Random Thoughts for May

 

Random Thoughts for May, 2023

Robert A. Hall

Feel free to post or forward.

 

Health Update: Things are stable. FEV numbers about 1.65. Weight 155.5 today. Got new hearing aids I have to have adjusted. Glasses fame broke, they ordered me a new pair. All else going okay.

 

I turned 77 on April 15^th. How the hell did that happen?

 

Also on Saturday, April 15, it was in the 80s here. Sunday night to Monday morning, we got two inches of snow. Welcome to Wisconsin!

 

Woke progressive Janet Protasiewicz won the open Wisconsin Supreme Court race, with a LOT of out-of-state dark money, giving the left a majority on the court and putting in jeopardy everything from concealed carry, to act 110 (repeal of which will increase property taxes), to babies’ lives. For her the Constitution is an inconvenient obstacle. Maybe it’s time to move south?

 

Liberal judge’s guide: If I like it, it’s constitutional. If not, it’s not.

 

“To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.”  ~ Jean de la Bruyere

 

“In our sick society, the targeted victims become the political victimizers.” ~ Victor Davis Hanson.

 

“Americans check their phones an average of 344 times per day or about once every four minutes. When you factor in sleep time it’s more like at least once every three minutes. In total, people spend about three hours a day staring at their phone on average. On a yearly basis, this means the average American is staring at their phone for 44 full days a year (again, this is without even factoring in sleep time, so call it 60 or 70 days a year). Seventy-one percent of people look at their phones within 10 minutes of waking up, and 74% say they can’t leave their phone at home without feeling uneasy. It’s hard to look at these numbers and call it anything but an addiction. Given the long list of problems in America today, people are not talking enough about this device addiction.” ~ Neil Patel

 

Anyone who advocates the murder of people because of their political opinions should be paid in the same coin.

 

“Avoid references to a transgender person being born a boy or girl.” ~ AP style guide

 

If honesty is its own reward, voting for liberals is its own punishment. Unfortunately, the rest of us get punished as well.

 

The inditement isn’t intended to convict Trump for the same thing Bill Clinton did, but to torpedo his 2424 election chances.

 

“A generation which ignores history has no past—and no future.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein

 

Politicians are prone to taradiddle.

 

“He thinks too much, such men are dangerous.” ~ Shakespeare

 

“Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” ~  John Harington's Epigrams of the early 17th century. There is much going on with politicians, activists, business leaders, and celebrities in the United States that would be called “treason,” if anyone dared

 

If you say, “Well, to be honest,” it sounds like you usually aren’t but are making an excepting this time.

 

I read that women who have the same education and experience as men, and work the same hours, make on the average more than men. As someone said, if women can do the same work cheaper and as well as men, why do companies not hire all women?

 

If you mix politics with business, expect to lose the business of those who disagree with your politics.

 

“The word Fascism now has no meaning, except in so far as it signifies something not desirable.”  ~ George Orwell, 1945

 

“(Fascism) has no valid meaning except as a term of abuse.” ~ Retired University of Wisconsin history professor Stanley Payne

 

Hostile environment? The military trains people to go into hostile environments.

 

“The switch from the Ice Age to Global Warming was one of those Eastasia-Eurasia war bulletins; there wasn’t even a period of Global Stability in between, it seemed.” ~ James Lileks

 

When someone says, “Mistakes were made,” always ask “By who?” (Or is it “By Whom”?)

 

Ronald Reagan famously said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction.” I think that generation has now grown to adulthood. 

 

Racial discrimination is now called “equity.”

 

(In the face of declining birthrates) “The future belongs to those who show up.” ~ National Review.

 

The country has more material wealth than ever before, but grows spiritually poorer every day.

 

“Trust the science (if verifiable). Never trust the politics of the scientists.” ~ Christine Rosen

 

It takes a wise and strong person not to overdo a good thing.

 

“Weakness itself is a provocation.” ~ National Review

 

“Chew your corn.” ~ Capt. Dan Pease, late skipper of the schooner Lewis R. French

 

“(People) spoke of ‘Justice,’ but they seemed to mean ‘Revenge.’” ~ Douglas Murray, The War on the West.

 

BLM is an organization of racist thugs. Antifa is an organization of fascist thugs.

 

“Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.” ~ George Orwell

 

Slavery was a great sin. The United States would be better off if not one slave had been brought to these shores. Colonialism was also a sin. The world would be better off if European powers had not built one road, hospital, airport, or school in the third world.

 

It’s telling that Antifa, BLM, and their woke allies have targeted Winston Churchill, the greatest anti-fascist in history.

 

“The demonization of the west and western people is now the only acceptable form of bigotry at international forums such as the United Nations. ~ Douglas Murray, The War on the West.

 

You cannot right past wrongs by committing new wrongs in the present.

 

Make America Sane Again.

 

“The Jewish nigger Lassalle…It is quite plain to me…that he is descended from the negros who accompanied Moses flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger.” ~ Karl Marx, letter to Engles.

 

“We find every tyrant backed by a Jew.” ~ Karl Marx, New York Tribune, 1853.

 

“Slavery is an economic category like any other. ~ Karl Marx, 1847

 

So, in light of these and other quotes, why have the statutes of Marx not been dragged down? When people have been cancelled because their ancestors invested in a company that benefited from slavery, why not Marx? Because he is a left-wing god.

 

I’m glad I learned math before 2+2=4 became racist.

 

The woke have indulged in revenge and called it justice, in destruction and called it building, in hate and called it love.

 

“One way or another, we are going to have to figure out how to make our multi-ethnic realities work, and one of the great intellectual projects facing us---in America and abroad—will be to develop a vision of ourselves strong and supple enough both to acknowledge the lingering importance of inherited group identities while also attenuating, rather than reinforcing, the extent to which such identities are able to define us.” ~ Thomas Chatterton Williams, Self-Portrait in Black and White. https://www.bing.com/search?q=thomas+chatterton+williams&filters=ufn%3a%22Thomas+Chatterton+Williams%22+sid%3a%22695cdb93-9cf4-cd29-6fe9-b8440bd600fd%22&asbe=HS&qs=MB&pq=thomas+chatterton+williams&sc=10-26&cvid=1C3FD4687E41401C8A5542B381DBCBAC&FORM=QBRE&sp=1&lq=0

 

Note from a dental technician who bought two of my quote books: “My dad and whole family will greatly enjoy these as they resonate with everything we value & hold dear. What a gift you have & what a sacrifice of time.” ~ Emily

 

Email from a guy in NC: “I bought four copies of your Quotes. I gave three to friends and one is on my desk.  GREAT WORK!” – Kirk. He followed up that he bought a two more books for other friends! He also wrote a very positive review on Amazon.

 

*****

Quotes for the Conservative Heart: Ideas as Weapons of Defense

Print $9.99:

Kindle $2.99: https://www.amazon.com/Quotes-Conservative-Heart-Weapons-Defense-ebook/dp/B0B44B7F3R/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1655505879&sr=1-1

Quotes for the Conservative Heart is a collection of over 1,900 quotes, thoughts, and adages that will make you think (which may be an uncomfortable experience), which will help you defend yourself against ad hominin attacks, and which will help your writing and speaking. They will inspire you to fight a bit harder and a bit longer. As necessary to your security as an extra magazine, this book will help you identify threats to you, your family, and your culture. Open carry (of this book) is encouraged. We hope it will be a constant companion and a treasured possession. If you like it, please review on Amazon and tell your friends.

 

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic. http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-American-Republic-prevent/dp/1461122538/ref=sr_1_5?s=booksandie=UTF8andqid=1304815980andsr=1-5 For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. Hall’s other books are listed here: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7362663422037727028/9086317755245136353

His blog of political news and conservative comment is www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com. He currently volunteers as a writer-editor in the My Life, My Story program as the Madison VA hospital, interviewing vets and writing up their life histories. He is also teaching chess to kids after school.

The War on the West by Douglas Murray

 

The War on the West by Douglas Murray

https://www.amazon.com/War-West-Douglas-Murray/dp/0063162024/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1T0G630VS9UZR&keywords=war+on+the+west+douglas+murray&qid=1682347116&s=books&sprefix=the+war+on+the+west%2Cstripbooks%2C111&sr=1-1

Though it may make you depressed, angry, and full of despair, I think this is a must-read. In clear prose, with irrefutable examples, and using logic, research, and argument, Murray details the attack that is destroying western civilization and culture. What will replace it will be chaos, the war of all against all, and a great decline in culture and civilization. Murray details how the west and free markets have lifted millions from poverty, sparked great medical advances (why I am alive today), and given far more to the world than any other culture or civilization. Some quotes from the book:

 

“The demonization of the west and western people is now the only acceptable form of bigotry at international forums such as the United Nations.

 

“(People) spoke of ‘Justice,’ but they seemed to mean ‘Revenge.’”

 

“The Jewish nigger Lassalle…It is quite plain to me…that he is descended from the negros who accompanied Moses flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger.” ~ Karl Marx

 

“Slavery is an economic category like any other. ~ Karl Marx

 

This book will provide you with both an understanding of the destroyers, and arguments to fight back.

Sex with Children

 Failing to Create Brotherhood of Man, UN Promotes Sex With Children

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/04/19/failing-to-create-brotherhood-of-man-un-promotes-sex-with-children/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell&mkt_tok=ODI0LU1IVC0zMDQAAAGLPRrIn_j6_ORrQ39Cw436ehTEva4r8XS_8Za3-9Xat4bucXcOq87kYnraxlFkEZYOtzXIQzjeWlkdFGEJjLtXgyZ5AbVeXEAXB20zVbXqokLIAp18

Happy Patriots Day

 Happy Patriots Day

April 19, a holiday in Massachusetts commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord which started the revolution.

Book recommendation

 

Mala's Cat: A Memoir of Survival in World War II by Mala Kacenberg

https://www.amazon.com/Malas-Cat-Memoir-Survival-World/dp/1643139037/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3DVLTV1SHJ8DD&keywords=mala%27s+cat+by+kacenberg&qid=1681602150&sprefix=mala%27s+Cat%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-1

My wife and I listened to this book on CD in the car and found it riveting. The author recounts her experiences as a young Jewish girl in Poland during WWII. All of her immediate family and most of the Jews in her town were killed by the Nazis. She was fortunate in having blond hair, so was able to pass as a Christian girl, after obtaining a fake ID. She also had incredibly good luck, was cool and quick-witted, and very brave. Often, she was alone in the forest with only her cat for company and to warn her of danger. Eventually, she took the step of volunteering for the labor exchange which took her to work as a maid in a hotel in Germany. She also met many good people along the way who sheltered and fed her. If you want to know what it was like to be a Jewish child during the Holocaust, you will find this volume most interesting.

 

Our Half-Educated Education Debates

Lately there’s been much hand-wringing punditry about the education “culture wars,” with the mainstream media blaming right-wing extremists for heated fights over social studies, school boards, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), library books, and what-have-you. But what if right-wing extremism is mostly a figment of the mainstream media’s collective imagination? And what if it’s actually those enlightened pundits who are fueling the fights?

Education coverage often seems bent on ignoring or caricaturing conservative concerns, signaling to readers that the Right’s complaints are ignorant or insincere. This predictably frustrates the Right, ramping up populist outrage. And round and round we go.

Consider this winter’s AP African-American-history clash. When Florida governor Ron DeSantis objected to the politicized and polemical elements of the pilot course, major media portrayed him as a scheming, censorious bigot. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin accused him of mounting a “full-blown white supremacist” attack on “fact-based history.” The New York Times featured the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund declaring that “Florida is at the forefront of a nationwide campaign to silence Black voices” and “erase” black history.

Yet such attacks ignored inconvenient facts: Florida’s Stop WOKE law requires students to study the civil-rights movement, and DeSantis has repeatedly explained that he objected not to the subject matter but to units such as “Black Queer Studies” and “The Reparations Movement.” Whatever one thinks of these contemporary and controversial topics, questioning their inclusion in high-school curricula is hardly evidence of hostility to “fact-based history” or a desire to “silence Black voices.” The major-media coverage, though, echoed progressive hyperbole while providing no sense that conservatives might have sincere concerns or good-faith objections.

Now, it’s not news that newsrooms lean left. But they might still be interested in substantive debate, the habits of good journalism, or simply the veneer of fairness. Unfortunately, it appears that the guardrails of professional responsibility have corroded, to devastating effect.

In a series of studies over the past five years, I’ve examined how the media cover major education debates, such as those related to teacher strikes, critical race theory (CRT), and President Biden’s student-loan-forgiveness scheme. Looking at the nation’s most influential newspapers (typically the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today), I’ve examined what shows up in news reporting and found a maddeningly comprehensive bias. The problem isn’t just partisan bias but extends to matters of what gets covered and who gets quoted.

 

Perhaps the most pernicious source of bias is the way reporting systematically disregards inconvenient facts. For instance, in covering the wave of teacher strikes in 2018, the generosity of teachers’ health care and pensions should have been a major issue, yet fewer than half of news articles even mentioned health-care benefits. Not one story mentioned teachers’ vacation time, and just 3 percent of news stories mentioned the value of teacher pensions — even though in some strike states, the average teacher already earned more than the state’s median household. Just 2 percent of articles compared teacher pay and median household income.

Hostility to letting schools teach about slavery or Jim Crow was almost uniformly presented as the reason for public anti-CRT sentiment in 2020–21, even though polling showed broad support for teaching those topics. The pushback against CRT was actually about CRT, which, as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic enthuse in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” More than 90 percent of news accounts wholly ignored this rejection of equality, rationality, and objectivity, and more than 85 percent ignored CRT’s disdain for “color-blind” thinking. A reasonable person could have read a year’s worth of CRT coverage in the nation’s leading newspapers and come away convinced that the only question was whether schools should teach about segregation.

News accounts of Biden’s $400 billion student-loan-forgiveness proposal last year paid remarkably little attention to its legality, fairness, or logic. After Biden’s announcement, just one in five news stories even mentioned the 2003 HEROES Act, enacted in the aftermath of 9/11, which gave the secretary of education flexibility to keep troops or other affected individuals from falling behind on student loans when “necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency,” and which the Biden White House used to justify its unprecedented action. Just 24 percent of news accounts discussed its inflationary impact, and just 6 percent mentioned that those who had borrowed for graduate or professional degrees would benefit, not just college kids.

Then there’s the question of who gets quoted in news accounts. In the case of the student-loan-forgiveness scheme, 81 percent of the quotes from public officials were from Democrats and 19 percent from Republicans. When the subject of an education article is a conservative proposal, such as school choice, news accounts are typically dominated by competing takes from putative experts instead of testimonials from parents. Yet when it came to Biden’s proposal, the rules changed. Policy and legal experts were duly skeptical, but they accounted for less than 20 percent of quotes. Meanwhile, individuals identified as borrowers or borrower advocates accounted for 30 percent of quotes, and those identified as taxpayers or taxpayer advocates for just 3 percent.

Yet such attacks ignored inconvenient facts: Florida’s Stop WOKE law requires students to study the civil-rights movement, and DeSantis has repeatedly explained that he objected not to the subject matter but to units such as “Black Queer Studies” and “The Reparations Movement.” Whatever one thinks of these contemporary and controversial topics, questioning their inclusion in high-school curricula is hardly evidence of hostility to “fact-based history” or a desire to “silence Black voices.” The major-media coverage, though, echoed progressive hyperbole while providing no sense that conservatives might have sincere concerns or good-faith objections.

Now, it’s not news that newsrooms lean left. But they might still be interested in substantive debate, the habits of good journalism, or simply the veneer of fairness. Unfortunately, it appears that the guardrails of professional responsibility have corroded, to devastating effect.

In a series of studies over the past five years, I’ve examined how the media cover major education debates, such as those related to teacher strikes, critical race theory (CRT), and President Biden’s student-loan-forgiveness scheme. Looking at the nation’s most influential newspapers (typically the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today), I’ve examined what shows up in news reporting and found a maddeningly comprehensive bias. The problem isn’t just partisan bias but extends to matters of what gets covered and who gets quoted.

Perhaps the most pernicious source of bias is the way reporting systematically disregards inconvenient facts. For instance, in covering the wave of teacher strikes in 2018, the generosity of teachers’ health care and pensions should have been a major issue, yet fewer than half of news articles even mentioned health-care benefits. Not one story mentioned teachers’ vacation time, and just 3 percent of news stories mentioned the value of teacher pensions — even though in some strike states, the average teacher already earned more than the state’s median household. Just 2 percent of articles compared teacher pay and median household income.

Hostility to letting schools teach about slavery or Jim Crow was almost uniformly presented as the reason for public anti-CRT sentiment in 2020–21, even though polling showed broad support for teaching those topics. The pushback against CRT was actually about CRT, which, as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic enthuse in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” More than 90 percent of news accounts wholly ignored this rejection of equality, rationality, and objectivity, and more than 85 percent ignored CRT’s disdain for “color-blind” thinking. A reasonable person could have read a year’s worth of CRT coverage in the nation’s leading newspapers and come away convinced that the only question was whether schools should teach about segregation.

News accounts of Biden’s $400 billion student-loan-forgiveness proposal last year paid remarkably little attention to its legality, fairness, or logic. After Biden’s announcement, just one in five news stories even mentioned the 2003 HEROES Act, enacted in the aftermath of 9/11, which gave the secretary of education flexibility to keep troops or other affected individuals from falling behind on student loans when “necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency,” and which the Biden White House used to justify its unprecedented action. Just 24 percent of news accounts discussed its inflationary impact, and just 6 percent mentioned that those who had borrowed for graduate or professional degrees would benefit, not just college kids.

Then there’s the question of who gets quoted in news accounts. In the case of the student-loan-forgiveness scheme, 81 percent of the quotes from public officials were from Democrats and 19 percent from Republicans. When the subject of an education article is a conservative proposal, such as school choice, news accounts are typically dominated by competing takes from putative experts instead of testimonials from parents. Yet when it came to Biden’s proposal, the rules changed. Policy and legal experts were duly skeptical, but they accounted for less than 20 percent of quotes. Meanwhile, individuals identified as borrowers or borrower advocates accounted for 30 percent of quotes, and those identified as taxpayers or taxpayer advocates for just 3 percent.

In the case of the 2018 teacher strikes, union officials and teachers accounted for over half of all quotes, while just 5 percent were from parents or students affected by the strikes. In fact, while families bore the brunt of strike-related disruptions, just 14 percent of media accounts included even a single parent or student quote. And when parents and students were quoted, over 80 percent of their quotes were pro-strike, even though only about half of adults said they supported the teachers’ right to strike — and despite social-media activity suggesting that lots of parents were frustrated with shuttered schools. It’s almost as if reporters were cherry-picking quotes to reflect a favored narrative.

There’s also old-fashioned blatant partisan bias. During the first 100 days of the Trump and Biden administrations, across both news and opinion, there were twice as many Trump-administration education stories in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal as Biden ones. This was particularly striking, given that Biden’s first 100 days featured $200 billion in new school spending and fights about school closures and mask mandates, while there was nothing remotely comparable on the education front during the tumult of Trump’s early months. But the Times, for instance, ran nearly two dozen anti-Trump pieces (with headlines such as “The Trump War on Public Schools” and “Ms. DeVos’s Fake History about School Choice”) in the administration’s first 100 days, but just one that was forthrightly critical of the Biden administration over the same period.

Those results mirrored the findings of another analysis I conducted a few years back, comparing news coverage of Republican education proposals in 2017–18 (when the GOP had unified control in Washington) with that of Democratic proposals in 2009–10 (when Democrats did). In the major papers, 45 percent of news stories on GOP proposals had a negative slant; for Democrats, the comparable figure was less than 5 percent.

I have a hunch that all of these disparities are not due just to partisan groupthink but also to risk aversion, laziness, and the wish to publish clickbait. Reporters know they’re safe if they side with teachers, “anti-racists,” and borrowers. And rehashing well-worn talking points about heartless right-wing anti-teacher bigots is easy; mastering the complexities of teacher pensions or student-loan repayment is hard. And, of course, a story about the fight against proto-fascists is not only safe and easy but far more likely to generate clicks than a deep dive into the complexities of CRT or loan forgiveness.

But whatever its causes, the double standard has truly perverse consequences. By describing conservative positions as unfounded or ignorant, the media have degraded our discourse. And by giving progressive proposals little scrutiny, they have handed a free pass to extreme voices. All this has made it harder to find constructive middle ground on issues, when it can be found at all.

When it comes to “anti-racism” and CRT, there’s plenty of room for serious people on the left and the right to embrace inclusive, robust history while rejecting toxic dogmas. On teacher strikes, there’s room to agree on boosting teacher pay while also addressing issues about benefits and outdated salary structures. On loan forgiveness, there’s broad agreement that Biden’s proposal is neither legal nor equitable but that student lending does need to be revamped.

But in elevating extreme claims on the left and fueling frustration on the right, the nation’s agenda-setting media have made it far tougher to find such agreement. Indeed, if the nation’s most influential reporters and editors had consciously set out to exacerbate our distrust and division, the result would look a lot like what we see today.

This article appears as “Half-Educated” in the April 3, 2023, print edition of National Review.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Norway: Principal says Muslim high school students shouldn’t skip classes to pray, they threaten to lynch her

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/04/norway-principal-says-muslim-high-school-students-shouldnt-skip-classes-to-pray-they-threaten-to-lynch-her

Wisconsin Supreme Judicial Court goes woke.

 

Woke progressive Janet Protasiewicz won the open Wisconsin Supreme Court race, giving the left majority on the court and putting in jeopardy everything from concealed carry, to act 110, to babies’ lives. For her the Constitution is an inconvenient obstacle. Maybe it’s time to move south?

Random thoughts for April

 

Random Thoughts for April, 2023

Robert A. Hall

Feel free to post or forward.

 

Health Update: Breathing some better. FEV Numbers (Forced Expository Volume, the liters of air I can expel in a second) were up, in the 1.6 range for the first time this year, now down againto the 1.5 range. But my tremor and the arthritis in my hands are getting worse. It make’s texting almost impossible, typing vary hard, and my handwriting (always bad) is now unreadable by me. Hearing is getting worse; VA gave me new hearing aids. But weight down to 155. Yea! I continue to march.

 

My New Book has Launched: Crude, Rude, and Lewd Jokes: Something to Offend Everyone. $6.99

This book has over 700 jokes, limericks, quips, and one-liners, that will make you a star at the bar, but a pariah at the church social.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Rude%2C+Crude%2C+and+Lewd+jokes&i=stripbooks&crid=2BCJTP14G5B1B&sprefix=rude%2C+crude%2C+and+lewd+jokes%2Cstripbooks%2C102&ref=nb_sb_noss

 

my favorite April Fool’s joke is to leave a shoe untied. When someone points it out, I smile and say, “I know it’s April Fool’s Day, you won’t catch me with that old one!”

 

New scam: A pleasant recorded female voice says, “This is a call from your utility company. A review of your records indicates you have been paying too much for gas and electricity. To receive a $50 credit and lower your bills by 35%, please press one.” (Notice they don’t say which company. And who doesn’t want to lower their bills?) Usually, I hang up. For fun, I pressed one. A guy with a foreign accident said, “How may I help you.? I asked what my utility company is. Click.

 

I went shopping March 3 and found inflation still roaring along. Gas is up again. Provolone cheese is up 50 cents a pound. The dog food our pooches like is up 30 cents for a 22 OZ can. Dollar Tree now charges $1.25 per item. Hurry, 2024.

 

One more time; repeat after me: Facts before feelings, Ability before identity, Excellence before mediocrity. ~ George S.

 

If everything about January 6 is just as the left says, why are they blocking release of the transcripts for 50 years?

 

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet not withstanding go out to meet it.” ~ Thucydides

 

With China, we face the “Thucydides Trap, a term popularized by American political scientist Graham T. Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon.”

 

I hear Biden has contracted with Door Dash to ship his BS direct to your home.

 

I read that the board of the Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed, was heavy with Progressive Democrats and liberal activists, with little banking experience. Go woke, go broke.

 

My new sessions of chess have started. Still enjoying teaching it to kids after school. Some of the kidsare doing quite well.

 

Legal doesn’t mean right. Slavery was legal.

 

In the pocket of a Marine private killed on Iwo Jima was a letter from a loan company, saying if he didn’t make a payment immediately, he could find himself in serious trouble.

 

“The one who throws the stone forgets; the one who is hit remembers forever.” ~ Angolan Proverb

 

I never give money to anyone who calls, texts, or emails. If everyone did that the spam/scam calls, texts, and emails would stop. would stop. And I never give out my SS# CC# or any other info unless I contacted them and know who they are.

 

I have received the great honor of being elected Newsletter Editor for the Wisconsin Chapter of the Third Marine Division Association. Well, as great an honor as possible when there was absolutely no one else willing to do it. I hope my health holds for a few years so I can fulfill the duties of the post.

 

We can’t go green without going Nuclear.

 

Having a degree doesn’t mean you’re not useless.

 

Dreams are fine. Trying to turn them into reality gets expensive fast.

 

I’m so old, I can make change.

 

The transsexual activist who committed the Christian hate murders in Nashville, killing three adults and three kids, underscores the need for armed teachers and a cop in every school. If someone had reported his mental condition, it could have been prevented. (Preferred pronoun is her, but murdering scum don’t deserve a choice of pronouns.)

 

If you want to find if you have cuts and nicks on your hands, try hand sanitizer.

 

“It is not that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.” ~ Sir Francis Drake

 

“175 children have died since the massacre at Columbine, Colorado, a school shooting that happened during the assault weapons ban.  In 2021, four hundred sixty-five children died on the streets of just nine American cities.  … More than 1400 people were shot in Philadelphia from January to August of 2022, but the District Attorney decided not to prosecute many gun possession crimes because that would mostly target young black men.” ~ Erick Erickson 

 

Note from a dental technician who bought two of my quote books: “My dad and whole family will greatly enjoy these as they resonate with everything we value & hold dear. What a gift you have & what a sacrifice of time.” ~ Emily

 

Email from a guy in NC: “I  bought four copies of your Quotes. I gave three to friends and one is on my desk.  GREAT WORK !” – Kirk. He followed up that he bought a two more books for other friends! He also wrote a very positive review on Amazon.

 

*****

Quotes for the Conservative Heart: Ideas as Weapons of Defense

Print $9.99:

Kindle $2.99: https://www.amazon.com/Quotes-Conservative-Heart-Weapons-Defense-ebook/dp/B0B44B7F3R/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1655505879&sr=1-1

Quotes for the Conservative Heart is a collection of over 1,900 quotes, thoughts, and adages that will make you think (which may be an uncomfortable experience), which will help you defend yourself against ad hominin attacks, and which will help your writing and speaking. They will inspire you to fight a bit harder and a bit longer. As necessary to your security as an extra magazine, this book will help you identify threats to you, your family, and your culture. Open carry (of this book) is encouraged. We hope it will be a constant companion and a treasured possession. If you like it, please review on Amazon and tell your friends.

 

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic. http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-American-Republic-prevent/dp/1461122538/ref=sr_1_5?s=booksandie=UTF8andqid=1304815980andsr=1-5 For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. Hall’s other books are listed here: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7362663422037727028/9086317755245136353

His blog of political news and conservative comment is www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com. He currently volunteers as a writer-editor in the My Life, My Story program as the Madison VA hospital, interviewing vets and writing up their life histories. He is also teaching chess to kids after school.