Author: Poetrooper

If you’re tired, like me, of being bulldozed by political correctness, especially when it applies to gays and the transgendered, then you just have to cheer for North Carolina Governor, Pat McCrory, for standing up to the corporate extortion against his state for passing commonsense legislation to deal with the issue of who can use what bathrooms. Unlike Georgia’s Governor Nathan Deal, who caved in to the out-of-state pressure and betrayed his constituents, McCrory showed some spine and nicely told all the corporate extortionists where they could stick their threats of jobs and tax losses.

This is a phenomenon taking place all over that part of America where common sense still rules the thinking of those ordinary citizens fed up with the growing lunacy of political correctness. This is especially true in those situations where the lesbian/gay/whatever coterie seem hell-bent on forcing their behaviors on communities that have long held them unacceptable. The problem arises when gay activists are unwilling to settle for resigned, indifferent acceptance of their proclivities, instead becoming insistent on forced public acknowledgment and acceptance of such issues as gay marriage and restroom access. This they do by taking aim at businesses operated by those whose faith precludes their participating in nuptials that are an outright abomination according by their religious tenets or opening public restrooms used by their daughters to whatever confused gender-bending male arbitrarily decides he’s female.

As for Christian businesses, walking through the door of the targeted baker, florist, or photographer, the gay activists know full well they are going to be refused. That is entirely the point, for the refusal of service for a gay social event sets into motion a process of legally lynching those business owners who fall victim to this form of social intimidation. The usual course is mass negative media exposure closely followed by civil legal action from gay activist organizations to compel the targeted business to surrender their religious beliefs and provide services. Their only other option is to close their doors.

Here’s my conundrum: if it is immoral, even criminal or civilly liable for these mom-and-pop Christian businesses to deny services based on their fundamental beliefs, why is it not also immoral or legally actionable for large corporations to refuse their services to the citizens of those states where those who govern choose to pass legislation to protect the religious freedoms of their citizenry?

If I’m a huge professional football fan living in Atlanta and the NFL people remove my city from contention for a near-future Super Bowl because they feel my state is discriminating against the transgendered, am I not the victim of discriminatory business practices on the part of the NFL? What about those organizations and corporations that cancel annual conferences and business meetings because of the actions of my state legislature? Aren’t these big corporations refusing to do business with my state simply because they consider our practices immoral, just as those bakeries, florists, and photographers see gays as immoral? Other than scale, I see little difference.

Okay all you smart readers: Tell me where I’m wrong.

Crossposted at American Thinker

It would be no surprise at all if, even before the enactment of our nation’s 16th Amendment, Democrats had been anticipating the value of a federal income tax as a club to smite their political enemies. While their most vocal proponent of the issue, William Jennings Bryan, didn’t include that particular consideration in his compelling exhortations to enact such a tax, it is not difficult to visualize that perennial presidential candidate (1896, 1900, 1908) offstage in a smoke-filled room offering other Democrat leaders this enticement: C’mon guys, when I’m president we’ll be able to hammer the Republicans with tax audits until they do our bidding.

Not to say that abuse of taxing authority is limited to Democrats; Richard Nixon reportedly used the federal tax audit to punish political enemies who angered him enough. But there’s no question that it has been the Democrats under Barack Obama who have made taxing power a weapon of mass destruction.

Granted, in the most recent IRS scandal it was a passive use: the withholding of tax-free status from conservative political organizations. The damage from that is impossible to assess, although the coast-to-coast fallout could be that we are now enduring a second four years of Chicago Way corruption of our legal system. The fact that the milquetoast members of the Republican majority in Congress have consistently failed to follow through on their investigations and pressure for indictments has only emboldened Democrats nationwide.

All of this brings us to this situation in Seattle, where a liberal Democrat city council has enacted an extortionate tax specific to guns and ammunition, a flat $25-per-gun purchase and anywhere from two cents to five cents per round of ammo. The tax is having its desired effect, driving gun stores out of Seattle to surrounding suburbs. That this tax on citizens’ Second Amendment rights will have any true impact on the number of household guns in Seattle is, like most liberal endeavors, laughable. It will, however, raise both prices and demand in Seattle’s criminal black market, and it’s a dead certain fact it will send jobs and the taxes that were already being collected from these gun stores to other, more sensible municipalities.

But the real lesson to be learned here is that while Democrats deny and dismiss the destructive effects of higher taxes on American industry, instead attributing manufacturers’ moves to offshore locations to corporate greed and an unwillingness to pay unionized workers a fair wage, Seattle’s Folly demonstrates full well that they know better. Here they have deliberately weaponized their taxing authority to target one small, specific business type for no other reason than to force it to do precisely what they deny giant American corporations are doing: move to a less tax-oppressive environment. The only difference is that this time, the Democrats in power view the move-out as a desirable outcome.

When the Democratic Party finally expires from this metastasizing corruption, the carcass will no doubt have the green bile of hypocrisy oozing from every orifice.

Crossposted at American Thinker

Carl Higbie, a former Navy SEAL, and Pete Hegseth, a former Army infantry platoon leader, two combat veterans I greatly admire who are now frequent contributors to FOX News, just squared off in the political ring, where Carl is a Trump supporter and Pete a Cruz man. What caught my attention was when Sandra Smith asked them their opinion of waterboarding, an issue just raised by Hillary Clinton, who piously declared her absolute opposition to torture of terrorists to obtain information to abort future attacks like those in Belgium.

Higbie noted that waterboarding is inflicted on our military personnel as part of their training, preparing them for what they may face if captured, so what’s the problem with using it on terrorists? Hegseth readily agreed, and then Higbie volunteered that he is agreeable to doing more than waterboarding if it saves innocent lives. Neither of these former warriors commented on the ignorance of Hillary’s flat-out declaration that torture does not work, as I had been hoping they would. They know better.

For someone who wants to command our military forces, Hillary needs to get herself up to speed on very basic military matters rather than simply spouting liberal pieties. If torture doesn’t work, then why are our troops trained very harshly to be prepared to resist it? If it doesn’t work, then why spend all that time and money training, and why does the American military’s Code of Conduct state this as its fifth rule (emphasis mine)?

5. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability, I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

I’d like Hillary to explain to the nation why our national guidelines for American military personnel who are captured recognize the reality that, unable to resist the pain of torture, even our bravest warriors may divulge more than the permitted name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. That’s the meaning of that clause, to the utmost of my ability. It’s recognition by the military that eventually, everyone talks if subjected to enough mistreatment. Then of course there’s the question that if torture doesn’t work, why do so many nations around this globe regularly employ it as an interrogation tool?

As an infantry NCO in Vietnam, I saw freshly captured Viet Cong prisoners punched, kicked, choked, and even electrically shocked with field telephones during battlefield interrogations, and every single one broke quickly and began giving up intelligence on their troop formations and placements. That was information that saved who knows how many American lives, perhaps even mine, and I never once felt regret as to how it was obtained. Following interrogation, we fed them C-Rations and evacuated them to our coastal bases, a far better fate than they faced from their own Vietnamese rivals, the ARVN, who simply shot them on the spot and left them to be buried by villagers.

So Hillary, despite your extensive combat experience in Bosnia, this old grunt is here to tell you that you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about when you say torture doesn’t work. It may not be morally correct by American standards, but lady, I’m here to tell you: it does work, or it wouldn’t have been going on since the first cave man, caught away from his clan, dropped his club and threw up his hands in surrender.

Crossposted at American Thinker

Millions of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum are eagerly awaiting the results of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s fairly obviously unlawful misdeeds regarding federal secure communications laws. Democrats whistle past the graveyard, hoping that even if there is a finding of criminality, their party’s control of the federal prosecution process will prevent their conceivably convictable candidate from ever standing in the dock. Many Republicans are in an almost foaming at the mouth condition, fearing the very thing the Democrats are hoping for.

All speculation on both sides is focused tightly on Barack Obama, because it is his, and only his, call. A simple shake of those expansive ears will absolutely end any possibility of Hillary facing a jury for her violations. Conversely, a mere nod to his attorney general will set in motion a scenario never before seen in American politics: the indictment of a political party’s nominee for president.

Hillary knows that her fate is in the hands of one man who is rumored to be less than enamored of her and her husband because of past slights of which he’s rumored to be resentful. On the other hand, she knows Barry wants to see his socialist deconstruction of constitutional America continue through what the media frequently refer to as Obama’s third term. Thus, Hillary’s knee-bending deference to Obama’s programs and presidency, although stomach-turning even to some Democrats, can be expected. When a single person wields the power to keep you from serving hard time, you’ll be inclined to do a bit of sucking up, no matter how badly it gags you.

With all that in mind, how is it that in a speech in Spokane, Bill Clinton, while exhorting the crowd to support his wife, said this:

But if you believe we can all rise together, if you believe we’ve finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us and the seven years before that where we were practicing trickle-down economics with no regulation in Washington, which is what caused the crash, then you should vote for her.

Uh, Bill, “awful legacy of the last eight years”? Does anyone besides me think ol’ Slick Willie, in a not so slick moment, just let his real feelings about the guy who would have been carrying his bags slip out in a rare, un-Clinton-like moment of absolute candor? Wouldn’t you just love to be a fly on the wall of the Oval Office when that little gem of obvious truth is whispered into one of those outstanding ears? Do you think it might drop with a rather loud clunk on one side of the scales of political payback in Barry’s brain? Do you get the feeling Bill may not be making too many future appearances on behalf of his wife?

Well, maybe if it’s on the witness stand….

Thomas Lifson adds: I am not the only one who has been struck by how feeble Bill Clinton looks of late. The open mouth while others speak, the licking of lips, and other behavior that indicates someone losing his faculties are just plain sad. His health may become a factor in the presidential race of his wife. A normal devoted and loving marriage relationship might occassion the jettisoning of career plans in order to care for an ailing spouse. Does anyone believe Hillary would put aside ambition in order to care for Bill? Or do you think she would attempt to squeeze every possible degree of advantage from sympathy?

Crossposted at American Thinker

The principal poobahs of the Republican Party and the pundits to whom they turn for the pulse of their party are perplexed that people they have so long believed to be passive are coming out of their primary voting places and informing exit pollsters that they are seeking payback. “What’s that?” the poobahs say. “The voters are angry? What on Earth could be going on?”

Yep, that’s precisely how out of touch with their voter base Republican Party leadership and far too many Republican members of Congress have become. It’s as if elevation to the lofty environs of Rome on the Potomac somehow pressurizes their ear canals in such a way as to render them incapable of hearing the distant pleadings of the plebeians who sent one there. A less kind and more cynical explanation for our elected representatives’ inability to hear our voices possibly could be attributed to the simple but ugly fact that once they have achieved their goal, election, they don’t give a plebeian’s patootie about our goals.

But let’s be generous and assume that those who convocate under that great marble dome simply are out of touch because they are just too busy doing the work of the people. Of course, that raises the question: what people? But I’ll not be snarky and instead offer our currently shocked Republican leaders a means by which they perhaps could keep a sharper ear to the wind or an ear on the rail or an ear wherever.

While the more doddering of these imperial pachyderms may be unfamiliar with the workings of the internet except perhaps for their smartphones, Al Gore’s ingenious invention could well be the way to prevent future surprises such as the one occurring now. This is not simply watching the many political websites and deducing from their daily parades of reporting and opinion what is going on in the hearts and minds of the people. Survey all that on a daily basis, and all you’re likely to glean is the thinking of the political class of pundits and players, movers and shakers, those who operate on the periphery of political power.

My response: read the commenters if you want to have your finger on the pulse of the voters. As a fairly frequent writer of blog posts, I make a point of always reading the comments on every piece of mine that gets published. Moreover, I frequently read the comments on others’ articles, sometimes finding them more interesting and informative than the original tract. Not infrequently, I find nuggets I can incorporate into my own writings. Yes, you sometimes must sort through personal bilge and back-and-forth, even occasional rabid intolerance, but there is something valuable there that can be mined and refined by those in power truly interested in knowing the mood of the people.

Any political organization with a program designed to monitor and distill comments on conservative political news websites would have long ago been able to provide Republican leaders with ongoing status reports on how anger was building to a critical level in those people who care enough about the political situation to read and comment on those sites. Even with no supportive data, common sense tells you there’s a strong corollary between those who read and comment on the current political environment and those who vote. Also, an aspect of comments that makes them a more accurate barometer of building political weather fronts than the phone polls currently used is that the anonymity of the internet permits commenters to have their say without any possible attribution if they choose to hide behind a username. It’s a given that any pollster who calls us nowadays likely knows all our basic identification data, perhaps down to what we eat for breakfast, while we don’t know beans about who he may be. Thus, our answers to such pollsters may be significantly more guarded than if hammered out forcefully on a keyboard.

And yes, I’m aware of the Big Brother implications here. I’ll be reading your comments.

Crossposted at American Thinker