Tag Archives: Viet Nam

Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Immigration, Politics 2023, Responsibility

BEING A LONG SHORTLY – 4

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How we deal with national problems need not, in all cases, be nationally.  A large fraction of our national weakness has resulted from the least-efficient mechanism in the country – and the most expensive – the federal Government in its thousands of permutations, assuming responsibility for local and intensely personal problems and discomforts.  These would include things like food, education, employment, housing, and sexuality… not to mention the nature of household appliances and pronouns.  We are becoming weaker as a people and weaker individually, as we wait for unrelated bureaucrats and disingenuous politicians to make us comfortable.  Only in the past 30 years, or so, have we begun to recognize that every bit of comfort has come at a loss of freedom.  Let’s move forward.

IMMIGRATION

Every nation must deal with immigration.  It’s an outgrowth of the “greener-grass” syndrome.  People in many countries live in economic and political systems that are pretty crappy.  Often there isn’t enough food or the government is mean to people.  Many of those countries are led by dictators or communists of various shades of red, leaving the residents not very happy.  Eventually some of those people do what it takes to move to some other country where the political and economic “grass” is greener… or prettier… or less crowded.  All countries, including those that people leave, have laws – or fences – to control entry, which means not crossing their border until or unless the new country actually thinks it might be good to let the foreigner across that border.  Every country does this: controls and guards its border, mainly because one never knows when a foreigner might try to steal from the new country or from its people or, worse, try to do harm to the new country or to its people.

So, every country on Earth controls its borders, umm… except for one: Ours, the U. S. of A.  Interestingly, ours is one of the freest and the most blessed with food and blessed with the idiocy of perpetual welfare.  How would a relatively modern, successful country like ours, ever select a leader who would not defend its borders?  It is a conundrum.  Our current leader, chosen according to legend by 80 Million of his fellow citizens, has actively subverted the laws – and the fences – of his country resulting in the unbridled entry of more than 5 Million strangers from 100 other countries (or more), a million of whom sidestepped the polite greetings of the so-called “Border patrol” staff so that they could enter in secret, perhaps with less than honorable intentions toward their new country.  What an odd “leader” our country is entrusted to.

Let us hope every voter with the opportunity is able to choose a far, far different leader so that our country’s border will again be protected and guarded.  It’s a simple thing.

DRUGS

Drugs can heal or injure or kill.  These 3 options are true for both licit and illicit drugs.  In concert with the problems of immigration, tons of illicit drugs cross the unguarded border we just discussed, and they definitely injure and kill the legal residents of this country.  Our erstwhile government, hired to protect us, the citizens, has failed to solve the problem of mind-altering and often deadly drugs for, well, virtually forever.  But, under current leadership and the inactions of our bureaucratic “deep state,” the swath of death such drugs have wrought has reached new depths of death and failure.  One wonders why this particular national problem has proven insoluble.  Our national government reflexively tries to force the solution to deadly, destructive drugs back upon individuals and localities, while grasping onto personal problems that earn votes and the continuation in power to make them national ones.  Someone is not being honest with the citizenry.

Over the span of 9 years or more, America sacrificed about 55,000 of its young men and women fighting Communists in Viet-Nam.  We have agonized over the waste of those young people for the 50-plus years since we pulled out.  Lots of lies and untruths were told to the American people during that botched conflict, yet we persevered until there was nothing left to fight for, and we left.

Drugs kill between 60,000 and 100,000 young people EVERY DAMNED YEAR nowadays – mostly due to fentanyl that comes through Mexico, our “friends” to the south.  The victims don’t need the Defense Department to ship them overseas to be killed; overdosing can be accomplished close to home… sometimes in the home. 

Fentanyl is fairly easy to make from its constituent chemicals, benzylfentanyl and 4-anilinopiperidine and our other “friends,” Communist China sells large quantities of those chemicals to Mexican cartels.  Toluene, an easy chemical to obtain, they don’t need to import.  “Fentanyl” is 100 times as potent as morphine in its ability to react with pleasure receptors in the brain, so a user must be very, very careful as to dosage.  Its other effect is suppression of breathing, and a user certainly wouldn’t want to end up like George Floyd, late of Minneapolis.  A deadly dose, even for a man as big as the late Mr. Floyd, is about the volume of one shake of salt on some food – very, very careful.  Unfortunately, most users of drugs, particularly drugs of questionable origin, are somewhat stupid.  Tens of thousands smarten up every year, right before they stop breathing.

A president, especially one elected due to his immense popularity with some 80 Million of his fellow citizens, would go out of his way, at least a little bit, to guarantee that they or their offspring would be safe from the ravages of illicit drugs like fentanyl.  It’s the least he could do for the millions of people who loved him so much, once.  It turns out that that President is more enamored of the one-point-something Billion friends he has in China, dwarfing the paltry crowd who “voted” him in.  So, he has done less than nothing to stop the flow of illegal drugs or illegal aliens across our once-guarded border.  Indeed, his actions have facilitated both of those illegal border-crossings, and here we are.  Parents and lovers who are mourning the loss of loved-ones to fentanyl and other “southern” drugs, are advised to never forget who their President cares about least.

Drugs could be stopped, but not one plea-bargained case at a time.                                               (See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/15/drugs-and-governance/)

It would be refreshing to hear a campaign speech that included the protection of the American people as a key promise.  It would elicit many Prudent votes, particularly if the death penalty were revived for drug distributors.

MEDICINE & FREEDOM

Recently, as in 3 years ago, a “new” coronavirus swept across the planet.  A lot of people died as a result, but not always from that virus, COVID-19.  We’ve talked about this, but the virus is not the biggest damage-causer.  The presence of COVID yielded a massive loss of rights and freedoms – un-Constitutionally – and changed the relationships among individuals, health-care providers and institutions, and changed the relationship between the federal government and individuals.  We who are plagued with short memories, owe it to ourselves and to our descendants, to keep alive the abuses Americans have been subjected to and why the new relationships must be reversed in law.  Lately we have heard the CDC and the NIAID branch of it, try to walk back the directives they issued during the “pandemic” that cost many their jobs, licenses and even lives.  Governors, school systems, public agencies, even branches of the military created executive authorities and powers to direct the actions of individuals because they were “following CDC guidance” or “following the science” as imaginatively defined by people like Dr. Anthony Fauci who claimed to “represent” science.  People like to think that “doctors,” including Phd’s, are “scientists,” but many are followers of others.  For medical doctors, with the brutal intrusion of federal governance into health care, many are employees, now, and they can be fired by the institutions that they turned to for stability and protection, if they don’t kow and tow.

Police and fire departments forced trained members to accept the experimental injections or lose their jobs; military branches forced members to accept the shots or lose their position, despite the investment in training and skills.  Teachers were forced to accept the experimental chemical injections on the same basis.  People were forced to get the injections or forego normal exercise of their rights of movement,  assembly or commerce.  Almost none of what was imposed on us, free, sovereign, Americans, was Constitutional.  Those who were questioned on these actions used various claims of ignorance by citing the “CDC” advisories as their authority to restrict freedoms.  Ostensibly, thanks to active fear-mongering by government entities, that same CDC and NIAID (Fauci) and ignorant media (to the point of marshalling hatred against those who disagreed with the fear… mixing it all up with “racism,” lack of “equity” and even “white supremacy” as reasons that people questioned “the science”) COVID was such a threat that states of emergency were justified and people could be arrested or economically destroyed for opening their businesses.

To be Prudent, most of “science” touted during the dark medical age of 2020 through 2022, was bogus.  Real science was often put forth and literally suppressed by government and media working together to protect a single narrative, and those actions killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans who would have survived COVID relatively easily had less harmful treatments been allowed early in their infections.  In some cases, those alternative treatments worked in very late stages of infection, but it took a contentious legal battle to obtain them.  Hundreds of thousands.

Science is not a place or even a consensus, it is a process.  Stopping investigation, data analysis and experimentation by claiming “settled science” or similar baloney, is as anti-science as can be.  That’s what the “great” Anthony Fauci represented throughout.  The entire National Institutes of Health – NIH – should be disassembled and reconstituted in a way that will improve health and longevity, not the bottom lines of pharmaceutical companies.

The only legitimate role of government in our democratic Republic is to be a partner in the health, safety, advancement and prosperity of its citizens.  Consider what it is, in fact today, and recognize why Prudence indicates that these should be revolutionary times.

DOLLARS

The world is awash in dollars including the trillions we create through productive enterprise in our own economy, those we create through productive enterprise in other countries, the “air-dollars” the FED creates for us at re-election times, and the dollars created by foreign banks and enterprises.  Lots and lots of dollars.  The “air-dollars” have been tolerated by Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations (OPEC being largely a creation of Henry Kissinger and the American oil industry) and nearly every other nation in the world since Nixon closed the “Gold Window” of the Treasury in 1973.  Simultaneously we guaranteed to protect Saudi Arabia and its oil markets and they agreed to market oil only in dollar denominations.  People who wanted oil, and many other traded products, were happy to accept dollars in payment and just as often would sell their goods in terms of dollar values rather than their own currencies.  The need to maintain “exchange rates” with all other currencies and the dollar, gave rise to incredibly lucrative currency speculations that have been not only a financial lever but a political one, as George Soros and others can testify.  So many dollars.  Every one is a bill – a bill against American productivity, and each must eventually be paid with something valued by the holder.

Many in power today seem to view the ocean of dollars as something that will be tolerated forever, and, further, that our incomprehensible debt – over 32 Trillion, now – can be “mentalized” as opposed to monetized.  That is, we will eventually be able to talk our debtors out of worrying about it or even wanting it paid back.  Without grasping what their attitude means, many people just roll their eyes when asked about how we will ever deal with our national debt?  Since it can’t be dealt with now, the best thing is to not let it worry us too awfully much, and let someone worry about it in the future.  Apparently, since we have made ours the largest single element of worldwide debt, all other nations should realize that if our debts are called the world will be worse off without an independent United States… so there: deal with it.  That’s some convenient mentalizing, but it’s not likely to work.

Until 10 or 15 years ago, the majority of nations accepted the dominance of the dollar as a trade-off for stability and extensive military aid from the U.S. to the more than 150 nations in which Americans were posted to protect or stabilize smaller countries facing politically crappy enemies.  Militarily, the U.S. had established a global empire that benefitted itself in both trade and influence, yet also cost it more than its own productivity could afford, hence the enormous debt being tolerated.  But tolerance isn’t love.  There was and is nothing about our past relationships that will inhibit smaller countries from accepting “help” from Communist China, our sworn enemy.  Part of China’s all-dimensional war against the U.S. is the unseating of the dollar as the global currency of trade.  If we lose the “petro-dollar” advantage other nations will quickly decide to not accept payments of international trade obligations in dollars.  One hopes that some one of the geniuses who brought us to this point of astronomical debt, is working on how the U.S. of A. is going to survive as an independent entity without the petro-dollar economy to sustain it.  Voters should ask politicians this question.

Fellow Prudentialists will appreciate the growing, unique responsibilities of U.S. citizenship, ignored or un-taught only at our peril.  Let’s move further.

Crime, Economics, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2020, Terrorism

A citadel of Lies

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Supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. – Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. (Photo by Saul LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

A CITADEL OF LIES

It appears that not only the idiots who stormed the Capitol but Trump, himself, were suckered into exactly the reactions the Democrats wanted.  They have been convinced for years that conservatives and anyone who agrees with a strong defense of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are all, secretly, neo-Nazis and other caricatures of knuckle-dragging troglodytes.  And all racists, of course, every last one.  One can see this attitude displayed in the virtuous signage supporting “Black Lives Matter” and “Science” and “Love is Love” and “Hate Has No Home Here” since, by their lacking such declarative advertising on their own lawns, everyone that homeowner already knew was barely human, is admitting to that condition.

The trouble is, they teach this stuff in school, to the point of children apologizing for being born white.  Undefined guilt works best if started at an early age.  What rot.

There were some idiots in Washington on January 6th, and not all were part of the rally / protest.  Many work there… many on Capitol Hill, in fact.  Their erstwhile president-elect was quick to declare that the breeching of Capitol security could not be referenced as a ”protest,” no, no, no; it was an insurrection!  A threat to and an attack on “democracy!”  “Don’t you dare call this a protest,” he stated with great passion.

This of course denies the presence of tens of thousands of protesters who have, it seems Prudent to say, hundreds of things to protest.  They came at great cost, since virtually all of them work for a living, and came with some discomfort and trouble, TO PROTEST!  The left, including Democrats and their subservient media, perceive the election of a Democrat as a fresh confirmation of purity and light; only the disruption of that outcome is subject to protest.  Republicans and conservatives are merely tolerated for their value as a common enemy of “progress,” whom all good and virtuous people should dislike, if not more, and shun if possible.

Trump changed their reactions, as he did those of most Republicans, because he actually said what he believed and then put it into action, policy and legislation.  Worse, millions of people – the aforementioned troglodytes – loved the change, loved the brashness, loved the heartfelt defense of America.  The “real” rulers of America had to up… errr, lower their game.  The worst “official” behavior in our history became normal for more than four years, as those sworn to uphold the constitution connived to destroy the most dangerous interloper they’d seen.  For shame.

Now, with the attack on the Capitol, the left has a more perfect common enemy than they could conjure up with constant lying: “Look what they did!  See?  They’re as bad as we’ve been telling you for decades!” 

The Capitol, itself, will become a virtual armed citadel, with new defensive barriers, more police carrying long guns, maybe some hate-sniffing dogs.  Why, you citizens can’t protest what we do up here.  We don’t work for you scum, you work for US!  Oh, wait, is it too early to say that?  We meant to say, “We work our fingers to the bone for all Americans, and we’re happy to scrimp and sacrifice for each and every one of you, especially minorities and members of the LGBTQx community and women and the downtrodden and those streaming to our country for a better life and more government checks, and for Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Disney and CNN and the Washington Post.  But, we must be safe as we go about our august duties… for you.  And you must be safe, too, so keep your stupid masks on.”

No one opposed to the steady march leftward has a right to protest, since to do so is to oppose “progress.”  That such progress replaces and suppresses the guarantees of the Constitution and disabuses us of the points of the Declaration of Independence, is being obscured and dissipated by educational avoidance.  A generation of children are amenable to socialism in the mistaken belief that it will somehow end racism and “inequality.”  The premise, riotously hammered home in city after city during 2020, is that we cannot repair the problems in the U. S., we must destroy the United States and start fresh.  God forbid.

The people leading the riots that burned, destroyed and looted, and assaulted and killed totally innocent people, are financed and led by espoused Marxists and communists.  Yet the “woke” left and Democrats were sympathetic to them and to their supposed grievances however illogical, and even to their destruction of public property.  Theirs were “mostly peaceful” protests and represented an exercise of “fundamental rights.”  Those who lost their businesses – and the THIRTY people who died – were probably part of the protested problems…, they were capitalists, after all.

What on Earth could motivate hundreds of people to be so angry that they’d break the law to protest something the Congress was in the midst of?  What could have possibly been so important?  An election?  Really?

Without fail, every Democratic source and nearly all media instantly declared that there was no evidence of voting fraud or irregularities or illegalities.  By definition, then, anyone who thinks there were is a right-wing nut and not worth listening to.  Unfortunately there are hundreds of statements, affidavits eye-witnesses and analyses that strongly indicate that a lot went wrong in the handful of states, counties and cities where sufficient unlawful votes could guarantee a Biden electoral college win.  None of those deniers of electoral hanky-panky has been interested in actually investigating the charges since doing so would add to the possibility of something wrong and they uniformly deny that.  It’s actually fairly easy to make a strong case based on data analysis, sworn statements, and similarity of irregularities and tactics in the half-dozen “battleground states.”  The defense of what happened in each state comes from the election officials who may be culpable for what may have gone wrong, if so.  To whom can we turn for redress of these grievances?  No one has an answer for that question.

Courts have rejected every appeal, and in more than one instance – including the Supreme Court – the fear of riots… err, “protests” like those that destroyed cities and monuments, was part of why no hearings would be entertained.  For shame.

The respective states’ legislatures, Constitutionally defined as responsible for selecting electors, did attempt action in some states, but the executive branch of their governments had already “certified” the results of the election as reported.  The Biden juggernaut was almost at the pier and the political pressures to conform were intense.  No state was interested in actually investigating “itself,” particularly if it were the only one to change its results, winding up on the ‘outs’ with the new Biden administration.  Our corrupt intermingling of financial responsibilities between supposedly sovereign states and the ostensibly Federal  government, could cost a state a lot of “federal” dollars if that state appeared to oppose the new disbursers of those increasingly hollow “dollars.”  see: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/

There was a flood of complaints and subsequent sworn testimony.  There were observations of illegal internet connections, photocopied ballots being scanned, observers being prevented from doing their legal jobs, observers being illegally removed from their posts, false justifications for “stopping” counts simultaneously in four of the battleground states, followed by statistically impossible “spikes” for Biden, every time.  At one point, in Georgia, following an abrupt spike for Biden that erased Trump’s substantial lead, the following FIFTY THREE batches of votes showed exact rates of 50.5% for Biden and 49.5% for Trump – an impossibility.  “Nothing to see here, everybody.  We can explain how everything you saw happen, never happened.”

So, was the giant Washington protest and the smaller ones across the country, just because of this election?  For many, yes, but for many more, the election is simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Congress, particularly the leadership in both houses, has been lying to us for decades.  Almost every piece of legislation is a pack of lies, in that almost every one has a high-falutin’ title that purports to describe what making that bill law, will do.  Yet every one contains pieces of spending that couldn’t pass otherwise.  The worst deceptions are the so-called “budget” bills that spend hundreds of billions at once.  Not even leadership know what such “omnibus” bills include.  Partisans argue over details for publicity purposes, but under various deadline threats, these piles of crap are passed and sent to a president who is also under timely pressure usually because the bill, itself, was passed at the last minute and the defense of the country or the checks to Social Security recipients or, as of late, Covid relief checks are already late.  The pile of dishonesty becomes the law of the land.  Then the big lie kicks in.

The U. S. can’t afford the cost of its standard of living.  Congress – and most other government types – pretend this is nothing to worry about.  They pass spending bills as if we had the money, or revenue, to pay for them.  But these are really borrowing bills.  Up to a third – even 40%(!) – of our budgets for the past 20 years have been covered by borrowing money through the Federal Reserve, a private banking consortium that can legally lend the government money that it doesn’t have.  The U. S. Treasury also sells bonds, which is to say, borrows money from thousands or millions of lenders / investors to keep enough cash in the bank to cover daily outflows.  Consequently, whether to holders of “treasuries” or to the “FED,” Americans pay a ton of interest every month and year.  When we can’t afford to pay the interest, why we just borrow that, too!  What a hoax.

We’ve all heard the stock lie about how closing the government over a spending dispute will cause us to “default” on our loans.  This has never been true, but it sure upsets the less-informed, and mendacious news outlets repeat the same nonsense.

Americans like to believe that the people we elect are watching out for us and keeping us “safe.”  How safe are we with $27 Trillion of debt?  Are we not obligated to our lenders?  How “free” can we be with that burden?  Have our elected representatives been pulling the wool over our eyes all these years?  Are any of them watching out for this nation or for us?  No wonder people are restless.  Fake news makes it even worse, and it all came to a head with the shady voting of 2020, following a year of lies about Covid and lies about the dangers of voting in person.  Partisan news organizations support all of those untruths and add personal attacks and calumny aimed at Trump supporters who agree wholeheartedly with “America First.”  Who argues with that philosophy?  One can tell a great deal about those who do.

After the Viet-Nam war and the following 45 years, who can we complain to?  We have the right to peaceably assemble and to appeal to “the government” for redress of our grievances.  Who would that be?  Who has power over the budget, over the rates of taxation, over the disbursement of funds to which agencies, over the amounts and recipients of “foreign aid, over the confirmation of judges, over the laws governing federal elections, over the policies governing public education, and over the kinds of lightbulbs we can buy?  And over thousands of other daily, personal and business decisions?  Why, the very Congress who has sold us out to China and to international bankers, that’s who.

They are the same charlatans who haven’t been listening to the Americans they purport to represent.  One wonders if they heard anything on January 6th.

What did they hear all Summer as cities burned and insurrection was declared in Seattle?  What did they hear as Marxists burned out the businesses of private citizens and companies?  Apparently, their perceived message was telling them that enough fear in the streets will prevent any serious investigation into the theft of a presidential election.

They did hear something on the sixth, too: “Now is our opportunity, with the connivance of media and social media, to destroy those who disagree with our socialist plans.”  For shame.

Unfortunately, on January 6th, there were some truly odd characters who infiltrated the crowds close to the Capitol building itself.  Many have commented on the very different attitudes of men in camouflage outfits, and how things “felt” as they got closer to the Capitol.  Some evidence indicates that Antifa’s paid thugs were also at the head of the line as the Capitol lines were breeched.  With the new administration, no investigation of that possibility is likely.  As for the odd ducks who may be white supremacists, there is no need to investigate that, because Democrats believe that EVERY Trump supporter is only a shade above troglodyte status and very probably a white supremacist, even if he or she doesn’t know it.  No investigation.

Our new, quite old President, is staffing his administration with people about as different as possible from those who have done a remarkably good job under Trump… and they’ve been selected not for merit or skill, necessarily, but for gender and skin color.  Biden’s “dark winter” could extend for years.  God save us.