic significance is mainly tied to oil and natural gas and extensive mineral resources.  Russia’s longest border is with China, slightly longer than that with Mongolia.  There have been shooting skirmishes along the border with China and the relationship between the two countries has been likened to two praying mantises in a bottle, neither trusting the other.

Lately, however – 6 to 7 years, cooperation between the two socialist/communist giants has been more active.  China’s economy, despite its problems, is 6 to 7 times that of Russia’s.  Russia’s huge land area sits atop enormous natural resources, particularly in oil, gas and relatively untapped shale-oil and gas.  Its population, however, is shrinking.  Programs have been tried to give stipends to parents for having children, but they have not worked to bring births up to even “replacement” rates.  Ultimately, along with politics, economics and industrial base, population size is the key determinant in national strength, depending on how it is achieved.  Massive immigration is not, generally, the solution.

China has 5 times the population of Russia, but lacks sufficient energy resources and, because of an unintended consequence of the “one-child” policies pursued in the late 1960’s through 2010 and beyond, the bias toward boys remains.  This pattern skewed the balance of boys and girls significantly, as parents aborted female fetuses.  During that same period, many thousands of girl babies were “adopted out” so that families could have another baby, hopefully a boy.  China’s ratio of female-to-male is 100 to 118: there are not enough marriage partners to civilize the males, essentially, or to produce enough children to replace aging workers.  China well understands the importance of population quality, rather than mere quantity, and it plays a multi-decade game in its quest to be the dominant country and culture.  So what, you may be asking?

The issue behind almost everything is the U. S. A.  China’s “problem” is not Russia, although the CCP is perfectly happy to buy oil from Russia while it stirs up problems for the “West.”  It is the United States that is the main impediment to Chinese hegemony, even in its own side of Asia and Southeast Asia.  After decades of buying off the elites, Wall Street, the universities, the banks and major industries in the U. S., China has finally secured a compromised President, who it has also “bought off,” and, praise the ancient dragon-gods, is also mentally incompetent!  Things seem to be aligning for China’s big move to unseat the U. S., globally.

Wait a minute, you’re saying, I thought the worst problem is the brutal destruction and wanton murder of Ukraine.  Sadly, Prudence thinks not, although the brutality is the worst the world has seen – paid attention to – in 30 years, except for the murder, rape and slavery promulgated in Africa, in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, Uganda, Nigeria, Mali, Angola, Namibia… and on and on.  Of course those countries and tribes didn’t have such good communications or beautiful buildings to be bombed as Ukraine has / had.  Besides, we like Ukraine and our President’s family scammed a lot of money there.  But the dead, starving, uprooted people in Africa are just as dead or more in pain than Ukrainians, who have modern neighbors to flee to and billions of dollars of aid pouring in.  Prudence hates all of it, but Americans are rather selective in our outrage.

What else has been going on in Africa these past 30 or more years?  Why, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.  The same long-term strategy reaches into European countries, Arab /Muslim countries, South Asia, South America and Oceania.  China lends money and expertise to countries that need major infrastructure in order to compete economically, but many cannot afford to pay off the loans.  China is happy to trade ownership for the notes, or lifetime access to ports, natural resources, communications systems and so forth, resulting in a densifying web of influence and military advantage that is, bit by bit, surrounding Russia as effectively as it does the United States in their Western Hemisphere efforts.  Hard to tell which of us is more blind.

So, is it really Prudent to connect the “Rape of Ukraine” to China?  Really?  “Absolutely,” seems to be the answer.

Keep in mind that China’s actions are ALWAYS in favor of China.  That kind of nationalism deserves respect, and it’s fully understandable.  This is why we were safer when Trump was president: “America First.”  The United States is the only country that has always tried to do things, internationally, that are better for other countries, including shedding jobs and production in order to “buy” cooperation, first, to resist the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism, but later to try to buy friendship from China, of all countries!  While our largesse wasn’t restricted to only China, the shift to our insidious pro-China tilt, in academia, in industry, and in our “grass-roots” politics, believe it or not, has weakened our will to defend America.  The Biden regime has stopped enforcing requirements to reveal foreign sources of funds flowing to colleges and universities, most of it Chinese.  Why would they do that?

It is safe to say that the timing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was based on China’s “granting” permission to Putin.  There may have been, it seems likely, some sort of permission from the W. E. F., as well.  Russia had its forces gathered east of the Ukrainian border for more than a year; they could have invaded at any time.  What made the winter of 2022 the “right” time?  Prudence indicates that it is the presence of the Biden administration and a number of steps Biden has taken to soften U. S. policy towards China, both for responsibility for the Covid pandemic and with regards to China’s multiple efforts in other countries that have begun to compromise even southern Europe.  An “America First” foreign policy would have the U. S. countering the Chinese “Belt and Road” initiatives around the world.  What we must aggressively, diplomatically do is attempt to keep poorer countries from succumbing to China’s bait-and-switch.  Instead, the Biden regime has ignored China’s encirclement.  China has observed the shift in U. S. policy since Trump and, it seems, has decided that this period is when invading Taiwan might be most successful.  It is unclear how much more encouragement China needs.

The final test has been observing how “the West,” most particularly the United States, deals with Russia’s aggression.  At the same time, Russia’s abilities are also being evaluated.  China is perfectly happy to fight to the last Russian, even as the West seems to be happy to fight to the last Ukrainian.  Gaining such knowledge will be put to China’s advantage – everything is.  China cares very little what happens to Ukraine or to Ukrainians; just as little about what happens to Russians and Russia, itself.  Russia has been a rival of China’s almost since Mao Tse Tung took over.  China is playing a century-long game with respect to Russia, too.  Helping Russia, now, buying its oil and gas, for example, may, in China’s view result in the acquisition of far eastern Russia, enabling the encirclement of Korea and Japan and control of key parts of the Pacific.  If you’re thinking that , “… oh, China would never try to do that…” then you haven’t been watching its creation of artificial islands and their militarization and disturbing encroachment upon the Phillipines, and Taiwan.  Indeed, the entire arc of Southeast and South Asia is waiting to see how the U. S. responds to China’s expansionism.  No other country in the world can oppose China and the globalization of Communism.

Interestingly, the World Economic Forum is pushing capitalist countries toward global unification, obviously under the benign management of bankers and oligarchs.  This is diametrically opposed to China’s plan for world hegemony, under the benign management of the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP.  Where the W. E. F. says that in the future we won’t “own” anything and therefore we’ll be happy,  the CCP believes we’ll be happier under their form of Communism and total social control that our ephemeral “freedom” fails to afford us: not that different in net.  Neither option will be “Constitutional,” and no one but the United States will be a defender of the principles of our nation.  This part of our exceptionalism is being constantly eroded BY AMERICANS!  Even people we have elected to our own Congress are actively attempting to destroy our Constitutional culture, now reinforced by a Biden administration that is compromised by BOTH China and Russia!  Interestingly, Biden’s family is even compromised by Ukraine!  What a mess.  Just be certain, in your heart of hearts, that NEITHER THE W.E.F. OR THE C.C.P OPTION IS IN THE UNITED STATE’S INTEREST!

Prudence is deeply concerned about the ascendancy of the oligarchy in the U. S. and elsewhere in the West.  Multi-billionaires do not respect Main Street, U. S. A., nor do they respect the basic family values that drive American culture.  Moms, Dads, marriage, Christianity and children raised by parents, are not the path to power that oligarchs crave.  The general morality of the ultra-rich is quite different from that of most moms and dads – by some reports, rather depraved.  When one’s fortune reaches a certain size, the impetus to make governments protect that fortune becomes paramount.  Politicians, unfortunately, are unusually attracted to power and money much like true oligarchs, although they are not smart enough to earn the billions to gain economic entry to the oligarchs’ club.  So, sadly, many are willing to sell-out to the real power brokers, because re-election is equally sought-after.  There is a relative handful of true patriots or statesmen and women in office who will sacrifice to protect the last best hope of mankind.

Wow!  All of this from the “Ukraine” problem?  May God protect that nation and its people.

FULCRUM OF HISTORY

NATO potato

Prudence observed, recently, that 2022 would be “the” year.  It would be the year that is the fulcrum of history, thought Prudence Leadbetter, and every passing hour appears to confirm that prognosis.  Not only is it a mid-term election year in the United States, but war has broken out in Europe, Canada briefly descended into fascism over Covid vaccine mandates, and China could finally decide it’s a good time to smash Taiwan.  Why should Putin have all the fun?

Americans are going to have their first opportunity to balance the scales after having allowed a most questionable election to install the worst administration in a long lifetime.  There are many questions as to what the consequences of current events may ultimately be, and people have a right to ponder the hundreds of possibilities.  Let’s consider a few.

How long and how large will the Russo-Ukraine war be?  In one view, the best result is a quick victory for Russia and Vladimir Putin.  That will stop the fighting and provide some satisfaction for the Russians, probably stopping their adventurism.  On the other hand, the Ukrainians are not interested in being part of Russia, again, and are fighting ferociously for their land, families, homes and neighbors.  Europe and the U. S. are belatedly providing ammunition, supplies and armaments to Ukraine to whatever degree they can be transhipped to a nation at war for its life.  Without a doubt, the take-over of Ukraine is not proceeding, for Putin, as he intended.  This has made him less rational; he has placed his nuclear forces on “high alert.”

Had the first desired scenario worked out: rapid collapse of the Ukranian government and surrender of Ukranian forces in a few days, perhaps with Zelenskyy fleeing in fear, then Russia could clamp down on Ukraine, start making nice with its NATO neighbors and the world would adjust, amidst grumbling and sputtering, to a new reality.  Putin would be left stronger inside Russia and on the world stage.

However, the second, more dangerous scenario may be playing out.  That is that Russian brutality must increase to the point of war crimes, if not already there, and even if successful in crushing Ukranian resistance, Russia is left a pariah nation and Putin, if he retains power in Moscow, will lose face and influence and any semblance of trust around the world.  Russia will be sanctioned by loss of trade, particularly in oil and gas, weakening it nationally, and possibly reducing cooperation with bordering republics.  NATO will be strengthened.  Amidst this messier turn of events, Putin might do something really stupid… something that draws the United States into direct conflict.  God forbid.

Another question;  Will Democrats attempt even more blatant election fraud to hang onto power in the 2022 midterms?  Despite the inability to prosecute any of the most questionable results, an inability built into the distributed nature of Presidential elections, there are many questions, including Constitutional ones, that no court, including the Supreme Court was interested in hearing, about the conduct of elections in 2020.  Nor did any state want to reverse its certification of electors when that would place them on the ”outs” with a new administration controlling the flows of dollars to state budgets.  It can all be “blamed” on the fear of Covid-19, but the extra-legal changes to voting practices in 2020, were THANKS to Covid-19, not fear of it.

That 2020 experience should be instructive to Americans: the Democrat Party is willing to subvert both standards and laws to retain its hold on power.  The desperation they felt in the face of a most-likely re-election of Donald Trump and his exposure of the deep state bad actors who participated in the attempted destruction of the Trump presidency, was enough to encourage that party to attack election laws in many states, permitting vote-by-mail and unlimited absentee voting, vote harvesting and numerous other weakenings of voter identification.  There is evidence of international electronic connection to voting machines that were, ostensibly, not legally internet connected, and within that illegal action, evidence that foreign actors created blocks of votes that were “dumped” into the electronic records of key states when it became obvious that Trump’s majority would be larger than they had planned to overcome.  They got away with it and Biden’s electors were certified.

What, then, are Democrats prepared to attempt in November of 2022?

Next question:  Will China seize on Biden’s weakness to attack Taiwan in 2022?  Despite its obvious use of Covid-19 to weaken other nations, China is not yet the pariah it should be, internationally.  Many countries are beholden to China for “development” loans they have “paid off” with grants of industrial, raw-material, or military access to their resources, land or coastlines.  Many western leaders are becoming richer through Chinese-led corruption, the greatest of which is the Biden crime family, followed closely by Nancy Pelosi’s husband and Mitch McConnell’s wife.  Hundreds of millions of Chinese dollars enter the U. S. political arena through universities, non-governmental organizations, various non-profits and relatively direct political contributions through straw donors.  Politically, America is compromised.  It is a Chinese strategy that is well-known and well-ignored by our “elites” and the political class.

Does China believe the time is right to move on Taiwan?  We’ll find out, probably around Labor Day.  They, and Democrats, will perceive that crisis as politically positive for Democrats.  God forbid.

Will there be a banking or currency crisis in 2022?  The question hinges not only upon the long-term desire of Russia, China and Saudi Arabia and others to unseat the U. S. dollar as the universal and reserve currency, but also on the oil and gas global trade – something in which President Biden has severely weakened the U. S. position and influence.  It’s almost as though he intended to damage the U. S. economy in as many ways as possible.  Be that as it may, trade dollars, or “petro-dollars,” in practice, became the standard for international conversion for most trade.  This status has also made it possible to create dollars (of DEBT) whenever the U. S. felt like it, which, since the Great Society began, followed by Nixon’s closing of the gold conversion “window,” in 1973, is virtually every budget year.  The government used to borrow in times of war or depression, only – during actual crises, in other words.  However, since the federalization of welfare, there has been a “crisis” nearly every year. 

The U. S. has “borrowed” something over $30 TRILLION dollars, since then, without ever attempting to pay it back.  In return we have seen fit to act as the world’s policeman and foreign-aid piggy-bank.  With the fall of the Soviet Union and general maintenance of stability in global trade and relative peace, sort-of, for the U. S., the rest of the world went along with America’s debt creation and erosion of dollar-value, and our de-facto empire, but the system has grown tiresome and the U. S. has grown less reliable.  Plus, in our soft-hearted / soft-headed immorality, we have gained many enemies that we refuse to recognize or even describe, many of whom are unmoved by stable trade.  Indeed, some have brought America to virtual surrender regardless of the hundreds of billions of military dollars and thousands of lives we have “invested.”

Fewer nations trust us as allies than did 50, 30 or even 10 years ago, possibly than did even 4 years ago.  Precious few will defend our economy when China and others decide to pull the plug on the dollar.  What will that mean?  To start, look at the labels on things you buy.

Many of our vegetables and fruits come from other countries, for example.  If the international standing of the U. S. dollar evaporates, what will we use to buy that produce?  If South and Central American nations, New Zealand, Southeast Asian nations start to require Chinese renminbi for trade, where will we get some to trade with?  Buy them with our own dollars?  Why would China want them?  Sell some gold to China?  Sell some, ahhh… what, to China?  Land???

The U. S. has been acting like an international social-service agency for decades.  This has fitted with the leftist view because it weakens the dominance of the U. S. A.  We have agreed, repeatedly, to buy products to help smaller, poorer nations.  We have agreed to offshore manufacturing to, mainly, China, but also to several other nations, including in Europe.  We’re such nice, friendly folks.  Now, we haven’t sent fast-food “manufacturing” to other countries, so maybe we could trade hamburgers for our fruits and vegetables.  Eh, probably not.  French Fries, maybe.  In our dense “wisdom,” we have already sold off a lot of farmland and food processing to China.  That sounds smart.

Much of America’s power is wrapped up in our position in the global banking system.  Most nations store their gold in New York, for example, with international transactions performed on handcarts between vaults a few yards apart.  Most currency exchange rates are based on the U. S. dollar, secondarily on the British pound sterling, a remnant of the British empire’s dominance prior to World War One.  This works because every nation relies on dollars for international trade, a remnant of American dominance after World War Two.  The final remnant of dollar-dominance harkens back to the final closing of the gold window in 1973.  America had been willing to sell gold to multiple other nations at the then-current exchange rates with the dollar (“redeeming dollars” held by other nations), but we were running out of physical gold.  Enter the “petro-dollar.” 

The U. S. made a deal with the House of Saud that Saudi Arabia would sell oil contracts with other countries denominated in dollars.  Other OPEC nations had to go along.  Several ramifications manifested.  One was/is that most nations needed to have dollars in order to buy oil, the most widely traded commodity.  Because of a high trust level in the honesty of U. S. institutions – including banks, like the Federal Reserve – countries held dollars as part of their reserves.  This “soaked up” a lot of dollars and helped/helps maintain the international value of the dollar.

The U. S., however, effectively flaunts the benefit of having other nations hold and trade in dollars, by creating debt for its own domestic purposes.  This ramification exposes the fraudulent nature of American governance over the past 50 years or so, and now amounts to more than $30 TRILLION, with no end in sight.  This one process threatens U. S. sovereignty and fiscal stability more than any other.  Another ramification is the frenetic speculation in currency exchange rates.  By trading in currency “futures,” countries “forced” to hold petro-dollars are able to hedge against dollar fluctuations, but the net effect is to weaken the dollar to keep commodity prices low (oil, natural gas, wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, pork, beef, steel, chicken, etc.).  It also makes American manufactured products relatively expensive, helping to encourage manufacturers to off-shore production to lower-cost countries, hurting American labor and other economic segments, and driving up the need for Americans to buy products from overseas.  So long as other nations need to have dollars to obtain energy and other commodities, they will accept dollars in payment for their manufactured goods.  What if that stopped?  Can you imagine astronomical price increases?  Rates like 100% per year or more?

Life would change.

Financial gurus have been predicting an economic “reset” for years, and the unseating of the U. S. dollar is its basis.  Yet, politically, we continue to borrow and spend as though the rest of the world will put up with American mendacity forever.  What the Hell is a debt ceiling, anyway?

Very soon, Russia will complete its Ukraine travesty, simultaneously emasculating Europe and NATO, and China will then finalize its move on Taiwan.  What “sanctions” do the Biden administration expect to use to counter that move?  Whether sanctions or real military resistance, China always has the leverage over American debt, and will happily move to unseat the dollar, completing its own elevation to dominance in the world.  At that point the U. S. will be unable to AFFORD to defend itself, an unforgivable circumstance.  Would we turn over the keys to the country in a Rose Garden ceremony?  Do you think we’d go nuclear?  Do you think our progress on transgender equity in our military services enhances our deterrence?

Americans have elected, re-elected and re-elected, sometimes 15 times or more, the same scoundrels who have become wealthy in office while plunging the country into unheard-of debt.  That debt is on us, everyone, not on those we’ve elected, because they have done that deed in our name.  And we have rewarded them for it.  Can we possibly turn our eyes away from the truth and expect life to go on with borrowed funds forever?  Do we think it’s too complicated for us poor rubes to figure out?  One day those debts (loans) will be “called” when that move can do the most damage to us.  Of all the weaponry, research and advantage we have allowed our enemies to steal, the greatest threat is the one we created for ourselves, and that just to keep certain liars in power.  Shame on us.  Maybe this will abruptly change in 2022 when Republicans take over from the Democrats.  If you have evidence of such being likely, please share it widely.

Amidst the wholesale weakening of the United States nation since Trump left office, we are suddenly facing the one alliance we have long hoped would never manifest: China and Russia, and in combination with China’s long-term economic attacks (including organized theft of technology and advanced research), now a combined, hot, military threat.  Most Americans, automatically sympathetic towards the suffering Ukranians, are mostly blind toward the imminent threat of Chinese military action.  This is upon us while the Biden administration has halted the momentum toward strengthening the U. S. military.  God forbid that our country face its second existential threat while the fools in this administration are in charge.  Our national independence and sovereignty could be lost in a week, if it comes to that.

TIME NOT ON OUR SIDE

Time may not be on our side.  One cannot overview the world and our political circumstances… and the calendar, without realizing a little fear for where things might go from here.  Where is that?

Let’s look at some of the pressures building up.

First, the political time-line.  Mid-term elections are the historic relief valve for sometimes hasty or confused political decisions made during presidential elections two years earlier.  There certainly were those in 2020.  Because the national conscience is so, well… impacted by beliefs concerning the 2020 elections – stolen or not stolen – the release of tensions in the 2022 mid-terms is a little harder to predict than what a lot of pundits are trying to foresee.  Most are making judgements on “normal” political considerations and it doesn’t seem Prudent to do so.

The weird eminence that most have already discounted, but who is the key to millions of voters’ decisions, is Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.  She has been a unique Speaker, at least.  For decades she has appeared to be simply a fierce partisan and has been appreciated, if not revered, by partisan Democrats who were happy to be “winning” barely-understood battles through her slick machinations.  By rights, she should be at the end of her career, and she probably is, but it’s a career that descended into a previously unrecognized socialism starting under Obama and deepening with hatred under Trump.  In those 12 years, Democrats became uneasy.  While enjoying victories Nancy engineered, no matter how messy, Dems also became concerned about the leftward lurch, yet had no other port in which to seek refuge.  Over the Trump years, leftist hatred for “America First” left many Democrats adrift.  What are they going to do in 2022?

If “centrist” or “American” Democrats abandon the Pelosi-led leftists (not that Pelosi was elected to lead the leftists: she has run, skipped twisted and kneeled as needed to stay ahead of them) will they suddenly vote Republican?  That doesn’t seem Prudent.  Will they fail to vote in standard numbers?  That question forces Prudence to wonder about what “the Black vote” might do.

Blacks have slowly been drifting away from their Democrat plantation, with an interesting increase in that trend in 2020.  Despite Covid, Blacks did well economically under Trump since 2017.  Despite, also, a perpetual anti-Trump media blitz accusing Trump of racism, Blacks could see that his policies helped all races.  Like all underdogs, Trump was seen somewhat sympathetically by Blacks who understood too well how prejudice hurts.  Have Blacks been treated better by increasing leftism?  Were they advanced by BLM-led riots and Antifa hatreds that damaged so many black businesses and jobs?  Have they been helped by Democrats’ union-led resistance to school choice?  Has weakening public safety served Black families or neighborhoods in any way?  Are they particularly likely to “reward” Pelosi’s weird coalitions with more power, more votes?  That doesn’t seem Prudent, either.  But, will they vote for anyone else?

So, on the backdrop of multiple failures of the “Biden” administration and severe economic news, what will be the “shape” of the change in fortunes for our two parties?  Over the next 11 months, how virulent will the Pelosi Left become?  Clearly their anger has been kindled by the loss of legislative momentum thanks to West Virginia Senator, Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator, Kyrsten Sinema.  Even 3 counties of Maryland would like to become part of West Virginia.

In 2020 we suffered through months of cultural destruction and destructive rioting and looting and economic despair in numerous cities.  Many strange, leftist mayors and governors have been exposed as feckless, ignorant and ideologically foolish.  Americans are practically fleeing their jurisdictions for states that seem to honor the Constitution more.  Yet the Pelosi House insisted on passing the enormous, so-called “Build Back Better” bill that would have transformed fundamental freedoms and democratic-republic structures created by the Constitution.  Against the backdrop of systemic failure at the southern border and the flood of illegals swept into the country by administration policies, the congress spent inordinate time on the “BBB” plan and the pointless “January 6th” commission.  Not a word is spoken in congress about what Americans are truly upset about, not least of which is the southern border.  With that legislation apparently doomed, what will the 117th Congress do to improve Democrats’ re-election chances in 2022?  Most options are likely to do damage to the republic at least domestically.

_________

Internationally, the Biden bindlestiffs have made a mockery of leadership and of honesty.  Without fundamental honesty, there are no diplomatic maneuvers that will work, almost regardless of what’s at stake.  In matters of war and alliance, conditions, tensions, and opportunities for gross, deadly errors, can spiral out of control quite abruptly.  Let’s look at the simplest area of tension: Iran.

The postulate is the following: Iran hates the United States as much or more than it hates Israel.  Iran is a theocracy determined to correct spiritual wrongs to the point of suicide.  To correct those wrongs, Iran will use nuclear weapons.  The inherent danger is that first the Obama regime and now the Biden regime DON’T BELIEVE THESE THINGS.  That is, they’d rather believe that Iran is as rational as other nations, desirous of better living standards for its people, better economic conditions internally, and willing to negotiate to achieve those ends.  All this talk about “death to America” and wiping Israel off the map is just talk, just posturing.  Because they don’t believe the United States can be guided by religious concepts of good and evil, neither can any other nation.  The United States can show them how love is better than hate and kindness and generosity will prove that the U. S. can be a reliable partner in seeking a better life for Iranians.

As the imbecilic John F. Kerry, onetime Secretary of State once said: “Would that it were, would that it were.”  For a man who has but the mildest relationship with truth, he places a lot of faith in the words of Iranian negotiators.  He apparently believes that Iran is enrichening Uranium purely for domestic power production… to improve the standard of living for Iranians.

Trump, to his America-first credit, had a sense of when he was being lied-to, and that extended to Iran.  He recognized that the “Iran Nuclear” agreement (never proposed as a nation-binding Treaty because it would never pass the Senate) was a pack of lies, which, naturally, Biden has been begging Iran to renew under his administration.  Iran has refused, so far.  With all the cash and lifting of sanctions that Obama and Biden have given them, the Iranians no longer need to negotiate further concessions under the agreement – they received what they needed for free.  Now it is merely a matter of time before Iran starts issuing nuclear-backed threats toward Israel, which the Biden regime will perceive as opportunities to go “back to the negotiating table.”  To their credit, Israel (and other nations in the Mideast) will take steps to prevent an Iranian strike.  The U. S. won’t, failing to realize that Iran will likely strike both the Little Satan and the Big Satan simultaneously. 

PRUDENT JUDGMENT: VERY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION.

The next simplest, as in somewhat more complicated, problem area is the Western Pacific, including both Taiwan and North Korea, but also India, unfortunately.  Here is the postulate: China intends to take over Taiwan; China virtually controls what North Korea does at any point; China will not move against Taiwan if it believes the U. S. will fight for Taiwan’s independence; China is beginning to think that the U. S. will not make any serious moves to stop China (the Biden family’s compromised position vis a’ vis China is a factor, here); and, finally, North Korea will make some sort of military moves against South Korea at the same time, seriously complicating United States’ response to the Taiwan crisis.  There has been shooting along the frontier of China and India within the past 18 months.  It is not inconceivable that China would stir that pre-heated kettle at the same time or before, that it moves against Taiwan.  This feint would likely involve Pakistan, as well, another nuclear power that hates India.  Every nation in the arc from the Arabian Sea to Qinzhou will suddenly be seeking a side in the conflict.  The failure of the U. S. to decisively defend its allies will transform the entire region and its oceans… and world trade.

PRUDENT JUDGMENT: EXTREMELY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION.

Finally, of the 3 hottest spots, Ukraine and Russia are preparing for some level of shooting.  The U. S., thanks to Obama and Joe Biden’s family, has meddled in Ukraine for years.  Ukraine is a big country that encompasses wide swaths of fertile land, great waterways, warm-water coastline on the Black Sea, huge coal deposits and iron ore, manganese ore, and other ores, which yield a large steel industry, heavy machinery manufacturing and, its greatest political weakness, a natural, relatively unimpeded pathway for oil and gas products to be transported to Western Europe.  The same can transport armies, too.

For more than a thousand years the Russian people have had strong cultural and religious ties to Kyiv, now the capitol of Ukraine, and to Crimea, Odessa and Sevastopol.  Strategically, the naval value of Crimea is perceived as so crucial to Russia, as with the USSR, that taking the Crimean peninsula “back” from a recently independent Ukraine was worth the international condemnation.  It’s a done deal and will never be negotiable.

In addition, the industrial heartland of Ukraine in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnetpropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya, covers much of eastern Ukraine from the Dneiper River to the Russian border.  Russia depends on many of the manufacturers in the region for not just machinery, but military and aerospace equipment.  Not having complete control of them is a sore spot.  Further, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson districts have significant Russian populations and Russian-speaking populations, which has formed an excuse for Russian regulars posing as irregulars or subversives, to create an enclave of sorts with a militarized line facing Ukrainian army regulars.

Sensing weakness and indecision from the Biden administration, and determined to not have Ukraine join NATO, Putin and the Russian Federation is looking for the opportune time to, in effect, take control of eastern Ukraine, if not all of Ukraine, by military force or forced federation.  When they move, what will Biden do?  Both Democrats and some Republicans have made tough-sounding statements about standing firm with Ukraine as if the status of Ukraine were a vital national interest.  Perhaps it is.  But setting up a line of U. S. troops to deter Russia seems unduly provocative.  If the situation were reversed and the Russians were placing troops to deter the U. S. from taking over cartel-dominated Mexico, let’s just say, we would certainly not find that a reason to stand down, would we?

What seems “small” to most Americans, in geopolitical terms, could place us in a hot confrontation with a huge nuclear power, 4,000 miles from our border, where both the land location and the naval one make us the underdog.

PRUDENT JUDGEMENT: VERY DANGEROUS UNDER THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION, and more dangerous than it appears.

____________

The shift away from “America First” thanks to the 2020 “elections,” has caused friends and foes, alike, to re-evaluate their relationships with the U. S.  The brutal withdrawal from Afghanistan, apparently executed by military idiots and a bumbling president, has changed strategic calculations by many nations.  The English-speaking world no longer reveres the U. S. as the leader of their coalition, and certainly does not respect Biden as it did Trump.  A strong, pro-national leader is not only respected, but understood by other nations, including adversaries.  There is a profound logic to leadership that clearly is patriotic and who speaks clearly of his – or her – intentions.  No nation likes surprises, internationally, nor confusing messages.  Every leader can make clear judgments about clear leaders, even about those they view as opponents.  This is not our current situation.

It has been said many times that the most dangerous circumstance is when other nations are unsure about what America will fight for; it is yet even more dangerous when America, itself, is unsure.  God save us.

CITADEL OF LIES – PART 2

Land of the Free

CITADEL OF LIES – Part II

January 6, 2021 was a day in the life of freedom, our fragile system of human self-perfection and responsibility, that exposed not the risk to America from conservatives, but from established leftist vipers.  That establishment was and is represented – publicly – by Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, a strange person to say the most.

What happened?  American citizens, convinced by the flood of evidence of astounding election fraud engineered within and without the United States, primarily by China, massed in Washington, D. C. to protest the imminent congressional certification / acceptance of fraudulent election results that were about to award the presidency and vice-presidency to the Joe Biden, Kamala Harris team.  The U. S. has sunk to its lowest point.

Evidently, groups of actual troublemakers had fulfilled their long-intercepted plans to attack the Capitol under the guise of disappointed Trump supporters.  The help requested by the chief of the Capitol police – the same help President Trump had offered to provide well in advance of the January 6th rally, had been denied by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, under whose office the security of the Capitol rests.  Why would someone in her exalted position deny guarantees of safety for those who rely upon her for protection?

One theory is that the thrilling possibility of an event like the breach of the Capitol had such future political  value for those like Mrs. Pelosi who are happy to demonize anyone who clings to the promise and premise of the United States.  First, Trump provided a focus for hatred – a revolting, dangerous political energy – and the opportunity to tie Trump derangement syndrome to “insurrection” was worth the risks from facilitating the breach.  That’s just a theory, of course that neatly associates all the odd circumstances.

People at the rally report that the closer they got to the Capitol the less the crowd felt like the rally crowd.  People, men, mostly, in camouflage outfits and wearing vests and helmets were agitating for an attack.  Some had pro-Trump hats but seemed more interested in assault than in protest.  At least a few, it has been revealed, were connected to “Antifa,” an organization whose views are closer to Nancy Pelosi’s than to Donald Trump’s… or to Prudence Leadbetter’s for that matter. Indeed, those worthies had begun the assault on the Capitol long before Trump had finished his rally speech.  No matter.

The resulting media storm, cries of “insurrection!” and “murder” of a Capitol Police officer who died of natural causes well after the assault, and the death of an actual unarmed – like every other entrant – Trump supporter who followed the crowd into the building and was shot by an officer who had likely never been in as stressful a situation as was allowed to develop by Nancy Pelosi for the foulest reasons an American could imagine, was utterly predictable.  And it was all Trump’s fault, requiring his impeachment.

It’s only a theory, but once the machinations, intrigue, subterfuge, lies and treason needed to subvert a presidential election were proven successful, and virtually impossible to overturn, investigate or correct, then the opportunity to completely take over the future of the United States was made clear to the radical left, and to Mrs. Pelosi who will lie down with any suitor who proclaims her to be a great leader.  The razor-wire-topped fence around her Capitol is a fitting symbol of the new American order.  Here and there a smattering of logic and justice may appear, like the “acquittal” vote, but it is not of much concern to our new masters.

No longer a Capitol of a free, self-governing people, the complex of outrageously costly buildings atop Capitol Hill is, in fact, a citadel from which our Democrat dictators will rule in safety.  Theoretically, we may have voted in the last election and the façade of the Republic will fall off in pieces , exposing the ugliness about to hatch.

It’s only a theory that ties together all the evidence, but real Americans can pray that it is proven wrong.

And on the other hand…

Prudence has worked for 2 weeks on a response to the Democratic convention.  It is a topic that has piled up words faster and deeper than any other… and it’s not finished.  Whether it’s ever posted is a question.  Who on Earth would read it?

So, a lighter analysis of 2020 politics is in order.  Might be fun.

There are two distinct sets of philosophies vying for power in this presidential year – no news, there.  Summed up, one is generally in favor of our constitutional system of distributed power, installed as governance for the first time in 1789; one is in thrall to ultimate government control over the economy and not just the economy, but control over individuals: how they live, what medicines they are permitted – or MUST – take and how they educate their children and about what.

One recognizes that America succeeds within a culture that is worth strengthening and imparting to succeeding generations; one appears anxious to displace American culture and replace it with race-based socialism.  What has this to do with each of us?  Whichever philosophy wins the 2020 election is going to have a direct impact on the lives of many – not all, but many Americans.  It will also affect the lives of millions of people in other countries.  There aren’t many election decisions when that is true.  Why will it be so?

In the event that Trump is re-elected, and we do, historically, tend to re-elect presidents if they have not failed economically, primarily, but not always… in that event there are significant risks to both our culture and our economy – affecting most of us, but not all.  The forces arrayed to stop Trump in his first term will not have given up.  If anything they will be more sharply aimed with greater destructive intent.  It is sad but Prudent to consider the possibility that he will be assassinated.  His determination to undo the deep state and eventually the economic oligarchy has not abated, and will be sharpened, as well.

The upset to our culture will be significant, much like the Kennedy assassination that began a long process of distrust of government and the decades of sex, drugs… and rock-and-roll, but I repeat myself.  It opened the door to Johnson, the Great Society’s 60-year erosion of our family-centered culture, and led to the Viet-Nam War and to Richard Nixon, whose removal from power changed politics – and the media – forever.  It is impossible to predict the upheavals that would follow an assassination, but none would be positive from a Prudent point of view.

Trump’s re-election is perceived as dangerous by many, and will expose him and his family to danger.

If, on the other hand, Biden is dragged across the finish line in November, there are significant risks to both our culture and our economy – affecting most of us, but not all.  The radically left forces that have grasped the philosophy of the Democrat Party will be vindicated even as they celebrate their relatively cheap victory over tradition and constitutionalism.  Elements of the “Green new Deal” will be proposed for legislation almost immediately, as will proposals on how to pay “reparations” to some amorphous group of non-whites.  Green energy, so called, will be sold as an infrastructure plan; money in the defense budget will be diverted to pay for part of it.  “Climate change is an existential threat.”

Sexual aberration will be further codified and given taxpayer support for any treatments or operations needed.  Laws defending sexual identities and how everyone must accommodate them, will become more strict and widely enforced.  Public safety and policing in general will be softened, and sanctuary status allowed where municipally claimed or, God forbid, state-claimed.  The nullification of federal laws will become rampant.  It is hard to predict whether rioting and anti-capitalist / anti-white destruction of urban centers will continue.  Those who have permitted it in 2020 will also feel vindicated and their anti-Americanism rewarded; it’s possible.

Should Trump win and survive, there are positive changes he will promulgate, and among these are immigration enforcement and the eradication of “sanctuary” status everywhere.  There is the distinct possibility that riots will continue, but Trump will feel vindicated by re-election, and will more readily impose states of emergency or even martial law to stop them firmly.  This is a danger to everyone should martial law become acceptable for solving policing problems.  At first it will be welcomed, but it is at least extra-legal and a terrible precedent and habit.

The reactions of China, North Korea, Iran and, interestingly, Pakistan to the re-election of Trump, are hard to pin down.  Xi Jinping of China hates Trump for constantly calling out China over the Covid virus release, if not for several other reasons.  His desire is to embarrass Trump so as to put him in his place, as it were.  Xi naturally perceives his China as destined for global hegemony and sees Trump as his biggest impediment.  Trump must lose face for the world to recognize China’s ascendance.  This could take the form of North Korean provocation to near hot war with China’s declaration of support for North Korea including full military force, forcing humiliation on South Korea and the United States.  Many alliances will be strained or broken if Trump backs down or appears to.

Pakistan, particularly with the conclusion of a much anticipated “peace” treaty with the Taliban in Afghanistan, may be encouraged, again by China, to resume clandestine and, perhaps, direct operations against India.  All 3 states are nuclear armed.  China has had hot incidents with India, most recently in 2020.  It could serve China’s interests to see India tied down in the mountains of Kashmir, and to see the United States take India’s side.  This would provide opportunities for China to act aggressively elsewhere.  Whereas Trump has moved from treaty to agreement with abandon, re-making trade and other agreements to benefit the United States as he wished, in his second term he will be severely tested by China.

What would world leaders do with Biden in the White House?  He has shown himself willing to bribe and take bribes from other countries, as has his “buddy,” Obama.  He has supported softening relations with China for decades.  Would he suddenly be tough?  Doubtful.  He has shown himself unwilling to denounce “Black Lives Matter” or the rioting in several cities.  He appears to like top-down directives from government and would lock down the economy a second time if “experts” told him to.  The only bold moves he has described for his administration have concerned climate change and the green new deal… plus raising taxes.  For middle-class Americans, the Biden agenda, distorted by socialists, is unpleasant to contemplate.

As George Soros, evil globalist, recently stated, “The 2020 election will affect the entire world.”  Be Prudent when you vote.

BALANCING ACT

Increasingly Mr. Donald Trump is becoming the fulcrum on which our democratic republic balances, and he has not shown, yet, that he is rigid enough to affect the balance.  This is not to say he isn’t tough.  The constant attacks, threats of impeachment since inauguration, and unusual hatred, would wilt lesser men, and often has.  Much has been made of the turnover in Trump’s administration, as if it represented “chaos” in the administration.  While it may yield a little “chaos,” it is temporary.  The problem is that Trump believes that when someone is hired, he or she owes an outward loyalty, at least, to the “boss.”

What has taken him some time to recognize is that every – as in, every single one – person in a position to execute policy or influence policy, has an agenda.  Worse, since the Obama administration, agendas in Washington are no longer matters of how to accomplish national goals, no nuanced approaches to policy.  Agendas now are only to accept or to oppose the direction desired by the elected president.  Many of those recommended for top appointments, especially on matters of international policy, held an agenda of opposition, and deserved replacement.  The president now must become very strict towards his appointees, and this mood must extend deeper and deeper into the many agencies who are happy to oppose him.  (see: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2019/11/28/due-process/ )

Is Trump up for this?  It is hard to tell.  He seems not to take very much advice, else someone would have tempered his Tweeting; on the other hand, his selections for judgeships reveal good work and recommendation by someone else.  Still, he has not been as thorough in replacing appointees as his predecessor was, and many of those in the White House, State Department, Department of Justice and the “Intelligence Community,” are actively opposed to Trump, his background, his style of work and speech, and to his America-first policies.  Their allies in the Congress and other covens of Democrat-leftists, have done their worst to hamstring the president since he first appeared to have a chance at the nomination, never mind the election.

Despite the roadblocks and mistreatment by much of the press, Trump has managed to accomplish quite a bit, and he has changed the nature of American diplomacy somewhat.  Will it all bear fruit?  It is impossible to say, but certainly no more impossible to predict than have been the results of “normal,” deep-state diplomacy over the past 50 years.  The best way to guarantee the predicted outcomes in all that time has been for the United States to give up more – including sovereignty – than we ever have asked… or received in return.  Predictions of opposing sides’ accepting all the American largesse our “negotiators” could give away, always came true.

One hopes that should we not obtain the quality of a deal we need for U. S. benefit, that our “side” will stay strong and not immediately throw more value to the other side in order to “win” some sort of a deal that politicians can crow about, knowing that after a few dust-ups, most voters will forget what was even at stake and accept that the deal we got is better than “not talking” at all.  This is national hogwash, of course, and it stems from a general attitude of American unworthiness compared to other nations’ interests.  Trump supporters want a bull-dog negotiating for our side, both domestically and internationally.

At some point, one would surmise, the mendacity of the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and even the Obama White House, and the 3-year story of failing to prove any – as in, not even one – of the amazing allegations against Donald Trump and his appointees and supporters, would begin to dissipate the hot tempers that accompanied those allegations, both personal and legal.  At some point, the charges of “racism” and “sexism” should abate; the so-far indefatigable charges of “collusion” with Russians, well-debunked at great effort and expense, should fade away as the truth penetrates haters’ consciousness.  At some point, all of the energy needed to maintain hatred of Trump, the person, could be expected to turn toward political action.

But, with the gaveling into passage of two gaseous “articles of impeachment,” not yet.

REAL GOVERNANCE

Despite his New York crudeness and bragadocio, Donald Trump has begun a service to the foundational ideas and premises of America, and thereby to every American.  He, himself, and every one of his most loyal compatriots, is oblivious to the magnitude of that service.  What has he done?

His presidency has operated, as most have done, at a public level, variously reported in praise and condemnation, broadcast and published – the level at which modern politics are negotiated and fulfilled.  Beneath that, he operates within the secret, classified levels that are presented to each president as though to initiate him to the centers of real governance, hidden from public view for reasons of “national security,” wink.  This secrecy conveys a patine of power and influence to which he has been inaugurated, shared by very few.  It is heady stuff, becoming a member of the world’s most august and arcane fellowship.  The continuity of the secrets, of the secretive machinations, of the vital, world-controlling decisions that only he can make, of the “nuclear launch codes,” and of the distilled intelligence few others will see, is really out of his hands.  It is shared with every president as part of the fable of democratic, civilian control not only of the vast domestic bureaucracies, but of even the military-industrial complex.  But, it is a fable.

Here and there brief windows open between the public and private presidencies and much heat is generated, politically, some of the citizenry become agitated, editorials are written, commenters supply commentary, and even Congress expresses its dudgeon, both high and low.  The portion of the public made restive by the once “secret” revelations is assuaged by palatable political lies and life goes on.  Very few lives are affected.  Elections, however, can be effected because of them.  Still, not much changes over time.

Beneath the “secret” level of (mostly military and international) governance, there is the amorphous, faceless, simultaneously unorganized yet unified, unelected and permanent, administrative state.  This vast majority of our “governors” have virtually no connection to any president or even presidency.  Each new “head” of the administration is largely uninvolved with this level.  It was in place – two millions strong – long before his election to the “most powerful office on Earth’ and it will remain in place long after he has “left his mark” upon America.

And now, Trump.  Trump got elected by defeating the penultimate deep statist, Hillary.  Hillary is a political deep statist; the permanent deep statists are, however biased, mainly interested in their individual interest areas, perhaps thanks to some college degree, and in their economic security, excellent benefits and virtual tenure.  Political  deep statists are more likely to adhere to either the socialist world view – and power – and to the eternal struggle to impose it upon the United States, or to simple, tawdry, utterly corrupt and corruptible personal financial aggrandizement.  This is where Hillary Clinton has spent nearly five decades and America has finally had enough of her.  Trump is clearly on a path quite divergent from the Clintons’.

Trump doesn’t much care about political correctness.  He doesn’t care much about whom he offends, even when he intends to offend them.  Most are offended because that is their “shtick:” finding offense everywhere and garnering immediate social media support that will bring the weak-willed to their sniveling, apologetic knees within the hour.  Otherwise decent, even productive and useful people, are made weak and malleable by the “woke” offense industry.  Soon, people like Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke are apologizing for being white.  This doesn’t work with Trump, one of the reasons his supporters stick with him.

Because he doesn’t suffer fools, Trump has engendered impressive levels of hatred here and there within the deep state.  He has a pro-America agenda, which is to say, an agenda that hews slightly more closely to the presumptions of liberty that were part and parcel of her founding.  He wants domestic policy to reflect individual responsibility and even-handed law enforcement, for example.  This is not the policy of the deep state, crafted in tens of thousands of regulations whereby virtually everyone may be persecuted or prosecuted for broken “laws” created by those unelected regulators.  Regulators hate Trump, even though he hasn’t struck all that deeply into their regulatory empire.  It is hateful enough that he undid some of the “great regulator, Obama’s” glorious flood of executive orders.

The deep, deep state, State Department department hates him because he wants America’s treaties and foreign relations, trade and otherwise, to work FOR the United States and no longer against us.  Most presidents make diplomatic noises while the State Department’s deep statists (largely globalist socialists) do what they “know” is best for the world; Trump intends to reverse much of that and make it pro-American.  They will undermine his policies wherever possible, like in Ukraine.  He has no interest in helping George Soros.

The EPA minions surely detest him because he wants land use to include humans.  It may sound silly, but many EPA regulators literally prefer squirrels and other four-or-more legged denizens of Earth over almost any two-legged ones… except for them, of course, and the other climate-change thinkers who, they dream, will wind up taking care of the planet far better than most humans have been, and in deserved comfort – few, if any, America-first conservatives included.

Interior has little use for Trump.  The careerists at Interior cannot imagine any wide-open spaces that are not restricted to bears, wolves and armadillos.  Humans don’t belong in those habitats, just lizards and beavers and so forth.  Any humans already mistakenly thinking they “own” a plot in those open lands can be eased – or forced – out of the “habitat,” and eventually housed in a 300 square foot dormitory space powered by solar panels, vegetables growing on the roof, drinking recycled water.  Only by being as uncomfortable as possible could humans – non-ruling humans – ever balance the ways we’ve despoiled all the “habitats.”  Trump isn’t into that view of the future.

It is impossible to evaluate the motivations of 2 Million federal workers.  The majority are lifers, eventually to retire from their federal jobs.  Each has his or her own motivations, personal “profits,” philosophies and biases.  No single description can apply to 5 people, let alone to a million or more, but given their similarities of employment, there are obviously some motivations, satisfactions, that they share.

Primary of these is a general approval of government, defined as interlocking bureaucracies within which, and among which, are performed the “real” work of government.  Federal government personnel are generally in favor of federal government: perfectly logical.  Next, each long-time employee is generally favorable toward his or her own agency or office.  Each perceives his or her work as valuable, if not vital.  Each, then, is likely to be resistant to any diminution of his or her agency or mission.  The managers in each agency are, more than just stability, desirous of growth – growth of mission and growth of personnel numbers.  Growth equals importance, promotion, better pay.  Built into the 15 executive departments of the Cabinet, are so many agencies that no firm count of them exists!

There are 200 at least, but there may be over 400.  These, alone, provide a substantial force for permanence and growth – a force that politicians cannot find the courage to temper.  Four hundred or so would seem to be a manageable, or at least a take-controllable number.  But it is merely the blueprint.  Within them all are PROGRAMS, programs and more programs.  Congress creates them.  For every one there is an advocacy group that at some time identified a problem that a federal agency/program was not addressing specifically.  The good intention of every advocate is probably real.  Problems exist.  Solutions are often obvious, but rarely easy to effect.  So, politicians are scratched at their most itchy spot: re-election.  Soon a bill is filed to great publicity, that will finally, after years of Republican inaction, solve this or that terrible problem.

Mainly out of ignorance for some, and out of innate anti-liberty socialist beliefs for the rest, problems, no matter how small or how caused, are federalized.  That the federal administrative state is possibly the least effective way on earth to solve problems, only describes the cynicism of politicians who put every problem in the federal lap or on the federal breast.  That they do so while the federal budget is $22 Trillion in debt – and more – only describes their utter mendacity and failure, over many terms, to uphold one of the most basic covenants the federal government makes with its citizens.  For shame.

Trump, unfortunately, has yet to express a willingness to change federal budgeting.

Still, whether it is because of, or in spite of himself, Trump has caused to be exposed the infidelities of globalists and socialists who prefer a continuing, costly, international policeman role for the U. S.  Several have been ejected and more soon will be.   But even if all of the untrustworthy DOJ, DOD, CIA and NSA apparatchiks were cleaned out… all of them… the liberty-corroding machinations of the molasses-heads just a bit deeper entrenched in the hundreds of agencies and thousands of programs (did you know there are over 1,000 federal programs “addressing” poverty?), will plod along, inflicting regulations with the force of law, able to strip citizens of their constitutional rights, among other things.  It is insidious, yet not corrupt, actually – it’s a way of stultifying, nightmarish administrative life.  Blame for it rests on 50 Congresses and a dozen presidents.  And on us.

Conservatives like to think that they are upholding the Constitution when they oppose communists, socialists, liberals and other Democrats.  They tout principles and vote to increase the debt ceiling like lemmings.  They are hated roundly for this, by the “woke” socialists who are not only not awake, but are barely aware of either the Sun or the Son.  God help anyone who threatens to cut the budget; only enemies of the Republic would conspire to allow the “government” to “shut down.”  It never does.

IMPEACHY

Impeachment.  An ugly term, certainly, but one so frivolously cast that it’s meaning and impact are widely misunderstood.  To impeach  means to indict.  “Well, like, ‘Duhh’ man.  What am I supposed to think, now?”

In simple terms, an indictment is just a charge levied against an individual, that is agreed to by a selected panel of citizens sworn to listen without bias to evidence supporting the charge, and to vote their consciences according to the applicable laws pertaining to the crime that the charge alleges.  How’s that?  Still a little unclear?  Perhaps an example will help.

A small business owner is awakened at night by a call from police informing him that there was a “break-in” at his building.  He throws on some clothes and rushes to his business to observe that, in fact, (real, or “solid” evidence) a windows was jimmied somehow, and other damage done to the window frame and to objects and materials inside the building.  There are no clear fingerprints or blood drops or other identifying foreign matter that could immediately identify  who did the observed damage.  A search is performed to see if something were stolen, and a police report filled out.

Eventually a person is arrested during a similar break-in, and the state, through the District Attorney’s office, brings him before a Grand Jury composed of that select panel of sworn citizens, and the charges are presented, including such evidence as has been gathered.  That evidence may be circumstantial or it may be direct evidence such as eye-witness accounts of the commission of the crime, or of the sale of items stolen from break-in victims, or even testimony from people who heard the accused talking about committing the crimes.  That panel, the Grand Jury, “hands up” an indictment  to the District Attorney, who will become the prosecutor  in the trial of the accused, and he or she files the case with the appropriate court.  The accused will be represented by his defense attorney, whom he has hired or whom the court (the state) has provided to him at taxpayer expense.  This is called “Due Process” in the United States.

Following a “just” trial according to the rules of jurisprudence, the accused, if convicted, may still appeal his conviction on various technicalities, including poor legal representation.

What has any of this to do with the impeachment show we are anticipating, now?

“Impeach” was a cry hurled toward Trump and toward anyone who would broadcast it, even before the brash, vulgar, non-Washington-molded President-elect was inaugurated.  “For what?” would be the response from his supporters.  “For “collusion” with Russians!”

That the charges  hurled against Trump were mirror images of the actions of the Clinton Campaign, the Clinton-dominated Democratic National Committee, AND of the nefarious elements of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. and of the Obama administration, itself, in no way mitigated the inflammatory calls for impeachment  that were hurled by politicians and elected office-holders throughout, so far, his first term as President.  Barely had the dust settled from the utter collapse of the collusion with Russians  construct, but new, nebulous charges have been leveled that are purported to justify… wait for it, impeachment!

The new charges stem from a phone call President Trump made to the new President of Ukraine in July of 2019.  Ostensibly, and it is strictly subjective, Trump threatened to withhold already approved military assistance unless President Zelenskey investigated apparent influence peddling by Joe Biden while Vice-President in the Obama administration.  So far, at least, there is no proof that a so-called, “quid pro quo” was actually required, but that is the crux of the impeachment  cries.  Mr. Trump deserves some recognition for not folding before the onslaught.

But, it may be instructive to consider the alleged “crime” of demanding something from the government of Ukraine in some sort of exchange for American largesse.

Ukraine has long been considered corrupt, inasmuch that numerous officials enrich themselves at the expense of the citizenry, including bribery to get anything actually done, including, amazingly, defending the integrity of the nation against Russian incursion and encouragement of civil war on behalf of the supposedly ethnic Russian minority.  The U. S. stood still while Russia separated Crimea from Ukraine, and virtually still as irregular Russian insurgents created a nearly autonomous region around Donetsk.  President Trump has finally begun to send armaments to Kiev for defensive purposes against the restive Russians.

Ukraine has last been independent for fewer than 30 years.  Upon the breakup of the Soviet Union, the new Republic of Ukraine inherited a bureaucracy of corrupt officials and apparatchiks  whose prior graft was tiny compared to the opportunities under a more open-market, open-for-business environment.  But Ukraine is also an example of the most unholy alliances our own government has made with international socialist organizations who, for 30 years have been undermining governments to install socialists.  George Soros is at the center of those efforts and our own tax monies have been funneled to his groups in multiple countries (Egypt, Macedonia, Ukraine, Chile, Somalia, Libya, and… wait for it, the United States!)

Bit by bit, President Trump and the relative handful of honest patriots who serve with him, have exposed the wholly un-American efforts of those who agree with international socialism and who actively support it with every form of subterfuge and disingenuousness true Americans can only imagine.  Mr. Obama was the most blatant socialist, ne’ communist, we have ever elected… and Mr. Trump is the antidote to his two terms of American decline.  Joe Biden thoroughly agrees with Obama’s work and his missions to Ukraine as Vice President, where Soros and U. S. efforts had taught young socialists how to topple a government in 2014, are perfectly legitimate areas of inquiry for an America-first president to follow.

The shady-looking insertion of Hunter Biden, a sketchy individual in his own right, into a corrupt gas company spawned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarchy, in a country into which the U. S. was poised to pour several hundred millions of taxpayer monies, made the need to obtain some sort of clarity that the money wasn’t an example of good money after bad, a virtual duty.  The parallel issues of “Crowdstrike” actions to interfere with the 2016 elections simply accentuated the need to encourage the eradication of corruption before more money were turned over.  If Trump had NOT asked for a “quid pro quo” he should be judged a fool.

Now there is a form of “grand jury” attempting to , quite unfairly it appears, assess “evidence” against the accused President.  There isn’t much to the process so far that adheres to what we enjoy as “due process” in the matters of indictment and prosecution.  To date there has not been described a crime for the “grand jury” to evaluate the nature of any evidence for, yet they struggle onward, certain that the unpleasant America-firster, Donald Trump, is guilty of something – if not everything.

Eventually, and probably just as interest in the “historic” impeachment inquiry begins to fall off, the House of Representatives, that august and impartial grand jury, will vote to “impeach,” as in, they will “hand up” an indictment.  But the hand-up goes not to a prosecutor but to the Senate.  There a “trial” will be held, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.  The once and future “grand jury” will take the responsibility of “prosecutor,” having filled the role of persecutor for three years to no avail.  They will employ various attorneys to make the House’s case in the Senate.  Should be a great show.