About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Thanksgiving Proclamation In The Year Of Independence Of The United States Of America The Two Hundred & Tenth

In issuing the 1985 Thanksgiving Proclamation President Reagan touches on some memorable moments in the history of what he calls "this treasured custom" -  from settlers giving thanks after arriving in Maine in 1607 to President Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation that started the tradition that has been followed annually ever since. 


By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Although the time and date of the first American thanksgiving observance may be uncertain, there is no question but that this treasured custom derives from our Judeo-Christian heritage. "Unto Thee, O God, do we give thanks," the Psalmist sang, praising God not only for the "wondrous works" of His creation, but for loving guidance and deliverance from dangers.

A band of settlers arriving in Maine in 1607 held a service of thanks for their safe journey, and twelve years later settlers in Virginia set aside a day of thanksgiving for their survival. In 1621 Governor William Bradford created the most famous of all such observances at Plymouth Colony when a bounteous harvest prompted him to proclaim a special day "to render thanksgiving to the Almighty God for all His blessings." The Spaniards in California and the Dutch in New Amsterdam also held services to give public thanks to God.

In 1777, during our War of Independence , the Continental Congress set aside a day for thanksgiving and praise for our victory at the battle of Saratoga. It was the first time all the colonies took part in such an event on the same day. The following year, upon news that France was coming to our aid, George Washington at Valley Forge prescribed a special day of thanksgiving. Later, as our first President, he responded to a Congressional petition by declaring Thursday, November 26, 1789, the first Thanksgiving Day of the United States of America.

Although there were many state and national thanksgiving days proclaimed in the ensuing years, it was the tireless crusade of one woman, Sarah Josepha Hale, that finally led to the establishment of this beautiful feast as an annual nationwide observance. Her editorials so touched the heart of Abraham Lincoln that in 1863—even in the midst of the Civil War—he enjoined his countrymen to be mindful of their many blessings, cautioning them not to forget "the source from which they come," that they are "the gracious gifts of the Most High God . . ." Who ought to be thanked "with one heart and one voice by the whole American People."

It is in that spirit that I now invite all Americans to take part again in this beautiful tradition with its roots deep in our history and deeper still in our hearts. We manifest our gratitude to God for the many blessings he has showered upon our land and upon its people.

In this season of Thanksgiving we are grateful for our abundant harvests and the productivity of our industries; for the discoveries of our laboratories; for the researches of our scientists and scholars; for the achievements of our artists, musicians, writers, clergy, teachers, physicians, businessmen, engineers, public servants, farmers, mechanics, artisans, and workers of every sort whose honest toil of mind and body in a free land rewards them and their families and enriches our entire Nation.

Let us thank God for our families, friends, and neighbors, and for the joy of this very festival we celebrate in His name. Let every house of worship in the land and every home and every heart be filled with the spirit of gratitude and praise and love on this Thanksgiving Day.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, in the spirit and tradition of the Pilgrims, the Continental Congress, and past Presidents, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 28, 1985, as a day of national Thanksgiving. I call upon every citizen of this great Nation to gather together in homes and places of worship and offer prayers of praise and gratitude for the many blessings Almighty God has bestowed upon our beloved country.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and tenth.

Signature of Ronald Reagan

RONALD REAGAN


Thursday, November 17, 2022

Letter Published In WSJ Responding To Senator Johnson's Op-ed

"Hi Doug - I am very much looking forward to your post midterm autopsy." - a note received a few days after the midterms from a charter member of the blog & former candidate for state assembly whom I admire very much.

I have been working on a midterm election analysis, mostly from re-reading many of the posts since the 2020 presidential election, which provide a lot of big clues along the way as to what happened on November 8 & why.  This analysis will be issued after the Georgia Senate runoff election on December 6 when the makeup of the Senate will be known.

In the meantime, below is my letter published in the Wall Street Journal today that responded to Senator Ron Johnson's (R, WI) op-ed of November 10 entitled "A Governing Agenda for Senate Republicans."  I point out that Johnson's fine agenda, presented in an untimely way, pertains to part of the analysis I have made so far, especially where he questioned how bad it has to get for people not to vote for the Democrats.

Dear Editor:

About halfway through reading Mr. Johnson's excellent points, I realized that his op-ed was a few days late.  If the Republicans intended to do anything like what he writes, they would have campaigned that way.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Midterm Election - First, Do No More Harm


Special note before reading the post:

Early voting has started across America & it signals a very heavy Democrat turnout for the 2022 midterm election.  Based on data from states with party registration & the U.S. Elections Project more registered Democrats than registered Republicans have already voted with the heaviest early voting recorded in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, California, & Texas.  As of November 1 more than 27 million ballots had been cast of which 909,003 (71% registered Democrats & 20% registered Republicans) were cast in Pennsylvania - more than 4 times the number of ballots cast in Pennsylvania in early voting in 2018. 

The Harvard Youth Poll has determined that once again @ least 40% of people 18 to 29 plan to vote & by a 57% to 31% margin they favor Democrats - a margin that has increased 5 points since Spring.  These young voters are impressed by Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, the student loan debt cancellation program, & the bipartisan gun reform bill.

A word to the wise:  to those who see that the government has become large enough & powerful enough to overwhelm the will of the people, elections are the one way we can control or reform a direction of the country we don't like.  The above statistics do not reflect polls or opinions but rather the energy of the Democrat party during the 2022 midterm election - in 2022 Democrats already have won special elections in New York & Alaska & defeated a proposed state constitutional amendment to restrict abortion rights in conservative Kansas.  It will take the largest Republican turnout possible to keep the country from further aligning with the Progressives' rejection of our founding & the continuous rise of bureaucratic despotism.

***

"(For the) first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if, in fact, things continue down the path they are going.  We've got a guy I know fairly well.  He's not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.  We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy & the Cuban missile crisis.  We're trying to figure out what is Putin's off-ramp." - Joe Biden, speaking of Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons in his unprovoked war against Ukraine following Russian setbacks in that war.  Biden, the American Commander-In-Chief, is a slightly senile elderly man who is in possesion of the nuclear launch codes & whose party controls both chambers of Congress.


 click on photo to enlarge

Recently I heard many Progressive Democrat commentators say that Republicans have no answers for any of the issues of the day.  Almost immediately I thought of the crime surge in NYC, caused by soft on crime DAs, that includes random & unprovoked attacks that precludes many tourists & business people from going into the city.  Lee Zeldin, Republican candidate for Governor of NY, pledges that, if elected, he would fire Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg on Day 1.  Now I am usually not a one issue voter but if I lived in NY that would be enough for me to vote for Zeldin.  How can people live where violent repeat criminals are put back on the street within hours after being arrested?

Well, this made me think of other issues of the day:

1.  The highest inflation in the country in over 40 years - started to increase the month Biden took office;

2.  Wages have not kept up with inflation - the year over year real average hourly inflation adjusted earnings have declined every month since Biden took office;

3.  The U.S. has the highest gasoline prices on record - Biden looks to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, & Iran to increase production but not America (Biden cancels Keystone XL pipeline the afternoon of inauguration day, January 20, 2021 & signs an executive order suspending new oil & gas lease sales on federal lands & waters the first week in office);

4.  Emergency oil reserves are released to artificially lower gasoline prices in the short term - to increase supply & appease Green New Dealers by not drilling for new oil, Biden has released 1 million barrels of oil per day for six months from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) planning to replace this oil in the SPR when prices fall to $67 to $72 per barrel.   Oil futures traders would like to know when that is.  Saudi Arabia plans to keep oil prices in the range of $90 to $100 per barrel for the immediate future & the December 2023 Crude Oil, Light Sweet Futures Contract (NYM) settled @ $75.04 on October 20.  Only 400 million barrels of oil remain in the 714 million barrel SPR holding capacity for a real emergency & the inflation brought about from shifting from releasing reserves to refilling them during an emergency is unimaginable.

5.  Mortgage interest rates are @ a 14 year high;

6.  Over 7,000 migrants cross our southwest border illegally every day (record 2,721,269 enforcement actions in FY 2022) - Kamala Harris says the border is secure;  The 2,721,269 figure is larger than the population of 15 states, all but our two largest cities, the total U.S. military, & the active duty militaries of both the Chinese & Russians.

7.  Democrat calls for defunding the police & abolishing both the Border Patrol & ICE have spread to demoralizing the military - the Army made only 75% of its FY 2022 recruiting goal & the Navy was short about 200 officers.  Unbelievably, only one-quarter of Americans between 17 & 24 are eligible to serve being disqualified for obesity, addiction, & criminal history.  Only a very small percentage of those who are eligible even want to serve, having formed unfavorable opinions of the country & the military from government school indoctrination of America being a racist imperialist country.  Also, people feel Biden deserted Americans on the Afghanistan battlefield where ten Marines, two soldiers, & one Navy corpsman were killed during the Afghanistan 2021 politically motivated withdrawal that left $80B worth of equipment that armed the Taliban & gave them an air force & 16,035 pairs of night goggles.  The Biden goal of having a "woke" military that is so politically correct that it emphasizes diversity & sensitivity training over unit cohesiveness & combat readiness has deteriorated very far into the dangerous depths of social justice & equity thereby making the military less prepared to defend the nation than it should be.

8.  Through executive order Biden is transfering student debt of 43 million people (i.e., voters) to taxpayers by canceling up to $10,000 in student loans ($20,000 for those with a Pell grant) & through a proposed income-driven repayment plan (i.e., payments are based on income not the size of the loan) wipes out the remainder of the debt after participants pay a fraction of the balance in monthly payments for 10 or 20 years.  This action ensures that colleges will continue to increase tuition.  The courts have issued an injunction temporarily preventing Biden from proceeding with the plan.

9.  School boards prevent parents from engaging in their own children's education - Critical Race Theory (CRT), that sees literally everything through the lens of race, is taught to young children so that they come to regard their parents as racists.  Black Lives Matter & a false history of America presented in The 1619 Project are supported by teachers' unions.  Teachers sexualize young children including having drag queens perform.  State abortion laws vary across the country - click here & here for updates - & most states do not require parental involvement for a minor getting an abortion meaning a teenager can pretend to go to school in the morning, have an abortion, & return home that afternoon without any parental involvement.

10.  Criminals know that they can smash & grab in highly organized efforts with little fear from law enforcement like in San Francisco where  shoplifters know that California state law holds that stealing merchandize worth less than $950 is just a misdemeanor, meaning that law enforcement will probably not get involved, especially knowing that prosecutors let shoplifters go free.  In 2019 New York passed a cashless bail law meaning that state judges cannot hold defendants based on their perceived dangerousness for most misdemeanors & some nonviolent crimes - those so accused are back on the street within hours to menace the public again.

The above ten issues of the day I thought of off the top of my head & anyone paying the least bit of attention knows that Republicans, unlike the Progressive Democrat commentators who say otherwise, have great solutions like drilling for oil to return America to an energy independent net exporting nation, securing the southwest border, & throwing criminals in jail.  When you look @ these simple solutions you realize that all of the above issues were purposefully imposed on America by the deliberate design of Biden/Harris to fundamentally transform America into a whole different country from what she is even today after plenty of transformation under BO.

The transformation is centered around AOC's Green New Deal (GND) which in reality is the largest expansion of government since LBJ's Great Society.  AOC's pledge to get America off fossil fuels by 2030 explains why Biden cannot allow drilling for oil to relieve the high gasoline prices.  The GND also includes universal healthcare, government job & housing guarantees, & a host of impractical ideas like replacing air travel with trains & upgrading & retrofitting every building in America to make them more energy efficient while @ the same time making the citizenry poorer & more dependent on government.  The GND is more about AOC's economic agenda for America & less about eliminating carbon emissions.

Former Reagan speech writer Kenneth L. Khachigian touched on all the important issues of the day when he recently wrote in the WSJ "For Republican candidates now in tight races, your opponents aren't "progressives" caught up in "woke" agendas. They are power-seeking lovers of big government tied to the extremist views of Joe Biden, who has wrought inflation and economic chaos, adopted a divisive, leftist agenda, and given us a laughingstock vice president who believes the border is secure.  No Republican candidate should allow an opponent to remain silent about the rot that eats at America's great cities with crippling price increases, crime, lagging schools, deadly drug use, homelessness, and an invasion of illegal migrants."

As for me, I am looking to vote for someone I think will just stop the Biden/Harris onslaught.  We know Biden will not drill, will not protect the southwest border, will not back the Border Patrol & ICE, or support cities & states fight crime so what we need in Congress are people who will not let it get any worse by not bringing up any large spending bills for instance.  Just stopping the Biden/Harris agenda the next two years goes a long way toward solving our problems.

The field of candidates is before us & we know that all but a very very small handful of Democrats in Congress have supported Biden/Pelosi/Schumer over 99% of the time so the answer to breaking this destructive lockstep is to vote Republican.

I met my Republican House challenger, Tom Kean Jr., over ten years ago & project that over time he will have a Liberty Score of F @ about 45%.  Normally I hate this type of candidate that votes for America only about half the time.  But you can see that it will be enough to accomplish my goal of just stopping Biden when you consider that his opponent, Democrat House incumbent Tom Malinowski, voted with Pelosi 100% of the time & has a Liberty Score of F @ 3%.