CORRECTION. Concealed Carry in Louisiana: A Really Bad Idea

Correction. Governor Landry's gun legislation concerns concealed carry. not open carry, as I mistakenly reported.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry supports a law allowing adult Louisianians to carry concealed handguns without a permit or training. The legislature passed legislation approving permitless concealed carry.

I confess I am attracted to the fantasy of wearing a pistol when I’m out and about in Baton Rouge. I can see myself with an ivory-handled Colt revolver cradled in a hand-tooled holster when I go to the grocery store. 

I grew up watching Western movies like Shane and TV westerns like Gunsmoke,  Bonanza, and Have Gun Will Travel. Apparently, everyone in the Old West carried a revolver, and the good guys always defeated the bad guys.

If I’d had a sweet little .38 special when I was in elementary school, no one would’ve bullied me on the playground.  There'd be a lot less child abuse if the kiddies had guns.

Nevertheless, Concealed Carry is a bad idea for the Pelican State.

I see these problems. First, if everyone is carrying a gun, petty disputes will turn into violent incidents. The recent shooting at the Kansas City Super Bowl parade illustrates my point. Two guys got into an argument. Both men pulled guns, and the result was the death of an innocent bystander and 22 people wounded, including nine children.

Second, handguns are a lot more dangerous now than they were 50 years ago. When I was a kid, a few people had handguns, but they were almost all revolvers of modest calibers.

Revolvers are dangerous, but they only hold six bullets, and reloading is tedious because each bullet must be inserted into the gun's cylinder one at a time.

Nowadays, there are a lot more handguns, and most of them are 9 mm autoloaders. Many of these guns hold 15 bullets or more and can be reloaded in a few seconds with a fresh magazine. 

And 9 mm autoloaders can be purchased cheaply. Premium brand guns are expensive, but you can buy an off-brand nine mm handgun for less than $300.

Third, even in a Concealed Carry state, a civilian who shoots someone runs a high risk of getting sued or arrested. In New York, for example, a person who defends himself against a mugger will probably go to jail while the mugger gets a preloaded debit card and a first-class plane ticket to Seattle. It would be a tragedy for an honest citizen to be arrested or sued for shooting someone, even if the shooting was justified.

Finally, we’ve got the issue of road rage. I know several people who carry handguns in their vehicles, and the practice makes a certain amount of sense, especially in New Orleans, where carjackings are on the rise.

Nevertheless, you know how you feel when you're driving on the Interstate, and a jackass pulls up 12 inches behind your vehicle and rides your ass for 10 miles or does some other stupid thing that drives you crazy.

If you have a handgun in your glove box, you'll be tempted to roll down the window of your car and just shoot the son of the bitch as he passes you on the right while he’s shooting you the finger. And then you will be sorry that you lost your temper.

For all these reasons, I will not carry a handgun, even though it is legal to so in Louisiana.  In the long run, we'll all be safer if we work together to build a secure and just society. In the meantime, we cannot cheat fate or forestall evil events simply by carrying a pistol.

Open Carry in Louisiana: A Really Bad Idea

It's Official--Joe Biden is a better President than Jimmy Carter!

 A couple of professors released a paper on Presidents Day (how ironic!) that ranked all American presidents from first to last. Abraham Lincoln ranked first, a relief to Lincoln, Nebraska's City Council. The council was disturbed by evidence that Lincoln was soft on slavery and was in the process of changing its name to Al Sharpton. Lincoln's reputation is safe for now, although a researcher at Smith College is about to release a study revealing that Lincoln was a cis-gendered white man from Flyover Country. Lincoln might get knocked down a few rankings if that research holds up.

Who are the eminent scholars with the intellect to evaluate all our presidents? The first author was Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor at the University of Houston, which Houstonians affectionately call Cougar High School.

Justin Vaughn, an associate professor at Coastal Carolina University, is the second author and an editor of the Journal of Political Science.

The rankings were based on polling responses from 154 scholars researching presidential politics and history. The results were so riveting and groundbreaking that the NewYork Times and other legacy media reported them extensively.

Joe Biden rated fourteenth among all the Presidents—an impressive ranking for a guy with dementia. If he hadn't lost his marbles, he undoubtedly would have ranked higher even than Barrack Obama, who ranked seventh.

Donald Trump ranked last among pinhead academics, but we didn't need a research paper to tell us that. I was surprised, however, that Biden outranked Jimmy Carter. After all, Carter engineered the Camp David Accords, which led to a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and moved the Middle East toward a lasting peace.

On the other hand, Bisen (and Obama before him) tried to charm the Iranians as opposed to imposing stiff sanctions against that terrorist regime. Now Israel is fighting in Gaza against Iranian proxies who used the mullahs' cash to stockpile arms and construct an elaborate tunnel system. With Iran's backing, Hamas raiders raped, tortured, kidnapped, or murdered more than a thousand Israelis—including women and children.

Now, our 14th-ranked demented President has the U.S. fighting in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and the Israelis are skirmishing with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Perhaps the presidential ranking report can be explained by the fact that the respondents mainly specialize in politics without much regard for whether our Presidents tried to make the world a safer and more harmonious planet.

 

Photo Credit New Arab

Rats swimming toward a sinking ship: Paul Krugman certifies Biden's Mental Acuity

 The only instance of a rat swimming towards a sinking ship.

Winston Churchill

Paul Krugman has joined the growing crowd of sycophants who earnestly argue that President Biden has all his marbles. "As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you," Krugman writes, "he is in full possession of his faculties--completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail." Indeed, Krugman avers that Biden has been "a remarkably effective president."

Krugman, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics, even admits that Biden's judgment about the recent debt ceiling crisis was better than his own. ("[Biden]was right and I was wrong.”)

Whatever you say, Paul. After all, you write for the New York Times, and I'm just a yokel from flyover country. So explain, please, Biden's boast that he will forgive billions of dollars of student debt without costing taxpayers anything. Does that sound right to you?

On a more urgent issue, how can you say that Biden is an effective president when he's bumbled foreign policy in Eastern Europe by stoking a war between Russia and Ukraine—a war that has cost at least a half million casualties and created millions of refugees? A smarter president would have listened to Putin's concerns about Ukraine's admission to NATO and assured Russia that the U.S. is not trying to weaken Russia, which is, after all, a nuclear power.

And if Biden has a world-class mind for economics, why is the U.S. budget deficit $1.7 trillion? And why doesn't he accept some responsibility for addressing our national debt--$34 trillion and growing every day?

And how's that war in Gaza going? Instead of backing Israel, our faithful ally, Biden gives aid and comfort to Hamas by calling for a ceasefire that would only benefit the terrorists.

Before November, it will become apparent to everyone--even you, Paul Krugman, that Biden doesn't have the mental stamina to serve a second term as President or even finish his present term. It will be crystal clear that Krugman and his media buddies have been rats swimming towards a sinking ship.

What will Paul Krugman and the other sycophants in the media elite say then? Will they admit they were wrong to write that Biden is an effective President and that his mind runs like a Swiss watch?

I don't think so. As Winston Churchill observed, "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

In other words, when it becomes apparent to people of the meanest intelligence that Biden's presidency has been a disaster for the American people, Krugman and his cronies will blame all our nation's ills on MAGA Republicans.

Which guy is smarter?

Dance with who brung you: Black pastors should back Israel without reservation

More than a thousand black pastors have called on President Biden to demand that Israel agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. Their stance carries an implicit threat that President Biden will lose Black support at the polls next November unless he makes a maximum effort to pressure Israel to stop the fighting.

As the New York Times reported, one influential Black pastor said that "Black faith leaders are extremely disappointed with Biden on [the Gaza] issue" and that "it's going to be very hard to persuade our people to go back to the polls and vote for Biden."

African American religious leaders seem to be sympathizing with the Palestinians who are suffering real hardship due to the Gaza war. Thousands of civilians have been killed or driven from their homes by the Israeli invasion.

Let's not forget, however, how the war started. Hamas terrorists raided Israeli towns on October 7 and committed heinous acts of torture, rape, and murder. Then these thugs kidnapped more than 200 people and still hold more than a hundred in underground bunkers.

Israel understands that these racist, sadistic butchers are intent on genocide--to wiping Jews from the face of the earth. There can be no compromise with them--Israel is truly in a fight to the death.

All Americans, including African Americans, should stand four-square with Israel in its war against Hamas.  The United Nations made an eternal promise to the world's Jews when it recognized the Jewish homeland as a nation-state in 1948. The world cannot renege on that promise--certainly not now when Israel is defending itself against terrorism.

African-American religious leaders need to realize that a wishy-washy stance on Gaza is not only a threat to Israel, it is an insult to American Jews. Jewish Americans were prominent participants in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and Jews and African Americans stood in solidarity as mainstays of the Democratic Party during those days when the Party advanced civil liberties for all Americans.

To borrow from the lyrics of Asleep at the Wheel, Black religious leaders need to "dance with who brung you" rather than give aid and comfort to Hamas--which a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza would do.

Image credit: Politico/Reuters

Governor Landry Wants More Death Row Prisoners to Be Executed: I’m Opposed

More than 100 film industry leaders released a public letter to Governor Jeff Landry expressing their disapproval of Landry's efforts to expand the ways that death-row prisoners can be executed. “How can we,” the filmmakers wrote, “continue to conduct business within a state that contemplates the implementation of execution methods reminiscent of history's gravest atrocities?”

Governor Landy wants the Louisiana Legislature to pass a bill that would add electrocution and nitrogen gas as approved methods for killing condemned prisoners. I’m surprised he didn’t add fentanyl to his list. A hundred thousand Americans died from fentanyl overdoses last year, and no one complained that fentanyl is a painful way to die.

Of course, the morality of capital punishment doesn’t hinge on finding more humane ways to kill people. The guillotine, which extinguishes life instantaneously, probably inflicts less pain than electrocution, but that doesn’t make decapitation a morally acceptable method of execution.

Governor Landry is a Catholic, and as Robert Mann pointed out in a recent blog essay, the Catholic Catechism states the Church’s opposition to capital punishment, calling it “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” Even before the Catechism was amended in 2018 to stiffen the Church’s opposition to the death penalty, Pope John Paul II expressed his disapproval. In a homily delivered in St. Louis in 1999, he said this:

A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.

In short, the Catholic Church’s opposition to capital punishment is not an arcane and obscure snippet of Catholic dogma; it is an inextricable part of the Church’s affirmation of human life and human dignity—as is the Church’s opposition to abortion.

In my mind, Governor Landry, a good Catholic, is bound by his faith to oppose the death penalty in Louisiana, just as he opposes abortion.

57 people on Louisiana's Death Row
Image credit: NOLA.com

Has E.J. Dionne Sold His Soul to the Deep State?

E.J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist, wrote a disingenuous commentary a few days ago that appeared in my local newspaper. Dionne takes Americans to task who believe we are faced with two equally bad choices in this year's presidential election.
Dionne argues that Biden is by far the better candidate. In his mind, Americans must choose between Trump, "who stokes and exploits their anger," and Biden, "who is trying to solve their problems."

Dionne can reasonably argue that Americans should choose Biden over Trump in November's election. Without a doubt, Trump is a deeply flawed candidate. Nevertheless, Dionne's arguments in favor of Biden are nonsense.

Deonne says Biden has sought "compromise to protect our southern border," which is unadulterated bullshit. Everyone knows that millions of illegal immigrants are flooding across the Mexican border and that Biden has done nothing to stem the flow. Everyone understands that our open border is directly responsible for the epidemic of fentanyl overdoses--100,000 deaths last year.

Dionne also commends Biden for sending aid to Ukraine when, in fact, our government provoked Russia to invade Ukraine when it helped overthrow a popularly elected pro-Russia Ukrainian president in 2014. Although Dionne will probably not admit it, Ukraine is losing that war, and continued American military aid will only lead to more casualties for both Russians and Ukrainians.

In my mind, Dionne’s essay is more offensive for what he didn’t say than for what he said. Dionne said nothing about Biden’s dementia, which has gotten so bad that a five-year-old child could diagnose him. Dionne failed to mention credible evidence that Biden and his family sold Joe Biden’s influence to countries hostile to America.

Incredibly, Dionne says our government “has performed well” under Biden, when in fact, Biden has weaponized federal law enforcement, stoked inflation, and diminished our national security and America's standing around the world.

In essence, Dionne argues that Americans must choose “between a normal human being and a self-involved, spiteful madman.” But Biden is not a normal human being. Alternatively, if he is a normal human being, then America is a nation of clinically demented criminals.

Dionne admits that he's spent his career in the mainstream media, which, he says "takes on the essential work of informing the public about what is going on in the world with a sense of fairness and a dedication to the truth . . ."

And that is the heart of the matter. The mainstream media is not dedicated to the truth; it has sold its soul to the Deep State. Unfortunately, Dionne has marinated so long in the Deep State's vile brew of mendacity that he can't see what is obvious to Americans living in the Heartland--our President is cognitively diminished and up to his elbows in corruption.

Photo credit: The Australian

 

High-Income Married Couples Can Get $117,000 a Year In Social Security Benefits: What the Hell!

 Our politicians and federal apparatchiks say they care about the poor and despise the rich. 

Nevertheless, I notice that our government gives out a lot of dough to rich people who don’t need federal handouts. For example, the Cato Institute reported yesterday that high-income married couples receive as much as $117,000 a year in Social Security benefits. Quoting Forbes writer Andrew Biggs, the Cato report points out:

[America’s Social Security program] produces . . . unnecessarily generous benefits for the highest earners, who easily could save more for retirement on their own, while shortchanging the Americans most at risk of poverty in old age because they received low pay during their working years.

This is outrageous when we consider that the average Social Security check is less than $ 1,800 and that 40 percent of older Americans depend almost solely on their Social Security checks to fund their retirement.

 

Put another way, Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi will get bigger Social Security checks than a Mississippi school teacher or some guy who worked all his life as an attendant in a nursing home.

Cato recommends that the U.S. follow Great Britain’s example and pay a flat-rate benefit to everyone—causing benefits to rise for low-income earners and shrink for the rich.

 

Britons receive about $34,000 in retirement benefits—regardless of lifetime earnings. If the U.S. switched to the British model, millions of low-income Americans would have a more comfortable retirement, and our Social Security program costs would decrease.

 

There's just one drawback: the British model for government retirement pensions would piss off  American rich people. And that's something Congress would never do.

 

Does Nancy need a big Social Security check?

 

 

 

 

President Biden, Ukraine, and Michelle Obama: Americans Are Sickened By Lies

Recently, I reread Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and this passage struck me:

You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.

I immediately thought about our national life; it's one big lie. Media commentators and Democratic Party hacks (Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, etc.) claim that Joe Biden is a mentally competent and fully functioning adult--that he has all his marbles and is making rational policy decisions based on moral considerations and our national interests. But that's a lie.

Biden is suffering from severe cognitive decline and dementia. The symptoms grow worse with each passing week. Everyone knows it, and the refusal of our political and media elites to be honest about the President’s mental health is frightening.

President Biden, the Democratic Party leadership, and the legacy media insist Biden is running for a second term. That’s another lie. The puppeteers in the White House rafters have already chosen Biden’s successor. I predict the new candidate will be announced this summer shortly before the Democratic Party's National Convention. I believe that Michelle Obama, not Joe Biden, will be on the presidential ballot next November.

I feel sure that Biden’s handlers have already written the presidential decree pardoning Joe's son Hunter and other family members of all their crimes. Undoubtedly, the President has already signed that decree in case he keels over prematurely in the coming months or is incapacitated by a stroke.

Our war in Ukraine is another lie. Ukraine is losing that war, which has produced millions of refugees and perhaps a million battle casualties. Although our government is lying about it, the United States is directly at war with Russia, a nuclear power. For what?

The people propagating these gross lies don’t care that they are hiding the truth. Perhaps, as Joseph Goebbels suggested, they have lied so many times that they’ve come to believe the lies themselves.

However, I think the White House press officers, the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post know they’re lying about the Biden administration. And I think they know that Americans don’t believe the bullshit they’re spewing.

They don’t care that they’re being written off as liars and dissemblers. Why? The mainstream press doesn't give a damn whether the American people think the press is trustworthy, and that’s scary.

Screw Peoria! The Biden Adminstration Hates the Heartland

 Until recently, “Will it play in Peoria?” was a familiar political aphorism. The question basically asks whether the American Heartland would approve a specific political action.

The Biden administration and the Democratic Party’s goon squads don’t ask that question anymore. Instead, they ask whether their various political activities will insult the Heartland, hurt the middle class economically, or help erode traditional American values. If the answer is yes, then it's full speed ahead!

Here are some examples:

Biden’sbureaucrats advance the bizarre notion that men can compete in women’s varsity sports so long as they identify as being women. Trans women don’t even have to castrate themselves—they just have to change their names and get a feminine haircut.

Another example. President Biden has opened the nation’s southern border to anyone who crosses the Bravo, including human traffickers, drug runners, and young men on the terrorist watch list. Biden’s policy frightens, angers, and demoralizes most Americans—which surely warms the hearts of the Democratic political operatives.

And here's one more example of the Biden team's contempt for Middle America. This year, the Democratic Party began disparaging the presidential primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. Why? Because the populations of those two states are too white! Biden prefers to start his anemic reelection campaign in South Carolina, where the state’s registered Democrats are not so Caucasian.

Speaking of this year’s presidential campaign, who believes President Biden will be on the ballot this November? I don't. The man suffers from dementia. Next summer, the Democratic Party’s hoodlums will introduce a replacement for ol’ crooked Joe—someone who didn’t bother participating in the state primaries.

Oily-haired Gavin Newsom and the cadaverous Nancy Pelosi breezily affirm that Joe Biden's mental state is just fine, which is their way of saying they have nothing but contempt for the average, everyday American voter. Hey, a demented geriatric is the kind of president that Flyover Country deserves.

But here’s the thing. Americans are beginning to despise the nation’s political class as much as the politicians despise them. You would think that would scare the sleezebags who run our government.

But they’re not worried because they have ballot harvesting down to a science. The Dems are going to win, no matter how the true vote count turns out.

That’s right: The 2024 presidential election will be rigged—just like the 2020 election.  But don't say that out loud, or Fani Willis will arrest you.

Peoria sends its regards.

More Plagiarism at Harvard: Another Stain on the DEI Industry

Plagiarism, Schlagerism. What does it matter so long as you stand by the integrity of your scholarship? That’s Claudine Gay’s position, and she earns almost nine hundred grand a year at Harvard University even though she stepped down as Harvard’s president after being accused of plagiarizing parts of her Harvard dissertation.

And perhaps that’s Sherri Charleston’s position as well. Dr. Charleston, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Harvard, has recently been accused of plagiarizing parts of her 2009 dissertation and a 2014 scholarly article published in the Journal of Negro Education. Gay and Charleton are both African American women, and both saw their careers blossom as American universities embraced Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

What do these two scandals tell us about DEI in higher education? First, DEI is an industry that has nothing to do with scholarship. DEI administrators are political officers, not academics. Harvard did not place Gay and Charleston in elevated positions because they have records of outstanding scholarship; they got their jobs because they had the credentials that would help Harvard advance its DEI agenda.

Second, DEI is a career path that is only open to racial minorities. If you scan the higher education landscape, you will find that the universities have hundreds of DEI administrators. I’ll buy you lunch at the Stockyard restaurant in North Baton Rouge if you can identify even one heterosexual white male in a DEI position.

Finally, the proliferation of DEI administrators has not promoted racial harmony on American college campuses. On the contrary, our nation has seen a shocking outbreak of antisemitism on university campuses in recent months—shocking enough to prompt Congress to hold hearings on the phenomenon. On the whole, the DEI commissars are indifferent to racism against Jews, as evidenced by Claudine Gay’s remarkably nuanced and legalistic response when she was asked whether calls for "genocide of Jews" violated Harvard’s policies on bullying and harassment.

In the coming months, we will see more scandals erupt as critics scan the academic credentials of university DEI officers. These scandals will show that the colleges don’t give a damn about their DEI apparatchiks' scholarly records. Sherri Charleston, for example, has been accused of plagiarizing passages in her dissertation from a book written by Professor Rebecca J. Scott, who co-chaired Charleston’s dissertation committee. Presumably, Professor Scott read Charleston’s dissertation drafts. It's odd, don’t you think, that Scott apparently didn’t realize that part of what she was reading came from her own book!

Harvard Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Help Me, Obi-Wan Nikki Haley: You're My Only Hope

Until yesterday afternoon, I was depressed about this year's presidential election. It seemed inevitable that Americans would be forced to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as our next President. Both men are highly unattractive. Biden is a crime boss who has dementia, and Trump's flaws are too numerous to summarize briefly.

Then, the political landscape changed in an instant. Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race yesterday afternoon, and now Americans have three stark choices for our country's next President.

We can choose Joe Biden--or, more likely—the mystery candidate who will replace him when he drops out of the presidential race next summer for health reasons.

We can back Donald Trump, the runaway favorite Republican nominee. He's the odds-on favorite among conservative voters.

Or we can vote for former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley—the last remaining Republican to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.

If I get the opportunity, I will vote for Nikki Haley. She is eminently qualified to be the President of the United States, and for me, her chief attraction is that she is not Trump or Biden.

I have been disappointed by dark-horse presidential candidates in the past. I supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and later realized he's just another political hack. I once thought Elizabeth Warren would make a good president because of her stance on student loans and corporate greed. But she's just another political hack who never did anything substantive to help working-class Americans,

I'm throwing my support to Nikki Haley. To borrow a line from Star Wars, Help us, Obi-Wan Nikki Haley. You're our only hope.

Busted for Sedition! I Bought A Carhartt Shirt at Bass Pro Shop

Federal investigators asked banks to scour customer transactions for . . . purchases at stores including Dick's Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shops . . .

Daily Mail.com, January 18, 2024

I returned home from the grocery store late last week to find three black SUVs and an armored personnel carrier parked in my driveway. About a dozen FBI agents were milling around in my front yard. They all wore conservative business suits and looked like finalists in a Kevin Costner look-alike contest.

In my backyard, I saw ten or twelve SWAT team members dressed in black, wearing Kevlar, and carrying assault rifles. Uh-oh, I thought, I must have skipped a payment on my Chase credit card.

But it was far more serious than that. At the Justice Department's direction, my bank analyzed my credit card records and discovered I had purchased two Carhartt shirts at Bass Pro Shop. The Feds read me my rights and arrested me on two counts of sedition.

I mortgaged my house to hire the best criminal attorney in Baton Rouge—Robert Hufflepuff. "You've been caught red-handed," Hufflepuff told me, "and the evidence against you is overwhelming.

"It's only a matter of time," Hufflepuff added, "before the FBI finds out about those mittens you bought at Cabela's. And how will you explain that copy of Saint Teresa of Avila's autobiography on your bookshelf? Religious literature is another extremism indicator."

On my lawyer’s advice, I made a full confession and agreed to rat out my relatives and go into the witness protection program. I have a big family, and the Feds arrested dozens of my nieces, nephews, brothers-in-law, and ex-brothers-in-law. All of them had bought stuff from Bass Pro Shop, Cabela's, or Dick’s Sporting Goods, and a few had some religious books in their homes. It was the biggest bust of treason plotters since Waco.

I've learned a lot from this traumatic episode. I now realize I should have never bought those Carhartt shirts from Bass Pro Shop. If I had bought them from Academy Sports, the FBI wouldn’t have arrested me, and about two dozen of my relatives wouldn’t be facing hard time in a federal prison.

Second, the FBI witness protection program is not as glamorous as you might think. I hoped to make a fresh start in a charming city like San Francisco. Maybe I could get a gig as a hedge fund manager and pull down some big bucks.

Unfortunately, my FBI handler only offered me one option: a new identity as a Baptist preacher in Dry Prong, Louisiana. I decided to take my chances.

I'm so sorry. I bought a couple of shirts at Bass Pro Shop!

Fooling All of the People Some of the Time: Retired People, Working-Class Families, and Peope Living on Fixed Incomes are Suffering Under Bidenomics

 You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Abraham Lincoln

How are Americans doing under Bidenomics? According to President Biden, we're all doing fine. This is what the President said just a few days ago:

Today’s report shows that we ended 2023 with inflation down nearly two-thirds from its peak and core inflation at its lowest level since May 2021. We saw prices go down over the course of the year for goods and services that are important for American households, like a gallon of gas, a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, toys, appliances, car rentals, and airline fares. Despite what many forecasters predicted a year ago, inflation is down while growth and the job market have remained strong. 

 Of course, that's total bullshit, and Americans all know it--at least all the Americans who do their own grocery shopping. Week after week, I go to my local grocery store and am shocked at the price of nearly everything. 

I know, however, that I am more fortunate than many of my fellow Americans. I'm retired, but I don't depend solely on Social Security to pay my bills. However, one out of seven retired Americans live almost totally on their monthly Social Security checks. And the average Social Security check is only about $1700.

Who can live on that? Nobody. 

President Biden is about to demonstrate the truth of one of Abraham Lincoln's most famous observations. Biden fooled millions of people during the 2020 presidential campaign by hiding his cognitive decline and his family's influence-peddling racket. The obsequious mainstream media pitched a wild yarn about Bidenomics that has fooled some Americans to this day. Incredibly, almost a third of Americans believe Sleepy Joe is doing a good job managing the economy.

But Lincoln was right: you can't fool all the people all the time.  Now, we are in the 2024 presidential primary season, and Biden is about to see that millions of Americans have figured out that they are losing ground economically. Retired people, people living on fixed incomes, and working-class families by the millions are going to vote for Donald Trump or Nikki Haley.

Our Year for Living Dangerously: 2024 Predictions and Premonitions from Flyover Country

 In late December or early January, pundits and commentators make predictions for the new year. This year, I’m going to join in that tradition from my home on Lake Mary in Southern Mississippi.

I’m making three predictions for 2024. I’m also sharing three premonitions about the coming year. I feel certain that my 2024 predictions will come true. I hope my premonitions will not come true, but I fear they will.

 

Prediction number one: Joe Biden won’t be the Democratic nominee for President in 2024.

 

I agree with James Howard Kunstler that Joe Biden will not be on the ballot for the presidential election in November. Biden will participate in most primaries, and he will easily collect enough delegates to capture the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, but someonne else will be the Democratic Party's nominee.

As Kunstler has suggested, I think Biden will disclose that he has a serious medical condition sometime next summer. For the good of the country, he will say, he is stepping down from the presidential race and releasing his delegates to someone else.

Who will that person be? I don’t know and you don’t know, but someone living on Martha’s Vineyard knows. The Democratic nominee won’t be a person who participated in the Democratic primaries. After Biden steps aside, the Democratic Party’s Super Delegates will nominate someone who skipped the primaries. Credible speculation says it will be Michelle Obama.

 

The mainstream media pretends that Biden is a serious candidate for another term as President, but no one believes that. His declining health is evident to everyone. Biden has some sort of cognitive disability, which is steadily getting worse. 

Moreover, the Republicans are finding evidence that the Biden family took bribes from foreign countries and stashed the money in offshore bank accounts. If substantiated, those charges could led to an  impeahment trial during Biden's second term. 

 

I think Biden will pardon himself and his entire family (including his grandchildren) before leaving office. He will then shuffle off the world stage and live the remainder of his days in an opulent and secure memory care facility. 

 

Prediction number two: Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President in November. 

 

Within weeks, the Supreme Court will overrule decisions by various state officials to keep Trump off the presidential ballot for allegedly participating in an insurrection. You can take that to the bank.

 

Trump is also facing criminal charges in various jurisdictions. I think he will beat those charges. Alternatively, any convictions against him will be overturned by the appellate courts.

 

Thus, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president, and he will face an opponent chosen by the Democratic Party’s Super Delegates.

 

Prediction number three: Americans will regret our involvement in the Ukraine war.

 

Ukraine is losing its war with Russia. It will never regain the Donbas or reoccupy Crimea. Meanwhile, the NATO countries are more and more ambivalent about their support for Ukraine. Russia has the stamina for siege warfare and prolonged fighting. The western nations do not.

 

Eventually, Ukraine and Russia must reach a settlement, and that settlement will require Ukraine to give up some territory. The longer the West waits before coming to that conclusion, the more people will die in this foolish and unnecessary war.

 

Now here are my premonitions for 2024—premonitions I hope will not come to pass.

 

Premonition number one: Urban violence. I fear an outbreak of violence in our cities during the summer of 2024, which will peak during the Republican and Democratic Party conventions. I also fear anti-Israel protests will become larger and more disruptive and will invite more violence.

 

Premonition number two. Rampant inflation. In spite of our government’s effort to deceive the American people, inflation in this country is out of control and is getting worse. In particular, the rising cost of food and housing will cause millions of Americans to suffer before the year is out. 

 

Premonition number three: Terrorists will cross our southern border and kill hundreds of Americans.

 

Illegal immigrants are entering the United States at the rate of 10,000 people a day, and they are not all coming from Latin America. A significant number of border crossers come from the Middle East and some are on the government’s Terrorist Watch List. No nation can absorb those numbers indefinitely without endangering its sovereignty.

2024 may be the year in which PresidentJoe Biden's insane boder policy enables terrorists to cross our southern border and commit a wanton and spectacular act of murder.  I hope not.

Conclusion

 

I hope 2024 will be the year when Americans take prudent steps to protect our security, our culture, and our way of life. I hope this is the year Americans will stop electing crooks and madmen to public office and quit sending their children to universities that promote racism.

 

I fear, however, that America will continue along its downward path toward financial and social collapse. If Americans don’t do something this year to remove the crooks from public office, reform our education system, and get our financial house in order, the days of American greatness will be over.

 

 

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows: Preventing the wrong people from running for President

We don’t know nothin' about no diversity. LSU rebrands its DEI agenda.

As reported by Robert Mann on Something Like the Truth, his blog site, Louisiana State University recently rebranded its DEI agenda. For those of you living under a rock, DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 

Last Friday, LSU President Bill Tate alerted the staff and faculty that its Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights, and Title IX has a new name: the Division of Engagement, Civil Rights, and Title IX.

Why the name change? LSU obviously took this action to counter mounting opposition to the university's DEI agenda in the state legislature. The university hopes to stave off criticism of its diversity program by simply changing the name.

LSU president Bill Tate explained the action differently in an email message. Unfortunately, me no speakie gobbledygook, so I am unable to translate it for you. I’ll quote part of the message; you can translate it yourself.

Engagement is defined in several ways. We use two forms of the definition. For us, it represents a two-way process that enables change on both sides. To fully deliver on the promise our flagship offers, we must engage with each other to exchange views and experiences and share potential solutions to our most pressing challenges. Second, engagement reflects a serious commitment. We must commit to find[ing] ways to translate our discoveries and talent to serve and elevate the state and its people.

What the hell does that mean?

I draw these conclusions from LSU's diversity-and-inclusion shuffle:

First, LSU is not revising its DEI agenda; the fact that it has switched from using the word inclusion to engagement does not alter the university's obsession with race and gender.

Second, President Tate's word-salad justification for the change was probably written by the university's attorneys, which tells us that the lawyers are now running the university – not the academics.

Finally, LSU‘s rebranding of DEI shows that its leaders are cowards. If they’re fully committed to DEI, why change its name? 

As I just said, I think the change was motivated by the fear that the conservative state legislature and Louisiana’s new governor will clamp down on LSU and perhaps cut its funding to punish it for its flirtation with DEI--higher education's current obsession.

LSU wants to pursue its DEI agenda without alienating its funding source. As Robert Mann observed, the move was dumb and ham-handed.

In addition, the change is a transparent act of obsequious cowardice and a sure sign that LSU has lost its way.

We don't know nothin' about no diversity.

Harvard is never having to say you're sorry

If you’ve seen the movie Love Story (and I don’t recommend it ), you’ve heard Ali Macgraw deliver her famous line: “Love is never having to say you’re sorry."

Ali got the line wrong. Actually, the aphorism goes: “Harvard is never having to say you’re sorry.”

Claudine Gay, the first black woman to serve as Harvard's president,  stepped down a few days ago; Gay was unable to weather a storm of controversy around her equivocal response to a question about anti-Semitism at her university and by credible allegations of plagiarism in her dissertation and other scholarly publications.

Don’t cry for me, Argentina. Gay will resume her job as a tenured Harvard faculty member, earning almost $900,000 a year--close to what she made as Harvard's president. Good wages for a scholar with a skimpy publication record and serious charges of plagiarism.

Nobody apologized. Gay said she stood by the integrity of her scholarship and said her downfall was driven, at least partly, by “racial animus.” Harvard professors who supervised Gay's Harvard dissertation did not apologize for missing plagiarized passages in her dissertation draft. She would undoubtedly have corrected the errors if her advisors had caught them. 

As I said, Harvard is never having to say you’re sorry It just blunders along, year after weary year, sucking in money from billionaires who do not know what to do with their wealth, spouting platitudes about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Harvard Law School hired Elizabeth Warren as a professor, no doubt because she claimed to be partly native American--a Cherokee, to be precise. That assertion proved false, but Warren retained her post at Harvard.  In fact, she sailed on to become a U.S. senator and even had the temerity to run for president.

Harvard will weather the little storm kicked up by President Gay. Its endowment may suffer a bit, but the university has $60 billion in endowment money. Harvard professors can wipe their asses with $100 bills from the endowment fund, and Harvard will never run out of money.

Harvard's reputation may suffer a bit, but thousands of young people still want to attach their name to a Harvard diploma. I was one of those people and foolishly spent three years at Harvard to get a doctoral degree. It wasn’t worth much.

As others have said, Americans should stop believing that Harvard is the acme of scholarly intelligence. Harvard does not maintain rigorous standards; ninety percent of its undergraduates complete their degreeswith honors. Harvard claims to be urgently concerned about discrimination and prejudice against underprivileged minorities. Still, it has shown itself to be little more than a haven for anti-Semites and race baiters.

I regret the years I spent at Harvard. I regret the money that I borrowed to pay Harvard tuition. I regret the stresses on my family brought on by my ill-advised decision to leave the lovely state of Alaska, where I was making a good living, to wallow at a  sordid university in the dirty and inhospitable town of Cambridge. Indeed, I found Harvard,  Cambridge, and the greater Boston area to be provincial, bigoted, and willfully ignorant about how the real world works. 

Harvard is never having to say you're sorry.