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THE INFLATION CHRONICLES

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The Biden “administration” has done everything it could in 19 months to destroy the trajectory of the U. S. economy, and, possibly, U. S. permanence.  Above all, everyone is either helped or hurt by the big “bugaboo,” inflation.  Economists, pundits, commenters and news-readers galore, all have wise-sounding opinions, yet no one seems to know what inflation IS!

It seems Prudent to assume that some of them do, but the average person listening to any such is not going to find it out.  To a mouth, all say in so many, many words, that “inflation” is prices increasing.  Well, no it isn’t.  Inflation is inflation of the money “supply.”  And that isn’t even accurate; it’s inflation of available cash OR CAPITAL that is “liquid,” or lendable.  Capitalism and “inflation” go hand-in-hand to create prosperity for most people.

“Wait just a minute,” you’re thinking, “Inflation makes prices go up, and that’s bad, so it’s not helping MY prosperity.”  Actually, it has helped it – look at the riches and bounty we enjoy.  It’s a two-edged sword… like fire.  It can cook our food, keep us warm, run our engines or… burn the house down.  The key is keeping inflation where it runs the engine without burning down the house.  So, where does this wonderful inflation come from?

The simple answer is debt.  Our economy – even your personal economy – operates on a “futures” basis.  If you own your home you probably have a mortgage on it, which is a long-term debt, well into the future.  One of the quirks in our economy is that banks can legally loan out more “money” than they actually have on deposit.  It’s called “fractional reserve,” and it is about 14%.  In other words, among all the stored “savings” deposits and “performing loans” and temporary deposits, the “Bank” has an average number of dollars “in reserve,” at any given time.  If it amounts to a million dollars, our laws allow the bank to lend out up to $7 Million, round numbers, of which 6/7ths is, fundamentally, air.  So long as the honesty and ability to repay of most borrowers are intact, this is a safe system and the recipient of the check for the house you bought, accepts the dollars that were created to write it, as well as if he saw them peeled from a big fat roll of $100-dollar bills.

If the seller of the house also dealt with the same bank, his or her new deposit of, say, $400 thousand will, for a while, increase the average “reserve” the bank can lend seven times as much of.

Anyway, you commit to paying your mortgage for 20 or 30 years because the pain of losing your home is worse than the pain of making the payments.  Besides, you have a job, you’re productive, you’re helping to create profits somewhere – productive surplus, if you will.  It is reasonable that you will keep your promise to pay.  You have made your work valuable enough to produce some “productive surplus” for your own family.

Try to imagine where the construction industry and millions of jobs would be if there were no such thing as mortgages or construction loans.  But, if you’re worried about inflation, look at what you just did: you caused the inflation of the money supply by about $340,000!  Depending on the “velocity” of that money (through the economy), possibly even more than that.  But!  It’s OK.  You’re going to pay it down – or “back” – to the bank.  Owning that house will cause you to buy a bunch of other stuff that increases production (let’s hope, inside the U. S.), as well as future repairs and upgrades, and it will enable you to raise your children to become productive, too.

Transactions like these happen thousands of times a day, whether for homes, or cars, or work vehicles, trailer trucks and on and on.  Every loan creates some inflation, but not more than the “economy” will absorb, or, we might say, not more than the economy needs.

In the process of economic activity, wages, sales and so forth, governments collect taxes.  That is, BECAUSE THERE IS PRODUCTIVE SURPLUS in our economic activity, “we” can afford to pay taxes for those services and public works that individuals cannot provide for themselves.  Among these are public school facilities, police departments, fire departments, all the bureaucrats who are there to help US, the military, highway and roadway constructions, sewage treatment, water works and sewers, themselves.  All that stuff is paid for from productive surplus.  If kept in a rough balance, it all works together amazingly well as more people become productive and relatively financially independent, and benefiting in safety and economy from our shared public works.

How does it get out of balance?  Put most simply, if the money supply grows with no commensurate increase in production or productivity.  Take the example we’ve experienced recently where governments, based on perceived, raw, political advantage, decree that the “minimum wage” shall be $15.00 per hour.  A kid stuck at the fry station in a McDonald’s, making French fries for as many customers as desire some, gets a sudden, say, 20% pay increase.  He or she cannot fry more potatoes than before the raise, there are only so many orders for fries in a given day.  The added pay does not enable the fry-kid to encourage more people to buy fries than they used to buy before the change in pay.  Do you think the individual cost of an order of fries is going up?  Of course.  Or, is it possible that customers might wait a little longer to get their fries – and their whole orders, when it’s busier?  Perhaps the restaurant owner can’t afford to put two kids at the fry station in busy periods, now that the pay has increased arbitrarily.  The customer pays – or suffers – for this arbitrary work rule.

So, French fries go up in price, but is that “inflation?”  Well, no, obviously.  It’s an imposed change to the “CGS,” or Cost of Goods Sold.  How would inflation cause the price of French fries to go up?

Suppose that in a certain marketplace: your town, for example, there are both a lot of disposable income – free cash, as it were – and a limited supply of frozen French fries.  Potatoes are neither grown nor processed locally; they are transported some distance to the restaurants that want them in your town.  People in your town are in the habit of ordering fries with their burgers and sub sandwiches and business in fries is brisk.

Because the supply of spendable cash has been inflated (increased), people who might have held off adding fries to their sandwich orders, have started to order them more frequently, yet the total volume of fries coming from the processors can’t increase for quite a while, as the extra cash in everyone’s pocket makes it possible to afford the fries in other towns, as well, and the price of fries appears to be a bargain where they used to be a bit of a luxury.

Restaurants are finding that they’re “selling out” of fries and seeing customers go to another restaurant that still has some.  The owners get on the phone to order more fries but there aren’t any extra to be had.  Very quickly busier restaurants will offer a premium price to the distributor to get an extra case of frozen fries every day.  Realizing the nature of the increased demand, the distributor makes a deal with a potato processor who guarantees additional frozen fries, but at a higher wholesale price, too.

Pretty soon, the French fry supply problem is solved and people in your town can obtain all the fries they want, although each order costs a little more.  Lo, and Behold!  Inflation of the money supply changed demand patterns in the French fry marketplace.  This example is too simple, but also real.  During the engineered Covid crisis, the federal government wrote checks to millions of people that it/they, the federal, state and municipal governments had thrown out of work… billions and billions of dollars’ worth, but they were from accounts that had no actual – although highly hoped-for-future – money in them!  The checks were written from AIR.  Worse, they were doled out without regard to increasing productivity or other economic growth.  No new crops were planted, tended or harvested; no new mines were opened and their valuable minerals retrieved; no new inventions were spurred causing new manufacturing to commence.  But people accepted the ‘air-checks’ and spent them like money.  The money supply increased by over a Trillion Dollars while the supply of goods to be purchased actually went DOWN!

Prices started to go up until states started to re-open their businesses and let people go back to work.  The economy was roaring back when Biden was shoveled into office.  He promptly signed another Trillion-dollar “Covid Relief” bill that was no longer needed, indeed it extended payments to not work, and inflation really started shooting up.  The money supply – more air, but who’s counting – was now completely untethered from productivity, production or quantities of goods for sale.  In addition, there was an even larger incentive to not work.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) started to take off in a serious way.

Because of “petro-dollars,” a sweetheart deal we made with Saudi Arabia (and, therefore, OPEC) when Nixon closed the gold window in the early ‘70’s, our federal spenders have developed a habit of calling everything a “crisis.”  It doesn’t have to be a war, a disaster, a plague… just a problem – like getting re-elected.  And, since there is (almost always) a terrible crisis, they can justify borrowing to resolve it.  So, they spend about one-third or more, MORE than the real money tax receipts that the federal government collects each year.  That missing third or 40% or so must be borrowed, largely adding to the “national debt.”

Now, if the extra federal spending were creating real wealth, which is what real investment does, the loans would steadily be repaid by the productive surplus the investments made possible.  Another way of saying it is that the DEBT would be DESTROYED.  That’s a good cycle: ideas vetted, loans obtained, practices, processes or new resources are implemented or obtained,* and the new productive surplus can be applied, in part, to “retire” the loan while net societal – or National – wealth increases.  Living standards improve and the repaid capital (the loan) becomes available for other real investments.

This neat system collapses when non-productive or ANTI-productive effects of the loan (deficit spending, it’s called) are mandated by law.  Most commonly, it collapses because the government borrows money to PAY FOR CURRENT EXPENSES, like welfare, interest on older loans, increasing the numbers of people employed in non-productive pursuits, and so forth.  A good example of hiring more people to be non-productive is part of the recently passed “Prosperity Reduction Act,” or, as it is officially mis-labeled, “The Inflation Reduction Act.”  Inside of this dishonest legislation is a provision to hire 87,000 more IRS agents, who will harass and impoverish productive people (tax-payers they are called) with absolutely no increase in productive surplus for anyone.  Oh, there’ll be some fat paychecks, but the net wealth of our economy will decline. 

The extra payroll dollars (among others in the bill) will inflate the money supply, however, and prices will move upward again as more cash chases fewer goods.

There are $600+Billion other dollars in the “bill” that also don’t represent any new production, productivity or wealth… they just lower the value of all the dollars floating around or in your wallet and retirement accounts.  Thanks, Brandon.

*Where are new resources “obtained?”  Well, there are only so many sources of new wealth that can add to an economy and total wealth of a nation.  The first is agriculture.  The elements of a crop of wheat or corn or soybeans or potatoes, are relatively inexpensive.  We count on God to provide the soil, the rain and sunlight… even the seeds, although humans have figured out how to augment everything but sunlight, and how to till the soil and harvest the crops with automated machinery, which has reduced the cost of labor in food production, as well.  Barring weather disasters and political interference, agriculture creates new wealth with every crop-cycle.  Many inventions and new mechanizations have been developed in response to the need for better food production as population has grown.

Coincident with expanding agriculture are various forms of mining, whether for coal, metals, oil, gypsum, quartz and dozens of other riches the earth provides.  From them have come thousands… no, Millions of products and inventions and improvements to standards of living, not least of which are pharmaceuticals and computer chips.  Virtually every one of these bits of progress and improvement has required some “financing,” or, as better known, debt.  Little by little every step has also “inflated” the money supply, but in rough equivalence to the new economic activity each has spurred.  A lot of that activity has been in the form of “fixed” assets, like buildings, roads, bridges and so forth.  At their creation, “fixed” expenditures DEFLATE the money supply, while enabling long-term economic benefit for lots of other activities, comforts or safety.

Somebody is going to paint those buildings.  We’re still driving across bridges that were built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s.

Some companies, banks, agencies, treasuries and individuals are benefitted very nicely by inflation, primarily the federal government.  They get to spend the money first.  Debts and other invoices the federal government owes are paid off with “cheaper” dollars.  Increased payrolls result in increased tax receipts.  Favored industries obtain contracts and payments to carry out policies incorporated in the inflationary legislation.  Millions of votes are purchased as loans are forgiven and exorbitant expenses incurred and paid off.  So, some benefit immediately and don’t begrudge deficit spending.  Others, tax-payers, not so much.

The actual net result is a reduction in both national and individual wealth for MOST people.  The few favored in the legislation get an artificial boost of income.  It’s all very unfair and sold to the American people as a universal “good.”  But, what does it have to do with “petro-dollars?”

Petro-dollars refers to our agreement with OPEC that oil would be traded only for dollars.  Every nation, basically, would need to always have some dollars on deposit – some even made the U. S. dollar a “reserve” currency – so that when they needed to buy oil they could.  If they sold oil, they accepted having billions of U. S. dollars on deposit.  Dollars could be exchanged for any other currency an “oil” nation needed to buy products from anyone.  Still, a global acceptance of dollars gave a golden “carte blanche” to ignorant congresspeople to borrow without any practical limit.  All they need is a “crisis.”

At the same time that President Biden has ruined relations with Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC, and attacked fossil-fuels in the United States, multiple countries like Russia, China, Brazil and Iran, are making moves to eliminate the dollar as the currency of trade in oil.  When they succeed – WHEN they succeed – countries will start dumping dollars.  They won’t have the impetus to buy stuff from the U. S. in order to use up the dollars they have had to hold.  Currency markets will turn upside down.

We will experience price increases that are unimaginable.  All the goods and goodies that we import now, will have to be paid for with more valuable currencies than U. S. dollars.  Exchange rates are going to punish the dollar when that day comes.  All the dollars that have been created in other countries and banks have been inflating the same “money supply” we talked about earlier.  Every dollar BILL is, in fact, a bill that must be paid with something valuable, not merely with more “Federal Reserve Notes.”  The mendacious debt that Congresses and administrations have racked up to the tune of almost $31 TRILLION, will complete its cycle of inflation, as well, while much of the trading world rejects payments in dollars, preferring gold, rubles, rials, or, most likely, yuan.  We have no concept of and no political ability to balance our books and bring the number of dollars floating around into alignment with some form of productive output from our economy.  Prices, for everything, will shoot up.

We can see the World Economic Forum, a group of self-selected control freaks by which real governments – including our own – are being influenced, is spreading the organic fertilizer of “nitrogen pollution,” since carbon-dioxide hasn’t scared enough people.  To limit “nitrogen” requires, in their view, reducing crop yields (by refraining from using chemical fertilizers) and going “organic.”  There is an agenda that is far removed from “climate” at work here.  What will we do when hyper-inflation is chasing reduced supplies of food around the world?  Or, when Chinese- and Bill Gates-owned land is held out from cultivation in our own country?  We need miss only ONE growing season to be faced with famine, which is very unpleasant, even here.

Looking at the effects of the “green” movement and the recent pandemic-inspired tyranny, and the so-called vaccines that resulted, the main effects, cumulatively, have been death and sterilization.  Sounds like population reduction, if one were being Prudent.  Lo, and behold!  Bill Gates and the people he hob-nobs with agree that there are too many people on Earth, by a factor of two-thirds or more!  Let’s “vaccinate” every person on the planet.  Inflation won’t be a problem, then.

Crime, Culture, Education, Elections, Governance, Guns, Right?, Politics 2022, Race, Religion, Representation, Responsibility

THE CONSTITUTIONAL MILITIA

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When tyranny threatens, elections are months away.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL MILITIA

The evolution of American constitutionalism responded no more to the several theories of rights and representation of the late 18th Century, as much as to the necessity of freeing ourselves from the shackles imposed by the British Crown and a non-representative Parliament.  That freedom would not have been won without “Militias” – home-grown assemblages of armed citizens, by definition, non-governmental organizations.  Our Constitution references these quasi-military, self-selected groups of passionate defenders of farm, family and business, in the Second Amendment.

The potency of the Second Amendment is rarely mentioned.  Everyone argues over the “… right to keep and bear Arms…”  Opponents of gun ownership point to the first phrase, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, …” as if it referenced what we now call the State Police, or even “State Militia” which are controlled and limited by our friendly and benign state governments.  Some liken the term to the National Guard, which is even further off the mark.  “Militia,” in the Second Amendment, refers to self-declared and assembled, armed, private-citizen organizations.  It is not clear that such organizations are legally tolerated today.

In fact, there are a number of such groups around the country: legal gun bearers who come together like clubs, perhaps including some militaristic training.  They tend strongly toward white-guys, exclusively, sometimes religious, generally anti-federal government.  Unfortunately, there is a parallel tendency toward racism, but the number of incidents in which members of such “clubs” attack blacks or others is very, very small… no way comparable to the numbers of blacks who attack everyone else, although never being charged with “racism.”

Militias have a bad name.  Still, they are a part of the patriotic front that challenged and stopped the British in the 1770’s, and which became part of the “official” Continental Army under general George Washington.  They were tough people, supported by equally tough wives and relatives, both farmers and merchants.  How would they fit in to today’s social fabric and political landscape?  They are referenced and promoted in our Constitution, but universally denigrated as, mainly, racist crackpots playing with guns.

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State…”  What “state” were the framers talking about?

At the time of the fight for independence, the “states” were colonies: 13 separate entities with separate civil authorities appointed by the King or by his governors.  To become sovereign states they had to both rid themselves of British governors and soldiers, who were the “police,” as it were, and then establish their own authorities with elections, appointments, codified laws and relatively independent courts.  They had, also, to defend themselves.  Automatically it became obvious that the colonies had to stand against the British together, else they’d be militarily quashed separately.  Without much debate, they formed the Continental Congress and a sense of “nation” was established across fairly diverse colonies.  A common enemy will do that.

Militias, essentially, were folded in to the individual colonies’ “Minutemen” forces and ultimately into the Continental Army, but not all of them.  Many Militia fighters served key roles in interfering with British supplies and cavalry, harassing them like guerilla fighters, sometimes providing a flanking force when standing ranks faced off on battlefields.  However, by the time of the war of 1812, militias were relatively unheard of.  Citizens were still armed, but the U. S. Army and Navy then formed the military wherewithal of the new nation, calling up fighters from the states, each of whom represented their states as much as they did the United States.

The Constitution acknowledged and stipulated the importance of “militias,” and stipulated the right to keep and bear arms, but militias, themselves, faded from prominence.

By the end of the Civil War there was no question that the military forces were U. S. forces, and the federal government took on the costs and administration of veterans’ disabilities and welfare.  States had police forces, but no longer raised their own “regulars” or trained or equipped them.  Militias, if such can be identified at all, devolved into chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, constantly ginning up anger against negroes – a most despicable era of American history.  Roughly speaking, the “Union” army and victorious states were “Republicans;” the former confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan itself, were “Democrats.”  Democrats supported gun control laws, among other segregationist restrictions, to keep guns out of the hands of blacks.  To maintain power and influence, the Klan, like revolutionary militias, had to constantly exaggerate the presence of a common enemy: free negroes.

“Militias,” now, are perceived as kooks.  Any concept of forming armed forces to overthrow “the government,” is inherently illegal, and only a tiny fraction of Americans in either party think it’s either practical or legitimate.  Yet the concept of non-governmental militias is Constitutional!  Where could “militias” fit in?  First, they’d have to meet standards.  Their fellow citizens would have to trust them in terms of public safety and support of the Constitution, itself.  Then what?

Somehow, some way, militias would have to coexist with police forces, both municipal and state.  Participation in “Guardian” training and functions is a good place to start.

The Guardian Program, yet to be adopted anywhere, is designed to “legitimize” concealed carry, in a sense.  The Constitution already protects the right to keep and bear arms – carry them around, in other words: to be individually armed.  As a Guardian, the person who is willing to carry a firearm would also be trained in handling, safety and safe reaction in the presence of a crime or imminent criminal act.  That person would also wear a “9-1-1” transponder that would identify and locate the individual and alert police forces to a possible active-shooter situation.  Meanwhile, the guardian would take such action as practical to defuse a conflict or stop criminal action until police arrived.

Finally, the guardian would be shielded by special indemnification for legitimate and proper actions taken to stop criminal actions, whether on his or her own property or in public.  “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”  The truth of that observation is timeless.  Establishing “Guardian” legislation enables the multiplication of police power and effectiveness at very low cost.  It also provides vectors for evaluating gun owners and their family environments.  If such gun owners formed the core of “militias,” governments and citizens could have confidence in their judgment and rationality.

Militias could also be held to ethical standards.  Non-guardians who “joined up” would have to swear to certain behaviors and practices concerning gun ownership, handling and safety inside and outside of their homes.  Militia organizations would be subject to fines for failing to adhere to ethical standards or for failing to reject or eject members who fail to do so.  Such information would have to be shared with law-enforcement and become part of the unacceptable persons’ records.  Most Militias would form through “Rod and Gun” clubs or hunting clubs  or “Sportsmens’ Clubs.”  Whether they could remain associated with those clubs would be a decision of the club, not of any government.  How would a Militia function politically?  How would the majority opinions of a Militia or dozens of Militias, enter into public policy or political power?  Who would their “common enemy” be?

By definition, the “common enemy” would be our own federal, central government at the moment it is perceived as tyrannical.  We have major political forces who are enthralled with government by experts – the bureaucratic state.  Decision-making by and for individuals is anathema to these leftist “Progressives.”  They are also anti-religious, increasingly opposed to free speech, virulently opposed to the second Amendment as written, and socialist in economics and social organization.  Many members of a militia organized to monitor and resist – if not remove – tyranny in our central government, would count “Progressives” among the tyrants.  A militia formed by progressives, for such there could be, though unlikely, would see themselves as saviors and conservatives as the common enemy.

Obviously, those most attracted to “militias” would be vilified and hated to greater degrees as members than they are, if at all, as relatively quiet, unobtrusive neighbors and co-workers.

Militias would tend to be somewhat secretive in their meetings and deliberations.  Using common social media communications would leave them open to attack and interference.  They will want to network – and perhaps coordinate – with other militias through a modern version of “Committees of Correspondence” as was done in Revolutionary times, when their discovery would have resulted in arrest and torture.  If not actual secrecy, strict confidentiality would be essential to operation and growth of militias.  But, how, short of taking up arms in fact, would constitutional militias influence political, governmental actions and direction?

Clearly they would have to be financially independent of government support or tax abatement or tax-free status on any places of meeting or practice / training.  They would be subject to continuous hate from leftists and racists, for they would not be able to control militias from the inside.  They would have to be scrupulous about opening membership to anyone who met their standards of behavior and ethics, which standards would include legal gun ownership, by definition.  But, again, how would a militia influence political power?  Could a militia sway the votes of others?

Communications, communications, communications.  As with the Committees of Correspondence, militias would have to present factual and documented positions on the actions of government(s) and of elected or appointed officials.  They would have to lay bare the nature of tyrannies large and small that made clear the un-representative nature of those in power including, most specifically, the expenditures of public monies.  To do so would mean operating publishing businesses in both print and digital formats.  Since a militia would not be a political “party” or be attempting to run candidates of its own, its publications would have to be both historical and current, and easily comprehensible as to how an issue/ topic either resisted tyranny of the state (or municipality) or fit into a tyrannical or potentially tyrannical action that threatened Constitutionally guaranteed rights or the freedoms of individuals.

Would anyone care if they did this work?  Would citizens listen?  Militias, like those that deposed tyranny at the inception of our country, have an obligation to pursue wisdom and to act upon it.  The first militias had the wisdom of recognizing tyranny and of how to multiply their effectiveness in fighting it.  It led them to wonderous courage and sacrifice.  To fulfill that legacy, Constitutional militias must form with that same sort of commitment.  Membership would not be a sport or part-time interest.  Just as “the Left” maintains decades, if not centuries, of commitment to upending Biblical truths and models of behavior and governance based on individual freedom and responsibility, Militias must maintain a singular purpose to inform other Americans of the lies and evil of Socialism and Communism, backed up by the ability to risk everything to overthrow tyranny in defense of the American Way.

The creation of one militia, independent and uncorrupted, will bring forth many others, and their creation still more.  We have learned after dozens of congresses and hundreds of representatives and senators, that the election of readily corruptible men and women who enter office with pathways of personal wealth and influence providing them all too many comforts and excuses for failure, has not – and will not – bring about the change needed to save and preserve our nation, our Constitution and our integrity.  A well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State.

Crime, Culture, Education, Family, Religion, Representation, Responsibility, Sex

FROM ISSUES TO CRISES

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Despite Prudence’ writings over the past 8 years, the nation has not adjusted to the models of governance and behavior she has carefully laid out.  Upon the election of the odd Joe Biden and his basically anti-American administration, irritating, family and society-weakening tendencies have become policies, however illegitimately.  Now, they’re crises – crises that threaten the survival of our nation and of Freedom, itself.  Like the heart of Socialism in every sense, it derives from the avoidance of responsibility.

People say things like, “it’s a new day,” or “Times have changed.”  Except “times” haven’t changed, people have.  They’ve – we’ve – been taught new ideas to believe, habits to adopt, pleasures to revel in.  We can look to a sudden change upon the murder of President John Kennedy.  Most likely, the purpose of that assassination was political, not cultural.  Kennedy had created powerful personal and political enemies.  The abrupt change in culture and morals was an inadvertent one.  Lyndon Johnson became president, federal civil rights legislation moved to center stage, for right reasons, but its adoption was made possible by the crassest political calculations.  Inadvertently, for some but not all, the Civil Rights bill shifted morality into the metastasizing businesses of the federal administrative state and the court, where it has become enforced amorality. 

Prior to the ‘60s, change in living standards and integration was happening due to improvements in individual beliefs in better moral codes… not fast enough, by a long shot, but improvement and progress were being made.  The Civil Rights Act and the movement that brought it to fruition, inadvertently changed the nature of federal moral enforcement, even as it made long-overdue corrections to discrimination and segregation.  Part of the federal “corrections” included elements of the “Great Society,” which federalized welfare and began the application of laws differently for different groups.  This process, in all of its corrupt and socialist pieces, has rendered the federal government a soft tyrant which is hardening daily, while providing $Trillions of support for sub-tyrannies throughout the administrative state, particularly in Education.

Under the Constitution, the only moral adjustments can and should be made through equal justice: Equal protection under the law / equal application of the law.  That canary escaped with the passage of the Great Society.  Otherwise, our system works only if the vast majority of our citizens and residents share basic morals and mores, a claim that can no longer be made.  Every institution that could reinforce the moral strength of our people, including schools and churches, are either hell-bent in the opposite direction, or bending a knee to popular immorality.  For shame.

Freedom isn’t freedom without responsibility, it’s mere licentiousness.  As responsibility began evaporating in the 1960’s, leftists accelerated, as part of civil rights and the Great society, their domination of public education and colleges of education, themselves.  Like Mao’s “Long March,” it has taken decades – well-paid decades – to convert the role of education from conveyance of language, culture, skills, morals and history to our youth, to one of separation by race, class and, incredibly, gender.  Everything happening fulfills the Communist Manifesto: separation from God and from Responsibility.

Churches and liturgies have proven to be much weaker than the years of bygone sacrifices to hold to and establish those faith communities would indicate.  Just count the rainbow flags that some churches think override the teachings that brought them this far.  They are proving every day that it is nearly impossible to convince others of ideas you, yourself, don’t believe.  Simple economics can’t take the place of shared moral goodness.

America has been under moral attack for 60 years at a higher intensity than during its first 170 years.  As the lessons of Genesis make clear, God’s Word (or, if you find that term more offensive than child abuse) moral truths, are always under attack here on Earth.  Christianity has long been the primary target of such opposition, both from within and without.

For centuries those attacks tended to fail because the engine of responsibility kept working.  People still, for the most part, paid the price for their own follies and failures.  That is, until socialism replaced monarchy.  Evil men – almost always men – grasped socialist ideas as a better way to control nations, economies and armies, but they ultimately fell: their bases were evil and so counter to human nature that they became insane.  There has never been a government that created for itself political defenses that not only protected amorality and immorality, but learned to erode morality and, specifically, responsibility by individuals.  Not until the U. S. federal (and state) administrative states.  They’ve made a lot of “progress,” but they are “Progressives” by their own description.  It has taken 60 years of “re-education” to bring us to an America facing the corrosive issues we do today.

What are the parameters of responsibility in matters of conception, pregnancy, abortion and birth?

Since the ‘60s we have replaced marriage as the cultural norm, with contraception, abortion, “hooking up,” and fatherless children.  Responsibility has shifted to federal and state welfare programs.  Women have become convinced that they need not choose a decent, committed and loving man who will provide for his family and children, and who will be in their lives through puberty and into adulthood – and this all before having sex!  All they need is the sperm… and other men when they feel like it.  It is the destruction of the American family and of children – especially boys: our vote-buying tax dollars of destruction, at work.

Along with hyper-sexualization of grade school children, lewd “Pride” parades and filth in school libraries, the left appears to be obsessed with fornication for “all genders.”  To Democrats and other anti-Christian groups, fornication is a “right” as important to freedom as the First Amendment and all the rest.  Except, without responsibility, it’s not a freedom at all.  Enter abortion “rights.”  Except abortion never was a “right,” per se; democratic decisioning at the state level is the “right” our Constitution guarantees.

What are the parameters of responsibility in matters of guns, ownership, self-defense and crime?

Gun owners quote the phrase, “… the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  It is part of the Second Amendment.  Some like to ignore the stuff about the “A well regulated Militia…”  But, as they may also choose to ignore, the amendment goes on to qualify the concept of a “militia,” as follows: “… being necessary to the security of a free State, …”  Above all, the Bill of Rights amendments and their wordings are intensely Prudent in their purposes of preventing a tyrannical central government.  Guaranteeing individual armament is crucial to that purpose.  Clearly, by simple inference, mindful of why the Constitution was drafted and mindful of the horrendous sacrifices needed to permit its creation, is it not obvious that arming the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT had nothing whatsoever to do with the second amendment?

The only “militias” in the new nation’s experience were those formed by local communities and others to fight off the central government, perceived to be tyrannical toward the colonies.  This aspect is never, ever acknowledged by that same federal government.  Yes, gun ownership is crucial to individual self-defense, which that same federal – and some states’ – governments appear to discourage, if not deny, to its citizens, even as those governments purposely abdicate their contracted role of public safety.  Had the British monarch established today’s same failed public policies, the justification for overturning his authority would have been far more popular.

There is a high expectation of responsibility for Constitutionally legal gun owners.  As a definable demographic, legal gun owners are the least source of crime and, by far, the least source of crimes involving firearms.  Yet this same group is always the target for restriction whenever a mentally or criminally defective person commits a “mass” shooting.  Individual shootings and murders by gang members and drug dealers are of no particular concern to those who attack the rights of legal gun owners.

Maybe the concept of “militia” for legal gun owners is one that should be developed – not by any government, but by gun owners, themselves.  “Whoa,” you might be saying.  “That sounds like a mechanism for insurrection.”

Well, it’s not, but that threat should ALWAYS be on the mind of the Executive departments, and on the minds of voters.  Sadly, and our own faults, the Congress should have it at top of mind, as well.  Americans have the RIGHT to replace a tyrannical government with a representative one.  One bright light – President Biden – during a press conference on gun control, uttered these non-sequiturs:

 
“Those who say the blood of lib- — ‘the blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

If these words had been uttered by someone who knew what he were talking about, they’d be chilling to Americans…  perhaps, upon reflection, they are.  That bozo is President.  But the concept of “militia” is not far-fetched.  Certainly it is not a federal force, nor should it be funded federally.  “Militias” should be local, and the more local the better.  In the most Prudent view, those gun owners who choose to carry concealed could be part of an anonymous police-trained force that has been earlier referenced as “Guardians.”  (See: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/30/the-guardian-program/) These same would be the nucleus of local militias.  Leadership of each jurisdiction’s militia would be chosen by election within the membership, and thereby granted officers’ titles.

The nature of “Militia,” Constitutionally, is inherently anti-federal.  No wonder this aspect of the Second Amendment is never discussed.  “Nuclear weapons,” indeed.  At the time of its adoption, the concept of “Militia” was understood as the forerunners of the Continental Army ultimately led by George Washington, named a General by the Continental Congress.  To make the revolution work required the establishment of a governing body separate from the King and his governors and troops.  It was all extra-legal and deemed illegal by the Crown.  Militias were already fighting the Redcoats by the time the Continental Congress got down to the business of revolutionary government.

Americans are so reliant upon a steady and dependable government in Washington, that we find it hard to conceive of an autonomous civilian militia, yet that is precisely what the framers were talking about.  The colonies had just fought off a tyrant and the framers were determined that we be just as prepared to fight off another, should the tyranny arise.  There existed very little affinity for a central government because of the tendency toward tyranny by virtually all such entities.  The ability of citizens to check the power of government provided all the justification needed for a Second Amendment.  Armed crime in the streets was practically non-existent in 1789, so that wasn’t the reason for it; hunting was so crucial to provisioning of food and even clothing, that no one had to “allow” for it in the Constitution.  What was crucial was preventing another tyranny from replacing the British Crown.  The twenty-seven words of the Second Amendment guaranteed the ability of citizens to replace a tyrannical central government, and Ratification was impossible without it.

Today, unfortunately, discussion of the true reason for the 2nd Amendment brings forth accusations of sedition and insurrection, “fringe” white-supremacist grouping, and religious fundamentalism.  Yet, it is the Constitution we have and that forms us, even now.

To the “left,” constitutionalism is suspect in all iterations.  It challenges and exposes the sanctity of the STATE for the hollow proto-tyranny towards which it constantly slithers.  The “establishment,” nearly as tyrannical as it could be – economically, morally, politically – is directly threatened by the Constitution, as are all tyrants, everywhere.  Our own proto-tyrants fight to make the U. S. as much like every other nation as they can, while patriots recognize and try to enhance the exceptional nature of our constitutional Republic.  “America first” sends chills down the spines of the permanently re-elected swine that wallow for decades at a time in the halls of Congress. 

Americans have unique responsibilities, including defense and preservation of the Constitution; it is not the task of elected people, specifically, but of THE PEOPLE.  The Constitution came not from government, but from “We, the People…”  WE ordained it, which is that we gave it life.  WE ratified it, but only when the Bill of Rights was appended to it, which is that we entered into a covenant  with all who forever after held office upon swearing to Preserve and Defend it – the Presidents merely a handful of those.  The ultimate defense and execution of the Constitution is our business: the People’s.  We are obligated to preserve it, defend it and live according to its rights and responsibilities on behalf of every American citizen, now and forever after, as well as on behalf of every nation and people, who depend upon the United States to stand firmly against globalism, socialism and communism… and dishonesty.  Let’s get busy.

Biden, Family, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Politics 2022, Representation, Trump

WHY IN HELL?

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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.

Economics, Education, Family, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Politics 2022, Representation

Cons-piracy, n. : Piracy Together

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Although it seems imprudent, Prudence is going all conspiracy theory in this post.  Needless to say, there are numerous such theories on a myriad of matters.  Did Oswald act alone?  Or did Hinckley?  Was Barack Obama born in Hawaii?  Did he ever regain citizenship after living in Indonesia?  Why did he claim to be a foreign student?  Maybe Roosevelt knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, but he wanted to be forced into war.  Were Armstrong and Aldrin acting on a soundstage?  Did Eisenhower meet with UFO aliens?  Do Freemasons know secrets from the Knights Templar?

So, there is no end of possibilities, but we’re going to examine one of the very latest:  Are the mRNA “vaccines” part of a globalist population control scheme?  If so, was the creation of the SARS-Cov-2 virus part of this plan?  Was the coverup of the Wuhan Laboratory gain-of-function research, engineered by Dr. Anthony Fauci and others in the U. S. NIH, also part of the plan?

Those aren’t all the questions.  What role do Bill Gates – and others – play in the worldwide promotion of these rather dangerous injections and the drumbeat for “booster” injections?  What about the U. N. and the W.H.O. and the World Economic Forum?  Why has the W.H.O. lied about the virus and its pandemic and the role of the Chinese?  And, how did Moderna know about the novel coronavirus research taking place in Wuhan but the United States remained ignorant of its nature and potential infectiousness?  How were the mRNA injections developed and distributed in such a short timeframe but that timeframe allowed for approval only after the 2020 elections?  Why have so many standard medical practices been subverted in response to Covid-19?  And, why have safe drugs that have shown effectiveness in slowing down Covid infection been suppressed and made illegal in the U. S.?

Those aren’t all the questions, either, but they’re enough to make us go “Hmmnnhh.”

The human fertility / maternity questions are vehemently answered, “Absolutely no effect,” by the CDC, NIH, WHO and major hospitals and universities around the western world.  There are, literally, hundreds of articles stating no measurable effect of the mRNA injections on either male or female fertility: lots of studies, charts and statistics.  Interestingly, all refer to the shots as “vaccines,” and all claim that there is no effect on DNA from the shots.  To refer to the Moderna and Pfizer chemicals as “vaccines” is to comply with a widespread fraud since they do not meet any definitions of “vaccine,” legally, nor do their patents make any claims of being vaccines or list any effects of defined vaccines as their effects.

The potential effect on DNA has been shown in a laboratory setting by Swedish researchers. 

Technically, then, both companies’ concoctions are correctly described as experimental chemical gene therapies, not “vaccines.”  Most people would refuse such shots since they don’t treat or prevent any known disease.  Most people, however, trust vaccines.  What is going on?

In the simplest sense, a conspiracy to create the Covid-19 novel coronavirus and the expensive “vaccines” to fight it under pandemic conditions, can be reduced to a hunger for money.  Not only did the U. S. federal government spot Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson/Janssen many billions of dollars to develop vaccines as quickly as possible, but that same government set aside many regulations to speed the process.  Then it guaranteed more and more billions to those companies to purchase millions and millions of doses.  People were so fearful of dying from Covid-19 by the end of 2020 that there was no question that all the doses that could be produced and distributed would be used, and paid-for.  Financially, it was a gold mine, so to speak.  But Covid and the pandemic and resulting states of emergency, in the U. S. and many other nations, was far more complex than just an obscene transfer of fortunes in public funds.

The earliest stage of complexity hearkens back to 2003 and the outbreak of SARS in Asia.  SARS is caused by the SARS-CoV virus (or SARS-CoV-1, now that were counting), a novel coronavirus.  Those in the coronavirus fascination business: people like Tony Fauci, key people in the CDC and a couple of researchers at UNC–Chapel Hill, recognized as early as 2002, before the outbreak, interestingly, that coronaviruses that cause things like colds and some forms of pneumonia, are wonderfully manipulable.  They busied themselves in engineering changes to the original SARS-CoV virus so that it could be PATENTED.  There are legal issues around patenting life-forms.  Naturally occurring life-forms cannot be patented.  Only a modified, or “engineered” iteration of a life-form can be patented, and the SARS-CoV virus is defined by patent number 7776521, held by our own, very trustworthy CDC agency of the National Institutes of Health.  Later, the CDC petitioned to have this patent made “confidential.”

UNC at Chapel Hill also holds a patent, number 7279327, which protects their methods of making “recombinant” coronaviruses, which is to say, coronaviruses that contain protein elements from more than one source.  This is, however IM-Prudent, a valuable skill to have, for some reason.  You never know when the market for recombinant coronaviruses might open up.

In any case, the work being done at UNC, financed by Fauci’s NIAID agency, was skirting the law as it was close to bio-weapons research.  Subsequently, the newly modified SARS-CoV coronavirus, the patented property of the CDC, and the patented skills of engineering same, were transferred to the Wuhan Institute of Virology under a contract placed through an U. S. “NGO” headed by Dr. Peter Daszak.  It has taken many months but Americans and the rest of the world have finally learned that the NIAID financed gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute.  The functions gained were designed to take a bat-origin coronavirus, supposedly the source of the SARS outbreak in 2003, although that may have had help, too, and make it able to readily infect humans.  There wouldn’t seem to be any economic value to creating a more infectious coronavirus, although there may have been some scientific value.  Certainly no one would want to sell a new disease and, in fact, the CDC / NIAID / EcoHealth cabal didn’t sell it, they gave it away – to China.

Still, there’s no market for the disease, but, if by the rarest of circumstances, we are told repeatedly by eminent scientists, at the direction of Anthony Fauci (the Great), this engineered-to-be-infectious virus were to escape the lab, there would be a Hell of a market for a vaccine to fight it!  “Oh, c’mon, Prudence,” you’re crying, “that sounds like some huge conspiracy theory!”

Prudence doesn’t want to spread a conspiracy theory… just sayin’.

Still, if the impetus were simple enrichment, Covid has worked out very, very well.  However, if the larger purpose is something else… something more in the line of shifting free peoples away from freedom, as leftists are always – unfailingly – attempting to do, then the political, dictatorial “emergency orders” have had a far greater impact than Covid-19, the disease, has had.  What if the purpose was to prepare millions… no, billions of people to accept heavy-handed, un-Constitutional restrictions on movement, freedoms, employment, private properties, personal hegemony and education?  What if weakening the fabric of free societies were the main act?

The heavy-handed, largely UN-scientific reactions by various government entities, to the “threat” (read: fear) of Covid-19, has had, as its GREATEST effect, the division of populations against one another.  Masks and mask-mandates are a perfect example of this.  Despite the utter lack of scientific/medical value of popular masking products against the spread or infection-rates of Covid, Americans become angry toward anyone who questions them.  Schools have been allowed to open, for example (by teachers’ unions), only if children as young as pre-schoolers are forced to wear masks.  There’s plenty of data and evidence for the negative effects of masks on children, yet teachers have gone so far as to tape masks onto special-needs children – as if somebody were made the tiniest bit safer because of its forced placement.  Anger results, and great defensiveness that cites “CDC Guidance” as justification, yet the CDC’s mission is research, not public policy.  Who gave the CDC, of all people, this enormous power?

The Congress, supposedly the most potent locus of power under our Constitution, is left begging for information.  This is upside down, is it not?  The W.H.O., a corrupt agency within the corrupt United Nations, is just as often cited by our administrative state as justification for recommendations that have effectively militarized medicine in the United States.  W.H.O., we should not forget, began its advice about Covid by lying, for weeks, about the role of China in developing and spreading Covid-19 around the world.  It is completely IM-Prudent to take their advice on much of anything.  Now there is building the idea that any NATION that opposes W.H.O.’s directives on health and future (and current) pandemics, should be punished!  This can only be effected by reducing the sovereignty of member nations. 

Almost 90 nations have adopted or are considering some form of “vaccine passport,” including our formerly quite free neighbor to the north, Canada.  Here we have a set of injections – called vaccines – that the latest evidence and releases of information from Pfizer and the FDA show are greater risks than the supposed disease they are supposed to prevent.  Governments and major employers – even the Department of Defense – are using threats against continued employment should individuals refuse to receive those questionable shots.  We seem to be trading our freedom for… well, for risky medication about which mostly lies have been told.  Yet W.H.O. and the U. N. are pushing global requirements to accept the injections.

Clearly the overriding purpose of this pandemic and the vaccines, lockdowns and damage to independent businesses, increased drug overdose deaths, increases in multiple cancers and other diseases and deaths caused by the mRNA vaccines, is not public health.  Nor is it improvement to the standards of living for a majority of the residents of this planet.  No, it’s something else.  You can see this, Prudence hopes.

So, how can inordinate fear of a disease be maintained?  Well, as any government afficianado can tell you, by widespread, even mandatory testing… and more testing, weekly testing, daily testing, testing if you have a friend who knows somebody who was in the same suite of offices as a person who tested positive, him- or her-self, for the dreaded Covid-19.  With enough testing – especially with “PCR” testing – the numbers of “cases” can be kept artificially high.

There’s nothing wrong with Polymerase Chain Reaction testing; such tests can be very accurate in proper laboratory settings.  The only value to a PCR test for Covid-19 is to expose infectiousness.  Finding out that there may have been exposure to Covid-19 outside of the period of perhaps a week or less of actual infectiousness, is fairly useless… at least in terms of preventing disease.  It is useful, however, for inflating the number of “cases.”  Higher case rates justify the imposition of restrictions, mask mandates and, ultimately, injection mandates.  Higher case rates can keep schools closed, businesses shut down, and can empower civil authorities to criminalize normal commercial and religious activities.  God forbid one would be part of a “super-spreader” event.  Constant testing provides justification for all sorts of government reactions, legal or extra-legal, constitutional or UN-Constitutional.

So, if PCR testing is so accurate, how can it be abused?  It doesn’t require malicious intent, necessarily, for testing “data” to be abused by politicians, for they must be portrayed as “doing something.”  The process involves, first, detection of an RNA string unique to Covid-19.  This might involve only a few copies of the RNA “snippet.”  The chain reaction step then replicates the small number of strings in repeated steps until there are enough strings to confirm and display by concentration assay.  Bingo: a positive!  Keep ‘em coming, boys and girls, and we can lockdown those pesky right-wingers for months.

The only real counter to fear of covid is early, safe treatment of symptoms and inhibition of viral replication in the body.  Given a little help, natural immunity will figure out how to stop the virus and create an immune response that can last for years.  Unfortunately, mRNA injections start out lasting only a few months and, by the 2nd “booster” shot, only about 4 WEEKS.  In the process, since they defend against only one protein in the virus, they augment the ability of the virus to mutate, creating “variants” that may or, often may not be deterred by the “vaccines.”  Aha!  More fear, more restrictions, more dependence on government, more formerly self-sufficient individuals on welfare, more billions to develop still other mRNA shots: a lifetime of “boosters.”  If this is a plan, it’s a damned good one.

Treatments for Covid-19, however, have been suppressed.  Typically, facing a new disease, the best medical reaction is to try everything that might help from the pharmacopeia of known drugs.  Obviously, EVERYTHING, in the beginning, will be “off-label!”  Duh!  Every potential anti-viral should be tested, AND THEY HAVE BEEN, and in various combinations with nutrients and complementary drugs.  Protocols have been assembled that are VERY effective at certain stages of infection and progression.  Medical science is a remarkable engine of innovation.

Why do you suppose these treatments have been made, essentially, illegal?  Such a reaction is unique to covid-19!  Patients who exhibit symptoms were told to go home and come back to the hospital if they became really ill.  No treatment offered.  Once in the hospital, again, no treatments, just maintenance.  Some recovered on their own, many were intubated as lung function declined, many of those died, apart from loved-ones.  Eventually, Remdesivir was approved and pushed onto patients, but it is a treatment that’s worse than the disease, with severe, organ-damaging side effects.  None of the inexpensive treatments are ever offered, and even if prescribed by a physician, hospitals will not ALLOW them to be administered.  In many cases – most – pharmacies will not fill those prescriptions because of “CDC guidance.”

The only answer offered to the question of SARS-CoV-2 fears are the weird mRNA shots, shots that don’t promise to immunize, or stop infections or even prevent future infections – only to mitigate infections, but then, only if you happen to contract Covid-19 during the small window of “vaccine” effectiveness.  Unfortunately, it has become clear, these injections tend to disrupt your natural immune system, leaving it able to respond only to the one protein the mRNA shots react to.  “Vaccinated” people become increasingly defenseless against many other diseases, including childhood diseases and cancers that natural immunity typically fights off unnoticed.  Yet, these are the shots governments are FORCING people to take, all around the world.  Why in Hell, one wonders?  And our freedoms will be stripped from us unless we accept them? Populations could decline if this is allowed to continue.

Are we sovereign human beings with unalienable rights?  Or laboratory rats?  How about WE conspire to remove the people who have reduced us to this status?  America, Awake!

Economics, Elections, Governance, Politics 2022, Representation, Taxation

“with Liberty and Corruption for all.”

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There are always consequences to corruption in government agencies… and officials… and it’s not always mere dollars.  Simple graft is bad enough for it demonstrates the willingness to lie more or less directly to the people an official or “representative” has sworn to serve while in office.  Typically, we, the foolish voters in either party, see our “humble” servants gain ever more comfortable styles of living, but those gaining the increased comforts are usually careful to hide the actual scale of thefts from which they benefit, and we re-elect them.  We tell ourselves that the problems facing government are the fault of other or previous representatives or senators, mayors, city councilors, governors or, ultimately, presidents, not the ones for whom WE voted.  Our civil society is breaking down, it seems, in every way we contemplate, and yet we only shake our heads when trying to explain what is happening.  The scale of American civil failure disturbs us and we try our best to isolate the one thing we would change if we ran the zoo, but it’s not really clear that our ideas would really cause the change we think we want.  Besides, we’re busy and, fortunately, there’s an election on the horizon and we’ll be able to change the party holding power – or most of it – and “things” will get straightened out.

Except they rarely do get straightened out, or even “change” very much.  Over the past, say 70 years, America’s direction has not been toward strength or toward moral purity, but toward weakness and moral decline.  Still, there appears to be a majority in the country that prefers moral straightness and traditional American honesty and trustworthiness.  Why have “things” declined – lately quite dramatically, in the past 30 years in particular – when most people want the direction to be otherwise?  It’s a damned good question.

The Prudent thing to do, as our erstwhile Vice-President, Kamala Harris, likes to say, is look for a “root cause.”

Prudence offers a theory of the root cause based on extensive evidence: official corruption.  We are in decline not because “the times” are changing.  In fact, we have purposefully caused our own decline by electing corrupt people, and then re-electing them over and over.  The effects of this simple process are very complex – for good, purposeful reasons – and far-reaching to, now, threatening the survival of our nation.  While this sounds like there’s a single “thing” we could change to correct our decline, if this theory is true, we are so far gone that no election or piece of legislation can do it.  But Prudence is committed to never leaving her readers without a solution, or a host of them, so fasten your seatbelts.

Fifty thinkers studying the problem would have 150 opinions about what should be our FIRST move, and in truth, it is the largest conundrum.  So, we have to look for some of those root causes so that beloved corrupt politicians can’t make things worse.  Although its strictures are being eroded as quickly as the left (it’s always “the left”) can chip away at them, our remarkable Constitution is still the fundament of our laws and means of governance.  However, it cannot speak to our modern, sophisticated ways and means of subversion and corruption.  It needs some upgrading via amendment, and via an amendment process that cannot be corrupted by our “deep state” or current elected officials and representatives.  It won’t be easy, but Article V. of the constitution provides the mechanisms for proposing and adopting Amendments.  One such mechanism is for 34 states to apply to Congress for the calling of a Convention for the purpose of proposing amendments.  The Congress must issue the call for such a convention, and then step aside, as the Constitution allows for no further role for the Congress in this mode of proposing amendments.  Ratification is performed by the states, too: three quarters, or 38 of them.

The key to saving our nation, then, is the nature of those who actually attend the Convention, and there is the crux of the matter.  It seems obvious to Prudence that “the left” should have no role in such a Convention.  How can this be ascertained?  Could there be a test of philosophies to select each state’s delegates, like Supreme Court nominees?  State legislatures are going to control who represents their states.  One can hope that the 34 states that ultimately make Application to the Congress to call the Convention, will be the more conservative states, but there is no certainty to that.  Many resolutions over the decades have been passed by one state legislature only to be rescinded by a later legislature.  Most had specified one or two purposes for the Convention to form into amendments.  In many cases, the nature of those reasons to call for the Convention were the reasons for recission, later.

The likelihood of actually convening an “Article V. Convention of the States” appears remote.  A more likely possibility is that during Republican control of both houses of congress, an amendment could be proposed and submitted to the states for ratification.  Such an action requires a two-thirds vote in both houses, but no approval from a President.  Still, there will be a problem obtaining even that much cooperation when one of the key elements of an amendment is to impose term limits on Senators and Representatives.  Could the case be made that the time had come for courage and sacrifice?  It all depends on how corrupt the Congress is at the time.  But let’s assume that a clean, traditionalist, pro-American delegate body could be filtered out and assembled.  What are the “TOP 12” fixes the amendment should include?

Term limits for federal offices keeps coming up as of prime importance.  With our longer lifespans, instant communications and unbridled budgeting with perpetual debt, the opportunities for becoming wealthy in Congressional “service,” are legion.  All that is required is a tingle of corrupt aggrandizement.  One need only pick apart any budget legislation or any “emergency” spending bill – often an “omnibus” bill – that is more than 20 or 30 pages long, and numerous “earmarks” can be found.  These happy “gifts” to Rep’s and Senator’s districts and, often, key supporters, are the price we pay to keep our elected “representatives in office for 20, 40 or more years.  During those decades the motivation to represent the constituents who elect a 2-year or 6-year representative, is twisted into the overarching motivation to keep a cushy, well-paid job in which lots of people treat the lucky “seat-holder” as if he or she were very important.  News media seek out the elected and ask for their unique and oh-so-important thoughts about whatever is “hot” at the moment.  Before too many months have passed since taking office, the elected begin to think that they are wise, not just smart.  After the first re-election, they also begin to accept that they occupy their “seat” because they are one of the uniquely capable humans who can understand the positions to which they have been elected, and understand, at the same time, the incredibly complex and arcane workings of government and legislation.  How fortunate are the ordinary people who are represented by any one of these august creatures.

We have a “system” of election and “representation” that corrupts men and women, alike.  Their jobs are too comfortable and too permanent.  We pay them too well no matter how poor or sloppy a job they do, and no matter how poorly the country and their constituents are doing.  There are too many “perks” and advantages built into their job descriptions and, with the exquisite tools available for twisting news and social media, there is virtually no oversight of their performance.  We re-elect them so that they might “fight for us” in Washington, or, at least, so that they can keep the scurrilous bastards and bitches in the other party from taking away our Medicare, 401k’s or Social Security, or from raising taxes and fees and imposing onerous regulations.

Helping to grease the skids toward illicit wealth are an army of lobbyists – more than we can imagine.  Many of them represent not only business and hand-out interests, but also foreign countries who all, it turns out, have their hands out, too.

The whole corrupted enterprise depends in large part on long-term relationships with those lobbyists and the abiding motivation to be re-elected.  What makes it work is repetitive re-election.  The first article of the new Amendment should be Term Limits on consecutive terms of service.  It doesn’t seem proper to create a group of people who cannot run for certain offices.  Forcing them to remain out of particular offices for a period of 4, 6, 8 or 12 years will open up representation to people who are NOT compromised by lobbyists and re-election corruption.

The second article should pertain to the budget, but not simply that it be balanced.  It should force Congress to manage budget legislation while forcing oversight of the administrative state and the flood of regulations that emanates from it.  So, the “A” paragraph will force the congress to budget no more revenue than that collected in the previous 12 months, and that it shall have 4 budgetary cycles to accomplish this goal.  The “B” paragraph will require that every Cabinet Department’s budget and planned regulatory effort for the next budget year, shall be analyzed and approved or modified separately from other departments.  A sub-committee shall also be charged to review existing regulations and to recommend changes to or “sunsetting of” regulatory regimes.  Finally, the “C” paragraph shall require a date-certain for completion of budgeting and oversight that is prior to the beginning of the next fiscal 1-year or 2-year period.

A third article would simply state that the Congress may, by law, change federal budgeting to be bi-annual rather than annual, should the work of review described in Article 2 take longer than will allow for annual budgeting.

The fourth article will require that: A. No legislation may include items of appropriation or law that are not listed in the title of the bill; B. No bill that raises or lowers taxes may be more than 40 pages long, printed in 8 point or larger type; C. Any bill that appropriates funds for projects or support for any cause or construction that impacts a single District or two or more Districts in a single state must be presented as a single bill to be voted upon separately from any other matter; and, D. Any “continuing resolution” deemed necessary for continued operation of any agency or department of the Federal Government shall include spending at a rate equal to that of the budget cycle preceding that which is just ending, whether a 1-year or 2-year budget cycle.

Finally, the fifth article will replace Social Security with a mandated private investment plan at the same rate of payroll contributions as currently required, with restrictions on dates of retirement similar to those now enforced.  A period of years would be required to completely phase out the current federal “piggy-bank” structure of Social Security so that once privatized – carefully overseen and regulated – the funds will build wealth for taxpayers and cease being a drain on the Federal budget.

There are a hundred other ideas for cleansing our federal spending and taxation and limiting opportunities for self-enrichment while in office.  With more frequent turnover of elected personnel the expectation will be that more Congress-people will employ statesmanship more often, and not fear fighting the bad habits of others.  The same will limit the amount of damage a bad-apple can do in his or her limited period in office.

Meanwhile, let us stop electing career politicians.  Let’s impose our own term limits, particularly at the caucus and primary levels.  The office-holders who have participated in expanding the debt to, now, more than $30 TRILLION, do not deserve re-election.  Remain Prudent.

Biden, Crime, Economics, Education, Elections, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Politics 2022, Religion, Representation

THIS IS THE YEAR

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What can he see?

This is the year.  2022 has been forced by the left to be the fulcrum of history.  The perception of the left in 2020, faced with the likelihood of Trump’s re-election, was that the field was finally fertile enough to sow Communism (under a variety of euphemisms) in the sharply divided and guilt-ridden, formerly United States.  Cities were collapsing in 2020, “Black Lives Matter” had coordinated with thousands of weirdos, “antifa” thugs and students and other youth who had been taught to hate our nation and history.  The time seemed right to pull the trigger on revolution… besides, the media and a strange congress had many municipal leaders so consumed with hatred for Donald Trump and the Americanism he represented, that they too, agreed with “BLM” and allowed rioting in the name of myriad hatreds to destroy their communities.

The demise of George Floyd provided the spark as if written into a script.  If Derek Chauvin had not been so incredibly stupid, some other event would have happened, some other black man would have conflicted with police and drawn fire while unarmed.  Then his family would have become millionaires and Nancy Pelosi and a bunch of other dopes would have kneeled in the rotunda in that man’s memory, while the same cities – and hopes – burned.

The left engineered the answer to a big wish of theirs: dumping Donald Trump.  We can begin to grasp what leftists really have for an end-game, when we dissect their hatreds, and their hatred for Trump – and trump supporters – is instructive.  Trump, they decry, is a “populist,” which is to say, he only goes with what is “popular.”  “Populist,” however, actually means being a member of the “Populist Party,” which gained traction in the late 19th century over issues like initiating an income tax, public ownership of utilities, support for unionization to counter the power of large corporations and banks, and support for fair returns for farmers.  As a “people’s” party, the Populists were seeking to balance  economic freedom for small business and workers, against the explosion of industrial growth and price-fixing power of industrial and financial trusts.  Many of these issues were assumed by Progressives and the “Trust-Busters” in the first decade of the 20th century.

The more meaningful approbation of Trump is that of “Nationalist.”  This is supposedly terrible, and likened to Nazism, ostensibly because Hitler was a nationalist.  “America First” became pejorative in the view of leftists.  So, what is the alternative goal?  Globalism: the dissolution of national identities and, therefore, national heritage and culture.  Destruction of American culture was the primary effect of 2020 lawlessness.  It seemed to have many allies, one of whom is now president.  What were/are they thinking?

Anti-nationalism has only one goal, globalist, one-world government.  Is there any reason to expect that one-world government will be based on the American, Constitutionally limited  model?  We can learn a lot from the last 50 years of United Nations “enlightenment.”  The vaunted U. N. was a creation of liberals and leftists who sold war-weary Americans on the image of diverse peoples all getting along to spread peace, democracy and the end of hunger around the world.  Communists never accepted those premises, nor did other kinds of tyrants… nor Nazi-enflamed fundamentalist Muslims.  To poorer nations it was a way to get money from the United States; to Communists a way to weaken the United States, to Muslims, a way to get the U. S. to pay for oil for poorer nations while weakening Christianity.

Within a very short time the U. N. became an excusatory congress for the U. S. policy of containing Communism, and we were thrust into the Korean Conflict for that stated purpose, but at its heart that war was an excuse to pit the U. S. against the Soviet Union and, ultimately, against communist China, while weakening the only super-power.  It was the first war we won by losing: a new experience for the greatest generation.

Right on its heels the globalist C.I.A. and State Department leftists concocted what became the Viet-Nam War, the scars of which have never healed.  Still ostensibly “containing” Communism, the U. S. consumed about a $Trillion dollars (back when a Billion dollars was a lot of money) and destroyed Americans’ faith in their military.  So many lies were told about the conduct and success of that stupid conflict, that the Army had to hire hundreds of paid dissemblers to keep up with the flow.  Again, we lost by winning, and were shamed.

Since Viet-Nam we have embarked on numerous military adventures, most of which are unknown to Americans and better grasped by other nations, including our enemies, of which there is a considerable list.  At the same time we have exhausted our credit line with policies of welfare, corporate, family and personal, international and more. Nine administrations and 18 Congresses have seen fit to overspend – not at declining but at INCREASING rates.  We now have commitments that cannot be met, and devaluing the currency is the final effect.  Americans are seeking a political solution to a philosophical deficit: we have accepted the blandishments of socialists and communists for 60 years and mismanaged our industrial base so badly that we can barely afford to defend ourselves, much less project power to constrain tyrants.  Freedom is shrinking, everywhere.

Americans have swayed from responsibility to licentiousness, forswearing God and religion, turning instead to the perpetual debt-creation of government.  We are not able to sacrifice for a better future as our parents and grandparents did, automatically.  We have a plethora of foolish rights… and fewer freedoms.  The freedoms remaining are under assault, now that we have elected a tyrant of our own.

So, 2022 poses a host of problems that took a long time to gestate, but which need to be corrected in very short order.  It will take sacrifice on everyone’s part.  America has never been invaded, discounting the War of 1812, and we have not felt the devastation and losses of war.  But a war is brewing, here amongst us, and a welfare check won’t stave it off.  What do Americans have to do, now?  Learn Mandarin?

More than once over the past eight years we have considered our ballooning debt.  For the past two years elements of our deep state, agencies of the National Institutes of Health, elected leftists, George Soros’ minions and Communist China, have conspired to hobble capitalism about as rapidly as has ever been done – our hobbling of ourselves not having proceeded as quickly as they’d liked.  Brutal lockdowns and debt-defying welfare payments to locked out workers and free-loaders, fearful school closings and now mandated injections of ersatz vaccines or firings – even in the military and emergency domestic personnel – have stripped our workforce and businesses of the people needed to produce our goods and productive surplus.  We are broke and rushing to become poorer…, well, except for a few multi-billionaire-global merchants and money manipulators.  We have given up the capitalist opportunity society for an oligarchy of wealth and severe stratification into the rakers, the makers, the takers and the fakers.

Even more effectively, we have turned the “vaxxed” into haters of the “unvaxxed,” while formerly trustworthy doctors and hospitals, in thrall to the pharmaceutical manufacturers, have started denying medical care to those who choose to not be injected with mRNA poisons, whose safety and efficacy have been unknown, only now being revealed as neither safe nor effective.  Our barely recognizable “government’s” only offering is dissolution of the constitution and further expansion of the debt by another couple of $Trillion.  God save us.

It appears that a massive shift in political alignment is in the offing for the mid-term elections, but so what?  We are teetering, contemplating a preposterous war1 and swearing at one another.  Society is rending itself as it awaits the next free-delivery of goodies and gadgets from Amazon Prime and GrubHub, no longer even bothering to cook for ourselves.  We’ve demonized smokers, and glorified tokers.  Will changing control of Congress mean a tinker’s dam?  What do we expect a powerful new Congress to do?

Will a Republican congress cut the federal budget?  Will it use its “power of the purse” to force enforcement of the Constitution and of laws?  Will it impeach scurrilous Joe Biden?  Will it pursue exposure of the deep state and various collusions and corruptions that seem to have happened?  Will it force a complete house-cleaning at the Department of Justice?  Will it impeach Merrick Garland on Constitutional grounds?  Will it stop raising the debt “ceiling?”  Will it undue a host of bad laws and regulations?  Will Republicans eliminate clearly racist distinctions in the application of laws?  Will it pass a budget?  Will it resist any legislation of more than say, 30 or 40 pages in length?  Will it prevent the back-door passage of unrelated “wants” that certain Reps or Senators want to attach to true “needs” legislation?  Do we think either House will reform itself for the benefit of citizens or in defense of Constitutional rights and freedoms?  Given the last 40 or 50 years of congressional history, all these hopes… indeed, ANY of these, seems like a long shot.

We saw, upon the surprise election of both leftist and somewhat questionable Democrat Senators from Georgia, that the Democrat party was poised to push through utterly radical policies.  Indeed, their virulent attempts to “reset” American Constitutionality would lead patriots to accept the plausibility of concerted efforts to steal the presidential – and other – elections in 2020, in order to get the “reset” underway.  It, the rabid intensity for replacing the American system, seems to not be politics, anymore; it is no longer based on how to best represent the needs of the American people, but rather a mission to undo the last bastion of freedom in favor of a Chinese-led global tyranny.

The question, then, aside from “will we descend into war over Ukraine,” is how radically, how rabidly will the Pelosi-Schumer Democrats breach the bounds of law, custom and ethics to achieve victory in the mid-terms?  They have shown, repeatedly, that free and fair elections cannot be depended upon to maintain their majority in either house.

Consequently, given the building expectation of a Republican sweep of the mid-term elections, the threat to a Democrat majority anywhere is also building.  Watching the criminality guiding the Biden administration along our southern border, and the willingness of Merrick Garland to abridge the Bill of Rights, the threat to the survival of the United States will likely be experienced in 2022.  There is no one to our West who will save democracy for US.  We must save and defend it ourselves… right now.

1 There is really only one solution to the Ukraine standoff.  With consequences for invasion on the table, the U. S. must reach out to Putin and President Zelensky, not at the same time or place, but close, to commence negotiations.  Ukraine deserves respect, but not American blood.  Biden or Blinken or one of their apologists must make clear to Zelensky that neither NATO, or an assemblage of European states is going to risk everything to defend Ukraine from the Russian juggernaut.  Russia holds the military cards and killing thousands of them and more thousands of Ukrainians is not going to shift that balance materially.

Russia also must be respected, and assuaged.  The U. S. must assure Putin in no uncertain terms that war will not ensue over Ukraine IF an acceptable condition of neutrality for Ukraine: neutrality with sovereignty, can be established that is acceptable to Ukraine and Russia.  That may involve special trading status between those two nations, and sufficient flexibility for Ukraine to trade elsewhere as well.  It will have to recognize the special status of Crimea as a military enclave for the Russian Navy with some rights of veto by Ukraine for other than agreed uses and operations there, perhaps with a 99-year “lease” of the peninsula.  It could include a pact within which neither nation would take sides with any 3rd party against the other.  It must also recognize the cultural distinctions of ethnic Russians resident in Ukraine, and possible changes in the acceptance of the Russian language within Ukraine.

There is a diplomatic path that the U. S. could broker and cause to be recognized by the European Union and NATO itself, including NATO’s firm rejection of membership by Ukraine and agreement by Ukraine to cease negotiations with or appeals to NATO.  The U. S. should agree to recognize the neutrality of Ukraine and to lead the effort to have the rest of the U. N. similarly recognize the new status.  Russia must agree to exercise no military provocation or threat to Ukraine and to recognize, unequivocally, its independence, neutrality and sovereignty.  It’s possible.  All alternatives to this framework are disastrous.

Crime, Economics, Elections, Governance, Religion, Representation

dry your (T)(F)(Y)ears

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No one really looks forward to what others think may happen in a 12-month period when the calendar changes to a new year.  Given the past couple of strange, guilt-ridden years, many just say or think something on the order of, “Please, just let it be more ‘normal’ or ‘stable’ or ‘American’ than it was in 2021.”  Of course, the question is, Who’s doing the “letting” we’re hoping for?

When we think about it, we are asking some undefined “force” that (also hopefully) permeates all of life and reality, waiting for our entreaties to effect a needed change or “alignment” that will turn our pleas into pleasure, even if it is simply making a handful of traffic-light changes go green when we are running late.

Sometimes we question our very “right” to ask for help from the Universe (if that is where the help emanates), as though our own worth were questionable at that moment.  Perhaps we were really snippy with someone we love and said some regretted words as we were running late, leaving us unworthy until we have a chance to “make up” for the hurt we inflicted.  As that moment of opportunity approaches, we automatically ask the same “force” to put our loved-one in a good mood and able to accept our apology or peace-offering.  Is this religion?  What if we’re not particularly “religious?”  What if Sunday School was our last brush with Biblical things.  Chances are, when “things” seem out of our control or when a tragedy has struck someone we may not even know, we automatically (it seems) turn to a form of power outside of ourselves to adjust or rectify conditions for the better.

So, is there a Who?  Let’s hope it’s not the government.

2021, and 2020, for that matter, are examples in stark contrast of how government power can destroy the lives of millions, perhaps billions, in multiple countries while other millions, perhaps, billions, are pleading with the “government” to make life better, safer, more prosperous and less guilt-ridden.  Doesn’t seem like too much to ask.  After all, government has the money and power to do what needs to be done.  This attitude may not be the most Prudent: it exposes a feared failure of “the Universe” and the absence of hope.

Can’t the intercessor who changes lights from red to green also defeat a mere virus and balance the budget?  We say “who” because humans can’t conceive of an omnipotent being or force without a personality and, to complete the package, a face.  Whether it’s Jehovah or Jor-el, let’s hope the force is with us in 2022, ‘cause we’re running late.

Covid-19 was a creation of at least two governments and was released across the planet by government, as well, while governments insisted the fault lay within animals.  So far no one has been punished for the largely avoidable deaths of millions of people.  Is that the fault of us or of the “Force” itself?  We know government entities caused the plague, we also know that simple treatments can stop it, yet we fret and worry and wait FOR THE SAME GOVERNMENTS to make everything better.  This seems odd.  It’s virtually a declaration of helplessness on the part of millions of people who, if they perceived their place in the “hierarchy of the Force,” could take dominion over their corrupt governors and set things in proper alignment.  Is there a hierarchy?  Are we groveling observers and pawns or do we have a role to play in the direction of life and hope?

At this point we’re all saying or thinking, “Oh, please let us not be groveling observers or pawns.”  There’s that “letting” business, again.

We can’t avoid politics when discussing government actions and failures.  Political parties – or “factions” – are amazingly inept mechanisms for effecting the “general welfare” of the whole nation.  They must, by definition, serve themselves, first.  That is, by some convoluted instruction set, or “truth table,” partisans convince themselves of the welfare of their party being synonymous with the welfare of the nation as a whole.  It almost never is, although it might appear so in bits and pieces.  In any event, more and more of what the party has achieved always appears to partisans to be better for the majority of people than a mere leaving of things as they are.

Troubles accumulate, however, because each party inevitably promulgates some evils that serve key (ie. Powerful) partisans’ very local, even as local as their wallets’ interest, and the opposing party accepts those evils in order to obtain some “goods” that, in the arcane legerdemain of partisan politics, somehow balances out against the evils.

When the levers of power change partisan hands, the pent-up desires for self-interest are unleashed and the immediate saviors of the nation transform into evil-doers, albeit, in their own minds, at much more rational levels than those foul denizens of the other (yuck!) party.  And so it goes.  The “goods” instituted by this or that group of partisans, are replaced, little by little – or, sometimes, in huge gobs – by evils of the other group.  This fact of partisan life can be seen in the unimaginable mountains of debt with which the flocks of both producers and non-producers (who hope that bills are being paid in the background, but which are not, in fact) have been saddled while sloshing back and forth between partisan saviors.

It is most Prudent, going forward, that those of us who still have hope enough to ask for salvation from the What or Who that never employs evil, recognize that partisan politics and personages will never fulfill What’s or Who’s hoped-for intercessionary role.

Still, as with every New Year transition (many people revelers or not, miss the sound of the transition, which is a faint, barely audible ‘Ummm’ in low E) we have a “new beginning,” whatever that means for each of us.  We have, by the good fortune of living into a “new” year, a new set of opportunities to “make up for” things we have done that may have hurt someone else or, often, ourselves.  After all, as part of life, we also deserve to not be hurt or pushed out of alignment.  If we are fortunate enough to still hope that What or Who is listening to us, as it were, when we hope for improvement, we might want to forgive ourselves for errors and omissions or direct injuries we have suffered at our own hands – or hearts.  Perhaps our best hope is to adjust our lives so that we don’t “run late” in 2022.

What about the power we have to undo evils and effect good in the world?  You may have fallen prey to the popular notion that only by doing evil, like burning, looting and destruction… and by hating properly, can humans bring about good, but in 2022 you need not believe that.  If you know the difference between good and evil then 2022 could be the year when you agree to not support evil in the name of “progress.”

What if every adult in your town visited the city council or Board of Select Men and Women and stated, simply, that you want every act of vandalism, shoplifting and public drinking or drug abuse to be punished according to the law, including full restitution and public service by offenders.  That’s it: no shouting, no anger, no hatred or petitions dropped off.  Everyone appears and states his or her desire for good change.  Is there any doubt that our “governors” or erstwhile “representatives” would effect those changes?

The same would work for bad and unfair laws that should be repealed or modified.

We saw this work before school committees in Virginia and elsewhere.  There are no representatives who have as much power as their constituents; there are no elected officials who have as much power as their constituents.  Gandhi showed us that there is no military/police force that has as much power as a people with a unified purpose.

Clearly we cannot allow our self-fulfilling governments to keep heading downward on the same paths they have taken us over the past two years.  We are smarter than that – and smarter than they.  The public good will be more perfectly realized when our government is again restricted by the Constitution, when it is as small as practical for the defense of our nation, and when it costs about a third of what it costs, now.

Over the past 6 decades it ought to have become clear that no government can ever provide sufficient “welfare,” as public charity is known.  Nor is it really charity, since it is not given freely by anyone.  It is taken from supposedly “free” people who never intended to grant sufficient power to the governments they formed to take their personal property under threat of loss or punishment (ie. Police power) so that it could be given to others who did not work for it or, to put it more starkly, who would be arrested if they took it from its owners, themselves.

Is governance so complex that it cannot be reformed?  Is it our nature – or curse – that mistakes, once made by elected “representatives” of we, the people, cannot be undone amidst bountiful proofs of failure or error?  What is it about Americans that we are hide-bound to repeat mistakes made by other Americans who were elected to some office or another?  Why?  Does the happenstance, no matter how dearly sought, of election perform some immutable purification that raises those so blessed above responsibility for their mistakes?  Or, does it transform their mistakes into the most beneficial policy decisions, the perpetual financing of which confirms their near-miraculous properties?

Why is it that we, the people, who caused – nay, granted – the election of mistake-makers are perpetually bound to PAY for those mistakes, and suffer from them?  Is there no means of correction?

One factor we have permitted and even encouraged is “career representation.”  With a 95% re-election rate for federal representatives and senators, and similar rates for state-level reps and senators, the decline in governmental and budgetary quality – honesty – has to be reviewed through the lens of longevity.  Connections and relationships among other denizens of capitol buildings become much stronger than the periodic and temporary connections to voters.  Combined with influence over the spending of billions and billions of dollars – and billions of dollars’ worth of regulations – the personal, rather than representative value of elective office eventually outweighs the higher ethical requirements of representation.  Soon, reps and senators at every level become elected bureaucrats.  Their voters tend to ignore their work until an issue makes the news.  When an opponent runs against a sitting (there is a lot of sitting) rep or senator, there is a desire to not “take away ‘Tom’s’ or ‘Jane’s’ job.”  Can we change these attitudes?

If a thousand people showed up for legislative hearings do you think representatives could be tricked into representing, again?  One of the key problems that inhibit citizen participation in their own government is the simple issue of parking.  Boston, in Massachusetts’ case, has for a variety of reasons, not least of which is some ephemeral effect on global climate, made it more and more difficult to park in the city and most particularly anywhere near the State House on Beacon Hill.  What if there were a 600-car parking lot reserved at certain times of the year for hearing attendees.  It could be where people could take the “T” or commuter rail into Boston at low cost.  With car-pooling there could easily be 1,000 citizens attending hearings. 

Do you not believe that 1,000 testimonies about a topic would get “representatives” attention? 

Is this 2022 a new year…, or less?

Biden, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2021, Race, Representation, Trump

TIME NOT ON OUR SIDE

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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.

Biden, Crime, Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Immigration, Obama, Politics 2021, Representation

THE TRUTH WILL SET US APART

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The statue of Goddess Athene on the top of the famous Pallas-Athene-Brunnen
in front of the Austrian Parliament in Vienna. Built by Theophil Hansen 1898-1902.

For a free people, freedom becomes increasingly harder to realize or defend when knowledge is limited by twisted education (which is to say, by the government) and by outright, calculated lying by that same government.  To maintain control at the most fundamental levels, a government bent on Fascism will weaken the economic standing of most Americans and, equally as powerfully, create dependency upon the government for health care.  Nearly $30 Trillion debt clarifies the former; elevating Anthony Mussolini, errr… Fauci, to prevaricating pandemic potentate, makes obvious the latter.

To whom does a citizen turn to counter a government that lies?  Does he or she try to work more often with local or state government because they are more likely to tell the truth – no certainty, just greater likelihood – because he or she may know someone whose best friend has met someone working at that level?  Like all contracts and covenants, only the honesty and integrity of their guarantors can give them force or value.

“Official” lies have become more creative since the Viet-Nam War.  Viet-Nam exposed the mendacity of our well-respected military, whose veterans we have always revered.  That period also revealed the ease with which our “free press” could be co-opted to push a leftist agenda.  In the case of Viet-Nam this meant reportage of destruction and failure, terror and war-criminality, while beleaguered marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen are winning every battle of the conflict, an untold story.  Trust in officialdom began to crumble.

Governments lying about, obfuscating or withholding truths from those governed is nothing new.  History is a series of stories about conspiracy and secrecy within and between governments, not populations.  The U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence that gave it flight, formed a shift toward honesty between government and citizens, culminating in the Civil War, in which both sides were brutally, murderously honest about their purposes and positions.  It has been mostly downhill ever since, as the forces of tyranny, the more comfortable theory of governance for government-types, rubbed and abraded the notions of citizen sovereignty and bottom-up authority – liberty, itself.

The threshold events and actors are well-known: Teddy Roosevelt; Wilson; Hoover; FDR-Cordell Hull; Johnson-Humphrey-Rusk-McNamara; Nixon-Kissinger; Carter- Brzezinski; Bush the 2nd; Obama-Clinton-Kerry-Rice-Jarrett; Biden-Blinken-MIlley, and many of their hangers-on, of whom some were/are virtual if not avowed communists.  Numerous congressional leaders steadily pushed American government further and further left, now to an accelerating rate by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer-Adam Schiff-Jerrold Nadler, A.O.C., Eric Swalwell, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and other fellow-travelers, many of whom literally seem to hate the United States.  Here we are in 2021.

Gently speaking, the only federal agency whose pronouncements are accepted as true is Amtrak when they inform erstwhile passengers that thus-and-such train will be late by some number of minutes or hours.  We also believe the Federal Aviation Administration is truthful, we hope.  But anything coming out of any Cabinet department or the White House, or the House or Senate, or the “Pentagon,” is now taken with so many grains of salt.  Since the phenomenal lies told during the Summer of Hate in 2020, and through the federal elections, there is very little that is trustworthy coming from any spoken or printed communication of the federal government.

Not a whole lot from state governments, either.

To whom does a law-abiding citizen turn when he or she is governed, cajoled or tyrannized by his or her government?  A church?  In a few cases, yes.  But even normal conversations are rare among ordinary civilians, in 2021.  Until one can discern or deduce what news sources a correspondent pays attention to, conversation is superficial at best.

Most Americans achieve respect for a politician who promises certain actions or efforts when running for office, and then does those very things.  Even in disagreement, honesty by an office-holder is respected.  Trump, for his braggadocio, embellishments and “mean tweets,” still pursued – and accomplished many of – the things he promised to do.  His fundamental philosophy of “America First” never wavered, and his foreign policy held true to his philosophy.  Americans learned to love “America First.”  Under the Biden regime, whomever is the leader of it, We have learned to hate “America Last.”

Biden and his strange, far-left crew, have realized one distinct accomplishment.  By reducing Americans’ expectations from the President and from any of his cabinet officers and functionaries, they are now meeting Americans’ expectations on a daily basis.  When the Press Secretary speaks, everyone expects her to lie on behalf of the Biden cabal and she never disappoints!  When Secretary of State Anthony Blinken testifies before Congress or holds a press conference, everyone, even including Congress, where most members are well adjusted to prevarication, expects him to avoid answering reasonable questions, to provide only partial scraps of information when he does answer, or to repeat lies that the regime has already spewed.  No one is disappointed!

If the reader thinks that “all politicians lie” and Joe Biden is just being a “politician,” then he or she should pay attention to the southern border, which has spawned lies so grotesque as to place political lies in a wholly separate category of simple mendacity.  Biden administration words, phrases, sentences and non-answers about the border and illegal immigration, are so crooked and twisted as to fold back upon the truth!  How is this possible?

It seems as though the military, Homeland Security, the President and the president’s spokeswoman stay up late – well, not the President – just thinking up how to explain or avoid explaining to the American people that what they are seeing and experiencing at the southern border with Mexico is actually NOT what they are seeing and experiencing.  Every action taken by the Biden regime regarding border protection, immigration policy, public health, “Homeland Security,” drug interdiction, human trafficking, child abuse and sexual slavery, makes clear how gross were the lies Mr. Biden told when he swore to uphold the Constitution and promised to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.  With nearly hourly disingenuousness from media sycophants (formerly known as fellow-travelers) Biden cruises along, seemingly oblivious to the conditions at the border.  When a question is tossed to him about “the border,” he turns his back and walks away.

Biden’s Secretary of “Homeland Security,” Alejandro Majorkas is in an impossible position… at least in terms of public relations.  He does face questions and is required to claim that “the border is closed” while the Border Patrol tries to keep count of 200,000 or more illegal entrants PER MONTH.  On the other hand, he has dropped the ultimate truth bomb: “…things are being handled according to plan,” or words to that effect.  The sad truth is, an open border and flooding the country with unskilled criminals IS the plan – a plan the most crass, cynical and hateful aspect of which is no more than to first make the U. S. a one-party nation and second to tear down the United States as a stumbling block to global communism.  Millions of Americans voted for these poop-heads, who claim that we “need” immigrants to fill jobs that are not getting done by citizens.  It’s as though they might actually expect most of our invited illegals to actually work.

Joe Biden has never been at a loss for some prevarication or another.  The first time he ran for president he contrived an elaborate story of his father’s mining career in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Lunch-bucket Joe, father was a miner.  Unfortunately the story was untrue and, worse, had been “lifted” from a speech given by a British politician, Neil Kinnock, about HIS father.  It was such a good story and Joe’s mental capacity being so limited, even in his 40’s, that “borrowing” it for his own campaign just seemed the best path.  Rather odd, that.  But Biden was uninjured by what should be seen as a gross lack of honesty.  Somehow the father-was-a-miner whopper became part of the élan of Joe Biden.  “That’s just Joe being Joe.”  Well.

Joe was being Joe when he voted for the Iraq war and the Afghanistan invasion, but speaks forcefully against both actions, now.  He worked as Vice President to help Saudi Arabia fight Yemeni fundamentalists, but speaks against it now.  He advised Obama not to attempt to “get” Bin Laden in Pakistan, but he’s proud of it, now  He was opposed to busing in the 70’s and 80’s, even working with Jesse Helms on legislation, yet was offended when Kamala Harris called him out on it during the 2020 campaign.  Now, as Obama was, he is in favor of eliminating single-family zoning everywhere in the country.  Millions of Americans voted for this poop-head.  Now his title is POTUS: Poop-head Of The United States.

So, the fundamental question remains: To whom can a citizen turn in a supposedly Constitutionally limited Republic?  Federal agencies and officers, top congressional leaders and most states have been lying to Americans while generating irrational fears about the Chinese-spread pandemic of 2020-21, while denying use of effective treatments for Covid-19 infection, and while destroying small businesses in the name of “stopping” Covid-19.  Federal agencies, including the White House, and several state officials and agencies are colluding with media companies to censor news and opinions about alternatives to the “party line” on the pandemic, the “vaccines” and treatments, not to mention questions about vote fraud in the presidential election of 2020 – quite arguably in contravention of the First Amendment – and citizens are wondering where to turn for “redress of (their) grievances?”

What is a greater threat, lying outright or preventing the dissemination of truth?  Perhaps the President will set that straight for us.