Author: publius911

You are a worthless piece of garbage. You are a worthless piece of garbage. You are a worthless piece of garbage… After a while, you start to believe that you are, in fact, a worthless piece of garbage. When done intentionally, it’s called brainwashing. The Chinese are doing it on a massive scale to the indigenous Uighurs. We abhor this kind of state-sponsored attempt to coerce millions into thinking a certain way, yet we have the same thing going in our own country.

Day after day, I read newspaper and website articles, listen to cable network morning shows and end of day “news” programs and see the constant barrage of “you’re a worthless piece of garbage” thrown at our President. Headlines are slanted to portray the content in a way that casts negativity and any retort or positive aspect is buried in the article. There is a dearth of any fact-based news on actions this administration, at the direction of this President, has taken and the extremely positive outcomes of those actions. So, I get why there are a lot of people who think this guy is the worst thing since Milli Vanilli.

Trying to get people to see an alternative story is very difficult these days. It goes both ways. I have friends who only watch FOX and listen to Limbaugh. I have other friends (at least I’d like to think they are still my friends) who only watch MSNBC and CNN and get most of their “news” from Facebook. Very few read newspapers or on-line content anymore. When you only hear one side, it is easy to understand why so many are intractable in their thinking, one way or the other.

There is so much to learn by listening to people of a different cloth. What a shame that we have lost that curiosity.

Despite the continuing deluge of mass media hysteria regarding hearsay, innuendo and outright fabrications, life continues. Youths are flocking to ice rinks all over the world and the NHL begins the annual slog toward the Stanley Cup. The excitement of seeing a 4-year-old put on his/her first pair of ice skates all the way through 18-year olds making the opening roster for an NHL team sustains me on those days when the world seems crazy. Hope springs eternal that my beloved Chicago Blackhawks will once again return to glory and hoist the Cup.

If you need to take a pause from all the discontent thrown at you, stop by a nearby rink and watch the unbridled joy of kids playing the great game of ice hockey. So often they are performing something that their parents can’t do; ice skate. It gives them a real sense of accomplishment and a growing confidence. As they begin to play the game, the norms of hockey shape their character. Hockey is a team sport where the individual sublimates him/herself for the good of the team. It demands respect for their teammates, coaches and, importantly these days, the officials. These attributes carry over into everyday life and can’t be better for the player and the world.

Want a better world? Play hockey! GO HAWKS!

New sanctions were placed on another Russian accused of subverting our 2016 election. Everyone insists that no vote was tampered with, but instead ads and articles on social media sites were the “crime”. While everyone likes a bogeyman, especially one with a dark past like the Russians, I contend that this deflects from the real culprits who undermine our election, and by doing so, our very Republic.

Our educational system has been taken over by socialists. Teachers see themselves as part of a collective, the unions to which they owe fealty, rather than to their students and our country. Now that they are more concerned with salary, pensions, benefits and working conditions, there is little concern for the content of their teaching. Instead, they look to indoctrinate their students in ways that support their view of the world and country; a view that coincides nicely with their own personal comfort.

Having taken over the curriculum, they can now denigrate our US history and capitalism, and promote socialist causes like global warming (or is it climate change now?). Slavery can be used as a cudgel to prove anything good was a result of somebody being taken advantage of. Robber barons, corporate greed, income inequality et al, are the fodder of classrooms now with no nod toward the context or alternative thinking. Malleable minds are easily directed and shaped and the result is thousands can be commanded to do the teacher/socialist’s bidding. Evidence the student walkout for climate whatever.

So, when we look to find the real culprit in our election tampering, ask yourself why we have so many that cannot discern between false narratives and facts? Why is it that so few can accurately research the truth with so much information readily available? Just what is being taught to our children by people who would walk out on the very people they are supposed to be committed to?

Having lost the Presidential election and with the prospects of losing it again, Democrats are fully engaged in a strategy that disregards all sense of decorum. Because they hold a slim majority in the House, they are free to wallow their time, and our money, on this coup. Forcing a President to reveal a conversation with another sitting President should raise alarm for EVERY American. Do you think it will be possible for any other foreign leader to be candid with this or any other President? The Democrats can’t see past their noses blinded by their hatred of this President and their own failings.

I think Democrats rightly know that this successful President is clawing away at their power base. They see their own livelihoods as “leaders”, with large incomes and perquisites, at risk. Unable to thwart his popularity and hence, votes, they will do anything and everything to marginalize and possibly, remove him.

Democrats are simple people who now have a legion of followers who have been dumbed down over decades by unionized socialist teachers. Their very survival is at stake and because of that, they do not see anything wrong with taking down the country. In fact, this crisis of their making, will not go to waste as they ride in as heroes with “free” everything paid for by the billionaires. Class envy being just one of their planks in this strategy. They know this is their time and their Waterloo. If the country goes into a tailspin, so be it.

Connecticut has a Constitutional requirement to balance the budget. In the last regime, the two highest ever tax increases occurred in order to meet this requirement. Even then, the fuzzy math did not work, and the state ran billion-dollar deficits. You see, a budget does not necessarily mean actual receipts and expenditures. So here we are again, a new regime but made up of the same old Democrat hacks and doing the same fuzzy math.

This time it’s about the tax increase that they thought they could get away with but didn’t. In the insatiable quest for more revenue, the Democrat Governor and Legislature passed an increase in sales tax on “prepared foods”. This was directed at restaurants but gathered up other items as well. They budgeted an unbelievable $110,000,000 more revenue from the ~14% increase in the sales tax (6.35% -7.35%). Now that the department of revenue is executing on the bill as written and demanding the tax on ALL prepared foods, like those sold in grocery stores, all the Democrat perpetrators are crying, “That is not what we meant.”  You really expected $110,000,000 more from eating out?

Add this sneak attack tax to a long list of new and higher fees, fewer items exempted from sales tax and a blind eye to any thought of a reining in spending and you have to ask yourself, “Who do you trust?” This budget will not result in a balance of revenue and spending just like the last how many budgets. The Democrats will spend and add to a growing deficit already in the multiple billions.

Flouting a Constitutional requirement should be a clarion call for electing an administration that follows the law and not one that tries all manner of shenanigans to make it look like they have a bonafide plan for achieving a balance of revenue and expenses. Projecting this process on to the national scene can tell you that Democrats, even when supposedly controlled by a Constitutional plank, will find a way to raise revenue and spend more. There are two ways to balance a budget. The Democrats only know one way, raise revenue.

I read the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) daily, Hartford Courant regularly and reference and read articles in Politico, Breibart and use the Drudge Report and Associated Press to further find “news”. The latest journalistic snafu from the New York Times compels me to draw attention to what exactly journalism has devolved to in the time of Trump. Because I am so familiar with the WSJ, I’ll use it as my most pronounced example but let me be clear, I find these attributes in most publications that present themselves as “news”.

In the 9/18 edition of the WSJ, authors Rebecca Balhaus and Siobhan Hughes under an article titled, “Trump Aide Rebuffs Panel”, they recant 6 short quotes from a 6-hour meeting; one from the President who obviously was not present. Using adjectives that paint Mr. Lewandowski in an unfavorable light, (stony-faced) they give only 1 quote from him. They provide the committee with cover for having Mr. Lewandowski testify by saying it “…allows them to highlight the White House’s obstruction of its investigation…” as if that is a fact. The closing paragraph is the clearest example of how these “reporters” are really advocates. It tags the article, which was about a committee hearing, with an entire closing paragraph on the Mueller report and spins the findings in what is now seen as a concerted effort to minimize the damage from it for not having found any collusion or obstruction. These reporters do not want to miss a chance to continue the narrative with the intent to make it stick.

While editorial boards may display a certain amount of discretion when commenting, they are labeled appropriately as editorials or comments and not news. As is the case with the WSJ and other “newspapers”, the editorial board is nearly 180 degrees different in political position than the reporters and news editors. These Boards unfortunately lend credence to the body of their papers that is ill-placed. The bulk of these news outlets are filled with biased presentations of actions and person’s words that relay a certain political persuasion but are labeled as “news” and not analysis. It is abundantly clear that we now have a 4^th estate that seeks to persuade rather than inform. Is it any wonder that most voters are now subject to the whims of those who have advocacy as their main objective?

Progressives/Socialists are hard at worming their brand of governance into our successful republic. They’re doing this by slowly taking control of utilities including electric, gas and oil and technology. The process is well established. First you must take every opportunity to vilify the private company. Service, costs, management are all found to be undesirable and “hurting” the consumer. These egregious actions by the company must be addressed so legislation is layered on to the already crushing number of dictates, resulting in worse service, costs and rendering management hamstrung to do what is necessary to serve their customers.

Then enters the shining knight phase, Nationalization! That is, with things that are critical to everyday life, no one is better at providing them than the Government. Just look at how bad these profit monger companies act in their quest for only one thing, MONEY! It was health care (Obamacare), internet with “net neutrality”, and now San Francisco wants it to be electricity. No doubt, it will be offered at less cost, at least initially, than that dirty profit motivated PG&E.

The Democrat California government legislated out actions that would have prevented or at least lessened the damage wrought by the Paradise, CA fires. Then they blamed PG&E for the damage causing them to have to file for bankruptcy only to have the perpetrators swoon in to pick up the pieces at bargain basement prices. San Francisco thinks they can provide electricity better than PG&E and has offered them $2.5b for the lines serving the city. Good luck with that San Francisco. You may want to start with getting the feces off your street first.

I am still waiting for a government run program that can prove its efficacy. Even the one thing our Constitution says they must do (provide for the common defense), is inefficient. Giving a bureaucracy with no limit on what they can or cannot do strikes me as ludicrous but then, I don’t get Socialism outside of a theoretical abstract either.

News of today. “July Was Hottest Month Since Records Began”. Those records began “more than a century ago”. Of course, climate change proselytizers have you all aghast at this revelation and point to it as proof that we only have 12 years to live.

Fact is the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Using data that is just over 100 years old to prognosticate our demise may not be the most accurate. But then, if you want to make your point, you will grasp at any straw.

I’m still waiting for the second ice age that was deemed inevitable by some of the same people now calling for our overheating deaths.

In the meantime, I continue to conserve, reuse and do reasonable things to keep our earth healthy.

In my first blog I wrote that, for the good of the country, President Trump should announce that he would not run for re-election. At that time, I felt his decision to withdraw from Syria was misguided and indicated his unwillingness to listen to his military advisers. I also felt that not running again would encourage those intent on sabotaging his presidency to stop and work with him to better our country. I was wrong.

Since then, President Trump relented on the decision to withdraw from Syria in accordance with his military advisers. Instead of working with this President, those seeking to undermine him have been persistent and emboldened with support from the mass media. These last days, following mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso, have clearly shown the left will not stop at anything to hurt this president. The constant drumming of Democrat politicians and their sycophant media claiming the President is a racist, misogynist, Russian puppet etc. will likely not stop until he is dead. With no basis in fact, these losers continue to use their bully pulpits in the mass and social media to foment the anger and divisiveness for which they admonish this President. In a “pot calling the kettle black” manner, these out of control seekers of perpetual power will not ease up on their quest to remove the duly elected President Trump.

I was wrong to think that they might allow this President to succeed in advancing the lives of Americans more than he already has. I was wrong to think Democrats would pivot to addressing the critical needs of our country and the people they took an oath to serve. Instead, their unabashed pursuit of perpetual power has them more concerned with stocking the pond with potential voters beholden to them, than caring for the ones they already have. Let’s hope the 2020 electorate sees through their strategy to negate the fundamentals that made our country the best one in the history of the world.

With the passing of this 2019, two year budget agreement increasing the debt limit, Congress has once again kicked the debt can down the road. In 2011, Congress passed a bill that was supposed to rein in deficit spending. That bill called for reductions in spending tied to increases in the debt ceiling. A joint commission was supposed to find spending cuts of trillions over 10 years including defense and discretionary spending. Instead, we see a bill on the President’s desk today that increases spending $320,000,000,000. Our current annual deficit is over $1,000,000,000,000 and total debt over $22,000,000,000,000. Unfunded liabilities add another $100,000,000,000,000. (Put your weekly take home pay against these numbers.)

Here’s an incomplete recent history of failures to rein in deficit spending.

• Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control aka Gramm-Hollings-Rudman 1985 – Intended to “balance the budget”.
• Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1987 – amended Gramm-Hollings-Rudman and allowed for larger debt ceiling to pay for social programs. (So much for the ’85 bill!)
• Simpson-Bowles 2010 – Commission that spelled out critical changes in order to address debt. (Ignored)
• Budget Control Act (Sequestrations) 2011 – (Blew through set limits)

Expecting people, whose income and power is derived from spending other people’s money, to limit how much money they spend, is fruitless. A balanced budget amendment in our Constitution is not worth the paper it’s written on given the track record of these scoundrels ON BOTH SIDES. “Balance” can be achieved by increasing revenue and therefore, the spending can continue unabated. Rather, a strict limit on the size of the federal budget is needed. Currently Federal spending accounts for 22.5% of GDP. This is historically high and growing. Limiting the Federal budget to 18% of GDP forces officials to find ways to increase the overall economy if they want to spend more. No doubt, the language of such an amendment will have to be tight in order to have any chance of actually working. Without attention now to out-of-control spending, our very survival as a county is at risk.