A response to Kelly Scoles’ letter:

I must apologize to Kelly this week for not fully responding to her letter. As odd as it may sound, world affairs have, in my opinion, and that of millions of Christians worldwide, suddenly become imminently menacing. Or so it is perceived by Catholic understanding of Marian apparitions today. Accordingly, long forewarned chastisements are said to be upon us, thought to instigate WWIII, plague, starvation, and unspeakable devastation of world civil and natural order. Some details in Xavier Reyes-Ayral’s new book “Revelations... “ attract one’s attention. It is the only complete history of Marian apparitions, from prophecies of La Fraudais, to Marie-Julie Jahenny (1850-1941). This particular apparition “was the most detailed and complete case ever studied in the annals of Marian apparitions’ history.” The message here, consistent with all Marian apparitions, is “...If men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one that has never been seen before...The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead.” In other words, our civilization has become so decadent that God’s mercy is finally turning to His justice. The messages are pleadings for conversion, not condemnation per se.
I am not an historian, especially of religious affairs, but I think most Christians today have a sense of being in what is commonly called the End Times. This idea is variously described in different Judeo-Christian denominations. “In Christianity, for example, these beliefs include expectations that Jesus will return to Earth after or amid a time of great turmoil” “In the United States, 39% of adults say they believe “we are living in the end times,” while 58% say they do not believe we are living in the end times, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.” pewresearch.org.
In addition, Black Americans (68%) are much more likely than Hispanic (41%), White (34%) and Asian (33%) Americans to believe humanity is living in the end times. And adults in Southern states (48%) are more likely to say this than those living in the Midwest (37%), Northeast (34%) or West (31%).

“Whenever some big catastrophe happens, you can be sure that someone will start talking about the “end times.” Both Catholics and Protestants do this. The difference mainly seems to be that Protestants start trying to chart out the apocalypse according to Daniel and Revelation, whereas Catholics try to chart it out based on various private revelations.” (1996-2023 Catholic Answers). These “revelations” or “apparitions” are private, not formal parts of church dogma, and belief in them is also a private choice. “Approved” apparitions are scrupulously studied before any may be found “worthy of belief.” Many approved apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mother of Jesus) are centuries old traditions in the Church, which takes me back to this idea of the End Times.

Marion apparitions have occurred since the 18th century all over the world. From Xavier Reyes-Ayral’s recent book, “Revelations, The Hidden Secret Messages and Prophecies of the Blessed Virgin Mary” it’s said:
“Today, in 2022, the message of La Salette, La Fraudais, Tilly, Fatima, Garabandal, Akita and Medjugorje, and their secrets take a meaning of the greatest importance, as the admonitions brought forth by the Blessed Virgin Mary warn of a cataclysmic global disaster which has now become imminent.” Chastisements can be averted (if not entirely stopped, with prayer, fasting, and penance, (“When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened”) as in Jonah’s Nineveh, according to the Church.

As a Catholic myself, I’m simply reporting on “approved” apparitions detailed in Xavier Reyes-Ayral’s exhaustive history on Marian messages and frightful global chastisements (which many churches expect) and now alleged to be imminent. Understandably, Xavier Relyes-Ayral’s 569-page book on this subject has attracted interest.

In short (if apocalyptic pronouncements can be shortened) the Russian-Ukrainian war is said to be the first stage of WWIII. Europe, especially France, will suffer (Paris destroyed - nuclear) and Benelux countries overrun by Russian-Muslim forces (later driven off). Little mention of China or U.S., except America unable to assist NATO. Unimaginable global devastation to occur; the Catholic Church will temporarily fall; “Rome will lose its faith and will become the Seat of the Anti-Christ;” food production and the world financial systems said to collapse. Other details of this prophesied chastisement are almost too unbelievable to report, so I won’t.

Those who may cheer at thoughts of a temporary demise of the Catholic Church should pause. If apparition messages prove true, all Christianity will be ravaged, the good with the bad.

So, has this frightening period of manifest chastisement arrived? All of these revelations are “admonitions”, not absolute condemnations. Whether many see this threat as true, merely probable, or just rubbish, the world needs to clean up its moral act. If Ukraine can’t win the war due to slow and unreliable support, Russia will run right through Europe, again - and China through Taiwan.

With these threats in mind, Kelly, all of the Congressional Budget disarray seems just suicidally stupid, and Congressional corruption will end our Republic with a whimper. Pray - it works.

A short response to Kelly Scoles' letter:

This week, Kelly, you go into issues I have little interest in. I'm disgusted and repelled by the level of scandal, duplicity, and unbridled hatred that energizes our national government.
Politics has always been a dirty business, with power and control the brass ring. But today, contending with the Democratic Party, decency and honor are strangers. It's a deadly all-or-nothing, zero-sum game, where human lives and reputations are cheap.

The best example is our judicial system. Hamilton thought the judicial branch was “least dangerous” branch of the new national government. He would be scandalized to view the Republic's system today. Instead of honoring constitutional text, reserving "all powers not delegated to the Federal Government to the people or the States" the nine justices of our Supreme Court have, during the past 60 years, overreached to make sweeping changes in the law inconsistent with those Constitutionally enumerated powers. Even my much-admired Justice Gorsuch has been duped: "...thanks to the fallout from Justice Neil Gorsuch’s toxic Civil Rights Act decision, it’s [Daughters of American Revolution are] effectively being forced to admit fake women [transgender] to its ranks."

Foundational traditions are being overturned. The scandalous failure of our judicial system today is a function of the anti Judeo-Christian characters who populate it. "Depraved" would not be an exaggeration, too many officers of the court lack both intellectual and judicial integrity. I'm NOT an attorney but I have always had a strong love of the law - until it cheated on me.

The Progressive Obama-Biden judicial system is a frighteningly true shadow of The Court of Star Chamber "which could impose punishment for actions which were deemed to be morally reprehensible but were not in violation of the letter of the law. This gave the Star Chamber great flexibility, as it could punish defendants for any action which the court felt should be unlawful, even when in fact it was technically lawful. However, this meant that the justice meted out by the Star Chamber could be very arbitrary and subjective, and it enabled the court to be used later on in its history as an instrument of oppression rather than for the purpose of justice for which it was intended." It was abolished by the Long Parliament in 1641.

We should note today's system is able to persecute Trump because it can, for any reason "which the court felt should be unlawful." Let's closely examine the menagerie of aggressive Democrat judicial minions:
"My Cousin Vinney" made me laugh, but our new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (who couldn't define "a woman") made me angry. Surely she knows about the X-Y chromosomes, but secretly favors a "fluid gender" philosophy; Jack Smith, pursuing Trump, a thug in his element; New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democrat seeking notoriety; Judge Tanya Chutkanm (works with Jack Smith to gag Trump); Judge Juan Manuel Merchan ( Democrat donor with daughter a Party consultant). Ethical obligations of "the profession" have become mere partisan pretentions, camouflage for public consumption. The "crimes" attributed to Trump would never be charged to a Democrat - they are customized to attack Trump and company.
Then of course we have that bevy of tyrannical Star Chamberlains at the Justice Department, headed by that devious little man, Merrick Garland, Attorney General with his 115,000 soldiers. I get a chill thinking that he could have been appointed a justice of our Supreme Court.

I remember Associate Justice Abe Fortas resigning from the Supreme Court in 1969. This was the first resignation, first by a justice for financial crimes in United States history. He was a prominent Democrat. "He acknowledged that the payment [$20,000] was the first of a planned lifetime fee arrangement that would pass to his wife, tax attorney Carolyn Agger, after his death." Joe Biden understands, and Sen. Bob Menendez, and Congressman George Santos, and Sam Brinton, and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, and, etc.

The political assassination of Trump, by judicial criminals, Deep State, media, and Democratic Party, taunts the moral death knell of the Republic. I would classify this cancer as the wholesale abandonment of our Judeo-Christian traditions, and replacement with Marxism-Communism. These enemies of our once Christian state hate religion, like their friends in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, and they control our schools (law schools) today.
Judeo-Christian believers must act to save Donald Trump - lawfully, of course. He represents the future of Equal Justice for All Americans.

I've gone too long with a short argument.

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:

My condolences to you, Kelly, for the loss of your husband, John. It seems inappropriate for me to head into a political debate at this time. I'm glad to welcome you in rejoining the world. We have a common friend in St. Dominick. I carry his medal to keep the demons at bay.

I would simply like to offer a few minor differences of opinion this week. At the risk of boring readers with the same old truth, I'll mix it up with a couple of whoppers. Like, Joe Biden is a brilliant, thoughtful, honest young man. Also, Kamala Harris has done an awe-inspiring job as our Border Czarina; millions of illegals flee at her very presence - though they flee the wrong direction. One last thought. In parts of America today gasoline is approaching $7.00 per gallon, again. Let's give a big yippee to Joe Biden's domestic think tank. They thought that raising the price of gas from Trump's affordable $2.00 to Biden's $7.00 would give God a chance to change his climate. The Democrats are convinced that God is still learning, and that they can accelerate that phenomenon. Isn't that thoughtful of them.

Getting back to the "realities" you refer to, "political realities" certainly are increasingly threatening. The threats I see concern the collapse of our judicial, executive, and legislative systems. Judicial (especially federal) abuse can be seen reducing Donald Trump to a Job-like figure (call it Job's syndrome), recalling the boils afflicted upon the biblical character, much like the subpoenas and hundreds of false charges which pin Trump down. Trump is certainly no saintly Job, but the political demons have been loosed upon him to satisfy Democrat vengeance, the Constitution be damned. The free world watches in disbelief as a former President of the United States is pilloried to keep him from becoming president again. In former times this would have sparked a real insurrection, torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers.

While witnessing this systemic criminal injustice, the affront to that iconic expression "Equal Justice Under Law" is obvious. What can be done, what is the remedy when the Constitution becomes plastic? I've lost my respect for the law as its justices, judges, district attorneys, and prosecutors manifest in extreme Progressive Drag. They're in a fit of judicial transgendering, lacking confidence in their historic jurisprudential gender. They farm the law to glean every scrap of power they can exercise. The system can no longer be trusted. It should be resisted.

Kelly condemns Trump for an intemperate political threat he made. Please, let's be fair. We should recall Senator Chuck Schumer shouting to the media in front of the Capitol: “I want to tell you [Justice] Gorsuch. I want to tell you [Justice] Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” He was referring to abortion cases. Excuse me, but that SOB should have been arrested. Threatening United States government officials is a felony under federal law. But Democrat behavior has always been above the law, they are rarely even prosecuted - remember Hillary's 30,000 classified documents? What did that FBI scumbag Comey say? "No reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Clinton for emails. FBI Director James Comey said his office is not recommending prosecutors bring charges against Hillary Clinton." What has happened concerning Joe Biden's thousands of unlawfully accessed and secretly withheld classified documents? Also, nothing.

Lastly, America is no longer an "experiment." America is already more than 200 years older than ancient Athenian democracy ever became. We know the governmental formula works, but it relies upon the character of its officeholders. The Republic is disintegrating today due to massive greedy, political-spiritual corruption. Democrats have turned the system into a criminal enterprise which Republicans seem too weak to resist.

Ukraine must win that war.
Support for Ukraine in her war with Russia appears to be wavering. Nothing could be more devastating, wasteful, or dangerous to world peace. To save the free world from completely unraveling, Ukraine must WIN the war. General "Ben" Hodges, former commanding general, United States Army Europe, knows this fact. Read his comments. Taking Crimea back is critical to success; giving Ukraine long-range missiles can get that job done. Our scandalous debt doesn't negate the profound need for continuous support to Ukraine. Let's not lose our will in the face of the enemy, as we did in Afghanistan!

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:

My condolences to you, Kelly, for the loss of your husband, John. It seems inappropriate for me to head into a political debate at this time. I'm glad to welcome you in rejoining the world. We have a common friend in St. Dominick. I carry his medal to keep the demons at bay.

I would simply like to offer a few minor differences of opinion this week. At the risk of boring readers with the same old truth, I'll mix it up with a couple of whoppers. Like, Joe Biden is a brilliant, thoughtful, honest young man. Also, Kamala Harris has done an awe-inspiring job as our Border Czarina; millions of illegals flee at her very presence - though they flee the wrong direction. One last thought. In parts of America today gasoline is approaching $7.00 per gallon, again. Let's give a big yippee to Joe Biden's domestic think tank. They thought that raising the price of gas from Trump's affordable $2.00 to Biden's $7.00 would give God a chance to change his climate. The Democrats are convinced that God is still learning, and that they can accelerate that phenomenon. Isn't that thoughtful of them.

Getting back to the "realities" you refer to, "political realities" certainly are increasingly threatening. The threats I see concern the collapse of our judicial, executive, and legislative systems. Judicial (especially federal) abuse can be seen reducing Donald Trump to a Job-like figure (call it Job's syndrome), recalling the boils afflicted upon the biblical character, much like the subpoenas and hundreds of false charges which pin Trump down. Trump is certainly no saintly Job, but the political demons have been loosed upon him to satisfy Democrat vengeance, the Constitution be damned. The free world watches in disbelief as a former President of the United States is pilloried to keep him from becoming president again. In former times this would have sparked a real insurrection, torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers.

While witnessing this systemic criminal injustice, the affront to that iconic expression "Equal Justice Under Law" is obvious. What can be done, what is the remedy when the Constitution becomes plastic? I've lost my respect for the law as its justices, judges, district attorneys, and prosecutors manifest in extreme Progressive Drag. They're in a fit of judicial transgendering, lacking confidence in their historic jurisprudential gender. They farm the law to glean every scrap of power they can exercise. The system can no longer be trusted. It should be resisted.

Kelly condemns Trump for an intemperate political threat he made. Please, let's be fair. We should recall Senator Chuck Schumer shouting to the media in front of the Capitol: “I want to tell you [Justice] Gorsuch. I want to tell you [Justice] Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” He was referring to abortion cases. Excuse me, but that SOB should have been arrested. Threatening United States government officials is a felony under federal law. But Democrat behavior has always been above the law, they are rarely even prosecuted - remember Hillary's 30,000 classified documents? What did that FBI scumbag Comey say? "No reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Clinton for emails. FBI Director James Comey said his office is not recommending prosecutors bring charges against Hillary Clinton." What has happened concerning Joe Biden's thousands of unlawfully accessed and secretly withheld classified documents? Also, nothing.

Lastly, America is no longer an "experiment." America is already more than 200 years older than ancient Athenian democracy ever became. We know the governmental formula works, but it relies upon the character of its officeholders. The Republic is disintegrating today due to massive greedy, political-spiritual corruption. Democrats have turned the system into a criminal enterprise which Republicans seem too weak to resist.

Ukraine must win that war.
Support for Ukraine in her war with Russia appears to be wavering. Nothing could be more devastating, wasteful, or dangerous to world peace. To save the free world from completely unraveling, Ukraine must WIN the war. General "Ben" Hodges, former commanding general, United States Army Europe, knows this fact. Read his comments. Taking Crimea back is critical to success; giving Ukraine long-range missiles can get that job done. Our scandalous debt doesn't negate the profound need for continuous support to Ukraine. Let's not lose our will in the face of the enemy, as we did in Afghanistan!

I am very sad to report the recent passing of a friend of many years, John Scoles. My condolences to his wife, Kelly, who has contributed greatly to the Gazette for several years now.

I knew John for virtually all of the 34 years I've been in Fillmore. I saw him regularly at Mass until his disability made his attendance too difficult. John was also a close associate of a best friend of mine, Joseph P.D. Kern, who passed away several years ago. Both outstanding lawyers.

May the souls of these faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

****
An unusually clear display of the Democratic Party's mind was exposed to the world last Tuesday when Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Gliannoulias (D) testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee to protect child pornography. The hearing, entitled "Book Bans: Examining how Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature", seeks to defend the vilest child porn as "literature" worthy to be included in school libraries. His argument: (child pornography must not be banned.) "This legislation is important, because both the concept and the practice of banning books contradicts the very essence of what our country stand for, and what our democracy was founded on," Giannoulias told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday." So, according to his twisted logic, the Founding Fathers supported sodomy.

The law – passed earlier this year – "prohibits state funding for any library that pulls books for "partisan or doctrinal" reasons." " The new law comes as predominantly Republican-led states continue to restrict books some consider offensive in schools and libraries across the country."

Giannoulias was questioned by Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) who shocked many by reading aloud excerpts from two infamous pornographic books ("All Boys Aren't Blue" and "Gender Queer") now promoted for public school libraries by Woke Democrats, but banned by others. Normal Christian parents loudly condemn the books as viciously pornographic. "Vicious", because the book's visual contents leave vivid spiritual scars on innocent memories.
Psychologists tell us that even a single pornographic picture stays with the child for a lifetime. But Democrats say banning any book is a bad thing, and child porn is a good thing. They use the idea of "free speech" to perfume the fecal stench of child pornography.

Illinois must be staffing its senior politicians from NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) membership lists. This situation epitomizes one of America's fatal flaws today, a flaw that may well end our Republic. That is, in multiple cases America faces completely intolerable, even lethal, situations - and seems incapable of doing anything about it. Call it sovereign political impotence.

Examples are plentiful. Our border was opened on the first day of Biden's election - 7 million global illegal aliens continue to pour in. Nothing has been done to stop it. Biden surrendered Afghanistan after squandering 20-years of blood and treasure. Nothing to stop hasty abandonment, including American citizens and $85 billion worth of equipment handed to the Taliban. Just today, capitulating to Iran (giving Iran $6 billion in prisoner swap for five Iranian Americans now held in Tehran). Iran is close to having nuclear weapons; the deal sabotages Israeli defense, endangers America. Who - what - can stop it? Evil in America today appears unstoppable.

Conclusive evidence of historic multi-million-dollar Biden family corruption (think treason), Democrat indifference, and media cover-up with no cure in sight, infests the Republic with confusion. Again, nothing can be done in a timely fashion - while China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran don't bother with fashion. Unpopular common sense declares America is in grave, imminent danger - too proud to pray, too naive to save the innocence of our school children. Still Home of the Brave? Or Ship of Fools?

Publisher’s Note:
Due to the political sensitivity of Letter’s to the Editor regarding Transgendering, Drag and LGBQ (etc.) activities, no identification of the author is required. This is to encourage correspondence and prevent retaliation. Opinions from all sides are encouraged. Of course, “fighting words” and defamatory expressions are always prohibited.
As a famous entertainer used to say, “Wunnerful, Wunnerful! Let’s keep those cards and letters coming folks!” (A free one-year subscription to the Gazette for the first person to identify him.)

****
A response to Kelly Scoles’ letter:
To be frank, Kelly, I’m sympathetic to the lyrics of “Rich Men North of Richmond”, but the sound is hard on my old ears.
While there is plenty of room to blame both Democrats and Republicans for our bankruptcy-inviting financial policies, Democrats are the greatest offenders; they are addicted to big government and its habits of profligacy; it’s like “join the Democrats, we give away the most free stuff,” until the “free” stuff runs out.
In the fiscal year 2022, the federal government brought in [taxes] $4.90 trillion but spent $6.27 trillion, with a net budget deficit of $1.38 trillion (the fourth-highest of the 21st Century). In addition, it has run deficits every year since 2001, when it last ran a surplus.

The current US national debt? (as of 9-5-2023) is $32 trillion. In other words, that’s thirty-two thousand billion dollars. I know, that’s headache-producing. That’s $98,000 owed for every person in the US.
Democrats believe Uncle Sam has an infinitely expandable credit card - like Zimbabwe did in 2015. “Equivalent daily inflation rate was: 98%. Time required for prices to double: 24.7 hours.” Cost of loaf of bread, “At one point, a loaf of bread was Z$550,000,000 in the regular market, when bread was even available”. That’s what you call hyperinflation - brace yourself.

Two examples of inflation impress me today, the cost of a cup of coffee, McDonalds medium: in Fillmore: $3.19, more than in Camarillo! (I’m holding the receipt). Next, the affordability for the average person to buy a house. As a young man I could sit at a luncheon counter anywhere and buy a cup of coffee for ten cents and get free refills. I bought my first house in Ventura for $56,000, two-bedroom, single bath, nice backyard, great neighborhood, in the early 1970s. I worked on the Alaska Pipeline at the time. The same house today: $450,000.

Kelly, I too am gravely concerned about the almost apocalyptic financial imbalance in the country today. It seems everything is too big for the average American to handle. BlackRock Investment Mgt. once claimed to control $10 trillion dollars. Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Amazon, Alphabet, and Nvidia all claim to be trillion-dollar companies. Let’s remember that a trillion dollars is 1,000 billion. As Senator Everett Dirksen once said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money”. Maybe that’s the question, is it real money? As long as the world continues to believe, it must be. Of course, as soon as people no longer believe, it becomes fictitious, like the Zimbabwe dollar. In a word, I believe most things of “value” today have become “fabulous”, fantastic, which is not a thing at all in reality; not unlike my friend Scrooge McDuck with his three cubic acres of cash and gold coins in his money bins overlooking the city of Duckburg. Money elevates one to the status of Super Mortal. At a whim, like Mr. Zuckerberg, at this level one can donate $400-million to the Democratic Party during an election, a pittance from the money bin. Though not as rich as McDuck, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Ford, Astor, Morgan, et al. sought to be the richest men in the world. None may have been as wolfishly greedy as J. Paul Getty (though he did leave a museum) and Carnegie, many libraries, while helping to organize the industrial revolution. I think accumulations of money like this are problematic for Republics. But all were ambushed by their mortality, and met their God, without benefit of money.

But I digress. I will admit, America is far out of economic balance, and I don’t know what to do about it. How can we ever get back to the ten-cent coffee and $56,000 house?

****
Since the Biden family’s domestic and international business dealings are proving to be criminal, Joe’s proposals are meaningless to me. I continue to support Trump, with some trepidation. He is being unconstitutionally attacked by corrupt federal and state agencies, which have been weaponized to destroy the Republican Party. I doubt whether he survives to run for office. This is true political assassination and election interference.
Kelly, you keep bringing up the tragic story of the “surgical sexual reassignment of David Reimer.” (“Reassignment” is an outrageous euphemism here.) I heard today that some 50,000 boys and girls (under age 18) have undergone similar surgery for so-called “gender dysphoria” - all based upon “feelings”. It’s time to hear from those who too late regret that surgery as they grow-up. Liberal leftists, like you, have substituted “feelings” for logic, and live in an unreality which science can never touch. You entirely misinterpret the Church Militant article. Where did I ever mention “sin”? The article is intended to show the horror of Transgenderism, not sympathize with it. I agree with you, “evil comes in many forms” - and “sexual reassignment surgery” is near the top of the list. You claim to “clearly refer to choosing to protect ourselves from unwelcome facts and being willing to make others suffer to avoid our own discomfort.” Kelly, it is not “discomfort” on my part that causes revulsion at the thought of these surgeries. It is the thought that Transgenderism (especially among the young) is an expression of growing Psychopathy, welcomed by pseudo scientists at the highest levels. What you call “facts” I see as delusion. What God has assigned let no man reassign.

As for your request for more “word count” to explain your thoughts more fully, for me, however important, the discussion can become a tedious echo chamber. However, you are entirely welcome to expand your opinions onto the Gazette, online. I’m just tired of the Pride stuff, the ‘LGBTIQA+, Drag Queen extravaganzas, and demonic Transgenderism. I classify this stuff as disordered psychobabble, psychologically injurious to normal people. As for me, it is all anathema to my Judeo-Christian understanding. But I will continue to respond as long as the conversation remains rational - and as long as this crap is tolerated in Fillmore schools.

****
I miss opportunities to comment on the crucial Ukrainian War and Russian-Chinese-North Korean and Iranian threats, for which we are not prepared. Maybe next week.

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:

Hello again, Kelly,

You ask why I "have such a heat on for the "evil" of transgenderism." It is because transgenderism has become central to my fear of the disappearance of normal logic. I fear it as a harbinger of "doublethink" as explained by 1984'sWinston Smith, which is "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself."

I know, stealing 100 words from George Orwell's 1984 here is unfair and unprofessional. But it takes Orwell's genius to decipher Kelly's arguments this week - and typical Progressive thought. Looking at some "doublethink" pieces from the letter:

"Bedrock reality significantly challenged." I ask, by whom? Challenged, always. "Significantly" never. Archeologists discover new proof of Biblical history every year. Some editions of the Bible are more "lyrical" (King James) than many modern versions; but the Bible is not meant to be a mere musical sheet. And it is a "history book," as a history of God's revelation to mankind. When Putin arbitrarily decides to make war on Ukraine by murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and making the land "uninhabitable", that is pure evil which no one finds "thrilling". God is omnipotent, Kelly, as such He permits his human creations to exercise free will, (instructions were included in the plan) which many choose to ignore.

Genesis tells of the beginning, explaining our earthly purpose for being. In America at least, you can believe or not; that is our God-given "inalienable" right. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition one God is worshiped, He is all good. It is not true, as you say, that "All religions hold that God can do no wrong." From a Judeo-Christian perspective other gods can personify evil. You say I "misunderstood" Genesis when I said God created two perfectly distinct sexes." Well, how else can we interpret this? "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." No one is forced to believe this, but that's what the Good Book says. How else can this statement be understood?
Kelly, did you happen to view Oprah's interview with David Reimer before he committed suicide? I recommend you do so. Listen to how he tried, unsuccessfully as a little boy, trying to act like a girl, when he wanted to play with toy trucks instead of the dolls offered him. At this point my temper, you might say, becomes "a heat on" for decidedly un-Christian kinetic justice! Also, David Reimer never tried to "reclaim his gender identity." He wanted his biological sex returned, which had been cut away. He didn't desire to become a female construction project.

A question: Do infants and toddlers also suffer from gender dysphoria, as sometimes "diagnosed"?
About your "tiny smile" over the "concept of pure evil versus good" as a "foundational principle of our Republic." If you found that statement to be so "so erroneous on so many levels" with "grotesque logic", a single example of one of those levels would have greatly enhanced your case. If you don't recognize our Bill of Rights as a shield against "pure evil", Kelly, you're blind. This prompted me to consult my Blackstone's Commentaries, a foundational Constitutional source. Rather than provide individual examples of America's primal Judeo-Christian base (to a man, every Founding Father, even Thomas Paine, proclaimed the absolute necessity of religion for national success) I offer you the Commentaries which are saturated with evidence of American Judeo-Christian faith. Find it online, some 1,000 pages.

Blackstone's work was "Perhaps the most important legal treatise ever written in the English language. Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) was the first effort to consolidate English common law into a unified and rational system. Clearly and elegantly written, the work achieved immediate renown and exerted a powerful influence on legal education [and constitutional thinking] both in England and America. In addition to the law of nature, Blackstone identified "the revealed or divine law," defined as those specific legal rules and principles found in the Bible.” He concluded, "Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these." Not surprisingly, it is reported that the Bible was Blackstone's "constant companion" while he wrote the Commentaries. [And the Commentaries, similarly, accompanied the Founders] For all of the Founding Fathers, Blackstone's Commentaries were required reading. It is a literary jewel.
You say, "afraid to consider the reality of others." I don't understand this statement. "Evil is a weapon we brandish for our own "protection"? No, pure evil is sexually mutilating a little boy to try and make him look like a girl - until he grows-up to understand what has been done to him, then commits suicide. That is the reality of pure evil!

Negativity can wear anyone down after awhile. So, I welcome something positive to begin this week’s Realities. It came during a leisurely walk down Fillmore’s bike path along the Santa Clara River, where ponds developed after all that welcome rain we had this year.

I’m glad I had my camera with me because the largest flock of Snowy Egrets I’ve seen in more than 30 years were resting on shrubbery near the ponds. Thirty to forty birds had gathered; best of all, about half were chicks, and about every five minutes a few more would sail in from the fish hatchery. It was a wonderful sight; they are an especially beautiful species that became somewhat rare during the drought.

****

Now, from Egrets to odd ducks, I’ve been doing a little research on the Transgender species. No one should believe that actual sexual transition is occurring - it cannot happen. True Gender dysphoria has been extremely rare, until this decade. Unfortunately, the medical profession now ignores that ancient, hallowed Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm.” Today, it’s all money - billions.

The Transgender fallacy has been adopted by a growing number of otherwise serious medical authorities as fact. Take Dr. Deanna Adkins for example. She is a professor at Duke University School of Medicine and the director of the Duke Center for Child and Adolescent Gender Care. Adkins argues that gender identity is not only the preferred basis for determining sex, but “the only medically supported determinant of sex.” (That’s a lie.) “Every other method is bad science”, she claims: “It is counter to medical science to use chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics to override gender identity for purposes of classifying someone as male or female.” (see: Transgender Ideology Is Riddled With Contradictions. (Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., The Heritage Foundation.2-9-2018) @RyanTAnd.

Of course, I’m not a physician nor expert in the medical field at any level. But I do respect common sense, logic, and established scientific reality. In these categories it appears to me that Dr. Adkins is embarrassed by common sense and has adopted a peculiar self-serving logic. She participates in a surprising new area of medicine which accepts wholly novel concepts of pseudo-medical reality while abandoning a millennium of established medical experience.

If this is so, she and her brave new world of medical experimenters should at least consider an even older alternative explanation of human nature, the spiritual, which takes us back to the beginning, and its creation. It is simpler, and easier to understand with something called faith. After all, Dr. Adkins has ample faith in her understanding of sexuality and gender, though that faith was virtually unheard of when she was born.

Breaking human history down to a manageable level, that I can understand, the Angels rebelled against God, releasing something called evil down to earth. Then, God’s first human creations disobeyed Him and spread evil on earth. That began a perpetual war between good and evil. Those folks called Christians, and those sometimes referred to as Our Elder Brothers in Faith, the Jewish People, tried to live by certain explicit Commandments, by books known as the (Torah) Bible, some being good, others doing evil. Skipping through a few millennia, we land in the first part of the third millennia, continuing to acknowledge the existence of two perfectly distinct sexes - male and female, with good still fighting evil. This distinction has everything to do with the original good component parts of human beings, “chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia”, etc. which Dr. Adkins now disfavors. Does she believe that with scalpel and beta blockers she has the power to stitch together something brand new in the way of created beings? In my opinion, she acts like a god-wannabe, creating gendered persons with opposite sexual identity, or vice versa. See (Church Militant, Architects of Perversion, Part II, “John Money: pedophile founder of gender ideology.” Listen to David Reimer’s ghastly story, and its suicidal conclusion.

Dr. Frankenstein thought the same thing, as he shrieked “It’s alive! - it’s alive!”
“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” I fear for those who, like David Reimer, fall into the hands of demigods with scalpels.

I side with the Judeo-Christian cohort in this battle, which identifies the phenomenon of Transgenderism as just the latest rendition of the same pure evil, as identified at the start.

Federal courts (7th Circuit) identify Transgenderism as a “religion”. The Fillmore School Board and Superintendent have no authority to inflict this evil religion upon the students entrusted to their care. I would resist as strongly against teaching Scientology.

(Note: Fillmore schools are facilitating both Transgender and Drag Queen presence on campus. They closely relate.)
Billions of people think the creation story and the concept of pure evil versus good is hogwash - and billions believe it’s true. But the foundational principles of our Republic support it. Those who reject it should, for the sake of consistency, also reject Transgenderism.

Concerning District involvement with future One Step A La Vez Drag programs:

I attended the Fillmore School District meeting Tuesday night. Opinions from many Fillmore residents and parents of District school children were voiced about participation in Drag Queen performances at the One Step A La Vez organization. Those attending were respectful, more so than at the last meeting. I didn't count, but anti-LGBTQ Drag Queen opinions seemed to be in the majority, with the crowd half as large.

Following the last meeting on the subject, two weeks ago, Superintendent Christine Schieferle stated (letter: 07-24-2023) the district’s policy on participation with One Step A La Vez' in school activities. In short, the Superintendent stated: "The Fillmore Unified School District (FUSD) will continue to share existing local and county resources, including One Step A La Vez, for families to assist them in supporting their children's education and well-being."

I'm sure the Board and Superintendent believe that this policy is most beneficial for the students. Unfortunately, they are mistaken in that belief. Most parents believe that LGBTQ activities, including Drag Queen events, are not beneficial. Quite to the contrary, anything officially associated with an organization which invites interest in "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit" ideas to children, is menacing to Judeo-Christian ethics and tradition. The presumed best intentions of the Board and Superintendent here are irrelevant. What is relevant here are parents' ethical and religious demands and expectations, which neither office has the moral authority to deny.
Neither the Board nor the Superintendent is competent to adjust extreme psycho-sexual delusions in children entrusted to their care. I emphasize the trust placed in the teachers who are designated caretakers of innocent children. In the case of A La Vez, this trust has been betrayed, in a particularly underhanded way, without notice to parents. I have to ask whether the Superintendent or Board members are holding themselves out to be priests, preachers, or psychiatrists? Even if they were indeed such specialists, they do not have the parental authority to teach their impressionable students about the psychological sickness of LGBTQ lifestyles. To impose LGBTQ influences upon normal Judeo-Christian children, without express parental authority, is tantamount to child abuse.

This issue, as embedded in LGBTQ philosophy, has profoundly shaken traditional notions of normality. Progressives want to change the law to charge parents with a felony if they refuse to give their kids puberty blockers and irreversible sex change surgery. The LGBTQ issues here have completely roiled our culture and threaten the most basic understanding of sexual and gender identity. This strange new pseudo-scientific force seeks to destroy traditional family cohesiveness. Most of all, this aberrant view is a direct attack upon America's Judeo-Christian foundations. It should be met directly and forcefully - lawfully, of course.

Even a little research into the tragic consequences of so-called Transgender activity should be enough to educate and alarm the average reasonable person into opposing all things "LGTBQIA2S+ ". It is anathema indeed to any traditional Judeo-Christian. I know the citations "anathema" and "Judeo-Christian" can grow tedious; they are, nevertheless, necessarily true, as is the fact that a man cannot become a woman, and vice versa. Let's rekindle our respect for the normal! It's been very good to us for a long time.

For these reasons I join all parents and others sympathetic to normal, traditional policies in public education, and will continue to oppose the rest.

****

Two hours before deadline I was handed a letter from Fillmore resident Daniel Gradias concerning the A La Vez issue. Mr. Gradias' letter was too long for complete publication in print this week, so it continues online at fillmoregazette.com.
Mr. Gradias is a clinical psychologist with a master’s degree specializing in "LGBTQ affirmative therapy." I wish I had seen this letter earlier. I would have devoted this week's Realities to answering it. Maybe in detail next week?
I don't doubt Mr. Gradias' expertise. It is a perceived lack of objectivity that bothers me. I would ask if he is a member of LGBTQ community himself? The letter is full of passionate intensity and stereotypical false flag excuses, as seen from a purely Judeo-Christian point of view. Where two irreconcilable ideas confront themselves, the one with the strongest logic and Judeo-Christian ethics should prevail. Now, I know this prompts howls from the Progressive side, but this being a contest of wills, what else should we expect?

Mr. Gradias, if, for example, you proclaim that gender is "fluid" and not determined by chromosomes, and sacred decisions, you must prove your case! I'm afraid you're stuck facing one of those "violent biblical passages" like the prophets of Baal did against Elijah when doing their best to popularize Beelzebub. Yeah, I know, that's a tad much.
God willing, I hope to provide a more succinct response to your letter next week. In the meantime, please feel free to take advantage of the Gazette's First Amendment invitation.

A response to Kelly Scoles’ letter:

By Golly, I can tell you are not happy with my last column, Kelly. You disapprove of my “anathema-cursing, bush-burning, and sinner-smoting”. Give me a break. I haven’t done any “smoting” in years; but I’ll now look into that technique to chase away the Woksters.

Seriously, your attack on my opinion looks a lot like smiting to me. But I refuse to be smitten for opinions I did not express.

I would like to persuade you to sheathe your sword and cease smiting me long enough for me to shield my opinion against your attacks.

While some of the “Inquisition Catholics” were responsible for some “sinner smoting” most were not. In your eyes my assessment of LGBTQ stuff is pure heresy, which apparently entitles you to smote the heck out of me. But this Judeo-Christian, at least in America, can defend against the Wokster demons, and the frumious Bandersnatch! I can take my vorpal sword in hand, and while the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, comes whiffling through the tulgey wood, burbling as it came, I just smote him. And that’s all I have to say about that.
My apologies to Lewis Carroll for this bastardized doggerel; I’m in a bad mood. Just experienced another major betrayal of trust, irrelevant to this discussion.

Trying to get back on track, Woksters use “diversity, equity, and inclusion” like putty to fill the cracks in their thinking, like Kamala Harris attempts a solution to something. I stand by my statements.

I never bother with “dog whistles”, Kelly. Fog horns are more to my liking. This whole LGBTQ morass has stupefied the entire Republic. After reading and watching “Architects of Perversion, Part II, John Money: pedophile founder of gender ideology” on Church Militant, my sentiments have hardened. I double down on my conclusions in last week’s Realities. This shocking historical replay was news to me. I had never heard of John Money before. Shame on me. “Dr. John Money coined the phrases gender ideology and sexual identity and is hailed by LGBTQ advocates as a pioneer in gender research. In real life, he was a pederast who destroyed the lives of those he experimented on, including twin boys who committed suicide as a result of his sexual and physical abuse.” Church Militant is a conservative Catholic site, but the story is pure historical fact. Kelly, I dare you to watch this short video.

After watching the video, we should all read Lauren Smith’s “Dr. John Money and the sinister origins of gender ideology. How a cruel, amoral experiment helped birth today’s trans movement.” (long read). No normal person, in my opinion, can read this and not be repelled by anything LGBTQ. This whole movement is a testament to the sickness of naiveté that is seducing America today. It is a central part of the political, religious, scientific fraud the nation has been fed for a generation. It would not be overstating the issue to say that much of the nation has lost its mind. Now many believe men can become women, communism can be good, and Hunter Biden’s laptop says nothing about his treacherous, larcenous, father. Do you believe these things, Kelly?

To be clear, Kelly, Gay Pride event entrepreneurs are free to hold their shows wherever they choose - except on school grounds, though the legal issues are being thrashed out nationwide. The same holds true for nudist groups, marijuana conventions, and witchcraft associations. LGBTQ groups really include the entire Woke agenda, from Trans to the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). “Without Money, [last name] it’s unlikely that trans ideology, especially the phenomenon of ‘trans kids’, would exist today in the way that it does.”

Parents certainly should do their job of protecting their children - but they need to be informed of the dangers to succeed. One Step A La Vez failed to do that, and not at just one event. For what it’s worth, I will encourage opposition (emotional, financial, and electoral) to anyone who supports LGBTQ activity in our schools, for these reasons:
Alfred Kinsey & John Money: Psychopathic, Serial Sexual Predators
Alex Coppen, Sep 12, 2021, AC @ Devils’ Lane (15 min read).

Kinsey and John Money were professional psychopaths, forerunners of the diseased LGBTQ agenda.
Dr Miriam Grossman puts it this way:

“Kinsey was afflicted at his core. He was a depraved human being, and his emotional illness expressed itself through his sexuality. He was consumed by a grotesque, debilitating obsession with a wide range of abnormal behaviors—I’ll spare you the details, but I doubt very much that in all the 62 years of Kinsey’s miserable life he knew even one day of what we would consider healthy sexuality.”

“You’d be forgiven for not knowing who these two people were, and there’s a reason you don’t. These “fathers of the Sexual Revolution” form the intellectual and supposedly moral basis of modern thinking around gender and sexuality. However, if you take a look at the men behind the ideas, what you find is so repulsive it would damage any reasonable person’s adoption of them as orthodoxy.”

“Many of these men - such as paedophile rapist Michel Foucault - seemed to have been hellbent on using academic theory to justify their horrifying sociopathy and its ghastly sexual expression.”
I have ignored most of the information in these sources due to their soul-killing loathsomeness. LGBTQ activities should be recognized as criminal activity under the Natural Law.

A few words in response to the July 24, 2023 letter from the Fillmore Unified School District regarding the One Step A La Vez Drag Queen incident.

"As the twig is bent, so grows the tree."

I understand by the statements made in this letter that the District, its Board, and our Superintendent Christine Schieferle, will continue to support the activities of One Step A La Vez within the school campus and at off-campus locations. This organization provides some helpful traditional academic assistance to students having difficulty with their studies, though no comprehensive list of such assistance has been available on its website.

Unbeknownst to many parents of Fillmore students, One Step also encourages, often very young, student participation in activities provided by various LGBTIQ+ groups. "LGTBQIA2S+ is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit," and their philosophy is directly opposed to historical Judeo-Christian moral teaching and tradition. LGBTIQ groups are at war with traditionalists, especially in the area of child education. To the traditional American Judeo-Christian family, they are anathema, their beliefs morally aberrant. This is where the "queer" Woke mantra of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" spread their poison. In a social setting, diversity in itself is meaningless. Equality (of outcome) is unnatural. And inclusion (of itself) is dangerous. Much of this world should not be included in our young people's education, if virtue is still important.

LGBTIQ groups are becoming pervasive. They are especially aggressive among the young, and closely tied to pornography, determined to infect public libraries and schools: "The images come from Gender Queer, which is the book that both Chelsea Clinton and Ari Drennen are arguing must be in schools to ensure that kids are appropriately exposed to LGBTQ concepts."
From a Judeo-Christian standpoint, we humans exercise free will, and religion cannot be coerced (despite historical aberrations). It is not personal hatred that requires rejection of LGBTQ practices, it is the command to see them as anathema, the unnatural practices in particular, the so-called lifestyle. They substitute pagan beliefs for Christian. I'll spare the citations, but the consequences of ignoring the spiritual law here are severe.

The parental demand expressed by so many mothers and fathers, that our schools disassociate from One Step A La Vez and its LGBTIQ Drag Queens, is not negotiable. Those who favor this association should do so on their own time and place, not on school time. It is otherwise offensive to parents inculcating traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs in their children's character.
Our School Board should stop inviting this group to entertain and/or proselytize our students. Our children have been entrusted to their teachers, an ancient trust "in loco parentis". That is a sacred responsibility to shield them from harmful influences as parents do. LGBTIQ Drag Queens are a harmful influence to Christian children!

The Fillmore Unified School District is mandated to teach traditional, nonsectarian subjects. Parents are the ultimate authority over their children's moral welfare, and they do not wish their children to be taught about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender problems. At their young age, reading, English, math, and science are challenge enough. Let's not initiate problems of gender or sexuality by pretending to be experts in the field. Kindly and respectfully refer those challenged students to psychological expertise. Our schools are not qualified to handle this issue. In my opinion, those who insist upon supporting One Step A La Vez (while LGBTQ influences remain) regardless of best intentions, should seek other employment.
****

Hi, Kelly:
Quickly, "indictments against Trump for serious crimes"? He now has four of these indictments to deal with, all planned to make it impossible to run his presidential campaign. The most eminent lawyers tell us the charges are phony, deliberate political traps, mostly unconstitutional.

All this happening while Joe Biden is finally being investigated for bribery, and possibly treason, for his decades-long family business of peddling policy influence to foreign enemies of our state. What astonishing lies Democrats tell (with their media co-conspirators) in attempts to obfuscate the crimes! The nation has never been in such danger as we are now due to Biden corruption. As I've said for years now, we are near checkmate with our enemies due to such massive betrayal, and political machinations by punks like Jack Smith.

I don't fear that Biden may win reelection; I think he won't be here for the attempt. My fear focuses on that giggling airhead of a Vice President who may be handed those atomic codes. We had better pray that Donald Trump escapes the political traps to face our enemies once again. This is getting more doubtful, as is the nation's future.

You talk of "well-documented accusations" against Trump. You minimize Hunter's laptop revelations, as well as whistleblowers, and FBI evidence of massive bribery (possibly as much as $100 million)! Where have you been?
As for my remarks about the fossils, I'm glad you appreciated a little tongue-in-cheek humor. I've always wondered about how many Titanosaurs it would take to make billions of gallons of oil, and how they got so far down into the earth.
About the railcars--at least make the owners clean-up the graffiti and keep the cars free of such. Sierra Northern Railways seems to be very arrogant. They own a traveling graffiti circus. Make them clean up their act.
I have overrun my allotted space by hundreds of words. I gotta go.

A note on the Drag Queen issue:

I regret I ran out of time to discuss the One Step A La Vez Drag Queen controversy this week. I have to take strong exception to the School Board's letter which approves of the Drag Queen performance and its influence upon the students at Fillmore schools. I see this as a betrayal of parental trust and a danger to traditional scholastic ethics. I oppose any and all LGBTIQA+ associated entertainment sponsored by the School Board or our Superintendent. This is more than mere entertainment, it is subtle indoctrination, most insidious in our schools. This is a religious movement, and I vigorously oppose it as I would a course on witchcraft. With our schools failing miserably with reading, math, and English, why should we "teach" wholly aberrant "queer" subjects? And, yes, this is that hill.
****

I would like to recommend three links to American Thinker. I highly regard this site. The publishers there specialize in lucid truthfulness. The Andrea Widburg article shows just how far our military has fallen apart.
The Achilles Heel of Mail-In Ballot Fraud
By Jay Valentine, American Thinker, July 24, 2023.
American Thinker
July 19, 2023

Who will be the innocent who speaks the truth to the transgender crowd?
By Ned Cosby, American Thinker, July 25, 2023
"Make-believe is fun as long as we have the freedom to stop when we tire of playing. Now, however, the wonderful folks that gave us Sodom and Gomorrah want to compel us and our children in public schools to agree with them that their perverse sexual practices and thinking are normal. They want us to agree with them that women can be men and men can be women. They want the objectors among us to face job termination and legal sanctions if we don’t say “amen” to their ever-changing norms."

American Thinker, July 25, 2023.
Defense Department on the road to disaster
By Andrea Widburg, American Thinker, July 19, 2023. In June, the U.S. Army posted an article on its website celebrating a pudgy, mentally confused man—a major—who claims to be a woman “living authentically.” People who care about our nation’s defense were horrified to learn that the military is in the hands of people like Major Jones.”
****

It's refreshing to read an article which agrees with one's own opinion, especially on controversial subjects. It's a sort of reality affirmation crutch, valuable when marching against today's harmful pretentions and illogical fads, though fighting against popular irrationality (transgendering) is futile when a desire to believe is invincible.
Today, something (let's call it a virus) has caused an alarming number of otherwise normal Americans to believe human gender/sex can be changed at will. Let me play the hero here and rescue those deceived folks with my reality vaccine: that idea is false, an unhealthy, a self-evident lie! How do I know the idea of transgenderism is a lie? God told me, and so does common sense. It's right there in Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." And this all happened before copyright so I can tell everyone without being sued. Anyone promoting such an idea 50-years ago would have been referred for psychotherapy.
Mature adults, of course, can do whatever they wish to do with their own bodies - the menacing reality of transgenderism is its indoctrination of children, often very young. Capitalizing on their youthful confusion, children are being brutalized with drugs and surgery, often without their parent’s knowledge. That should be deemed criminal conduct.
****

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:
Hi Kelly, Sorry for the shorter responses lately.
You're usually more interested in the political tidbits than I am. I don't like to go there because it tends to get too petty, and America is dealing with grave dangers today. However, military promotions and nominations are critically important.

Here are some problematic new Admiral/General candidates who exemplify weakness in our military leadership. First, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., President Biden’s choice to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) recently accused Brown of suggesting there were “too many White officers” in the military. Schmitt referenced a memo that Brown signed last year setting aspirational diversity goals for Air Force applicants. "There’s this obsession with sort of race-based politics being interjected into our military,” Schmitt said, later alleging that Brown was “advocating for racial quotas." Brown is a notoriously "Woke" general, his leadership sharply focused on Diversity, equity, and inclusion, to the detriment of meritocracy, cohesion, and readiness. Brown has signed-off on the racial quotas he believes should be accepted in the Air Force - 5,000 too many whites. Brown is far too divisive a leader to entrust with our top military position, having a huge chip on his shoulder (next to his 4 stars) for the racism he alleges he experienced coming up through the ranks. That memo and his reputation for "Wokeness" should have ended his candidacy immediately.
Then, we have had generals like (now Secretary of Defense) Lloyd J. Austin III, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, "nominated to be the first woman Chief of Naval Operations and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where she will continue to inspire all of us." We should also remember the Bozo Brothers (Generals Milley and Austin) who together signed-off on President Biden's treacherous plan to surrender Afghanistan (with some 7 billion in armaments) to the Taliban - not forgetting thousands of Americans left behind. Generals with honor would have resigned in protest; trustworthy generals would not tip-off the enemy like Milley. Military leadership is dying of the Wokeness disease.

Surveying our newest roster of generals, all I can say is, "Very pretty, Colonel, Very pretty. But can they fight?"

A short response to a letter from Kelly Scoles.

Hi, Kelly.

I just have no stomach for a discussion of the procedural strategies crooked DAs are concocting to kill Trump’s 2024 reelection effort. Corrupt DAs are legion today, and most are Democrats. Jack Smith is not “intrepid”, Kelly, he’s a punk, a soulless political thug who despises American justice. He’s all that remains after judicial honor is removed. The grand juries that Democratic DAs cook-up deposit the last sweepings of dirt on my life-long love of the law. They’ve turned it into something dangerously despicable. And that’s all I have to say about that. If Democratic Party politicians succeed in hog-tying Trump, and someone like Mike Pompeo isn’t somehow miraculously elected, it’s game over. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran will feed on the leftovers - fed to them by Woke Democrats.

I’m preoccupied with the teetering state of our military forces. From the Fat Leonard Navy scandal, to the overall Woke recruitment disaster, weakness is obviously endemic to our military leadership. I’m not a defeatist, but every corner of our Army, Navy, Air and Marine forces has been sabotaged.

“DoDEA sources speak out about woke ‘Marxist’ indoctrination: ‘I’m not a... sexual realignment engineer’’ There are movements going on right now from [Pentagon] headquarters all the way down that are allowing ideas that are anti-American to take root,’ a DoDEA teacher said.” (Fox News, 6-6-2023.)

It didn’t start with Joe Biden’s treason, but it might end there. The nearly mechanical effort to undermine America’s strength and purpose can be seen from Biden’s first day in office. We were energy independent. Joe made us dependent. Our border was secure; Biden opened it to the world. To date more than 7-million illegal aliens (including terrorists) flowed in, each needing to be fed, clothed, housed, educated, employed, and kept healthy - for the foreseeable future. They must be taught our language, laws, customs, and history. No one but the president can stop the flood - and he refuses to do so because the flood is programmed to increase the Democratic vote. And, of course, every child born to these 7-million illegals is immediately an American citizen. This is national suicide by foot traffic (ignominious way to die). The world will not run out of people who decide to come to America, but America has run out of solutions to care for them without bankrupting our already feeble support systems. The world stands astonished at our stupidity, and China observes us with that lean and hungry look.

I lack the necessary talent to detail our country’s many fatal flaws in this short space. But, they are many and they loom deadly.

Failing to understand the following in today’s America is preposterous ignorance:
Men cannot become women! Women cannot become men! God has created our climate to change naturally, often extremely (oceans to desert) and, without C02 all plant life dies! God made fossil fuels to help us; that’s why He made all those fossils! Communism is a completely evil plan to destroy all freedom! Record borrowing never slows inflation! The concept of “Woke” is a cesspool of anti-Judeo-Christian deceit! Judeo-Christian religious belief is the foundation of America’s liberty! Parents are the primary authority over their children! The citizens of our Republic, under our Constitution, are the ultimate authority, having received that authority from God! Those who reject our freedoms are our enemies! Strength of mind, body, and spirit make us free! Weakness and naiveté ends freedom! Without a supremely strong military America cannot survive!

Once again I’m out of time and space. God continue to bless America!

General Patton I don’t want to get any messages saying, “I am holding my position.” We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy’s balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it’s the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you’ll know what to do.
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General Nina Armagno Thoughts from today’s feminist agenda for the American military: “For nearly 250 years, the U.S. military has designed its machines, career paths, and uniforms through a male lens. Now, the Space Force has a chance to make history as the only military branch built with women in mind from the start.” “Can Space Force Be the First Military Branch Built for Women?”Oct. 30, 2020 “The women of the 2nd Space Operations made history as the first ever all-female space operations crew on July 23, 2020, at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo. Air Force photo by Dennis Rogers and Kathryn Calvert. “ Oct. 30, 2020 | By Rachel S. Cohen (Air and Space Force magazine article) At the Women’s Global Gathering forum held during the 33rd Space Symposium in 2017, Lt Gen Armagno said, “women lead differently and we shouldn’t apologize for it,” showcasing her perspective on the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.” “Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno became the first female officer to promote to three-star general and transfer into the U.S. Space Force during a ceremony at the Pentagon, Aug. 17”. “We’re starting fresh. We’re starting a clean sheet,” Armagno said. “We’re going to be agile, we’re going to be nimble, and we’re going to bring the best of everything into the space force.”
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Sun Tzu General Sun Tzu: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. ...” In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.
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A quick response to Kelly Scoles letter: Hi Kelly. I received your letter after finishing my column. You bring up one of my favorite topics, Christian America. No time left to answer this week; get it next week. As usual, disagree with most of your allegations.

*********************
Finally, a starkly truthful statement about national defense which should demand America’s attention. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich alerts us to the fact that “Biden’s White House is the ‘most corrupt’ administration in American history!” and shows just why. We should all review Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo from July 09, 2023 to hear Gingrich and (China expert) Gordon Chang tell us about the imminent danger America is facing due to Biden betrayals and China’s threats. Biden has sold out his office for 30-millions in silver; he is an utterly compromised Chinese trophy.
I feel somewhat less self conscious about my own national defense ranting after listening to this particular warning. My main concern - no one seems to be listening. At least no one seems to be doing much about it.

Trump acted, but he is now being politically assassinated. Absent a miracle I doubt he will be able to seek office again. Besides, the window of our vulnerability invites attack before the end of this year, while Biden is captivated by John Kerry’s climate lunacy and the great Woke agenda. America has three imperatives: assist Ukraine to win that war; defend Taiwan against China, and supercharge its defense industries to provide an abundance of bombs, missiles, and planes to prevail in the coming two wars. A staunch realist would say it’s virtually too late to cure this deficit here. A true believer in democracy would demand immediate action. It’s a foolish waste of time to complain about declining stores of munitions; make what we need now!

Australia has built a new ammo factory, and no one builds planes, tanks, and howitzer shells faster than South Korea. Remember, America produced two-thirds of the Allies’ weapons in World War II. Let’s find the William Knudsens and Henry Kaisers of today.

From Arthur Herman’s book Freedom’s Forge: “Then it was Henry Kaiser’s turn. “Here beside us is the great craft, [liberty ship] “he said, “only ten days from keel laying to launching; and in a few days she will be on the ocean bearing cargo to our allies and our soldiers. It is a miracle, no less — a miracle of God and of the genius of free American workmen.” “Assembly-line production had come to America’s shipyards. By August the prefab yard had 2,500 workers, with 42 women welders and burners—and ships were ready that were 95 percent preassembled.” It’s time for America to lay the foundations for new industrial strength. Build what we need here, not over there. Otherwise we’re just feeding the beast that seeks to destroy us.

This week I started to write about our bedeviled military, which weak, politically-infected Pentagon brass has subverted. After a few hours researching the subject I became so depressed my objectivity started to smolder. I knew things were bad, but not exactly show bad. We may be short of munitions, but what we are missing most today is leadership - fighting leadership. We have been at war with China since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. We need to think like the genius, Sun Tzu: “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” If we are defeated it will be because we became foolishly naive. Hot war is inevitable; we’ve already lost the cold one. As usual, we are unprepared. A realist by nature, I now feel the gravitational pull of pessimism. The male esprit de corps has shrunk; male leadership has been emasculated in order to emphasize the feminine. Boadicea, the ancient Celtic warrior queen seems to be today’s Democratic leadership ideal, instead of leaders like General George S. Patton. It’s all part of the Woke agenda to feminize combat, hoping for a kinder-gentler war. Note: Boadicea had a bad ending when Rome got serious. This new Woke feminization plan causes explosive contempt for America within the ranks of our enemies. It is also the main reason for the collapse of our military recruiting efforts. Healthy, normal young men don’t want to join a “queer” military; it’s not manly, it’s disgusting. “The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Vets Don’t Want Children to Join!”

Most military positions are open to women. However, combat jobs should not accept women, no matter how good a shot she may be, or how well she can handle a tank. There is a massive and ancient moral prohibition against women in combat, primarily because men love, respect, and are genetically programmed to protect women. That this relationship has always been imperfect doesn’t discredit the norm. Bottom line, it is the duty of a good man to protect women against bad men, and millions of men have given up their lives to honor that rule.

I’m out of time, space, and patience. When I see the feminization of the 82nd Airborne Division, and removal of Bragg’s name, it angers me. More reason to hate the weaklings in the Woke Pentagon brass.

Due to the July 4th holiday my time for this column has been shortened.

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter (Juneteenth revisited):

Let me begin with the postscript:

Hi, Kelly,

I would never accuse you of writing an untruth; that would require a deliberate deception. I respect your right to opinion, while disagreeing with my opinion. With you being (as I understand) progressive, and I being conservative, this collision of opinions will often lead to disagreement, sometimes irreconcilable, as on issues of abortion and religion. Dueling with opinion helps preserve my interest in the "nano newspaper" business, especially on days like the 4th of July.
Let me answer your challenge on "truth" in your latest letter and forgive me for not having wished you a Happy Birthday.
Giving credit where it's due, except for Lincoln's insistence that passage of the 13th Amendment be added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming 1864 Presidential election, that law would not have passed at that time. The Senate had passed it, but not the House. Republicans, take a bow (also, for the 14th and 15th)! Democrats kept the spirit of slavery going beyond the war, through Reconstruction. Remember, it was the Democratic Party that started the Civil War to preserve slavery and ended with the KKK. Maybe the Emancipation Proclamation of January, 1863, would have been more appropriate as Janteenth. After all, it landed in Texas two years earlier.

You say, "...Black Americans can celebrate the freedom of their ancestors and not give a darn whether White America approves." This is a true statement, but with vitriolic vibrations. Do you feel the same intensity about the abandonment of Columbus Day for "Indigenous Peoples Day"? "White" and "Black" Americans? Why not just "Americans"? Forbes recently estimated the total cost to taxpayers for each federal holiday is $818 million. That's a lot of money to spend to facilitate a relative handful of folks to yell yippee! before our Independence Day, while ignoring our Emancipation Proclamation.

You obviously despise Charlie Kirk for his disparagement of Juneteenth; but is that fair? "Historically accurate observations" may not smear or slander, but should they create a new national holiday just because they may be "accurate"? Should it be important that such a holiday be important to a majority of Americans? If so, Juneteenth doesn't qualify, and only provokes dissension.

I would like to see proof of, "The last slave freed was a Texan on June 19, 1865." The "truth" here is that all slaves in Confederate states were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation on January of 1863. That's a fact as well as the truth. Talk of "white privilege" is just seditious malice of a Progressive kind. Charlie Kirk is right to blame Black Lives Matter for encouraging Juneteenth nonsense. Like all Woke-Democratic Party subversion, it's all about money and political power.
You say "America, one of the last countries to discard [slavery]..." Name any other nation on this earth that fought against slavery in a 4-year Civil War to the tune of 600,000 deaths, in order to free those slaves. Slavery exists today in several nations, namely China (Uyghurs) and Middle East countries. I say America did a damn fine job! You say, if "...offended by the celebration of [Juneteenth] consider picking up a book on what slavery was like..." to understand the desire for celebration. We all understand that desire. I say it's much more important to celebrate the 600,000 men, dead in that grizzly war, who got the job of freedom done! The book of slavery is as old as mankind. Nowhere in those pages will you find any nation so determined to end slavery as America.

Huzaah! to America upon her 247th birthday. May she live forever strong and free. - without unnecessary embellishments.

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:
Hi again, Kelly,

Well, you spare no time unloading on Trump. After accusing him (in ten rhetorical blasts) of everything from racism to groping women, I think you must still admit that he's not all bad. After all, he's not a hair-sniffer, and he has not sold out his country, like Joe Biden, the first Fifth Columnist ever to preside as president of our nation.

Republicans had a right to be "aghast" at the farcical hand slap sentence Hunter Biden received on reduced misdemeanor convictions for tax and firearms charges. The gun conviction alone should have threatened him (as others) with a 10-year prison sentence for a felony. No additional evidence of deep corruption is needed to show Attorney General Garland and his Department of Justice as indelibly tainted. I shudder to think he could have been put on the Supreme Court!

You bring up the case of young Kyle Rittenhouse, "a two-time killer." I had to refresh my memory of the November 2021 case. Why do you reject the jury verdict? "Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges Friday after pleading self-defense in the deadly Kenosha shootings" (Nov 19, 2021) — "Rittenhouse was 17 years old and armed with an AR-15-style rifle when he fatally shot two [rioters] and wounded a third in August 2020." If this trial were set (even in California today) Rittenhouse would be acquitted again. I would certainly have voted for an acquittal. With all your talk of equity, you Democrats really don't believe in "Equal justice under law", it always has to go your way, for political power.

Kelly, "bogus Biden impeachment vote..."? "A fruitless Durham hearing"? "...revenge-censured Adam Schiff for doing his job..."? What world do you inhabit to entertain these fantasies? Please read the Durham report, it is key to any understanding of systemic corruption in FBI leadership. Adam Schiff "doing his job?" Is "his job" to be drum major in the Democratic Party liar’s parade? That's the reputation he has earned over the years with his infamous, falsely alleged "smoking gun" evidence of Trump collusion. He deserves a congressional bum's rush. As for our AG Merrick Garland, he will soon be impeached for perjury. He's another thoroughly corrupt Biden minion.

Kelly, here's an earth-shaking fact, only recently understood. Joe Biden's criminal endeavors throughout 50 years of federal service, as senator, vice present, and president, has been so damaging to the core stability of American government, it could spell the end of our Republic. The scope of his nefarious activities, all for self-enrichment, will take a generation to explain. Just thought I would strike a little wake-up bell while I'm still around. Believing it or not probably won't change the course we're on. I offer you an assignment: See: REPORT PHYSICAL COPIES LPDF BIDENLAPTOPMEDIA.COM. Produced by "Marco Polo", this provides an unprecedented, 600-page, detailed analysis of Biden family generational crimes. It is stunning. No good here, only bad and ugly, personal, business, family, emails, bribery, an orgy, diary, police reports, it's all there! Welcome to BIDENWORLD, a colorful tableau of the comprehensive betrayal of sacred trust.

Meanwhile, why in the world should I not celebrate Cinco de Mayo? Mexican-Americans were among my earliest friends. They, and their parents, were (are) proud Americans, first. My youth was blessed by an abundance of homemade Mexican food. I watched those small patties hand-formed into tortillas cooked on a wood stove - and, Mexico brews the best beer in the world, even today, Negra Modelo, there to enhance it all. Sadly, most modern Mexican-American kids can never know what they missed!

A response to a letter from Art Sandford (see "Letters"):
Art - you're back! I'm glad to see you haven't lost your funny side.
I was glad to learn that the Lampoon (Harvard's liberal magazine) actually survives; tired humor needs a dignified place to die.

But I must admit, since reading "The Breakdown of Higher Education" by John M. Ellis, (Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German Literature at U.C. Santa Cruz) Dean of Graduate Division (1977-86), author of 10 books, awarded Peter Shaw Memorial Award by National Assn. of Scholars; founded Assn. of Literary Scholars and Critics in 1993, President of California Association of Scholars in 2007-13, chairman of board since then,...) I'm no longer impressed with Harvard or the rest of the Ivies - except in science.

Art - say you didn't go there! This extraordinary little book speaks from decades of experience: "Frank Furedi reports on a survey published by the Harvard Crimson which found that "’around two -thirds of students who were surveyed had at some point chosen not to express an opinion in an academic setting out of fear that would offend others.’" "Students often report that particular courses require them to sit through their instructors' endless political rants and learn to regurgitate harebrained political beliefs in order to pass a course, something that should make any genuine academic despair." Quickly: 2016 study, found of 7,243professors, 3,623 were registered Democratic and 314 Republican, for D:R ratio of 11.5:I. Also: "...alarming evidence that the faculty hired in recent decades were doing a poor job of educating their students. Employers were finding recent college graduates to be much less able to write and reason than their predecessors, and tests in general knowledge found them abysmally ignorant of their country's history and institutions." And "...as to intellectual flexibility, it is difficult to deny that few people are less intellectually open, flexible, and curious than a radical leftist."

Dr. Ellis' book is so enlightening, Art, that I will provide it to you gratis if you will consent to a short quiz after reading it.
The Gazette may be "little known," Art, but we are known to you, a Fillmore elite, and that is sufficient recognition for me. However, "a mouthpiece for Spiny Soros" and sons? Hardley. I reserve a special vocabulary to define him, requiring a content warning.
That "last straw" was written with you and your fellow travelers in mind, Art. Rumors were circulating about you possibly secreting a copy of the great man's masterpiece, "The Art of the Deal" under your pillow. Fake news, no doubt.
"Publisher Doug" mistakenly "laments the demise of his magazine." As a friend you might tell him to switch from CNN to FOX to hear the truth, that reports of the Lampoon's death have been greatly exaggerated.
My thanks for your letter, Art. They always enliven our opinion page.

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:
I've lived about 82 years of my 84 having heard nothing about "Juneteenth." There's a good reason for that - it has never been celebrated nationally; for another good reason, news (slavery has ended) was received by most cities and towns in America with the speed of the telegraph. By 1865 the International Telecommunication Union was formed, and in 1866 a new transatlantic telegraph cable between North America and Europe was successfully completed. The Civil War caused the telegraph to spread all over the eastern and southern U.S. The telegraph was invented by Samuel Morse in 1844. "During the war, 15,000 miles of telegraph cable was laid purely for military purposes."
The news of the end of slavery was broadcast across the world in 1865 (even by undersea cable). Did every town need to declare a separate Independence Day upon hearing the news? Of course not. We celebrate July 4th as Independence Day, in unity, for the entire country. Excuse the "S" word, but this new national holiday is a stupid idea.
A little more credit should be given to those 600,000 men who gave their lives to forcefully end slavery. The world's greatest empire, England, ended slavery by simply signing a document. "It became illegal to purchase enslaved people directly from Africa under the Abolition Act 1807. However, the condition of slavery remained legal in the British Caribbean until 1834, when the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 came into force." But the white North declared war on the southern white South to force abolition. So, the Brits halted slavery 25-years earlier than Americans, but they did it without the death of 600,000 men in four years of war. Big difference! The Civil War was our bloodiest by far. It makes sense to celebrate those who died to end slavery. It makes no sense to celebrate one group who first happened to hear of the victory. The so-called Juneteenth national holiday makes a mockery of our Independence Day, diminishing those buried in Arlington Cemetery.
Joe Biden's establishment of this odd holiday is redundant, idiotic, and disrespectful.

What I really wanted to write about this week was our deadliest enemy, China, and its most recent threat to establish a military base in Cuba. Thanks to the brilliant fiasco of the Bay of Pigs fight, April 1961, by some 1,500 Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro (take a bow CIA), that cancer only grew. Are we beginning to see the checkmate we are drifting into with China? China is on a deadly, aggressive spree. Remember the Monroe Doctrine? This looks like a job for our senile Commander in Chief, Biden, shaky US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and our Woke Bozo Brothers, General Mark Milley and Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III. But let us not forget our Space Force. "In a significant milestone for the nation’s newest armed service, Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno became the first female officer to promote to three-star general and transfer into the U.S. Space Force during a ceremony at the Pentagon, Aug. 17."
Armagno will serve as the Director of Staff for Headquarters U.S. Space Force, where she will oversee day to day staff operations to include establishment activities for the new service. “We’re starting fresh. We’re starting a clean sheet,” Armagno said. “We’re going to be agile, we’re going to be nimble, and we’re going to bring the best of everything into the space force.”
Sounds to me like she really means to kick some ass! Hand me my old M1. They're going to need some help taking Havana!

Four score and four years ago I was brought forth on this continent. I've lived in a period of time just 3-years short in duration of what Lincoln knew as the nation's entire history. How ironic that today this short period of time again finds America on the verge of destruction. I may be able to say that I was there at the beginning, and possibly at the end as well.

Our continent was conceived in Liberty, which at this time is slipping away. Lincoln would recognize that we are again engaged in a great civil war, testing whether we can long endure. Testing our endurance is the army of Woke Lilliputians who have succeeded in capturing America's democratic soul for power and cash. The Democratic Party has morphed into a giant commune of Progressive-Woke activists, who with the Deep State, liberal media, and much of America's business enterprise, have brought our nation to near checkmate status, both between national political parties and foreign enemies. This is glaringly evident with yesterday's criminal arrest of former President Trump, and years of escape and evasion by radical Democrat Party leaders.

Yes indeed, this is a story of such monumental complexity and profound destruction that it seems too incredible to believe. The malignancy which began in the Obama régime is ending in the Biden crime family. With a sinister smile, Joe calls it "malarkey". Just too much to take in without some study. Hard to understand how most of our federal government, executive, judicial, and legislative, could be so completely subverted in such a short time, far short of four score and seven years ago.

The breaking point is the political assassination of Donald Trump. It is a point of no return, with perhaps one possible saving hope - Trump's election and self-pardon. But he has been so thoroughly framed by a traitorous Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland, Trump's situation is imminently precarious. Betrayed by many "close" friends, at a time when "Equal Justice Under Law" (emblazoned upon our Supreme Court building) has become meaningless. America is undergoing a massive coup at a time when its national defense has been sabotaged by a Woke military leadership.
Yes, I can hear the Liberal-Woke-Left cheering Trump's presumed demise, with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran chortling as well. They sense the time of America's dethronement is near, with the free world awaiting the tyrant's boot, again.
For me, except for a Trump win in 2024, the game will be lost. That game has been to save our nation from a fanatical anti-Judeo-Christian coup. The Googles, Apples, Facebooks, Amazons, Microsofts, and their fellow travelers may think they have won - just before they are devoured by the heathen crocodile they have been riding. This is the essence of treason which might bring down the greatest nation in human history.

But, attempting to introduce reality to a nation which has been feasting on fantasy, self delusion, and greed, is probably a fool's errand - and I'm feeling a little foolish right now.

There are several trustworthy Republican presidential candidates today, but only Donald Trump can save the country right now. He knows our enemies because he has dealt with them for the past seven years!
The criminal arrest of former President of the United States, Donald Trump, is our Fort Sumpter.

A response to Kelly Scoles’ letter:

Hello again, Kelly,

I appreciate your satire but question whether appropriate here.
You ridicule a book designed to assist pre-school and elementary school kids to understand how to react to a shooting threat by hiding, running, or, as a last resort, fighting. Absent adult protection, these suggestions seem completely reasonable under this set of grotesque conditions.

You did say, “As the adults are unable to address and solve the problem...” but did not suggest a solution. And that is the problem here - how do we anticipate the threat of child murder? What should reasonable adults do? How can we keep our children safe? Thank God sworn police officers are always on duty to help. But even the most professionally trained and determined force takes precious minutes to arrive, assess, and act. Most of these cases are over in a matter of minutes.
So, we need the fastest response possible, which can only come from the school itself. The best result here would be to disarm the would-be shooter. If not possible, then to shoot the would-be assailant. To be competent with a pistol (preferred carried weapon, or stored long gun) a designated armed responder must receive proper training from an accredited instructor. With proper instruction most people can become proficient at a good range (indoor preferred). Once proficient, the designated school responder should refresh his/her experience from time to time, to be completely familiar with carrying and handling his/her firearm, and accurate in its use. Obviously, this is an extraordinary responsibility demanding serious respect. For reliability of attendance more than one person should be so prepared. If lucky, a school might find a retired police officer or military person for the job.

Kelly, you say, “Kids, you may notice that no mention is made of any obligations of the adults of TX to secure your protection because they are committed to universal ownership of military-grade weaponry.” But Uvalde is the rare exception in Texas and elsewhere. My suggestions (above) are the anticipated rule. That little book entitled “Stay /Safe” would be useful only if a designated school responder were not present, and all adults were frozen into inaction, before the police arrived.

Kelly, (full disclosure) I am not a social media user. I despise it all. Social media has filled the world with rancid ideas, contrary to our Judeo-Christian traditions - like cancel culture and mandated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. By themselves, these three words promote a fraudulent new un-Natural Law. Diversity of itself is dangerous - to think straight is to discriminate good from bad, right from wrong. Not every idea deserves recognition. Equity, as Wokesters teach it, damns the idea of meritocracy, which seeks to reward good work. Inclusion, in Woke thinking, means everything must be mixed-in, never exclude anything or anyone - the very first bad idea: “...but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
But mankind’s greatest enemy told the most attractive lie: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, `You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, `You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.”For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
And eons later that same serpent said, “Men can make themselves women, and women, men!” And so, pretense became reality for them.

To be “Woke” today is to live that crafty lie.

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:

Hello again, Kelly,
I don't want to engage in another gun controversy because the Liberal Left, as it does in most all other life-and-death issues, refuses to acknowledge facts. It prefers to engage in political drama, based upon Progressive myths, as in "an unborn fetus is not a real human being", or "guns are evil, and confiscating firearms will stop violent crime." No introduction to basic logic will help to clarify their thinking, nor will common sense or historical human experience. Most Progressives are allergic to facts.

Your comments on school shootings exemplify my descriptions of this kind of thinking... "...no mention is made of any obligations of the adults of [Uvalde] TX to secure [school children against firearms terror] because they are committed to universal ownership of military-grade weaponry." Your interpretation of that outrageous slaughter is (again typically) wrong and illogical. No one wants "universal ownership of military weaponry."

Most of the city police department shamed itself that day at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022. Nineteen children and two adults were killed in that shooting; 17 others were injured but survived.

"Ramos (the shooter) remained in the school for more than an hour before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) fatally shot him after bypassing numerous local and state officers who had been in the school's hallways for over an hour.” Remembering those reports makes me nauseous today. I'm almost equally upset with the usual Progressive analysis, which is to ban guns. We are as likely to effectively ban firearms from this nation as we are likely to ban sin itself.

The children in Robb Elementary School were left unprotected that fatal day. A door was unlocked, no employee was armed or trained to stop such an attack. State and city police officers were not prepared for a tactical emergency. But the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) knew what to do and did it! Had the school doors been locked, and an armed employee been on guard, this slaughter could have been avoided. Where other schools and public gathering places ignore these basic requirements it's not unreasonable to expect similar future catastrophes. It's accurate to say, except for BORTAC, uncommon cowardice was a common vice that day in Uvalde.

"How often are firearms used defensively in the United States? According to the most-recent study, about 1.6 million times annually. Over a lifetime, about a third of gun owners will use a firearm defensively at least once. This recent data is broadly consistent with decades of social-science research." Also: "In 1993, Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck conducted a survey that was much more methodologically sophisticated than all the above polls. Kleck and his coauthor Marc Gertz found a midpoint estimate of 2.5 million DGUs [Defensive Gun Use] annually, with a possible range of 2 to 3 million."

It's hard to understand why you mock efforts to facilitate a weapons-based defense against school shootings, Kelly. These incidents happen very quickly. Schools can either provide an on-site skilled and armed defender or wait for the cavalry to arrive - and they will, but too often too late. God bless the sworn deputies who respond professionally, but schools need on-site protection as well.

My life-long firearms philosophy is simple, "Gun control means using both hands." Without guns America could not have been created. Without guns America cannot survive. That's a fact.

Well, there I go again, wasting an entire column on a hopeless quest to educate Progressives. I really wanted to talk about our faltering military, our corrupt intelligence services, the rise of "Woke" culture, and our traitorous Commander in Chief. Maybe next week?