Category: Politics

Posted on

Its Baaaack…

Hunter Biden’s laptop is back in the news.

Apparently, The New York Times walked back its claims that Hunter’s laptop was a Russian hoax. The Times is now saying the laptop and the information it contained is authentic.

Politico also ran a similar story that the laptop in question was part of a disinformation campaign. I don’t think they have retracted their stories yet.

NewsGuard claimed that there was no way the information could be verified. They, however were talking about the New York Times original article.

I’ll admit, there are intelligence organizations that could have spent the time to put together something as intricate as the email chains contained on that laptop. They could have put together a bunch of the videos and pictures too. They could have forged the text messages easily.

The question I always asked about it was why? Why would Russia expend such significant resources to paint a known drug addict, even if he was the son of a presidential candidate, in a negative light?

If the Russians were behind Trump then it would make sense that they’d try to keep Trump in office. That being said, the general thought pre-election was that Trump was going to win.

Unless the Russians knew something that the general public didn’t. Was it that the Russians were worried Biden was going to win?

That makes no sense. If the Russians were interfering in our election process, and they were backing Trump then it would have been pretty much a “Lock” Trump would win.

On the other hand, If the Russians were not significantly involved with Trump but instead wanted to return to the Obama/Biden era where they could engage in their expansionistic goals, then again it makes no sense for them to have expended the resources. Had the laptop been taken seriously pre-election it could have derailed the Biden campaign and undermined the Russian expansionism.

Then there’s the data on the laptop itself. The email threads I was able to read before the data disappeared were boringly routine. Yes, the emails were talking about the business of making connections with the “Movers & Shakers” of various governments but once you get past the shock of that, it was boring routine scheduling and money transfers.

The videos were shocking, but the male in the videos (whether it was Hunter or not,) was very consistent in his voice patterns. His speech had the proper accent for someone from the northeast. Moreover, the sounds he made during sex were consistent.

Let’s be frank, we all know that during sex, we make sounds that are pretty unique to us. Ask your spouse, and you’ll find that there’s a certain pattern to your breathing, a slight guttural vocalization, a particular sound that you only make pre-orgasm. If your spouse is paying attention, they’ll use those cues to get you there, or back off so that the fun continues.

The male in the videos that I saw demonstrated the same patterns over and over again. This doesn’t prove it was Hunter, but it does suggest that it was the same guy. I can’t say too much about the women in the videos, there were many, and rarely did two videos have the same woman or girl.

If you want an example, watch some porn. Choose one particular performer, watch several movies they’re in, and listen. You’ll see what I mean. It’s more prominent with males in porn because “The Money Shot” is often repeated from different angles.

All of this led me to believe that the laptop was in fact authentic. It’s no one thing, it’s the intricacy and consistency.

On my laptop, I do things the same way. I have habits and patterns that are like a fingerprint. The way data is laid out is recognizable to me. I can grab an unlabeled data storage device and know it’s mine just by the way information is stored.

It’s my opinion the volume of information on the laptop, and its associated consistency couldn’t have been created by a hundred Russian agents. It looked more like one person over time.

I’m not saying that a disinformation campaign is impossible, I suggest that it is unlikely.

If we believe that the laptop is in fact Hunter’s. Then it opens a nasty can of worms. Was Hunter brokering access to his father, The Vice President, during the Obama years? If this is true then do we have a Sitting President who is compromised?

That was the fear during the Trump administration. Isn’t that possibility what triggered the first impeachment proceeding? Do we have a smoking gun so to speak that points to graft, corruption, pay for play, and all the things of which Trump was accused?

Is it possible that Congress had all the “right” crimes but the wrong man?

It’s unlikely that anything will be done about it at this point. Biden is one year into his term, Congress took almost three years to impeach Trump and. they were fast walking the process. Congress will no doubt drag their feet in any impeachment proceedings for Biden. I’d bet that we won’t know the full impact of Hunter’s laptop for at least 8 years.

By then the laptop will just be a minor footnote in history.

The question is this;

If this laptop had belonged to Eric Trump would it have been swept under the carpet?

The question is rhetorical. We all know that it would have been front page world wide.

The larger question is;

Why? Why do we allow this difference? A crime is a crime. That is supposed to be absolute, not money, leader, or party dependent. The FBI has had the laptop for almost 2 years, yet there have been no arrests and very few subpoenas.

Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason. She’s supposed to represent the best of equal justice under the law. She’s not supposed to see race, or wealth, or power, or anything at all, except was the law broken.

Our Justice system is supposed to enforce the law absolutely. Exceptions may be made in extreme circumstances, (such as self defense), but exceptions should never become the rule.

Posted on

I was soooo excited to hear the SOTU Address

I could hardly wait to hear the pearls of wisdom from His Royal Majesty, The Imperial President Biden.

I wanted to see who would tear up their copy of the SOTU speech this year. I was hoping it would be a Republican and then we could see the dirty traitorous racist bastard roughed up and hauled away by The Nobel, Efficient, Capital Police.

I was hoping that we’d see angry “peasants” throwing themselves against the fence and razor wire surrounding the Capital. We might have seen The National Guard opening fire on them ensuring the majesty of our democracy.

The whole world would then see how strong our leaders were, as bulldozers scooped up the bodies and dumped them in a mass grave.

I was hoping for there to at least be some random arrests on the streets outside the Capital were the arrestees were detained without charge, denied their right to counsel, and imprisoned without due process.

After examples like that, the world would know that our leaders are fearless, behind guards, fences and walls, and they know how to control undesirable elements in our society.

Alas, it didn’t happen.

I suppose The Most Glorious Biden’s government is spread thin chasing down all the people who visited Washington DC during Jan 2021.

Happily, many of those racist, white supremacist, bastards, are rotting in prison. Perhaps there wasn’t enough room for more criminal scum?

Please pardon my venomous sarcasm!

I’ve always hated politics! I hate even more that I feel like I’ve been watching a 50 car pile up in slow motion for the past 20 years, and can’t look away.

By now, even the most ardent lover of Joe Biden must be having some buyer’s remorse. His polling numbers would seem to support that assertion.

Yeah, I’ve been aware of a creeping problem in politics for at least the past 20 years.

I voted my conscience, not my party for all of that time. I voted for the candidate, Local, Statewide, and National, that I thought would do the best job. Party be damned.

Ultimately, I thought that the individual candidate and their purported beliefs and history mattered more than their party affiliation. I naively believed that common sense and the inherent decency of the human being would prevail.

I was apparently wrong.

As an American, I understood that we would sometimes have hard times, and sometimes we’d be riding high. I didn’t have a problem tightening my belt for the betterment of my fellow Americans. It wasn’t easy, but it was a duty I shouldered right along with the rest of society because I saw that the government was taking action to correct the problem(s) and those corrections took time. After all, you can’t instantly turn an aircraft carrier, or a cruise ship. I still believed in the system.

However, unlike the frog in a slowly heating pot of water. I’m aware that we’re being boiled alive.

None of my core beliefs fit anymore.

I really wanted to believe The Biden Administration would address the raging issues facing Americans. I wanted to believe that they’d heard the people.

President Joe Biden delivers his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Washington as Vice President Kamala Harris and House speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., look on. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP)

Instead all we got from the SOTU address was what they thought we wanted to hear. Not an actual concrete plan to change course.

I’ll leave the fact checking to the political analysts, (Or Twitter).

A few things did pop out at me. Just a few days ago, there was an article, (I think from CNN) that said Biden admitted that sanctions against Russia wouldn’t help.

Now, in the SOTU, we’re being told that sanctions are hurting Russia? But we and the EU are still buying oil from Russia?

Part of Biden’s speech sounded like it came from the Republican platform. “Buy American”, “Open Schools”, “Build the economy from the bottom up”, “Immigration Reform”, “Rework the Tax System”, “ReFund the Police”. That last one was probably the most astounding.

Biden did mention that our divisiveness needed to end. He said we are all Americans and need to unify. I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment. He followed up with more rhetoric about gun control.

He went on to conflate voter integrity laws with voter suppression. Again that was expected.

Most of the speech felt like pandering.

It felt like Biden was saying words but there was no intent behind them. Once again we heard about Beau Biden. It seems like every time Joe Biden speaks, he invokes Saint Beau.

For all his screwups, I feel kinda bad for Hunter. His Dad always speaks about Beau with a sense of deep loss, when Joe Biden speaks about Hunter it’s almost as an afterthought. Hunter must feel like, “Dad wishes I’d died and Beau lived,” perhaps that is why Hunter appears to be so self destructive.

At some point I tuned out. Biden’s SOTU address was exactly what I’d expected. A whole lot of rhetoric and hyperbole but not a lot of substance.

I’d hoped that he (or his handlers) would have addressed a few very specific points and then provided specific corrective actions.

Something like;

“Fuel prices are high and that’s hurting Americans across the board. High fuel prices affect people at the pumps and increase the cost of goods being moved to market, adding to inflation.

To address this:
First I’m releasing our strategic reserves. That won’t last forever but will buy us time.
Second I’m authorizing a ramp up of domestic oil production. Fuel prices won’t fall instantly but as our production goes up and we replenish the strategic oil reserves I expect the prices to start dropping.
Third We will reduce our oil purchases from Russia. This will move us toward energy independence and simultaneously apply more pressure to Russia to stop their war in Ukraine.

This is not a short term fix, I ask all America to be patient. I call upon those companies with workers who can work remotely to delay bringing workers back into the office. That will help offset fuel demand and possibly reduce carbon emissions during this transition. If we work together, we’ll come through just fine.”

A simple statement like that would have been commanding and shown leadership. It would have shown there was a plan and even if that plan didn’t work, Americans would have accepted it, and tried to make it work.

Similar statements on just a few key issues would have made all the difference to me, and my opinion of Biden’s leadership.

There was no need for Biden to make anything more than a passing statement about the Ukraine conflict. He could acknowledge it and move on. After all, this speech was about the state of our union not necessarily world events. That’s what speeches at the UN are for.

I’ve included a transcript of the speech from Yahoo News, here.

Re-reading the SOTU. I felt like the Biden Administration was going down a laundry list, not of issues, but of special interest groups.

One item I warmed up to was making the VA work toward linking Toxic exposure from burn pits to disease ravaging our troops after they return from war. This is a problem that the VA has swept under the rug for a very long time. It’s not right that our troops should return home only to be driven into poverty by medical bills because the VA denies the problem is related to our improper disposal of known toxic materials.

Generally, this SOTU left me cold and disheartened.

Posted on

Where do we go from here?

The headlines are screaming, “Putin invades Ukraine.”

“Putin intends to decapitate the Ukrainian government”

To the second headline… My response was simply, “Duh,” That’s straightforward tactics. Destroy the command and control and the rest is simple.

I’m personally sad about the invasion , I have several friends from Ukraine and I’m sure they’re worried out of their minds. I hate seeing them upset and in limbo regarding their families still in Ukraine.

My question is; What’s Putin’s endgame?

Unlike our President, I think Putin is no fool. There has to be a political or economic reason for his actions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning the action. I just don’t think Putin is a moron. As such, I can’t see Putin invading another country unless he has a clear goal in mind.

That goal could be land, oil, or making sure that he has unimpeded access to the warm water ports along the Black Sea. After all, wasn’t that what the old USSR did?

I said previously in this blog that after Biden’s demonstration of his weakness and mental incapacity, other world leaders would recognize it and take advantage.

Putin’s actions are no surprise, except to the idiots in the Biden administration. Biden handed Putin a gift when his Administration said Russia would invade Ukraine on a specific day.

I pictured Putin laughing his ass off in the Kremlin and telling his Generals, “Oh, let’s wait a little while. We can use this as an opportunity to embarrass the Americans on the world stage. By waiting, we humiliate Biden, and undermine faith in the intelligence communities of the west. This too serves our purpose, and can be used in the future.“

It’s pretty obvious Putin has less respect for Biden than he did for Obama. Anyone remember how quickly Putin stepped over Obama’s, “Line in the sand”? Putin did that for no other reason than to piss on Obama’s parade.

I honestly don’t know what to make of Putin. I know he’s technically a dictator. I know he was part of the old USSR. I know he’s wealthy and that wealth has in part been made in questionable ways. (Funny that we say that as a bad thing about Putin, but look the other way in doddering Joe’s case,)

I know Putin was KGB and that he spent a lot of time in Germany in that role.

That’s about it. Nothing more than you could get from a Google search. Observing Putin over the years, I’ve come to respect him as one respects a strong adversary. Putin is a leopard that doesn’t change his spots when the wind blows. I respect that as well. At least you always know you’re dealing with a leopard.

What drives Putin is a bit harder to follow. He’s not insane like Hitler, he seems to have plans and goals. I’d never play poker or chess with him. Unless, I wanted to get my ass handed to me.

This brings me back to what are Putin’s intentions?

Were I in Putin’s place, I’d be looking to increase my arable land. I’d be working towards complete energy independence. I’d be trying to secure the ability to manufacture a wide variety of technology within my own borders.

If a country has these things in place and the ability to ship goods year round, then they become a world economic player. They also wouldn’t need to bend a knee to any other government or economic consortium.

You know, kind of like China has done.

Who knows, in the next 10 years maybe we’ll be seeing Национальный бренд  on all of our products, instead of Made in China.

Given the chaos the world has descended into. It could simply be that Putin has decided to adopt a “Russia First” agenda.

He may have concluded that financially it makes more sense for Russia to have the ability to isolate from the insanity. That would serve Putin, and the people of Russia.

If a country is dependent on no-one, then it is in the catbird seat when the shit hits the fan. There’d be a considerable bit of Schadenfreude for Russia to have America, Germany, France, England, and other NATO members, with their hats in hand asking for food, and manufactured goods.

The Schadenfreude would be even sweeter if the reason they were asking, was due to shitty economic, energy, immigration, and manufacturing, policies that drove their own countries into the poor house.

Putin is 69, he might even live to see that day.

We can only hope that the moronic Biden Administration takes Putin at his word about interference. Putin effectively castrated Biden, the only thing Putin hasn’t done, is bent Biden over a desk and metaphorically fucked him.

That’s probably on the agenda for next month.

If the timing works out right, maybe Putin could do that, the same day Biden is delivering the State of the Union address.

Posted on

Why we can’t have nice things…

Four years ago I was leaving a grocery store near my apartment when a complete stranger walked up to me and commented on my watch.

It wasn’t uncommon for my colleagues to notice it or comment on it. It was not even that uncommon for a clerk in a shop to notice my watch, (particularly if they were male,) and say something like, “nice,” while looking at my wrist.

That day in front of the grocery store, this guy who appeared homeless commented about my watch in a very loud voice. He said something like, “That’s a really nice watch, what did that set you back 10 grand 15 grand?” What caught my attention was that he was speaking loudly enough for pretty much the entire shopping plaza to hear him. I’m a suspicious person, and in the back of my brain a thought popped in, “Why is this guy announcing this? Is he calling to an accomplice?”

I politely said in an equally loud voice, “Thank you for the compliment, it’s amazing how many compliments I get on this cheap $200 Hong Kong knock off. Would you like to hold it? “

At that point the man lost interest. Thank god he didn’t call my bluff.

This event was about the 3rd or 4th I’d experienced in 2 weeks. Admittedly, I wasn’t living in the best neighborhood at the time, but up to that point I hadn’t felt particularly unsafe.

The watch in question is not a knock off.

I purchased it 14 years ago for about 7K. I’d lost a rather large watch collection in a fire and decided that I simply wanted a single very nice watch that I never took off. I’d worn my watch continuously since I put it on in the store.

There were some who scolded me for wearing such a nice watch while doing yard work, working on a car, building, painting, swimming, or just living. I really thought nothing of it.

It is my watch, and since it was the only one I owned, it was easier to keep it on my wrist than to keep track of it, if I took it off.

The watch itself has held up very well. I sent it in for routine service on its tenth birthday. The service center gave it a tune up, and a clean bill of health. complemented me on two things. 1) it was in excellent shape and 2) that they’d guessed I wore it every day and thought that was very cool.

They didn’t even charge me for the replacement of 2 links in the band that had taken the brunt of a saw kickback. The watch band had saved me from a very nasty cut on my wrist. As part of the service the watch was also appraised. I was a bit shocked, and pleased, to discover that my watch had more than doubled in value.

After the repeated incidents in public where the watch garnered unwanted and intrusive attention, (it’s still considered rude to ask a stranger what they paid for something isn’t it?) I decided it was time to put my beautiful functional timepiece in a safe and buy something cheap and ubiquitous.

I’ve enjoyed the lockdowns over the past two years because if I’m around home, or in my little mountain town I’ve been able to wear my nice watch. I also wore it with complete confidence on a recent trip to Florida. Some men in Florida noticed my watch, they just nodded in appreciation, and smiled. You know… “Old School Politeness.”

My cheap watch is an Apple watch. It’s nice, but having to recharge it daily is a pain in the butt. The advantage is that everyone has one and in that homogeneity is safety.

No-one is likely to mug me for an Apple Watch.

The sadness is that my beautiful, simple, functional, watch sits in the safe. I do wear it if I’m camping, diving, or know that I’m not likely to encounter crowds of people. I also wear it more in the Winter when a jacket or long sleeves afford cover for it.

Within the past month or two, I read a news item where a man in Los Angeles had been robbed of his Rolex, at gunpoint after an induced car accident.

Today There was a report from England in The Sunday Times talking about an apparently organized group of thieves who are targeting high end watch wearers. The article is here and it’s brazen.

Most of the men report being approached by lovely women asking for their signature on a petition or something. In some cases the women become handsy and quite forward, talking non stop. In a few cases they’ve offered sex or other enticements.

Often the men are so flabbergasted they don’t realize their watch is gone until the woman has left.

I’ve heard of expensive hookers, but these guys aren’t even getting blow jobs for their 10 to 20K!

The article mentions that the thieves seem to be targeting Rolexes.

The supply of Rolexes is thin and the resale market is booming.

Rolex among other high end watches retain their value worldwide. They’re easy to transport, and with a hot resale market the thief can dump the merchandise quickly.

I’ve been jonesing for a watch that I can safely wear daily that doesn’t require recharging or batteries.

I guess you could say I’m bored with the Apple Watch and its attendant software updates, power requirements, and fiddling.

I think fondly of my nice watch. Ten years, one watch, and zero trouble. Ahh, simplicity!

I’d been looking at a nice simple Omega. But that too is a high end watch and subject to the same targeting by thieves. That being said, I may get one anyway.

I suppose that a venerable Timex might be the best way to go.

It does make me wonder how long will it be before we’re all driving the same car, all wearing the same clothes, all wearing the same watch, and all using the same mobile phone?

Is that where this is going, will we all be stuck with a “one size fits all” solution just to fight crime?

That’s not freedom. That’s the old Soviet Union, North Korea, or China. I want the freedom to have nice things without worrying about becoming a target.

I’m also just old school enough to want a concealed carry permit and a stout .45 on my hip. I’d rather leave the thieves gut shot and bleeding out on the sidewalk. (Why gut shot? Because it’s an agonizing death.) People don’t usually think of me, and mercy at the same time.

I find myself thinking that all it would take is 1 year of would be criminals stacking up in the morgues, and crime would be almost nonexistent. I figure we’d either run out of criminals, or criminals would decide crime itself was too risky.

Unfortunately, especially in California, criminals have been given the upper hand and they’re continuing to press their advantage. Apparently this is also true elsewhere in the world.

Maybe I’ll go with a Timex until I’m able to move to a state where they’ve remembered, “An armed society is a polite society.”

Maybe sometime in the near future folks will wake the hell up and realize The “Wild West” era came to a close in part because we all agreed that a robust police force was preferable to daily shoot-outs at the saloon.

That’s provided that the morons running things haven’t burned the history books or forgotten how to read them.

Posted on

DHS may Not be our Friend

A New York Post article dated Feb 9, 2022 and another article in Law Enforcement Today talk about a DHS Bulletin describing the current heightened state of alert regarding threats to the nation.

There was a similar article yesterday in Breitbart. I’m not linking to that one. Some of these articles engaged in hyperbole suggesting that the DHS said If you question the Government you might be a terrorist. At least one article referred to Secretary Mayorkas press conference where he may have misstated or overstated the DHS Bulletin.

Titles like:

“We are all terror threats? DHS says “mistrust of US government” means you may be a terrorist“

While not incorrect, may lead a casual reader to incorrect conclusions.

The DHS Bulletin is uh, concerning, in one regard. I think it is worthy of noting the line that seems to have generated the attention.

“the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;”

To anyone raised in the 1960’s or 1970’s that line would raise eyebrows.

In those decades it was commonplace for the younger generation to apply the thinking, Question Everything, Don’t trust the MAN (meaning government), Trust no-one over 30.

These were turbulent decades. Mounting evidence that the American People had been lied to about many things peaked with the Watergate Scandal and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation.

For many, the revelations were heart breaking. Up to that time, it was sort of accepted as truth that our government was operating in the best interests of the people.

If someone in authority told a citizen to keep quiet about something in the interest of National Security, the citizen would do as asked. There was faith on the part of that citizen that they didn’t know all the facts, and that the Authorities knew the bigger picture and were in a position to invoke National Security interest. The citizen gladly did their patriotic duty.

After revelations about Agent Orange, Nixon’s resignation, revelations about DDT, scandals about vaccinations that went horribly wrong, government medical experimentation in Tuskegee, the unsafe effects of above and below ground nuclear weapons testing, and a long litany of scandals regarding Government Approved projects, our faith in government was, in my opinion broken.

As it turned out, those people asking questions, those who didn’t trust “The Man,” actually had a point.

These were the conspiracy “nut jobs” of the time. They had local meetings, and mimeographed, (if you don’t know that term, look it up. Acetone fumes in an enclosed space could get you high as a kite,) newsletters they passed out. The Information Age as we know it today didn’t exist. Agents from the FBI, CIA, NSA, or DIA were always infiltrating these conspiracy groups, just to keep an eye on them and learn what they knew.

You see us “Boomers” have heard statements like this before. What followed these statements often involved intimidation, threats, and arrests.

Senator Joe McCarthys famous line, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party,” still echoed from 1954. The Hollywood black lists were still in full force in the ’60s and ’70s.

Involvement with some groups could get you labeled a “possible subversive” and that label could impact your employment options for years. It didn’t have to be true, all you needed was the label in a file that would show up on a background check. The FBI had files on anyone remotely associated with so called subversive organizations.

I once lived with a roommate who’d been involved with some three letter organization. For two solid years all of my mail was delivered opened and hastily stuffed back into the envelope.

It wasn’t until much later in my life that I found out I’d been carefully watched during those years as a possible security threat. This information came to me as part of an in-depth security check I’d agreed to for a particular employment situation.

That was the day, I wondered if I’d finally “Sold Out”, and was becoming “The Man”.

At the time I was well over 30 so I figured it was high time. The Job was a good one, the money was great, and I wasn’t building weapons.

Over the last 5 to 10 years I’ve concluded that in an ironic way, I’ve been building weapons for most of my career. The exception was during the time I worked for an actual defense contractor. The irony of that is also not lost on me.

The weapons I built weren’t conceived as weapons. They were mechanisms that were built with the altruistic goal of freeing information. I thought if information flowed freely that it couldn’t be controlled. The despots, elitists, and powerful couldn’t hide their misdeeds from the public as they’d done in the past.

I never imagined the way that such information flow and devices could be weaponized. I never imagined that anyone would want to monitor the communications of an entire nation. Although there was the example of the old USSR doing it. That should have been a “Spoiler Alert”.

I was laboring under the illusion that the American Government would never do it. I wanted to trust in the government once more. Then came the allegation that the Obama Administration was in fact monitoring cellphone communications and archiving virtually all of them, with the help of the NSA.

Shortly after, we found that your cellphone even without GPS, was trackable and that our Government had built software that could locate your phone in a given area, building a record of your daily movements, then putting those movements on a map.

Did the government need to know where you stopped for coffee every morning on the way to work? This was ostensibly to assist in fighting terrorism and dated back to the Patriot Act, signed into law by Bush. The very people and entities I was hoping to stop, took our good intentions, innocence, and idealism, and fashioned horrible weapons. Weapons not to be used in time of war against a common enemy, but weapons to be used against their own citizens.

Oppenheimer was right. We should not question if we can do a thing, but rather should we do a thing.

It’s been said that a modern cellphone with GPS is the NSA, CIA, and FBI’s, wet dream. Everyone carrying around a tracking device that can be tuned into easily and efficiently with a few strokes on a keyboard providing an individual’s location within a few meters is the stuff of Orwellian nightmares on its own. Add to that corporations willingness to censor contrary points of view, backed by calls from government officials to sanction such censorship is terrifying.

One could read…

“the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;”

… as a call for the Government to begin active censorship of all unapproved narrative. Coming as it does from the DHS, this chills me to the bone.

In that light, I ask when does the DHS rename itself “This Ministry of Truth”?

As a “Boomer,” admittedly I’m on the tail end of that designation, I’ve been astounded by the breathtaking compliance and lack of questioning on the part of the American People over the past two years.

If as the hyperbolic headlines suggest, those who question the government may be considered terrorists.

I ask, what the hell happened? How did the lessons of McCarthyism get forgotten? How did the lessons of the ’60s, ’70s, and even ’80s get memory holed? How is it possible, with information flowing freely and unrestricted, that we’re at this point?

Does this mean that now, in my 6th decade, I’m suddenly a seditionist, a terrorist, a criminal?

What would be my crimes?

Asking questions?
Thinking for myself?
Having a lifelong aversion to a government that I justifiably never fully trusted?
Speaking out against actions, I think unjust?
Calling out politicians or others that I think should answer the people, but who do not?

If these are crimes, then this blog site contains abundant evidence of my guilt. Should I put my affairs in order in anticipation of the knock on my door and eventual “Suicide” from a shot to the back of my head?

I doubt I’m worth a bullet to these people. After all I don’t have Joe Rogan’s following. No, they’ll break the door down at 4 am and seize all my electronics, they’ll try to silence me and others like me by denying us access to the information network.

The question is, would that silence us, or just radicalize us further?

I wonder how much an old manual typewriter and hand cranked mimeograph machine cost these days. Can you even buy Acetone anymore? I’d bet without checking, Acetone is on the list of controlled substances.

No matter, those of us of a certain age still remember our organic chemistry. Who knows? Maybe someone even remembers the recipe.

Truth and Freedom ring like a bell. A truth, spoken or read, resonates in individuals that encounter it.

That resonance spreads and builds to questions. Those questions demand answers and cannot be denied forever.

This seems to be the one thing that totalitarian states always forget.

Truth sets the innocent free, and damns the guilty.

Let’s hope that the DHS bulletin simply contains a poorly worded statement.

In the event that our government is moving in a totalitarian direction, it’s time for us all to speak out, demanding that our concerns are heard and acted upon.