The United States military is being weakened from the top

December 20, 2022

One of the things that has earned the respect of most Americans through the decades is our military. Our armed forces have done wonderful things, like helping to save much of the world in World War II. It was able to do this because of the proper training of competent individuals.

Our military has been regarded as the best, most proficient and capable in the world. On the land and sea, and in the air, there were none better.

Recent developments now place those highly regarded forces in danger of being less ready and able to do their job of protecting America from its adversaries.

The men and women in the ranks are not the problem. They are well-trained and very competent, at least at the present time. The problem lies with much of the civilian and military leadership in the Pentagon and some officers in the services.

Non-military topics like diversity, equity and inclusion, and using the proper pronouns have crept into the thinking of some of the top brass.

The Department of Defense (DoD) has something called the Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan. The DoD explains that “diversity is a strategic imperative — critical to mission readiness and accomplishment.” 

And, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said that it must be a priority for our military “to look like America and not only in the ranks, but our leadership should look like America.” 

“The new priority turns the Army into a social experiment at the cost of mission readiness,” said Robert M. Berg in National Review. “The new push within the DoD for diversity, equity, and inclusion goes well beyond measures to ensure equal opportunity and instead looks to create preferences that have nothing to do with merit. Our military will suffer if it does not change course.”

Imagine how the performance of sports teams would be affected if the main concerns were having the right mix of ethnicities and such, instead of having the most talented players. That is the direction our military is headed.

Also, the military released thousands of service people who refused to get a Covid vaccine, and the services are now having trouble attracting enough new recruits to meet their targets. Some of that is because those of the right age and physical condition are turned off by the misdirection of the military recently.

The largest military service, the U.S. Army, is revisiting some of the fitness standards and academic standards right now to try to meet its recruitment goals. Lowering standards does not bode well for keeping military readiness at the highest level.

The late Rush Limbaugh, in highlighting the military’s critical areas, said that its job is “to kill people and break things.” The military must have as its primary goals to be as skillful, efficient and well equipped as possible. The services must not emphasize things like race, religion, gender, or other non-merit-based traits. Instead, it must focus on combat readiness. Anything that stands in the way of that mission is dangerous and unacceptable. We must always be prepared to fight and win the nation’s wars.

And now this new twist comes to light, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. “A little-noticed rule-making proposed by the Department of Defense, NASA and the General Services Administration would require federal contractors to disclose and reduce their CO2 emissions as well as climate financial risks. The rule would cover 5,766 contractors that have received at least $7.5 million from the feds in the prior year,” the Journal reported.

“Smaller contractors would have to publicly report their so-called Scope 1 and 2 emissions — i.e., those they generate at their facilities and from the electricity and heating they use. Firms with larger contracts would also have to tabulate their upstream and downstream Scope 3 emissions, including those from customers, suppliers and products used in the field.”

“In other words, this is a back door for the Administration to force businesses across the economy to report and reduce their CO2 emissions,” the Journal article continues. “As the U.S. military faces strained budgets and growing threats, climate will be a costly new priority in national defense.”

“But the very point of the rule, National Review said, “is to force CO2 emissions reductions across the private economy by leveraging $650 billion in annual federal contracts. By covering Scope 3 emissions, the rule would sweep in tens of thousands of non-federal contractors, including many small businesses.”

Thus, it is not only costly in terms of national defense, but it will affect the ability of these contractors to produce needed military goods as inexpensively and as quickly as possible.

The United States has already done pretty well in reducing CO2 emissions, compared to other nations. China, for example, continues to build new coal-fired electric generation facilities. And China is not focused on foolish “woke” concepts for its military, the largest in the world.

The civilian and military leaders who favor these new off-center ideas need to be replaced immediately with people who know and understand the critical purpose of our military, and who will focus on that.

How is Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan working out for the country?

December 27, 2022

President Joe Biden campaigned on the phrase “Build Back Better,” and as president has frequently used the phrase. The point he was trying to make was that things were really not so good under then-President Donald Trump, and if the country just had the good sense to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House, things would improve.

Nearly half-way through his term, how is he doing?

A column by Beth Whitehead on The Federalist website is titled “11 Of The Biden Administration’s Greatest Failures So Far.” Let’s take a look at a few of these failures.

** Facilitating a Deadly Border - The effects of Biden’s refusal to enforce U.S. border and immigration laws are devastating. Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, has said before a Congressional committee that the border is not open. He also said that the problems were inherited. And, he later denied having said the border is not open.

Putting some detail on that claim, Newsweek reported in September that “Data from the U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations compiled by Newsweek show that the average number of encounters under Biden reached totals of roughly 189,000 per month, compared to an average of just under 51,000 per month during the Trump presidency.” Sounds like an open border, doesn’t it?

Our southern border is controlled by cartels, which make millions of dollars smuggling men, women, and children across the border, which can be, and has been deadly for many of them. 

They also smuggle drugs, like fentanyl, which is deadly, along with other dangerous drugs. The number of Americans and others killed by fentanyl is in the thousands, and other drugs have taken thousands more lives. 

Roughly 3 million persons will have walked or waded across the border in Biden’s first two years, and we know little if anything about most of them. Some of them are criminals. Some of them probably were ill. Some of them were likely kidnapped.

** Shipping Illegals to a Community Near You - The president secretly shipped illegal aliens across state borders and into suburban cities and neighborhoods, without taking measures to deal with them, or even notifying these cities that the illegals would be coming.

** Holding Kids Hostage to Trans Radicalism - “In May, the Biden administration attempted to strong-arm public schools into letting males who identify as transgender use girls’ bathrooms by threatening to pull federal funding for school lunches if they didn’t,” Whitehead reported. “That’s 30 million lunch-program students Biden took hostage to push his party’s trans radicalism.”

** Tapping into Emergency Petroleum Reserves - So dedicated to the idea of killing the American fossil fuel industry, Biden decided that he would kill thousands of energy jobs, cancel fossil fuel projects, and gives up our energy independence, which we gained in the Trump presidency, and make up for that loss of oil by releasing oil from the national reserve, which exists for emergency use. 

He tries to cover his tracks by blaming our shortage on Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine war. But it doesn’t work. And Americans really enjoyed paying double for gasoline that now is only $1 or so per gallon higher than when he took office. He hasn’t told us how he plans to replenish the petroleum reserve’s oil, or if he knows he must. Perhaps he’ll buy the oil from Putin.

** Driving up Inflation - Biden’s brilliance has produced an economy that has chalked up 40-year high inflation of 7.9 percent. Trying again unsuccessfully to shift the blame to Putin, it is clearly Biden’s policies that have driven up the prices of everything Americans need and want, like gas, food, clothing, building materials and household items. 

He appointed Jerome Powell to be Federal Reserve chairman, and Powell printed money well after the “need” for it was over. That, along with the American Rescue Plan, set the stage for the current inflation cycle. So far there is nothing indicating an end to this misery.

“Under the Biden administration, consumer prices rose so much faster than wages that the average family lost $5,800 in real annual income,” reports the Heritage Foundation. “Skyrocketing interest rates account for another $1,300 in lost annual income,” for a total of $7,100.  

** Botching the Afghanistan Withdrawal - Moving American military out of Afghanistan was always something we knew we would do. But it was never intended to be the disaster that Biden created. We left too quickly, without giving the Afghan troops time to prepare, and abandoned Bagram Air Base. We left behind Americans and Afghan allies to fend for themselves. We also left billions of dollars in weapons and equipment, which are now in the hands of the Taliban.

No president is perfect, although some have done wonderful things. Biden, on the other hand, has set a new standard for imperfection. There is an ongoing debate as to whether these horrible ideas are his, or whether he is just doing as someone or some group is telling him. Regardless, the buck stops with him.

Summarizing Biden’s performance, his three Bs are actually four Ds: Dereliction, Dangerous, Disastrous, and Disgraceful.

Elon Musk’s releasing of Twitter files proves what so many thought

December 13, 2022

It is possible that there is a new person atop the left’s “Most Disliked Person” list. And that person, replacing former President Donald Trump, is the new owner of Twitter, Tesla owner Elon Musk. Or maybe Musk will merely be added to the list below Trump’s name.

Twitter and Facebook have long been criticized for censoring certain kinds of tweets and posts, including those of conservatives and those whose opinions run counter to liberal thinking. Now that Twitter is not owned and operated by someone who believes in censorship, things are changing. And evidence to support the long-held beliefs that social media sites were infringing on free speech is coming to light.

Not only is the censorship of certain topics now shown to be fact, but some, perhaps many, of the items censored were valid and important.

One conservative user, “Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — a longstanding opponent of a COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns" was placed on the site’s secret blacklists, as reported by Fox News, which is as bad to the left was Twitter was good.

This man is no average guy expressing an uneducated opinion. Yet, in its efforts to protect a faulty narrative, Twitter blacklisted him.

Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, posted on Twitter earlier this month that, “A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics — all in secret, without informing users.”

Her revelations are all based upon information provided by Musk from Twitter files he has released.

"Twitter denied that it does such things," Weiss noted. "In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said, ‘We do not shadow ban.’ They added, ‘And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.’" Former Twitter owner Jack Dorsey said as much in a Congressional hearing.

One technique used is visibility filtering, a senior Twitter employee told Weiss: “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool.”

 A post on msn.com offered the following: “Liberals on Twitter panned the latest ‘Twitter Files’ revelations from Elon Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi Friday which showed the internal communications of Twitter leading up to the decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the social media platform in early 2021.

“The third ‘Twitter Files’ installment – this time dubbed, ‘THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP,’ presented documents showing that Twitter staff banned Trump not solely based on tweets he made during January 6th, but on the ‘context surrounding’ Trump and his supporters’ actions ‘over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.’”

And more inside information: A member of Facebook’s Oversight Board and former Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning Schmidt, said, “Free speech is not an absolute human right,” at a Politico Europe event. “It has to be balanced with other human rights.” Schmidt may have said what’s what in Denmark, but that’s not the way things are in America, where free speech is guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And that includes unpopular speech.

What we know and are learning shows that the mindset of Twitter’s boss and employees was one of cheating, censoring speech by deplatforming, suspending users, and other techniques to achieve its liberal/progressive goals, including winning the election of 2020.

“Deplatforming is certainly an effective tool when it comes to countering terrorist and like-minded extremist groups online. But the fact that this tactic is being used against individuals and organizations that do not fit these categories is a terrifying abuse of power,” reported The Washington Times.

“Such a tactic has proven to be just as effective in manipulating mainstream electoral campaigns. One of the most egregious examples of this was when Facebook and Twitter censored the New York Post over the paper’s exposés about Hunter Biden’s emails and corruption. In other words, social media platforms baselessly characterized the Post’s investigative journalism as ‘misinformation’ and blocked it.”

The Times story goes on to say that a news report from the Media Research Center shows that some voters “would not have voted for the Biden-Harris presidential ticket if they knew at least one of the eight news stories that were suppressed by big tech and mainstream media outlets.”

Twitter was and is a platform owned by a private company. According to webopedia.com, “Social media platforms are interactive digital channels that focus on the creation and sharing of thoughts, ideas, and information through virtual networks. These platforms enable users to take part in social networking by creating content, sharing their thoughts, commenting on other user content, and reposting it.”

Twitter and Facebook can control what is on their platform. They can prohibit truly dangerous language. But to take a political side, without a public statement to that effect, and then secretly censor the other political side is dishonest, and un-American.

Elon Musk has a good start to cleaning up Twitter, and hopefully will keep it politically neutral. Maybe Facebook will clean up, too.

Taking a step to restoring common sense to the legislative process

December 6, 2022

There are problems with the Congressional process of writing legislation. This process should be simple and straight-forward: if a representative or senator has a proposal he or she believes would benefit the country, it should be written up in the appropriate manner and submitted for consideration.

Usually, this would take several pages, but not hundreds of pages, as some bills do. It also would not involve some number of items added to a bill that are not related to the stated purpose of the bill.

These days we find proposed legislation of hundreds and hundreds of pages and many additional items, some or most of which do not relate to the bill’s purpose.

Unrelated items that are included are designed to serve other purposes. They frequently are used to benefit some particular special interest group or a political purpose that the proponent seeks to help by adding items to the bill that have nothing to do with its stated purpose. 

The authors believe these little goodies will slide through because the main purpose of the bill is a good one, and anyone who doesn’t vote for it will suffer bad press and political negatives for opposing it. If each of these items were required to be in a bill of their own, this tactic would be rendered useless, and legislation that achieves approval would be much cleaner, more appropriate, and less harmful.

Sometimes a bill is so long that in the busy atmosphere of legislative work some representatives and senators simply cannot read every word and effectively study the bill in the amount of time allotted before a vote is scheduled. They then are only partially prepared to cast a knowledgeable vote.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Representative from California whose tenure as Speaker of the House blessedly ends with the 117th Congress on December 31, once said something to the effect of, “we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it.”

No, that isn’t the way a democratic republic passes legislation.

Republican Representative Morgan Griffith represents Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District, which covers 19 counties completely, and parts of three others, and is the Congressman for our region of the Commonwealth.

In one of his regular emails to his constituents, titled “Return to the Basics,” Griffith cites the need for changes, and says with the control of the House of Representatives moving to the Republican Party in the 118th Congress, it is time to make needed changes to the Rules of the House.

Of his suggestions, he wrote, “Most of these amendments restore old rules or clarify existing rules. It would mean a return to the basics of parliamentary procedure.” And, he recently testified before the House Rules Committee to offer those amendments to the rules.

He suggested restoring the Holman Rule, which was created in 1876. It was a tool that could cut government spending.

“One of my proposed rules changes is to restore the Holman Rule, which existed for more than 100 years,” he wrote. “[T]he Holman Rule was created by Congressman William Holman … [who] thought spending was out of control.”

“The Holman Rule allows representatives to offer retrenchment amendments on the floor of the House of Representatives to appropriations bills,” Griffith wrote. “Retrenchment means these amendments could rearrange an agency or department of the Federal Government to cut specific programs, positions, or salaries. In 2017, I revived this rule for the 115th Congress, but in 2019 Speaker Pelosi dismantled this tool,” he wrote.

He also suggested a change to the germaneness rule, that would only allow amendments to a bill that pertained to the bill’s purpose, and suggested that a bill could only have one purpose. He also suggested that those limitations could not be waived without a two-thirds vote of the House.

“Shouldn’t a bill address one issue and be straight forward,” he asked? “My single purpose rule would make it so. This rule would still allow for complex bills like an infrastructure bill. However, two bills or concepts could not be combined into a single bill unless their purposes were the same. For example, a bill to set doctors’ reimbursement rates under Medicare could not be amended into a rewrite of Medicare. To rewrite Medicare would require a separate bill.”

“Additionally, I proposed an amendment to set time limits for bill introduction. This would focus individual members on bills that the members are most passionate about,” Griffith wrote. “It would also reduce the practice of introducing a bill on the cause celebre of the day for publicity purposes,” and “allows a remedy for bills that are ‘truly’ important by giving members the ability to ask the House for permission to introduce their ‘vital’ bill late.”

These common-sense ideas, and others included in Griffith’s email, would go a long way to restoring the legislative process to a form that is straight forward, efficient, and offers more protection from political manipulation than the current process. As he wrote, “a return to the basics of parliamentary procedure.”

Is it too much to hope that a majority of House members will agree with these good ideas, and vote to adopt them?

America’s current pandemic is bad, and shows no signs of abating

November 29, 2022

The latest “virus” in our society has been around a good while, but has gotten more active in recent months. It’s not a biological thing, it’s a cultural thing, commonly referred to as the “cancel culture.” It is born of dissatisfaction with something or someone, based upon what is believed, but absent much or most of the relevant facts about the subject at hand. 

Such things as painting or removing statues of well-known people, changing the names of buildings and other things honoring someone, or demeaning traditions are some of the work of the “cancel culture.”

As the Thanksgiving observance approached, the idea that Thanksgiving should be cancelled arose.

But what is there about Thanksgiving that it should be done away with? Thanksgiving is a time for all Americans to “cease from their daily work” and give thanks for their “many and great blessings,” as then-President Theodore Roosevelt noted in his 1908 Thanksgiving Day proclamation.

Taking a different approach to Thanksgiving, Joy Reid, the host of “The ReidOut” MSNBC, said on Wednesday night, "Tonight, we begin with Thanksgiving, the day we gather with friends and family to enjoy turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. We throw on the game, catch up on with lives and discuss or quite possibly argue about religion and politics. For millions of Americans, it’s been a cherished tradition, and as Americans, we value those traditions. But it is also important to unpack the myth of Thanksgiving."

Enlightening the ignorant people who only think of Thanksgiving as a wonderful day of celebration and thanks, Reid then said: "It is a holiday riddled with historical inaccuracies, built on this myth that the indigenous welcomed their colonizers with open arms and ears of corn. A simplistic fairytale interpretation of a 1621 encounter between indigenous tribes and English settlers that erases the genocide that followed. It is the truth that Republicans want banned from our textbooks because here is the secret they want so desperately to keep: We are a country founded on violence. Our birth was violent."

Fortunately, there are millions of Americans who were not afflicted with this “unpacking,” as they prepared to enjoy the day with their families.

But now that the wonderful day has ended, looking into the substance of Reid’s diatribe can be done.

“We are a country founded on violence,” she proclaimed. Well, yes. Those British citizens who over the years ventured across miles of ocean in weeks-long trips on sailing ships, and through the many decades built themselves colonies which they cherished, were forced to employ violence to escape being under the thumb of their British masters who would not peacefully free them. 

This is not a secret. The Revolutionary War of 1775 to 1783 was an escape to freedom using violence, because that was what colonists were forced to do. Are we today supposed to apologize for that violent beginning? Or, does it make more sense to acknowledge what was needed and what was done, and move forward from there?

She makes fun of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, calling what most of us were taught a “fairytale interpretation.” She said “that the indigenous welcomed their colonizers with open arms and ears of corn,” was a myth.

Obviously, Reid was not there. But there actually is a first-hand account, written by Edward Winslow, who was one of the 102 people who sailed from England on the Mayflower in 1620.  After arriving in North America, they founded Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts. His letter can be found online at mayflowerhistory.com.

According to the History of Massachusetts Blog, “What is known is that the pilgrims held the first Thanksgiving feast to celebrate the successful fall harvest. Celebrating a fall harvest was an English tradition at the time and the pilgrims had much to celebrate.

“The 53 pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving were the only colonists to survive the long journey on the Mayflower and the first winter in the New World. Disease and starvation struck down half of the original 102 colonists.

“These pilgrims made it through that first winter and, with the help of the local Wampanoag tribe, they had a hearty supply of food to sustain them through the next winter.” Later, the colonists had conflicts with indigenous tribes, but not before or during the first Thanksgiving.

Reid’s tunnel-vision view of history from inside her bubble seeks to erase the established history of our country that has been with us for nearly 250 years, and replace it with a story based upon selected facts that support her position that the American people have been horrible from before day-one until today.

She then endorses the fallacious 1619 Project, which attempts to re-date the beginning of America to that year, when a ship with more than 20 enslaved Africans landed in what is now Virginia. In 1619 there was no United States of America, nor even colonies from which America evolved. And no slavery on that first Thanksgiving.

These pathetic efforts to tear down America with intellectually-challenged stories of half-truths and outright lies are dangerous.

America is not perfect. But it is so much better than these self-gratifying falsehoods suggest.