It is obvious that there were two very different legal opinions regarding the 2020 election. The January 6^th committee only heard one legal opinion, that by someone who agreed with them. But anyone familiar with the law knows that there are almost always two sides to complex issues, that is why we have lawyers on both sides, and we have trials. The attorney who was advising Pence said it would have been illegal for him to overturn the results of the election. But that ignores what actually happened. To the best of my knowledge, no one asked Pence to do that at all. What they did ask was for him to delay the confirmation of the results and ask the state legislatures to confirm or deny the delegates representing the state in the electoral college. It is important to note that several state legislators did petition congress regarding this.

This actually happened before. In 1800, there was a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. It took several days of balloting before the House chose Jefferson. One notes that Jefferson ran as President and Aaron Burr ran as Vice President, so one would think the result would be automatic. But it was far from automatic. Eventually the 12^th Amendment was passed to prevent this from happening again:

The Controversial Election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 (thoughtco.com)

One change was that if a candidate failed to get a majority, the House would decide the President and the Senate the Vice President.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay were all candidates. Andrew Jackson got the most popular votes and the most electoral votes. But he did not get the 131 electoral votes required. Since there was no clear winner, The House chose John Quincy Adams.

United States presidential election of 1824 | United States government | Britannica

In 1876, the election was down to Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden actually won the popular vote and claimed 184 electoral votes. But Republicans challenged the results and charged Democrats with fraud and voter suppression of blacks in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. Those 20 electoral votes changed everything. The House couldn’t agree, so a commission was made up of 5 representatives, 5 senators and 5 supreme court justices. The commission determined that Hayes won, so Democrats filibustered. Eventually, in desperate need to make someone President, the filibuster collapsed. By the way, the price demanded by Democrats for ending the filibuster was that federal troops be withdrawn from the South resulting in the election of Democratic governments in southern states. That ended “reconstruction” and ushered in the Jim Crow era.

The problem in the 2020 election is very different than what is being discussed. The constitution states that the state has the power to choose the method of selecting electors. During the 2020 election there were allegations that the 2020 election was conducted contrary to existing state law. Some state legislators appealed to congress claiming that the electors had not been chosen according to state law. In Ray v Blair, the Supreme Court ruled that once an elector was appointed, the state could no longer tell them how to vote

Can states control how presidential electors vote? | The National Constitution Center

While the Constitution gives states broad power to choose the method of selecting Presidential electors, that power does not include the authority to remove them and cancel their vote if they do not support the statewide winner, the majority ruled.

But what if the state legislature appoints a separate slate of electors because it believed the way the election was conducted violated state law. If the argument had been that some counties in Pennsylvania had ballots counted differently than other counties, the Supreme Court might just have listened. That, after all, was the basis for the Bush v Gore decision. But no one made that argument, and the Supreme Court was not going to volunteer.

It is my understanding that what the Trump administration wanted Pence to do is refer the question regarding which slate of electors was valid, to the state legislature(s). That is very different from asking Pence to declare Trump the winner.

Trump Election Strategy: Alternative Slates of Electors Are a Dead End | National Review

One can and did argue that this was a failed legal strategy, but it is vastly different than asking Pence to just decide on his own. John Eastman, Found Director of the Claremont Institutes Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence made that exact argument.

Here is what the law says:

“You sometimes hear conservatives argue that state legislatures could now “restore” their power to select electors (Claremont’s John Eastman makes that argument here around the 7–8 minute mark). Federal law allows this only “whenever any State has held an election for the purpose of choosing electors, and has failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law.” (3 U.S.C. § 2). But that is not what happened. An election was held on Election Day, results were reported and certified showing a winner, and election-contest procedures were followed in the states to determine the legality and correctness of those results.”

Note this article was by National Review, which is notoriously “never-Trumper.” It ignores the critical issue of what to do if the way the election was conducted violated state law. It really doesn’t matter who is right, legally, but making a legal argument is a far cry from plotting an insurrection. Few things are certain, but it is absolutely certain that Trump had and has attorneys who will make that argument.

I believe the more fundamental issue is nothing more or less than this: “Will history be kinder to those who pushed an incompetent and hopelessly corrupt Joe Biden into the Presidency, or those who saw this disaster coming and trying to stop it.”

Even if the election was technically legal, it was hopelessly corrupt. The MSM openly campaigned against Donald Trump, and it buried the Hunter Biden laptop report. Social media conspired against him and “Twitter” literally banned him. There are numerous polls showing that if people knew about that laptop and the serious allegations regarding Hunter and possibly Joe Biden, they would not have voted for Joe Biden.

Even now the MSM is trying to convict Trump without even the pretense of being fair. Trump is far from perfect, but the way the Democrats and the MSM have handled this is perfectly awful.

The big lie here is that there was nothing regarding the 2020 election that should have been grounds for concern. The bigger lie is that all the allegations of election fraud have been debunked. The biggest lie is that anyone in the Democratic Party or the MSM has any interest in reporting objectively on this.

The principal rule of law is that both the defense and the prosecution have an equal opportunity to make their case. Unless “some” Democrats recognize that failure to meet this standard hurts them more than it does Donald Trump or Republicans in general, it is difficult to see how things change until both the Democratic Party and its propaganda arm we call the MSM are thrust brutally and forcefully from power. Hopefully starting this November.

TDM

In the midst of bad news and economic despair, the owners of the Cleveland Browns are providing much needed comic relief. If you have ever wondered what it would be like to have enough money to do anything you want, even owning a professional sports team, this is a case study in why “money can’t buy you love, and apparently it can’t buy commons sense either.”

The Browns went all in on Deshawn Watson. They signed him to a “fully guaranteed” five-year contract worth $230 million, allegedly the largest guaranteed contract in NFL history. They also gave Houston three first-round draft picks, and two other selections.

So how did this happen? Deshawn Watson requested a trade from the Texans, following the 2020 season, just months after he signed a $111 million guaranteed extension. Then the first allegation of sexual misconduct surfaced. He was on the Houston Texans roster in 2021 but did not play one single snap. They were desperate to trade him and terrified that they would have to continue eating his bloated salary while he sat, somewhere else, other than on the bench.

By the way, Watson allegedly has a no-trade clause in his contract. In case you were wondering, the Brown’s fans, one of the most loyal fan bases in NFL history, are not amused. The Browns invited fans to participate in a “question and answer” session and the results were so bad that the Browns deleted the post. This is so over the top that even the New York Times noticed. The New York Times is wrong about most things, but perhaps this is one of those rare exceptions when they got it right:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/sports/football/deshaun-watson-browns.html#:~:text=The%20Browns%20had%20just%20traded,of%20its%20kind%20in%20N.F.L.

My favorite response was by Annastasia Meadors, moderator of a Facebook group for Browns fans:

“Who wants a supposed sexual predator as a football quarterback star for their team? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“We are the laughingstock of the N.F.L.,” 

“I love the team,” she said. “I can’t say I’m not going to support the Browns, that I’m not going to be a fan anymore, because one player doesn’t make the team. We have a ton of talent on this team. We’re going to get there. It’s just a shame we sold our soul to Deshaun Watson.”

It must be pointed out that the Houston Texans were not exactly saints regarding Mr. Watson. He allegedly met at least 66 women for massages, over a 17-month period, and had help from the Texans, including non-disclosure agreements. The only difference is when this all became public, the Texans had at least enough sense to be embarrassed. The Browns are still trying to figure out why this was a problem.

The reality is that IF Deshawn Watson does get to play this year, which is far from guaranteed, he better be absolutely outstanding. The Browns not only need to win, but they also need to win big, and he has to be the star. Imagine yourself another player on the Browns. You have a really great year. But you are told, they can’t offer you more money because they spent it all on Deshawn Watson. There is a reason why smart quarterbacks, like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers spend big bucks on expensive gifts for offensive linemen. They know that if the offensive line does not block, the quarterback is running for his life, with no guarantee of good results. Although quarterbacks get the big bucks, smart quarterbacks never forget this is still a team sport.

I still remember when the Green Bay packers went all in on John Hadl. The Packers were desperate for a quarterback, so they gave up FIVE draft picks for him. Hadl had been good, in 1963, but by 1974 he was 34 years old. Ironically Hadl stunk up the field, earlier that year, playing Green Bay. That should have been a sign. Eight days later, the Packers traded for John Hadl. Did no one watch that game? Dan Devine, who orchestrated this deal, wisely left Green Bay for Notre Dame. Bart Starr became the new head coach, but it is hard to coach successfully without any players.

https://www.sportscasting.com/the-1974-john-hadl-trade-set-the-green-bay-packers-back-two-decades/

I remember being cautiously optimistic about John Hadl. Then he fell down stepping backwards from the snap and fumbled the ball. Being a Packer Backer during the 70s and 80s was arguably harder than being a Jimmy Carter supporter. The results were equally dismal, but Carter screwed up the entire country, while Hadl only destroyed the hopes of the Green Bay Packers.

The real question is how supposedly smart and obviously wealthy people can make such stupid mistakes. The answer, again, is that the truly incompetent aren’t competent enough to know they are incompetent. Joe Biden really thinks he is doing a great job. Just ask him. Most of us have figured out that when you meet someone who knows more than you, shut up and listen. It is equally important to avoid input from people who want to convince you they know something, without actually being an expert.

I am reminded that fortune favors the brave, in modern times, people brave enough to avoid making dumb investments because high-priced celebrities tell them it’s a great opportunity. That those brave enough to invest, will become fabulously wealthy. Those who fear the risk, risk losing the opportunity of a life time. Except Bitcoin wasn’t the opportunity of a lifetime, other than the opportunity to make a really bad investment.

Today things were so bad that Bitcoin withdrawals were temporarily suspended. Earth to celebrities, they only suspend withdrawals when everyone wants to divest themselves of any money stupidly invested in Bitcoin as soon as possible. Odds are it won’t be soon enough.

But it may be a better investment than having ownership in the Cleveland Browns. Imagine this, owning a professional sports team and mucking it up so bad, you have to sell the team at a loss. Hard to imagine, but then the Browns could actually achieve this.

TDM

I, like most Americans, did not watch the Liz Cheney Illusion Act Thursday night. But those who did quickly noticed blatant misrepresentation of material facts. Apparently, Ms. Cheney read only part of what Trump actually tweeted on January 6^th, and then blamed him for what he didn’t say. You can’t make stuff like this up. It is remarkably similar to when the CNN reporter stood in front of a burning police station describing a “mostly peaceful” demonstration.

This is one reason Democrats are doomed to failure. Jack Del Rio, one of the coaches for the Washington Commanders, said the following:

“I can look at images on the TV [of the Floyd protests] — people’s livelihoods are being destroyed. Businesses are being burned down. No problem,” he said Wednesday. “And then we have a dust-up at the Capitol, nothing burned down, and we’re going to make that a major deal. I just think it’s kind of two standards, and if we apply the same standard and we’re going to be reasonable with each other, let’s have a discussion.”

If you read the statement by Del Rio, while not particularly tactful, he actually has a point. There was nothing burned down during the “insurrection.” The only person shot was an unarmed female by a Capital Police officer. While some people did get out of control and got into physical confrontations with the police, the majority of people were waiving flags and posing for photo ops. Any honest observer should admit that the protests in response to the George Floyd killing were far more violent and destructive than anything that happened on January 6^th.

The problem with the liberal left if that if you even ask legitimate questions, you are not only shouted down, but you are also fined. Washington head coach, Ron Rivera decided to fine Del Rio $100,000. Rivera said: “he will not tolerate any equivalency between the protests over George Floyd’s murder and the Capitol Riots.” Interesting twist of words, because there were actually Capitol riots, in connection with the George Floyd protests, but it is a bit of a reach to describe what happened on January 6^th, to be a riot at all. It was certainly a lot more peaceful than the BLM led George Floyd protests. Message from liberals: “don’t bother talking to us and if you don’t agree with us, we will silence you. Never bother us with facts or evidence, because our mind’s made up.”  Those who refuse to listen cannot possibly hear.

The problem for Democrats and people like Rivera is that there is video, hours of video, of showing both events. And no matter how much people like Liz Cheney try to cut and paste, a lot of people saw those videos, in real time. In effect Democrats and people like Cheney and Rivera are demanding we believe them rather than our lying eyes. As for me, the eyes have it.

I grant that there was more violence than we realized on January 6^th, but there were also thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who were peacefully protesting. In some cases, they were let into the Capital, by Capital police. There are videos of people walking peacefully, looking like sight seers out on a field trip. There were others wearing silly outfits and acting like idiots. What you did not see was people throwing Molotov cocktails. You didn’t see any of the “insurrectionists” armed with anything stronger than bear spray and a fire extinguisher.

Capital police officer Caroline Edwards testified about how she was seriously injured. Prosecutors described this already. They said that defendant Ryan Samsel pushed a metal barricade into the officer outside the Capitol near an intersection called the Peace Circle, causing her to fall and hit her head on stairs. She was knocked unconscious and apparently suffered a concussion.

Samsel allegedly picked her up and said: “We don’t have to hurt you. Why are you standing in our way?” Not exactly what one would expect from a murderous insurrectionist. More important is what the Capital Police officer’s union said about the incident.

“We need accountability, starting with our own leaders,” the union said in a statement. “Make no mistake, the breach of the U.S. Capitol was a failure of our leadership, as outlined in the Senate report earlier this year. It’s unconscionable that Officer Edwards was on the West front of the Capitol with no universal fence, no riot gear and too few officers to back her up. She could have been killed.”

Fining Jack Del Rio, for pointing out the obvious, is not on the list of things necessary to solve this.

Hmm. Who did make the decision to not put up a fence, to not provide riot gear and to not authorize the National Guard to provide backup? Certainly not Donald Trump. He suggested making the National Guard available. It was Nancy Pelosi who was responsible for this, but Liz was too deceptively editing video tape and parsing testimony to create the illusion of evidence solely against Donald Trump to notice what appears to be culpable negligence by Nancy Pelosi. Blind hatred is a poor substitute for vision.

I know many exceptionally good attorneys. None of them would pull a stunt like this, if for no other reason than it is guaranteed to backfire. It would immediately backfire on Liz Cheney too, if anyone were available to cross examine her or if the press had the slightest interest in reporting objectively. That is very unlikely to happen.

But the good news is that we don’t need rely on people like Adam “Schiffless” or Nancy “Poleaseosi” to translate the truth for us. Neither must we rely on the MSM. The truth is already out there and within minutes provided a devastating rebuke against the Liz Cheney illusion act. This is so bad that there is even a chance that CNN will notice. Not people like Don Lemon or Brian Stelzer, but rather the people already queued up to replace them.

The bottom line is that no matter how much people scream and yell about people screaming and yelling, most of us can easily see that shrieking at the top of one’s lungs is not actually a substitute for facts and evidence.

The facts are this. The 2020 election stunk to high heaven. At last count 45% of Democrats think there was something seriously wrong with the 2020 election. Any honest person has to admit that all mail in ballots, with marginal controls, is a recipe for fraud. The contemporary reports of poll watchers being blocked from doing their job are all too believable. What is not believable is that 84 million people voted for the shell of a human being elevated to a position for which he is so obviously incapable of handling. The big lie was Joe Biden, and most people didn’t buy it then and don’t buy it now.

If San Francisco is a clue, two things are happening. Conservatives and angry Democrats showed up in mass. Liberals and progressives stayed home. A progressive District Attorney was recalled called with over 60% of voters supporting recall in a city with over 90% Democratic voter registration. If that pattern continues, Republicans will run the table during the 2022 Mid-term elections. That will be the real insurrection, and unlike that promoted by the progressives, it will be mostly peaceful. Peaceful, quiet and very, very, loud.

TDM

It is now official. The January 6^th Committee has gone prime time with a gigantic swing and miss. My firm prediction is that the next “prime time” hearing will be ignored even by the MSM. There are numerous signs that the people who really run things, we call them people with money, are not impressed. Disney fired the genius who decided to go full woke hyperventilating about the “don’t say gay” bill, which isn’t actually a “don’t say gay” bill and is actually supported by more parents in Florida. You know the people Disney used to consider its’ target market. Losing billions of dollars in revenue does have a dramatic impact on enthusiasm.

MSNBC just reported the lowest ratings this century. CNN is openly talking about firing talking heads who can’t seem to present the actual facts without their heads exploding. The companies that have gone full woke are rapidly becoming fully broke. This is not about homophobia or any other phobia, it is about most of us just not enthusiastic about being forced to endure endless sermonizing by people who are not exactly personal pillars of virtue.

Now combine this with a report that was a combination of extreme bias, boring and obviously irrational narrative presented by some of the most unlikeable people on this planet. Even the usual suspect fact checkers, who tried to push back against Donald Trump saying he offered 20,000 National Guard troops, prior to the event, admitted he did exactly that, but he “didn’t order them to show up.” If Trump had ordered the troops to show up, that would have been considered an act of insurrection. The sad truth is that anything Trump did or does is automatically considered criminal, even if it accidentally happens to be a good idea.

Those who tuned in last night, are unlikely to repeat the error. We are seeing all these protests designed to generate public interest and support, but if you pay attention they are getting neither. Oh, the MSM traditionally shows up with glowing reports without regard to the substance, but the average person is at the point where “we’ve heard this all before.”  It is the ultimate “been there, done that” scenario.

There are people paying attention. In Canada they are purchasing every handgun in sight. In the United States there is, another, rush to purchase AR15 rifles. While Joe Biden wants to let criminals sue gun manufacturers for self-inflected wounds, he has actually made it possible for gun manufacturers to make record profits. Nice! Things have now reached the point that for a lot of people, if Joe Biden is against something, well, there is no better recommendation.

Even Bernie Sanders is concerned. He has noticed that Biden’s support among Hispanic voters is now at 24% and is below 50% with Black voters. What a remarkable accomplishment. Not that long ago Democrats got about 75% of the Hispanic vote and 90% of the Black vote. Even people with a far-left delusional view of the world, like Bernie Sanders, know this is not good. Of course, he thinks the solution is to double down on insanity, but one should recall that the primary reason for President Joe Biden is that even liberal Democrats become nauseated at the thought of having Bernie Sanders at the top of the ticket.

I would consider this the worst blunder in modern history, but I am reminded that the Cleveland Browns went all in on a someone whose record as a starting quarterback is 28-25 or 52.8%. Of course, he makes up for this by setting an all-time record for getting sued for sexual assault by massage therapists. It should have been a clue that Texas, who had him on the roster, has been openly celebrating since the Browns paid them big bucks to remove their biggest headache.

Yet, the owners of the Cleveland Browns still come in a distant second, because they only messed up one team, while Democrats are closing in on losing the country. Only one statistic really matters. Look around you. If things are a hot mess, odds are Democrats are in charge. If the people lecturing you are patronizing, arrogant and ignorant jerks proposing things that have not, will not and can not work, you are almost certainly living in a blue state or a blue city. It is not that Republicans are that great, they aren’t. It is just that being better than Democrats has never been easier.

The only thing that could make things worse for Democrats, is to double down on the downward slide by putting on the ultimate political blunder, and then insisting it goes prime time. Everything this committee is saying is either a gross exaggeration or a flat out lie and deliberate misrepresentation. If this was designed to distract from the failures of the Biden Administration, it is likely to have the opposite effect. People may have a problem figuring out what they want, but this is a case study in what they don’t want. Calling this a Blunder Bust is actually a complement, but I couldn’t think of a more appropriate term that would not require using poor taste profanity.

TDM

D Day was actually the 6^th of June 1944. But we are about to see the modern equivalent of it, only this will be January 6, 2021, a day long remembered, but perhaps for very different reasons than some expect.

Democrats are going all in on the theory that Donald Trump, the worst human being in the history of human beings tried to overthrow our democracy by claiming the 2020 election was stolen. They apparently want everyone to believe that any hint of doubt in the outcome of the 2020 election is tantamount to treason. Speaking publicly about it crosses over into tyranny and pretending there is any potential merit to his claim is grounds for immediate commitment to the nearest insane asylum. Of course, these are the same people who want you to believe that global warming will kill us all, unless we all buy electric cars, made by anyone other than Tesla. The same people who are shocked, I tell you shocked, that giving money and free housing to homeless people results in more homeless people. The same people who demanded we all wear masks, because they were following the science, when we now know the science said this was nonsense. The same people who thought that defunding the police and letting criminals out of jail would reduce crime. Those people.

January 6, 2021 was a tragic day, but not because a handful of people got out of control, perhaps with the help of some Capital police officers, and arrogantly posed for selfies in the Capital. They were angry because no one, including the courts, or congress, or the DOJ, or the FBI, were willing to admit there just might have been a couple of minor problems with this election. Like the vote totals changing mysteriously, overnight, in places like Philadelphia where Democratic politicians have been convicted, throughout recorded history for stuffing ballot boxes. This is hardly news to anyone remotely familiar with Philadelphia politics, but a complete mystery to the geniuses at the Washington Post and the New York Times. They only believe in rigged elections if a Republican accidentally wins. Then it is ok to scream fraud, at the top of your lungs, ala Stacy Abrams, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, without any evidence. But this when this is done by someone like Donald Trump, who actually has a lot of facts, horror of horrors.

Now we are going to have the January 6^th committee, which is going live tomorrow, determined to prove that Donald Trump is a threat to humanity. I doubt that many will watch, because there is not enough alcohol available for most people to watch more than 30 seconds of people like Liz Cheney and Adam Schiffless. Oh CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and particularly MSNBC will watch with bated breath, again, as the walls are closing in on Donald Trump, again, only to learn there are no walls, again. Wiser heads won’t bother to watch at all, while the loyal woke crowd are destined for disappointment when, again, it becomes obvious that there is still no there there.

Trump absolutely did beg people like Mike Pence to seriously consider the consequences of allowing Joe Biden to steal an election. He did suggest they consider the widespread damage the average American was likely to endure when someone like Joe Biden is put in charge of anything. I doubt that Joe Biden will succeed in destroying the country, because he isn’t competent to do that either. But he sure is mucking things up to a fare-thee-well, destined to be the only President in history capable of making Jimmy Carter look good in comparison.

It is bad enough to experience first-hand the consequences of electing someone like Biden but it is infuriating when it becomes increasingly obvious that this could and should have been prevented.

It is quite simple. The constitution requires state legislatures to determine how elections are run. In 2020 state legislatures were bypassed by partisan election committees aided by corrupt Democratic politicians. The rules actually used, and approved by courts, often violated the U.S. constitution, and were considered recipes for fraud, by both Democrats and Republicans, until Democrats realized they could get away with this. When some state legislatures figured this out, and appealed to congress, the courts, the press, the DOJ, and everyone else, no one listened. If someone even pretended to listen, they were accused of being co-conspirators.

Congress, the only entity that could have fixed this did less than nothing. It pretended there was nothing to hear, nothing to see, nothing to investigate, nothing to consider. They might have still decided things the same way, but they still should have listened. The constitution requires them to listen. The American people requires them to listen. Instead, the establishment decided that the only more thing to do was to go with the flow when the flow was headed toward Niagara Falls.

The January 6^th committee is composed of mouth breathing Trump haters whose view of reality is blocked by evil smelling fog generated by their own hate speech. Ironically, they may be at serious risk of accidentally exposing the truth, and the truth can be powerful beyond imagination. If you doubt that, and have a strong stomach, watch the Johnny Depp – Amber Heard trial.

One thing is certain, Trump never considered using the military or armed militia to over throw the U.S. government by force. That is absurd. It is beyond absurd. It is absurdly, absurd. That will become obvious because it is obvious. The only people hyperventilating about January 6^th, are the people who have the most to fear from reality TV. What makes this doubly dangerous for them is that they just aren’t listening. Otherwise, they would know that some report that as many as 45% of Democrats think there were serious problems with the 2020 election. About 99.95% of Republicans and 75% of Independents knew this from day one. This leaves only two options, either the January 6^th Committee knows facts ignored by everyone else, they are much smarter than everyone else, or they are the ones who are delusional. Bets anyone? Anyone? D Day all over again, only this time D Day stands for “Dumb Day.”

TDM

The tragic events in Uvalde, Texas are impossible to ignore. All of us are horrified by this tragedy. No one pretends this is remotely acceptable. Sadly, the knee jerk response by people on the left is to exploit any tragedy to push their dreams of gun control. In some cases, these are true believers, terrified of guns even when used by police. These people long for a world where no one ever has a gun. That is understandable, but hopelessly naïve. And, in some cases, extremely dangerous.

Many people point to Australia as the solution. Australia implemented nationwide gun control after a mass murder in Port Arthur. At the time, it was estimated there was about 3.6 million guns in Australia. Newsweek, hardly a right-wing rag, did an analysis of this and found out that things are not quite what they seem.

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-australia-solve-mass-shootings-surrendering-its-guns-1710584

It is estimated that while the percentage of people in Australia who hold a gun license is lower, those who already owned guns have bought more, many more. There are more guns in Australia today than there were in 1997.

One factor people ignore is that the bigger the country, the more people, the more likely something like this happens. It is the law of large numbers. In addition, the definition of a mass murder varies significantly. But the following article shows that, despite the reporting, when comparing the annual death rate per million people from mass public shooting the United States ranks only 10^th. Norway, Servia, France, Macedonia, Albania, Slovakia, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium, and Czech Republic all have higher rates than the U.S. In 2018 another study showed that the United States actually ranked 64^th in the world in terms of mass shooting rates per capita. Now some can and will argue that these statistics are misleading, but the point is that it is far from as clear as the usual suspects would like to have us believe. One significant factor is that if there is a mass murder in the U.S. it gets immediate and widespread reporting. That does not necessarily happen in other countries.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/mass-shootings-by-country

Some things are obvious. Preventing criminals from having guns is always a good idea. Preventing honest citizens from having guns, not so much. It is obvious that someone who decides it would be cool to become a mass shooter has serious mental problems. That does not mean that it is always easy to predict this kind of behavior. There certainly have been cases where all the warning signs were present but ignored. There have been other times, such as the Uvalde shooting, where this was not necessarily easy to predict. There is a fundamental problem in setting a standard for deciding who should or should not have a gun. Remember that liberals believe anyone who disagrees with them is a threat to humanity. They would gladly take away your gun, for any reason, because they don’t believe anyone, other than the armed security they employ, should have guns.

In liberal cities, it is extremely hard for an honest citizen to get a gun, unless you are rich, famous, or a security guard protecting a democratic politician. But it is obviously amazingly easy for criminals to get guns. The result is that often the only people likely to have guns are police, and criminals. Earth to liberals, criminals avoid places where police are present. Duh! When the police arrive, the shooting is often over, and the police take their time before moving in. In Uvalde, the police did arrive within 4 minutes, and they were armed, but waited for about an hour, or more, before charging the gunman and shooting him. It is easy to criticize the police for not doing that sooner, but one notes that the hero, a Border Patrol Agent, heavily armed and highly skilled, was shot in the head and nearly killed. Charging a gunman holed up behind a barricade is not that helpful if the only result is an additional victim.

I spend three years flying combat missions. One of the first things we learned is that if there is a gun fight, and you get shot too, you can’t help anyone. While charging that gunman may have seemed like a good idea and might have been necessary those of us who were not there should hesitate before we judge.

One thing we can be sure of is that Democratic politicians will seize the day and demand the problem be fixed by taking action that is proven to be ineffective. While that may help them politically, it is time to stop the role playing and start listening to each other. Banning assault rifles sound great, until you take two seconds to contemplate what this means. According to guns.com the U.S. has 434 million guns, 20 million AR15s, and 150 million magazines.

Tell you want. Let’s let Kamala Harris lead a task force to confiscate all these weapons. Heck let’s make it easy and only go after people with felony records. A lot of honest people will surrender their guns with no problem. But it only takes a handful of people who decide they will let the feds get their guns when they pry them from their cold dead fingers. Do some research on Ruby Ridge and other places and reflect on how much safer you feel. Did we learn NOTHING from prohibition?

Not only would this result in bad unexpected, but predictable consequences, it wouldn’t solve the problem. The problem is that about 16 people, in a country of 340 million people, got their hands on a gun and started shooting people. Seizing 16 million guns to find 16 people is a brilliant  strategy, probably from one of the geniuses who want to solve global warming by moving away from clean abundant oil and gas to scarce solar, wind and nuclear power. Spare me.

Police are constantly warned against profiling people. But the alternative to profiling is to treat everyone with the same amount of suspicion. This is the logic that has the TSA patting down 85-year-old grandmothers while ignoring those people most likely to be a problem. If you try to monitor everyone you end up monitoring no one, because the worst offenders are the ones most skilled at avoiding scrutiny. This should be obvious, it is obvious, but it is often ignored. Now liberals have replaced that kind of profiling with their preferred option, profiling anyone who disagrees with them. Silence them and if they still won’t shut up, put them in jail.

It should be obvious that if you rage against police, defund them, provide strict guidelines on when and where they can use deadly force don’t expect them to charge an armed lunatic behind a barricade regardless of the risk of personal harm. In addition, if the person they shoot is the wrong color, they are more likely to be prosecuted than to be praised.

Almost every mass murder happens in a gun-free zone, where the killer is pretty certain he will be the only one there with a gun. Yes, it is sexist, but most mass murderers are male. Duh! When these guys are confronted by someone with a gun, they frequently either commit suicide or surrender. The key factors here are the time delay between them starting shooting people and when someone with a gun intervenes. Even if the person planning mass murder “thinks” there may be someone there with a gun, it is likely to give them pause. If you are confronted with a mass murderer, and you must wait for the police to arrive, and them wait for them to organize a response, you have waited too long.

When someone proposes something that makes sense, he or she is immediately shouted down by the usual suspects. Ted Cruz suggested that just locking the door to the school would have made a difference. Seems obvious. If that door had not been propped open by a teacher, it might have made a major difference in this event. He also suggested hardening school security and hiring armed police officers. John Legend responded by losing his mind and calling this suggestion “evil nonsense.” No, Legend in your own mind, evil nonsense is doing the same thing, over and over again and expecting a different result.

What we really need is a lot less gum smoke. Instead of shrieking out why you and only you have the solution, how about all of us listening to each other. Yes, we should prevent bad guys from getting guns. We already have laws that allow that, how about enforcing existing laws first before passing new laws? We know mental health is a genuine problem. How about training people to identify people who really are a threat.

Don’t fight the wrong battles and don’t depend on people like the leaders of the NRA to lead. For one thing the leadership of the NRA has some serious ethical issues. But more important, a lot of people hate the NRA and they have almost no credibility with the gun control crowd. That may be unfair, but it is still accurate.

Another mistake is focusing on the wrong issues. For example, the AR15 is viewed by a lot of people as an assault rifle. Anyone who is remotely familiar with guns knows that this is not the case. The AR15 just looks scary to someone already terrified by guns. While these feelings are not necessarily logical, the feelings themselves are legitimate. The result is that the AR15 and similar rifles sometimes are more of a distraction and perhaps not worth the effort. It is not important to me that someone can just casually buy an AR15, not because the weapon is particularly dangerous, but because a lot of people think it is an assault rifle and they buy it for all the wrong reasons. But when we argue why anyone should be able to get their own AR15, we just give the anti-gun crowd undeserved ammunition. Ok, no one can buy an AR15, without written permission from grandma, even if she is long since departed. AR15s are fun to shoot, but are they really worth the effort? They certainly aren’t worth giving deranged Democratic politicians the illusion of rationality.

As long as mass shooting continue, and they will, shameless Democratic politicians will seize the day making idiotic arguments sound close to rational. But if you stop selling AR15s tomorrow, it won’t likely prevent one mass murder, but it will silence some really awful people, for at least 15 or 20 seconds.

Stop the gum smoke. Stop giving idiots undeserved ammunition. Find a way to protect our kids. Find a way to protect our public spaces.

TDM

Several years ago, my daughter called me and told me about a young man who had been very seriously injured in an accident. The injury was catastrophic, with a broken neck and significant paralysis. The parents were in shock and did not know what to do. My daughter asked if it was ok for them to call me. They did, while I was in Reno, Nevada at Hot August nights. The son was in UC San Diego and had already had four major neck surgeries. Kaiser was pushing to have him transferred to the Kaiser Rehabilitation division. The parents called me, and I advised them that I had have several employees treated at the Craig Institute in Denver, Colorado. I recommended they try and get their son treated there. They said there was no chance that Kaiser would approve this, and they were being pushed to transfer him from the UCSD system to the Kaiser Rehabilitation system. I explained that this type of decision could only be made by certain extremely high up people at Kaiser, and that, although I am not an attorney, I would help them write a letter to the right person. I looked up the President and CEO of Kaiser and helped them draft a letter of appeal directly to him. I wrote that letter from a friend’s house in Reno, and the mother sent it to Kaiser, under her own name. Incredibly, within a few hours, late on a Friday evening, they got a personal email back from the President and CEO of Kaiser who said he had assigned a team to this case. Within just a few days, their son was transferred to the Craig Institute, at great expense for Kaiser. The Craig institute transformed his life. While he is still a quadriplegic, he has made tremendous progress and is learning to leave a productive and happy life with his disability.

Shortly after the son graduated from Craig and returned home his father called me and said: “thank you. I know if you had not gotten involved, my son would be in a nursing home today.” I was humbled and grateful. Grateful that God had put me in a position to help, and grateful that with what can only be described as divine guidance, I was able to provide the advice and assistance they needed.

This injury took place during a church camp. I told the parents that due to the severity of the injury, they had to at least evaluate the potential for legal liability. I explained that they could not possibly do enough fund raisers to fund the expenses of dealing with this type of catastrophic injury. Since no one was preserving the evidence, I suggested they let me interview someone who was a witness to the event, so that this could be documented. One of the other students at the camp agreed to be interviewed, so I interviewed him, with his father present, and recorded the interview. I knew at the time that this interview was worth millions of dollars. This was long before they had retained legal counsel. I then recommended they hire an attorney, since the cost was so high this was the responsible thing to do. They later hired an attorney I recommended, an attorney I knew because she had retained me as an expert witness on another case.

This attorney bravely took on this case and managed it brilliantly. Tonight, I just learned that this case was settled, and their son has now the resources necessary to fund all his future medical care and to take care of him for the rest of his life. This is truly a miraculous and life changing result.

I am mostly in awe of the circumstances that put this family in touch with me at a time when they did not know what to do. I am grateful for the years of experience, overseeing numerous lawsuits and being responsible for purchasing the health insurance for tens of thousands of people. It was that experience that enabled me to understand the situation and to offer the advice necessary to make this all happen. I am in awe of the fact that they trusted me with the future of their most asset, their irreplaceable son. I am humbled that God put me in the right place at the right time to help them when they needed it most. I am grateful and impressed by the President and CEO of Kaiser, who read that email on a Friday evening and immediately took action only he could have authorized. I am grateful for all the people at Kaiser who put the needs of this young man first and did the right thing for the right reason. I am grateful for the local news crews who reported on this story and helped provide additional incentive to make the difficult and financial decision by Kaiser to send this young man to the Craig Institute. I am grateful for the tremendous staff at Craig institute that changed this young man’s life forever. I am a grateful for an attorney, who took on a difficult case at great personal risk because she believed in this young man. I am grateful for that witness who provided the information necessary to document exactly what had happened, and which made the foundation for a successful resolution.

Most of all I am grateful to God, who gave me the opportunity to gain the experience necessary to manage this. I am also grateful that he gave me the wisdom to give the right advise and he put the parents in a position to listen. I am not writing this to brag about my involvement, which is irrelevant to me. I am too filled with joy that God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform and sometimes he even allows someone as imperfect as me to accomplish remarkable things. It is often that way. Never underestimate how God can use you, in the right circumstances, if you are only willing to pray and listen.

I believe. So should you.

TDM

Every rational person recognizes that the mass murder in Buffalo, New York is beyond horrific. No one wants someone like this to have a gun. No one wants someone like this to be present in society. Yet, once again, the usual suspects are determined to learn absolutely nothing from this incident and instead focus on doing things that had nothing to do with this individual and which have zero chance of preventing this from happening again.

We expected the faux outrage over the need for gun control laws that would have done nothing to prevent this tragedy. Democrats never miss an opportunity to exploit tragedy for their coveted gun control legislation. We are used to that. This case is far more dangerous because now they are focused on what they view as misinformation and the alleged tolerance of hate. This person was filled with hate, but he was not a right-wing supremist spurred on by irresponsible statements by Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson. If initial reports are accurate, he is more left-wing than right wing. I accidently watched the women of the view, for about 45 seconds, and it was enough for them to slam Mitch McConnell for criticizing racism. To these clowns, disagreeing with them is the ultimate form of racism. If only everyone agreed with them, everything would be great. We would all be singing “Imagine” by John Lennon and the world would live as one. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

Today we are seeing rampant racism on full display, only the people doing it are either hopelessly oblivious, or they just do not care. The current Vice President of the United States was chosen SOLELY because Biden needed a Black female. So far, she has exhibited zero capacity to do the job. The most recent nominee to the Supreme Court was also a Black female. There is nothing wrong with celebrating when someone from a disadvantaged minority shocks the world by wildly exceeding expectation. But there is an enormous difference between that and choosing someone from a position solely because of race or gender. This is actually easy to understand. Just change the words and say that the only people considered would be white and male. The outrage would, legitimately, reach the heavens.

I sometimes wonder if the people doing this realize that this is an insult. It is the ultimate insult to put someone in a position solely because of race and/or gender because it implies that using any other standard would result in a different decision. True racial and gender equality is not given, it is earned. We should have learned that from Jackie Robinson who broke the color line in MLB by proving that he had earned the right to be there. Tiger Woods did the same thing regarding professional golf, and he would have been insulted if he had been allowed to use the forward tees.

But more importantly, this approach always increases racism. When white men are told they are scum, not worthy of consideration at least some of them will respond in anger. When one argues that all the problems in the world were caused by white privilege, how exactly do they expect people to respond. Oh, the usual suspects will always bend the knee, but they are the exception, not the rule. This anger is not created by those who are pointing out the obvious, but by those who ignore it. There is a concerted effort to change the demographics of this country so that Democrats will win every election. There are many people who believe that our open borders and encouragement of illegal immigration is designed to replace the existing voting population with people guaranteed to vote for Democrats. That is not a far-right theory. It is increasingly obvious. If that is not the actual intent of these policies, it is absolutely the expected result of those policies.

Except Democrats missed something huge. The people hurt the most by an influx of illegal immigrants is not those people sitting in suburbs luxuriating in their white privilege. It is the people living in minority communities who are paying the highest price for this miscalculation. It is these people who are feeling the effects of the rampant increase in crime. It is these people most impacted by new, lower income people, taking their jobs. Those who believe in the American dream are not necessarily enthusiastic when they are pushed out of the way with little regard to the consequences for them. The result is that numerous polls show that Democrats are rapidly losing support among Black voters and Hispanic voters.

But the real problem is more fundamental. No strategy based on an assumption that is not true has any possibility of succeeding. No matter how much people try to spin things, the truth is always there. Ignore it to your peril. History has many examples of this, those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. For years yellow fever was a major cause of death. All the scientists of the day had numerous theories about what caused yellow fever, all of them wrong. Yellow fever struck in the summer when it was hot and humid. There were foul smells from rotting refuse and waste. One theory was that yellow fever was caused by a product of environmental factors, including something called miasma. They were all wrong. Mosquitos caused it. One specific mosquito, Aedes aegypti was the culprit.

Dr. Carlos Finlay, a doctor from CUBA, discovered this, but he was ignored by those who were totally convinced that miasma was the problem. It wasn’t until Dr. Walter Reed tested his theory by methods that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of test victims, including some army doctors, that the truth became impossible to ignore.

It should be obvious. Racism results in racism. When you discriminate against someone because of their race, the victims tend to assume that you will be unfair to them because of your race. There are oppressors and there are victims, but both view the world through racist lens. The only real solution is to level the playing field and judge people fairly based on performance and ability. To learn to judge people on the merits, not their race. Elevating someone to a position of power, because of their race, is racism no matter who benefits and who loses.

The good news is that while the cultured elite are struggling to figure this out, most Americans are not fooled. The more the liberal elite and their fawning supporters in the MSM continue to make arguments based on nonsense, the sooner they will be driven completely from power. The process has been accelerated by the insane decision to put people like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer in power. If everything else is functioning normally, most people just ignore politics. But the gross mismanagement and incompetence of the Biden administration and Democrats in general is increasingly impossible to ignore. It is impossible to ignore skyrocketing gas prices, higher taxes, higher crime, a tumbling economy and the possibility of critical food shortages. All of this is already fueling the fire. Ignoring reality and fueling the fires of racism only adds to the combustibility. Screaming, hollering and load violent protests are not actually a solution to anything. We are facing a long, sweltering summer, but long hot summers often result in abundant harvests in the fall. It will come sooner than you think, much sooner than they can even imagine.

TDM

It has been obvious for some time that unless something changes, Democrats are in big trouble during this midterm election cycle. It is tradition for the party of a newly elected president to take a bath during the midterms, that also happened to Donald Trump. But this is on a whole new level. Frankly, we are rapidly approaching the “too good to be true” scenario. But this time there is so much evidence supporting this projection that it would be really naïve to expect anything different. Strategists in both parties, who agree on nothing else, agree about this.

It sure looks like the liberal left leaked that Roe v Wade draft opinion in an act of desperation. One of the more serious character flaws of people on the left is that they assume anyone with half a brain must agree with them. They are absolutely incapable of understanding how much of the world thinks. Frankly, this reached has now reached the point of institutional insanity.

It is often said there are two sides to every issue, but that actually isn’t true. There are a lot of things where there actually is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil. There is love and there is hate. People who do not understand that live in a parallel universe. Just because they have convinced themselves of something that is not true does not actually make it true. It just makes them delusional.

Joe Biden literally said that the MAGA movement is the most dangerous in American History. That goes way beyond delusional. It is insane. However, it is incredibly close to the Hillary Clinton “basket of deplorables” description of Trump supporters. This is more evidence that Democrats have moved beyond trying to convince of us things that are not only untrue, but absurdly, to believing this themselves. No political movement, led by the blind who are categorically insane can long endure. The reality is nothing more or less than this. If Democrats really believe this, then they are hopelessly delusional bordering on insanity. If they don’t believe it, but say it anyway, they are irredeemably evil. Take your pick.

California Governor Newsom said that the pro-life movement is led by white men, because men can’t get pregnant. First, that is irresponsible for someone who pretends that one can choose one’s own gender without regard to the physical characteristics with which one was born. How dare he say that men can’t get pregnant. Why the liberal left is demanding that public schools put tampons in boy’s restrooms. Brilliant! Second, the strongest pro-life people I know are, gasp, women. Men tend to be more pro-choice, probably because of feeling a sense of guilt in the event they get someone pregnant. I would suspect everyone knows of a woman who was driven to Planned Parenthood by a boyfriend who was more than willing to fund an oh so convenient abortion. I can pretty much guarantee that Hunter Biden would have cherished such an opportunity.

That is what the liberal left flat out fails to understand. The days of the coat hanger abortion in a back alley are long gone. Instead, you can just come to California, where people like Gavin Newsome will happily provide whatever cash you need to fund your abortion. But something else has changed, like science. The more we learn about fetal development the more we realize the miracle of birth and the myth that this is just tissue, instead of a living human being, has been shredded by actual science. That is why the vast majority of people favor some restrictions on abortions and few people, other than liberal activists, try to pretend that abortion is somehow a good thing. One vocal idiot even said she had an abortion to benefit her unborn child. Seriously? How could you describe this as other than insane?

I predict Democrats will rue the day they decided to Roe, Roe, Roe, their boat. It won’t change anything about Joe Biden’s senility, our international embarrassment, skyrocketing inflation, disappearing food stores and gas too expensive to drive to work. Instead, Democrats expect to turn everything around on the false assumption that the only thing Americans really care about is the ability to abort their babies. Good luck with that. Not, actually the worse of luck with that. Roe, Roe, Roe, your boat.

TDM

Today is one of the saddest days in American History. Just when one thought the Democratic Party and the liberal left had reached rock bottom, they managed to dig deeper, much deeper. The irresponsible person who leaked the draft of the alleged Supreme Court decision deserves to be permanently disbarred. The damage done to the Supreme Court is beyond measure.

I once warned some friends who were leaders in the pro-life movement that they were making a huge mistake. I pointed out that they were so focused on making abortion illegal that they ignored the obvious. This gave the pro-abortion crowd a moral argument where none existed. It allowed them to argue that freedom of choice was more important than the sanctity of life. Unfortunately, I was right about that. That is exactly what happened.

I have had friends who chose to have abortions. I do not judge them. In some cases, these women faced unimaginable choices, such as a seriously deformed fetus or a child conceived as the result of rape. But it is vital to remember that abortion, even when justified, is always bad. Perhaps the equivalent is justifiable homicide. It is wrong to kill someone, life is always sacred. But sometimes circumstances make it unavoidable. We do, at times, live in a world where the only choice is the lesser of two evils.

The result, sadly, has been the false argument that the higher moral value was the legality of abortion rather than the reality of abortion. Abortion is always the ending of a human life and that was once acknowledge by the leaders in the “pro-choice” movement, who said “abortion should be safe, legal and rare.” But the reality was that the “pro-choice” movement made abortion anything but rare.

I have always felt that the “pro-choice” movement is the most racist movement in the history of the U.S. and possibly the world. Jesse Jackson was famously “pro-life” until he realized he could not be “pro-life” and a Democratic politician at the same time. I sometimes think that if Jesse Jackson had continued with his “pro-life” position he just might have been one of the most important Black political figures in our nation’s history. Martin Luther King never considered backing down on his core principles. Here is what Jackson said. Read it for yourself.:

“Abortion is genocide. Anything growing is living. If you got the thrill to set the baby in motion and you don’t have the will to protect it, you’re dishonest… You try to avoid reproducing sickness. You try to avoid reproducing deformities. But you don’t try to stop reproducing and procreating human life at its best. For who knows the cure for cancer won’t come out of the mind of some Black kid. Reverend Jesse Jackson, JET MAGAZINE, MAR 222, 1973; P. 15.

According to the Washington Examiner it is estimated that since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, abortion has killed an estimated 20 million Black babies.

Since Roe, abortion has killed more black babies than the entire black population of the U.S. in 1960 | Washington Examiner

“The tragic reality is that 79% of Planned Parenthood abortion facilities are located within walking distance of neighborhoods that have proportionately higher populations of black or Latina women. An analysis of census tract data clearly documents that this kingpin of the abortion industry targets women of color, selling them the illusion that they must choose between career advancement and the lives of their babies. Any doubt about this skewed impact on women of color would be dispelled if Planned Parenthood were to publish data on the proportion of its abortion clients who are minorities. Planned Parenthood pointedly declines to release this data”

This data is not disputed, it is ignored by the MSM and the Democratic Party.

Today the Black population of the United States is estimated to be about 46.9 million. If it were not for the abortion rate of Black babies, it could be higher than 70 million. Northing has or could be done that would cause more harm to those who argue that Black people deserve a stronger political voice. Yet Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman appointed to the Supreme Court, has the support of NARAL Pro-Choice America and she ruled against the Trump administration when it tried to defund Planned Parenthood. President Biden promised to nominate a justice who believes in the “right” to abort an unborn child. It is one of the few promises he kept.

I believe the draft of this decision was leaked for two reasons. One was to try and intimidate the Supreme Court into changing its mind. I suspect, I pray, that effort will fail. The other is to energize the liberal left base in the upcoming mid-term election, to avoid an unprecedented wipe-out of Democrats in congress. This would be beyond desperate and an admission that they are losing every other argument. I hope and pray they lose this one too.

When this movement has morphed into a situation where in California, they are proposing that killing a newborn child within the first 28 days cannot be prosecuted, it is impossible to remain obvious to the reality of the modern-day pro-choice movement. While perhaps, at one time, they really did believe that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” they clearly would scoff at that argument today. No one should be confused regarding the goals of the “so-called” leaders of this movement.

I strongly believe the pro-life movement made a major mistake by allowing this to be an argument about what is and is not legal. Instead, they should have said it is not about what is legal, it is about what is right and what is wrong. If they had done that, I believe it would have saved a lot of lives. Now, we may be facing the ultimate moral dilemma in this country. If we allow the Democratic Party to stay in power by making promises that are morally indefensible, we deserve our fate.

TDM