The working people and the underdogs

© 2019 Jim Spence -  Recently the Wall Street Journal ran a piece suggesting Democrat voters didn’t care about the ideology of their presidential candidate, they just wanted a nominee who could win.
That could be a problem for America, given the “collective” ideologies of the field.
Sometimes it is important to take some time to wade through all the bovine excrement pumped out by the “news media” regarding the motives of the candidates. Let’s understand who provides Democrats with incentives to shape policies.
For my entire adult life, Democrats have positioned themselves as the party of the working people and the underdogs. It is clear this how they want to be perceived. However, perception is one thing, and reality is often another. What about the reality of Democratic fundraising?
The 2016 campaign of Hillary Clinton was a case in point for why people should never believe that the Democrats associate with and favor the underdogs and working-class people. Just look at how Hillary Clinton amassed so much money with her fundraising. You need look no farther than the most powerful segments of American society to understand who buttered her bread.
The numbers tell a story that suggests the news media is chock full of bald-faced liars and partisan advocates. They spent an inordinate amount of time and resources disguising who gave her money while painting Trump as beholden to the rich and famous.
According to Kevin Williamson at National Review, Banker’s campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton simply dwarfed those given to Trump in 2016. The margin was a factor of 7 to 1 favoring Clinton. Consider the elite stock brokerage firms, companies representing the uber-wealthy such as Goldman Sachs. Clinton’s campaign receipts from Goldman Sachs outnumbered Trump’s campaign coffer receipts by a factor of 70 to 1.
How about Ivy league school affiliated donors? The Ivy League is clearly the home of the firmly entrenched ruling elite in America. For Harvard affiliates, Hillary Clinton’s advantage in fundraising over Donald Trump was a whopping 200 to 1.
Let’s turn to Silicon Valley in California where high-tech billionaires live and where they run enormously powerful and profitable companies. Money coming from Facebook executives and employees favored Clinton by a ratio of 100 to 1. At Apple, the campaign contribution money totals favored Clinton by a factor of 135 to 1.
Are we beginning to see a pattern here? There is much more. Google contributions favored Clinton by a ratio of 76 to 1.
That is fine say the Democrats. It is big oil we have to watch out for, because you know, the oil companies are destroying the planet. Exxon-Mobil donations favored Clinton by a ratio of 4 to 1.
It goes on an on. How about big retail? Walmart executives and employees favored Clinton by a factor of 3 to 1. Mrs. Clinton led Trump by a ratio of 20 to 1 among lawyers and law firms She beat him in the all-powerful film and television business by a ratio of 4-1. How about health care? She won by a ratio of 3 to 1 among those in working in the health care business.
Can we summarize using the All the Presidents Men model of simply following the money? Clinton was, by an overwhelming margin the darling candidate of large money center stock brokerage houses, Silicon Valley corporate giants, gigantic Hollywood film makers, Ivy League schools, lawyers, and even real-estate developers. Add in overwhelming support from over-compensated do-nothing bureaucrats holding government jobs of dubious purposes and you get the picture.
So enough about who represents the working-class folks and the underdogs. Not one group mentioned above falls into that category. The big lie in America is that Democrats don’t represent the entrenched political power structure of the United States. The truth is Donald Trump is the only “outsider” in my lifetime to ever win the presidency. In doing so, he has attracted the wrath of those who are mad is hell he is drowning out their voices with his big mouth.

The working people and the underdogs

Efforts at election nullification lead to civil wars

© 2019 Jim Spence -  History buffs notice patterns in national behaviors. On these commentary pages I have suggested the United States has been inching closer to a second Civil War. On other sites there have been red flags raised.
At the heart of the rebellion is the idea of nullification. The slave holding south, saw the presidential election of 1860 as a life and death situation where they lost. It now seems that these same American Democrats, 159 years later, have decided that their loss to Trump in 2016, like their loss to Abe Lincoln, should simply be nullified.
Make no mistake, Democrats have been talking nullification (impeachment) since before Trump’s inauguration. And they have trotted out one absurd accusation after another in their relentless effort to nullify the results of the 2016 election. It has been an impeachment effort in search of a crime ever since.
Questions arise. What is it that Democrats actually want? Why do they hate Trump in particular? And why do they hate Trump voters in general? They do these things for many reasons. Below is a short list.
Democrats have an open border obsession. They support unlimited illegal immigration. And despite the fact that all countries have borders, Democrats demonize men and women who want immigration laws enforced. Anyone who doesn’t want to end national borders is a racist. Anyone opposed to offering U.S. citizen benefits to all illegal aliens, benefits that are paid for by taxpayers, is branded as a racist by Democrats.
Democrats have an anti-free market-capitalism obsession too. They bash employers every day and they can’t keep from insinuating that anyone in business is an oppressor who exploits all others for personal gain.
Democrats want all Americans to forget that the three worst butchers in human history were all socialists (Hitler’s National Socialism, Stalin’s Soviet Socialist Republic, and Mao’s socialist China). Democrats want to make the U.S. into a socialist country instead of being a free nation.
Democrats want to be allowed to never place blame for poor human decision-making where it belongs. They blame crime on everything except criminals. They blame guns instead of bad people for firearm violence. Democrats also have an obsession with disarming law-abiding civilians. They seem unconcerned that denying the 2nd Amendment will make it easier for a dictatorship to take hold. They ignore the fact that it was the well-armed militia in the original 13 American colonies that won the American Revolution.
Amazingly, Democrats are developing an anti-Semitic obsession. They have sent and defended radical Jew-hating women to Congress. These women make brazenly anti-Jewish statements on the House floor and are defended by the Democrat leadership. Democrats still seem oblivious to Islam's deep ties to Nazis Germany during World War II. Those anti-Jewish ties remain strong to this day.
It is also simply bizarre that Democrats want Americans to abandon the fundamental principles of civil liberty. They openly support radical anti-free speech stances on college campuses all over the nation.
Democrats use fossil fuels while demonizing the energy industry. They are mindful of TV preachers who have sex with fast women in limousines after delivering sermons on chastity.
Democrats constantly promote ignorance of economics. They have corrupted public education to indoctrinate students to embrace Marxism.
Democrats have also perverted our health care system. Despite horror stories within the V.A. system, Democrats want to engineer a government takeover of all healthcare services. The long lines and long waits to see physicians seem sure to grow even longer and longer if America votes for the Democratic presidential candidate.
The 2020 election of course, will follow the sham process of trying to pin the rumor on the White House. These days Democrats are changing the vocabulary of our nation. A partisan, political hack, and scam artist is now known as a, “whistle blower.”
The approaching civil war summary is simple. Those who like people who sign paychecks, understand the socialist legacy of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, believe in the U.S. Constitution, want basic freedoms preserved, want borders protected, respect the outcomes of elections, and aren't hypocrites about energy consumption, will be fighting on the other side of Democrats who are opposed to all these things.

Efforts at election nullification lead to civil wars

Bad predictions don't seem to matter

© 2019 Jim Spence - Lately the Weather Channel has been trying to sway the 2020 presidential election. Most people turn the Weather Channel on to, you know, check the weather forecasts. However, it is clear that the producers at the Weather Channel, which is not surprisingly owned by NBC, seem compelled to blow smoke for Democrats. This explains why one Democrat presidential hopeful after another, is being filmed wringing their hands, as they pretend to discuss the horrific consequences of climate change.
Just this weekend, Bernie Sanders was seen talking about how awful it is going to be….when the coastal regions of the U.S. are all under water. Of course, the trouble with this feigned Sanders' fear, is the coasts were supposed to ALREADY BE UNDER WATER. This is based on countless predictions made by radical environmentalists decades ago, as they tried to kill the energy industry. Yes, predictions of rising sea levels have been around for more than three decades with catastrophes predicted by the year 2005.
Now.....in case you haven’t noticed, all of the doomsday predictions on rising sea levels, the total disappearance of snow, etc. haven’t quite come to pass. However, with the help of their buddies in the media, Democrats keep moving the goal posts on climate change catastrophe predictions, allowing as to how predictors just need a few more decades to be right. In the meantime, we taxpayers can go along with the spending trillions of dollars to prevent what has yet to happen, despite the fact we didn’t spend what they wanted us to spend decades ago, before they turned out to be wrong…..dead wrong.
Today on the CNN weather page you can read this: “Don your jackets and mittens, East Coasters. You're going to need them. The next five to seven days won't just be cold -- they'll be record-breaking. That's according to data from the National Weather Service, which predicts more than 300 record cold temperatures could be tied or set from Monday to Wednesday.”
Here's a news flash. Record cold temps don't cause rising sea levels, they make more ice. And you don’t get record-breaking cold temperatures year after year, if the globe is truly warming.
Let’s get something straight here. The term “climate change” is meaningless. Nobody can define what climate change is. The closest definition of climate change is that it is vague enough to become a political excuse to encourage voters to put more power in the hands of an already bloated and over-reaching federal government. Climate change con artists have yet to get one single catastrophe prediction right. And yet these bogus predictions drive people to take dubious actions.
Speaking of lousy predictions, has anyone noticed that this impeachment thing is simply the latest in a long line of Get Trump scams Democrats have been running on us since the morning after Hillary’s political self-destruction reached the ultimate pinnacle? Democrat henchman Adam Schiff has been getting caught in more lies than Bill Clinton did after toiling with Monica Lewinsky. Nothing Schiff "predicts" ever comes to pass. This entire impeachment scam, which is being foisted on the American public with the help of an obsessed anti-Trump news media, is paid for with taxpayer money. Schiff should quit his job in Congress and become a producer at the Weather Channel.
There is actually one story out there that truly takes the cake. It is the story of how ABC News buried the horrific pedophile scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein. Before Epstein "committed suicide" like so many Clinton cronies tend to do, he was caught engaging in criminal behavior that was likely to snare Bill Clinton among others. Watch this video of ABC anchor Amy Robach. In this piece, Robach is caught on tape talking to her producer about how she had the Epstein story complete with corroboration. She says she had it three years ago. What happened? The big shots at ABC News, who have cocktails with prominent Democrats frequently, simply refused to run her story. It sounds like Robach should commiserate over a glass of cabernet savignon with former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who was treated the same way while at CBS.
Still, and amazingly, the news media continues to be shocked at how much it is distrusted by Americans. Tough to figure that one out isn’t it? Make a few hundred thousand asinine predictions and you get branded as scam artists.

Bad predictions don't seem to matter

Its hard to win if you behave like a loser

© 2019 Jim Spence - There’s an old saying in politics. If your election pitch is based on confiscating money or property that belongs to Peter, so you can give it to Paul in exchange for his vote…..you can pretty much count on Paul’s support.

Unfortunately, this becomes a serious problem once it pays nearly as well to sit back with your hand out like Paul, versus getting out and hustling like Peter. Logic tells us most people will simply behave much more like Paul and wait for politicians to take more of Peter’s earnings away from him. In sports, we call this, a Loser’s Mentality. Winners make things happen. Losers let things happen and blame their lack of success on everyone and everything except THEMSELVES.

We can see the LOSERS mentality increasing its grip on America these days. We see it with participation trophies instead of first, second, and third place trophies in athletic competitions. More alarmingly, we see tens of millions of bogus diplomas awarded to high school students all over the nation. Many schools pretend students who are essentially illiterate in the areas of reading, math, and science, have accomplished something when they haven't. We see this first hand on college transcripts, with horrific grade inflation. Academic achievement is often simply an illusion at universities, making it more difficult to determine which graduates actually have skills and work ethic.

Consider America’s dilemma in 2020. The GOP choice will be Donald Trump, who most rational people must concede, is off a bit. However, this being said, Trump has actually kept more promises than any other purportedly pro-competition and pro-higher living standards president....since Reagan.

The alternative to Trump, will most certainly be a Democrat who will continue to sneer at successful people and promise to confiscate the fruits of their production. The Democrat sales pitch is simple. They are coming after what Peter earns, so they can hand it to Paul. Success is to be scorned at.

A more intelligent approach would be to encourage people to make an effort to know more about billionaires than they do right now. I am reminded of the great book, Titan by Ron Chernow. Chernow documented John D. Rockefeller’s accomplishments, including the fact that he donated about 98% of all his wealth to charities. Rockefeller didn’t just give his money away, he became very scientific about his philanthropy, and gave only to “productive charities.” Rockefeller's gifting methods are well-documented in another book, The Circuit Riders, by Gerald Jonas.

Taking from Peter to give to Paul is not a new strategy. Politicians called for the confiscation of Rockefeller’s wealth by the state back in his day, even though Rockefeller had a better plan to make sure his hard-earned money did not make its way into the hands of politicians and crony government employees. It should come as no surprise that Warren Buffett also plans to funnel his vast estate to charities, instead of seeing the state's army of self-serving bureaucrats take it and squander it. Smart people hate waste. Billionaires hate waste. We should all hate waste. It is much easier to look the other way on waste....when someone else's money is being wasted.

An important question needs to be asked of all American adults. Why would anyone want to vote for any politician who encourages them to act like losers?

A quick survey of the competitive landscape in athletics suggests winners are required to exhibit a strong commitment, maximum effort, and a high level of personal discipline. Conversely, losers maintain much lower levels of expectations of themselves and others, especially in the areas of commitment, effort, and personal discipline.

Make no mistake, lowering the performance bar is precisely the approach that the candidates in the Democratic field are trying to sell. They don't suggest ways for us to get better. Instead, they sell mediocrity as if it is something to aspire to. They blame what amounts to personal failures on the fairest system on the planet. They encourage their fellow citizens to be particularly jealous of people who keep their commitments, make maximum effort, and exhibit strong personal discipline.

So here we are as 2019 winds down. Due to the loser’s mentality firmly embedded in public education, the bashing of Peter is considered a "safe" routine during Democrat "debates." 

Sadly, Democrats suggest that everyone should simply act like Paul. This may be a winning political strategy in America these days, but just as it is in athletics, acting like a handout-seeking Paul is a metaphor for the Loser’s approach to life.

Again, we should be asking everyone: Why is America thinking about embracing the attitudes losers embrace, when they could simply aspire to be the best they can be, instead? It makes no sense, unless selling dead-end shortcuts is your scam.

Its hard to win if you behave like a loser

Stay out of my uterus! - Exploring what this phrase actually means

© 2019 Jim Spence -  “Stay out of my uterus!”
It is a catchy phrase that actually seems quite libertarian on the surface. Recently, I heard this phrase used. Foolishly, I decided to explore what was meant by the declaration, “Stay out of my uterus.”
The young lady who uttered the phrase offered a seemingly simple explanation. Her explanation began with a very coherent defense of birth control rights. With no interest in re-litigating Roe vs. Wade, I decided to get right to the heart of the matter and see how far she might go in defending limitless abortion rights.
"When should abortion not be allowed?" I asked. "When is it too late?"
At first, she tossed out the third trimester as a logical boundary. I nodded and repeated her suggestion that there should be no abortions allowed after the six months of pregnancy. If she had agreed with the limit she set, it could have ended the discussion. It didn't.
Instead, there was a sudden serious hesitation. It seemed like some sort of a trap had been set for her.
She backtracked and allowed that under certain circumstances, it was acceptable to abort a baby after six months.
When she had finally finished hemming and hawing, I again tried to get to the crux of the matter. I asked her if she had ever heard of Kermit Gosnell. She hadn’t. It was not surprising she had not heard of him. The media has many filters in place to screen out anything that hurts their narrative preference on all abortions. The Kermit Gosnell case was censored away from the typical spoon-fed public view, by the national mainstream media, simply because the facts of the case were so sobering. The acts of Gosnell could make any reasonable person engage in a serious reconsideration of their demand that there be zero limitations on abortion.
Since she had never heard of him, I explained that Gosnell was a Philadelphia abortionist who was currently in prison for life without parole for the murder of infants who were actually born alive. At first, she recoiled in horror at the idea that anyone would kill babies. She agreed that if Gosnell broke the law, he deserved to go to prison.
I reminded her that in most late-term abortions, the babies’ skulls are crushed with forceps by the abortionists. Horrifically, the testimony in the Gosnell trial revealed that when his baby targets were not killed in the womb or in the birth canal via skull crushing, Gosnell simply snuffed out their lives with surgical scissors. To kill them once and for all, he slashed their spinal cords. Yes, Gosnell did these things while the babies were alive on the abortion table. When I explained these facts to her, she definitely agreed Gosnell belonged in jail.
Then came the tricky part. I advised her that there were several Democrat-dominated states including New York, that had recently passed laws that essentially made what Gosnell did a few years ago, legal today.
“How do you feel about those people who passed those laws?” I asked.
She quickly became uncomfortable. She knew she had to choose between legal and moral, so after some hesitation she surmised the following: “If the voters elected those people legally, and they passed those laws legally, then.......it is legal because it is the law,” she said.
Astonished, I asked her how she felt about the morality of the law, not the legality.
She realized at this point that those Democrats who would go so far in defending her uterus rights as to support infanticide, were now going to be required to be branded as "immoral." She simply couldn’t make herself do it.
Intellectually she was trapped, so she struck out at me, and inferred that I was making her out to be insensitive and evil.
In a feeble attempt to find common ground, I reminded her of her original suggestion regarding a third trimester limit, and asked her to simply say if not after the second trimester, to say at what point that she thought that it was simply too late for an abortion procedure, because of the life and health of the baby.
She just stared at me.
I tried to help her with suggestions of various stages of the baby's development. Would it be fair enough to ban these procedures after six months? Her answer was, "Nope." How about after seven months? "Nope," she repeated. How about after eight months?.....Nope.
She had had enough. In an effort to shut me up, she said that even at the end of the ninth month, it was OK to abort a baby.
And with that, the seemingly libertarian concept of saying, “Stay out of my uterus,” had morphed into the idea that all abortions should be legal, even after the delivery. Essentially, if the baby had survived all efforts to kill it, in states where the Democrats passed laws saying it was legal to kill it, abortionists could kill it if the mother had demanded it be killed. If a baby made it to the abortion table and out of the womb as they sometimes do, just kill it then and there. But call it a "legal abortion," instead of an illegal murder.
Shocked that this discussion would end with murder being advocated, I crassly suggested that people who thought like her should be rounded up and shot with AK-47’s.
Oddly, it was at this point, that my feigned advocacy of murder, simply to make the point, finally struck home. Completely missing the irony of such an absurd statement, especially within the context of our discussion of baby killing, she was deeply offended by the AK-47 crack, and she stomped off. She was clearly furious at my feigned views on murder, while still content with her actual views on murder.
As I contemplated this exchange, I was reminded of my reading of the words of William Wilberforce. Back in England in 1791, after he submitted mountains of factual testimony regarding the human horrors of the slave trade, and then argued for an end to legalized slavery. He said:
“You may choose to look the other way," he said, "But you can never say again that you did not know.”
The vast majority of self-described progressive thinkers truly understand the fundamental nature of infanticide. Incredibly, when confronted with alarming facts and truths, they find it more comforting to simply look the other way on the horrors of infanticide. The term “Stay out of my uterus” seems to actually mean......"If Democrats pass laws making it legal to deliberately kill babies in the birth canal or on the abortion table, it is justifiable." Even uterine sympathy goes straight out the window. Half of all babies killed in late-term and post-birth abortions are female. The "stay out of my uterus" argument can be reduced even further. Only "the demands" of the larger persons on the late-term abortion table are are to be honored, despite the fact that 1/2 those being killed are merely smaller human beings. They may have a uterus, but they have no rights.
Most of this is just as I suspected. It never had anything to do with protecting the uterus.

Stay out of my uterus! - Exploring what this phrase actually means

Limited Government - Abandon at your own risk

© 2019 Jim Spence - Limited government means different things to different people. Mostly it has been a philosophical pillar that provided the foundation of the battle cry of Republicans. We are learning that GOP battle cries are all about “talk,” and talk is cheap. With each passing year the Republicans talk more and do less. The GOP now pretends it is for limited government. It is a con.

Americans need to take a long look around. The opposite of enjoying the freedoms associated with limited government, is what we have right now. In 2019, the federal, state, county, and even Las Cruces city government have stretched so far in their insatiable needs for control, these entities in one way or another are involved in every aspect of our lives. And because of the enormous amount of power and control all forms of government have, national elections have become multi-billion-dollar contests to determine who will preside over virtually every decision every American makes about every facet of their lives.

Having completely lost sight of the incredible freedoms that come with limited government, Americans are now seeing that there is no such thing as an election season anymore. Again, because there is so much money, power, and control at stake, elections and the re-litigating of elections is NON-STOP.

Recall the election of George W. Bush in 2000 to his first term. On election night Democrat Al Gore actually called Bush to congratulate him on his victory. The call was placed before Gore’s scheming lawyers stepped in and convinced Gore to retract his concession and sue over his devastating loss in Florida. The Democrat’s perversion regarding accepting the election result did not stop there. Before they were done, Gore’s lawyers tried their best to have overseas military ballots invalidated in the Florida recount. Why would they do something so atrocious? If there is one thing all Democrat lawyers have demonstrated about themselves, it is that they know military votes are most surely not going to their candidates. The military trains people to fight for freedom, not destroy it.

Politics has always been a filthy business. Accordingly, nobody in their right mind would choose to endure the character assassination that comes to anyone who announces themselves as candidates for national office. In fact, even statewide office candidates draw the kinds of nakedly false accusations that used to be relegated to the hospitals for the mentally ill.

Take a step back and consider the improbable election of Donald Trump. So horrific was the Democrat’s candidate that hopelessly flawed candidate Trump, actually won. And yet even prior to Trump’s inauguration, the Democrats decided to launch a non-stop effort to undo what they could not get done at the ballot box. Amazingly, a still free but haplessly partisan press has been complicit in efforts to smear Trump non-stop. Impeachment has been the stated goal since November of 2016. And ever since, the Democrats have been desperately searching for a charge that will stick. The latest Ukrainian accusation is but another SHOT the Democrats have fired.

The pattern of character assassination has become utterly disgusting. It becomes the new rule of engagement in political war. Democrats don’t seem to understand that every president will be subject to the types of attacks they think are legitimate. This will continue to drive down the quality of candidates we get to choose from.

The patterns are in place and will continue to get worse for as long as Americans vote to surrender their freedoms and give more power to national, state, county, and city governments. Those of us who have observed the patterns of behavior in Democrats are hardly surprised by all of this. What has become increasingly surprising is the behavior of high-ranking GOP officials, who seem to have suspended every principle regarding limited government they ever claimed to hold dear.
What a pity that there is nobody left to keep totalitarianism at bay.

Limited Government - Abandon at your own risk

"The Trump Lesson"

© 2019 Jim Spence - Michael Swickard sent an email to me a few days ago asking what “The Trump Lesson” was.

It is a great question. My conclusions were somewhat paradoxical. It is important to take a few looks around. There are many seemingly conservative men and women who seem to buckle and surrender their principles once they get to Washington. It is almost like a law of physics the way it happens. Note there are a large number of GOP House and Senate members who are not going to stand for re-election in 2020. It is my belief that many are walking away simply because they cannot bear to endorse or be endorsed by Trump. And this is true despite the sound pro-business, pro-growth, pro-minority employment, policies Trump has deployed.

Still there are many GOP House members and Senators who simply cannot get behind good policies, because running a successful personal political franchise operation is all about style points and superficial appearances.

Excluding certain circles, Trump is clearly a bad messenger.......with a great message. However, I stand by my opinion that anyone could have beaten Hillary in 2016. She was that bad.

Most certainly those who try to be civil, but stick to intellectually honest pro-growth views, have little or no influence on the American political scene anymore. A big part of the decline of influence by those who understand how jobs are created, where wealth comes from and how limited government is in its ability to solve problems, is the horrible way that journalism has died and been replaced by naked advocacy. 

Journalism students graduate and go to work at places where facts no longer matter. Most journalists have already been indoctrinated to nakedly support far-left big government socialism before they ever cash their first paycheck.

The newspapers and television stations are all dying slowly. And because nobody working in journalism makes much money except a handful of stars at the "top," the only reason most people work in journalism these days, is because they like having the power to publish a steady drumbeat of anti-business “narratives” that attempt to influence voters to vote socialist. Naturally, these types find articulate conservatives to be very dangerous, which explains why you almost never hear from pro-growth types in the news media.

Consider the treatment of top-notch reporter Sharyl Attkinson by CBS (and the Obama government). Her story serves as a model for just how far journalism has fallen and how low media outlets like CBS have sunk.

And of course, it is very sad that the symptom of all of these sham actions by faux journalists is Trump. Unlike Reagan, Trump is a very poor messenger for sound public policies. Personally, I also find Trump to be detestable, mainly because there is not a drop of loyalty in Trump’s psyche. He praises and appoints people one day, and bad mouths them the next. He reminds me of basketball coach Bob Knight. He demands respect but offers none. Still, he governs well enough for me.

Trump’s efforts to improve public policy are by FAR the best since Reagan. And Trump has done more for the working poor than any president in recent memory. Wages are soaring thanks to his policies. The Bushes were part of the problem from a policy standpoint. Trump is at least trying to clean up the cesspool around him.

Because it is NOT easy to overcome the powerful media filter, sound and logical ideas seem to get completely lost in a sea of political dialogue dysfunction. Most people have tuned out politics and it is pretty easy to understand why.

In the end, I continue to think the evolution of American politics continues to be driven by toxic journalism, which has essentially declined into the abyss of advocacy. The rising popularity of Elizabeth Warren is a case in point. If this woman is elected, and she enacts 20% of the economic policies she endorses, she will destroy America’s vibrant economy for at least a generation. Sadly, very few Americans understand this anymore.

"The Trump Lesson"

Mythological "Renewables"

© 2019 Jim Spence - So many times, in this space, we speak of the Democrat’s beliefs/assertions that simply are false. Let’s consider the insistence by all those Democratic Party presidential candidates, save but a couple who are polling at zero percent, that the U.S. will simply STOP using oil and gas and power everything with wind and solar farms (combined with a massive increase in the use of batteries) IF they are elected.

These assertions are preposterous for so many reasons. Let’s set aside the crippling costs of such a sweeping re-tooling of the economy, which would be both massive and ongoing. These proposals would drive living standards around the world right through the floor.

What is still never discussed by Democrats or most Republicans, is the simple fact that abandoning oil and gas to use wind and solar, would require an ASTRONOMICAL expansion in mining activities. Not only would the volume of mining activities be required to explode, these activities themselves would produce unimaginable quantities of waste.

Let’s think about this. The idea of “renewable energy” is actually a pipe dream (no pun intended). What Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders never tell anyone, perhaps because it never comes up at their Kool-Aid parties, is that wind and solar machines, and the batteries required to store what energy these machines produce, come from………NON-RENEWABLE materials themselves. Duh!

Accordingly, this preposterous energy revolution which is being pitched by almost all U.S. Democrats, will result in the need for the disposal of astonishing amounts of plastic waste. Even with government subsidized wind and solar equipment, we can already expect more and more of this equipment to decommissioned in the years ahead. This alone will generate countless tons of waste. For every electric-car battery manufactured, mining companies will have to process and transport more than 500,000 pounds of raw materials. We are talking about TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS of tons of the earth being disturbed. And this will have to occur somewhere on the planet. This is of course, the same planet these lunatic greenies claim they want to save.

Of course, there are alternate paths. We can walk everywhere. We can start raising horses again and try to breed the flatulence propensity out of the species. Or, how about this? We can simply go on disturbing about ten percent of the total tonnage needed for one car battery and get the same number of vehicle-miles/units of energy.

Relatively tiny gas-fired turbines produce energy efficiently. On the other hand, a wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic to make. And of course wind turbines kill endangered bird species when the blades hit them as they fly too close to these monster-sized units.

Solar power equipment requires even more concrete, more steel, and more glass than wind generators.

There are many metals required for this mythological green conversion Democrats pitch, including silver, iridium, cobalt, and lithium.

The points here are simple.

1. The science behind man-caused global warming theories is very dubious, which is why Democrats changed their label to climate change.
2. Even if you swallow the man-caused global warming junk science they offer, the electricity that comes from wind or solar machines is going to require far more raw materials, waste, landfills, and environmental damage as fossil fuels.

The bottom line is just as a Dutch government-sponsored study concluded after considering all the facts. Exponential growth in renewable energy production capacity around the world is simply not possible with present-day technologies and annual metal production.

Sometimes it is hard to tell what actually motivates Democratic Party candidates to call for such dumb policies. But it is not hard to see that the general population has been sufficiently anesthetized to swallow just about any bone-headed scheme they trot out.

Mythological "Renewables"

El Paso and Dayton every week

© 2019 Jim Spence - The power of the media should never be underestimated. When news broke of the shootings in El Paso Saturday, my wife read some of the breaking details from the app on her phone. We both shook our heads and grieved for the families involved. Later that day we heard the news that our sister-in-law’s own sister was in the check out line at the Wal-Mart when shots rang out. Fortunately for our family, she left the store safely. And yes, she is Hispanic.

After some time passed, I went back to my sports programming. I record the golf tournaments on the weekends and watch them on a delayed basis. When I turned on the recording of the golf tournament, the CBS local affiliate in El Paso preempted the golf to broadcast news of the horrific events.

Of course, the national news media was all over the shooting incident with wall-to-wall coverage too. Not long after these sorts of tragedies take place, the politicians are brought on the air to try to score political points. As soon as it became clear that El Paso police were dealing with a sick racist scum ball with a vendetta against Hispanics, the acrimony against the GOP was heightened. This was followed by calls for more power to go into the hands of government. Of course, the solution to every problem for Democrats is to give more power to the state and of course, to end GOP influence on government policies.

This all seems so sad. The horrific nature of these killings is just awful, and it seems almost sanctimonious to wade in. But the hypocrisy of what the news media tends to emphasize these days needs to be scrutinized. The loss of life in El Paso was horrific Saturday. And nothing that anyone does or says is going hasten the healing of the families affected.

However, we need make our national news media outlets stay true to their supposed concern about the loss of life. El Paso is a pretty large city, but it has been a pretty safe city. Things don’t happen in El Paso like this very often. In fact, I can never remember anything like this happening in the city that is just forty miles south of our home.

Let’s consider how the media handles the greatest unreported scandal in U.S. history. In Chicago over this very same weekend, as was the nightmare in El Paso, more than 50 people were shot with six people killed. The number of shooting victims in Chicago in 2019 is close to 1,700 and the dead body count is close to 400. And the vast majority of the victims are black. In my place of birth, Baltimore, Maryland the city has a per capital murder rate that makes Chicago’s seem tame. So far in Baltimore in 2019, the murder count is 199. Again, the vast majority of these victims are black as are the murderers.

Let us all hope and pray that nothing like this ever happens in El Paso again. But sadly, there seems to be no hope for Chicago, Baltimore, or dozens of other American cities where local gun crime is a way of life. Where are the news reports? Where are the documentaries? Where are the TV specials?

The cynical side of me thinks that what amounts to a never-ending El Paso and Dayton never gets any coverage because these cities have been firmly under the political control of Democrats for decades. Also, Chicago and Baltimore already have the toughest gun control laws in the nation.

What is the media interested in if it is not interested in reporting on murders in these cities that dwarf what happened this weekend? Is it simply interested in helping Democrats acquire more power for the state and federal governments? Is it simply in damaging the GOP every time there is a mass shooting instead of fifty individual shootings?

Know this. Chicago and Baltimore are and have been KILLING ZONES every single weekend for decades, not just once in a lifetime. Where is the mounting concern? Instead it seems diminished. Where are the calls for solutions? Where is the accountability? Does anyone care about all of these shooting victims when there is no way Democrats can play the race card and get a gotcha on the other side?

Shooting victims in Baltimore and Chicago are human beings. They all have families. Many are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. These THOUSANDS of victims should not be ignored because they are of no economic value to the news media or the politicians who think giving more power to the state is the solution to every problem.

Here’s a news flash THAT WON'T BE REPORTED…..next weekend there will be the equivalent of another El Paso and Dayton in Chicago and Baltimore.

Does anyone care? Not the media. It seems obvious that with journalists and politicians, in areas where strict gun laws are on the books, astonishing levels of black-on-black crime is not newsworthy.

El Paso and Dayton every week

Doing real soul searching after a heart-breaking tragedy

© 2019 Jim Spence - The blame game began before most of the victims in El Paso had even been transferred to the trauma units at local hospitals. Donald Trump was blaming video games and a desensitized culture of violence in America. And Democrats tried to make the point that the president has inflamed the violent tendencies of those who agree with him by using harsh words and images about the reasons for controlling borders.

It seems to be a good time for reflection. Everyone should read the pair of quotes below made by the president and see if we can finally all agree that these are pretty darned inflammatory, anti-Hispanic, statements that have to be considered likely to trigger violent behaviors by unstable people:

“All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.”

“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”

Those attempting to mount a defense of the points the president seemed to be trying to make with these statements, is the fact that polls suggest most people agree with him.

Let's take a step back. It is true that most Americans are intolerant towards those types who take cuts in long lines. In fact, when this happens on highways, and is completely unrelated to illegal immigration, it can lead to violence via road rage.

Then there is of course, the tens of thousands of people who actually enter this country illegally, and once they elude the Border Patrol, they commit crimes. There have been many well publicized instances of these circumstances that can also inflame attitudes. And of course, there is no question illegal immigration imposes incredible stresses on taxpayers through unchecked demand for government services. This too can create resentment and anger.

Still, the violence in El Paso over the weekend has brought tremendous scrutiny to the inflammatory things the president has said about illegal immigrants. Is he at least partially to blame for saying these things about illegal immigrants?

There is one final piece to this puzzle to consider, as the politicians in America on both sides of the aisle look to pin the blame on the other side.

The president’s remarks are direct quotes. The first statement was made by Bill Clinton on January 24, 1995. Ten years later the second statement was made by Barack Obama on December 15, 2005.

It would seem that one man’s statement on border policy is another man’s racist, mass murder-inciting rant. It also seems clear that being guilty of racism is tied to the question of "who" is trying to take advantage of a heart-breaking tragedy so he or she can score some political points.

Joe Biden was certainly trying to score points on the tragedies over the weekend when he expressed agony for the people in "Houston and Michigan." Way to go Joe.

Doing real soul searching after a heart-breaking tragedy